City Council - Special Meeting

Clerk challenge. Could we please get a roll call? Yes. And thank you, Councilor Donahue. We have unmuted the room, so hopefully you can hear us. Councilmember Araya is out tonight. Councilmember McManus?

Here.

Councilmember Donahue, can you hear us?

Yes, present.

Thank you. Council Member Shipman? Present. Council Member Jorstad? Here. Council Member Edwards? Present. And Council Member Packard? Here.

Thank you. We'll move into guest business.

Do I want to?

Yes, we'd love to do that. I'd like to make a motion to excuse Council Member Araya.

Second.

Motion to second. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Now we should approve the agenda also first. I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm so excited. We haven't been here for like three weeks. So it's like all brand new.

I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. I'll second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Great. We have an agenda. Now we will move into guest business. I will turn it over to Administrator Brazel.

Yay.

Okay, tonight it's my honor to introduce our brand new finance director, Lindsay Vaughn. Lindsay graduated from Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Then she worked as a finance director for the city of Lake Forest Park for over seven years. And there she received distinguished budget awards, three actually. Her specialty there was diversifying in investments. So you'll be seeing more from Lindsay on that here. She also served as finance director for the city of Duval for two years. And that's where she put together her first biennial budget, which we'll also be talking about at some point. City of Cle Elum for three and a half years as the city treasurer. That's a full service city with regional water, regional sewer, and regional police. Lindsay graduated from the Northwest Women's Leadership Academy in 2024, and her team was selected to present at the Washington City Managers Association Conference on Controlling the Narrative. It's centered around correcting misinformation in local governments for the state of Washington. Lindsay also worked for a big construction company called Atkins Construction, where they focus on heavy civil construction. She was there for five years as a business manager. A couple of the projects she worked on was the Hayek 1C project and the Nally Valley Viaduct project. Her passion is horses, and when she was seven years old, her father helped her dream come true by purchasing her first horse for Christmas. She was 12 years old at that time, and she brought that horse to college with her.

Mm-hmm.

She currently owns 2.2 horses, including a true miniature horse named Ernie. That, yes, looks exactly like the little horse named Sebastian from Parks and Rec. Lindsay's hobby is cowboy mounted shooting and attending horse clinics to continue her lifelong journey of enhancing her horsemanship and leadership skills. This is Lindsay Vaughn.

All right, given we're just

maybe eight weeks from council diving into budget work. We're very excited that you're here. Eight weeks. That seems crazy. Okay. Moving to citizen comments. We have an opportunity to allow citizens to come and let us know what they're thinking. I have one green sheet up here from one person in the audience. I think we'll start online first and see if there's anybody online that would like to speak.

I don't see any hands yet. But again, as Mayor Pro Tem Jorstad mentioned, if you would like to speak to the council and you're on our Zoom meeting, if you can raise your digital hand, I can let you into the meeting.

Not seeing any hands. Okay, great. Thank you. Then we will move to the green sheet. Gary Peters again.

evening council gary peter sagan resident city of lake stevens um as hopefully you're all aware uh today is the last day for the trestle uh input study from public comments and um the planning and environmental linkage study allows consideration of community and economic effects of potential improvements in the early transportation planning process so having reviewed that and filled out the survey today i got had a couple of thoughts as to has the city developed a position on this uh the improvements or the potential improvements to the trestle there's a number of alternatives that are in the study and some of them are I mean, obviously, the basic is no action, just leave it as is. But some of the alternatives are a little puzzling. And cluing in on alternative 2A, you kind of scratch your head and say, why are we doing this? Because the improvements are two general purpose lanes, an HOV lane, two wide shoulders, and a pedestrian access on the north side. This is the westbound trestle. And so, what does that get us? It gives us an HOV lane. It does not build capacity. And so, with this community and the growth that we've experienced, I'm curious as to if the city supports capacity on the trestle, improved capacity, meaning general purpose lanes, or... you know, what is the alternative? And I guess I don't know, as though searching the website and so forth of the city, I don't find any information as to what the city would like to see. And granted, we are early in the process of formulating this new trestle. Hopefully it'll be in the not too distant future. But years ago, we've had the discussion about the trestle and tolling was a huge issue. And so again, there's another issue that I think the city should take a position on. It's interesting that in the report, it talks about washed out admits. The trestle is the only direct link to I-5 from this eastern part of the county. And so in my mind, I don't know why we would be saddled with a toll. That seems a little unfair. The other areas throughout the state that are tolled do have alternative access. 520 is tolled. I-90 is an alternative. for instance. So again, I would appreciate if the city could maybe formulate a position or a policy as to what the city would like to see in regards to the trestle. It's early in the process, but now is the time to start doing that. And I hope that the community will provide their input on this PLE study. And we can get something that we can all live with and improve capacity. One other note I just saw in there, one of the alternatives is for the eastbound, which is phase two, down the road a ways, but continuation of a one lane up 20th.

We're at three minutes.

Just kind of crazy when you think about that's what we have today. And so why are we going through this process if there's no improvements to traffic situation? So anyway, I appreciate your consideration and hopefully policy will be documented and formulated. Thank you.

Thank you. Moving into approval of the consent agenda, Clerk Chillin had just a couple of comments before we move into that.

Yes, just a couple of typo errors, my apologies, on the June 2nd meeting minutes. It did mention that Council Member McManus had refused himself instead of recuse himself. I did have a little chuckle. I apologize for that. That was my error. And then also, unfortunately, the executive session times were a little bit off. So I just wanted, instead of sending you another revised report, Just, I'm going to go ahead and fix the final minutes for the website but 645 is when the meeting recess to executive session for 35 minutes resumed at approximately 720 you made another 20 minute extension and then it reconvened at 745. So, just out of all transparency I want to let you know I'll make those changes.

Thank you. Great, thank you. Do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda with those changes forthcoming? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda with the changes forthcoming.

A second.

Motion and a second. Any discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Consent agenda has passed. Moving to item number eight, action items. Action item A is the Evergreen HVAC removal and replacement contract. And I will turn it over to Aaron, Director Halverson. Thank you.

Okay, good afternoon, Mayor and Council, just Council. My name is Aaron Halverson. I am the City's Public Works Director. I appreciate being here tonight to talk about the Evergreen HVAC contract. So the City's been working on designing contracts an HVAC system at the Evergreen site, which is the future city hall site in the adjacent commercial buildings. This one's really focused on the adjacent commercial buildings. The system is at the end of its useful life and has been for quite a while. The city budgeted last year to have that system replaced and is ready to do just that. We solicited for bids, received five bids and received the low bid. Please bear with me. For some reason, my computer is acting up. Sorry. My computer's frozen.

Okay.

Oh, here we go. Thank you. Very good. Okay, great. Received a little bit. I couldn't remember the name of the business. The business is Johansen Mechanical. The contractor will replace five existing HVAC units in the 7,200-square-foot Evergreen building. Again, that's not the City Hall building. That's the commercial building that is just east of the City Hall building. The bid amount is $247,000. 297.81 and it is close enough to the 250 000 threshold that would require council approval so that's why we're here tonight should something change on that project or we find something that's unexpected there is a chance that it would exceed that original contract amount of 247 000 and exceed the 250 000 so we're asking for council to authorize the mayor to sign the contract with Johansson Mechanical for replacement of the HVAC system at the Evergreen building.

Thank you, Director Halverson. Any questions?

I do have one clarifying question, if you don't mind, Director Halverson. On the bottom of page 24, that last paragraph there, it talks about If it goes over that limit of 250 and advanced council authorization, would this approval be the advanced council authorization? So what's the advanced amount above the 250 if it goes above that?

So good question. So the way that works is anything over 20% of the contract value must be approved or up to 20% of the contract value can be approved by the city administrator and then anything beyond that would take a higher approval by the council. So should the, does that answer your question?

Yes, I see.

Thank you. Yeah, no, great question.

Thank you. Any other questions? Do we have a motion?

Make a motion to approve the Evergreen HVAC Rural Replaceable Contract Award to Johnson Mechanical, Johansson Mechanical as written.

I'll second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes, thank you.

Second, Council Member Shipman. Okay, I thought that was your voice, buddy.

Moving on to action item B, I will turn it over to Director Wright to discuss the City Campus Bid Award.

Good evening, Council. Russ Wright, Community Development Director for the record. I am pleased to bring to you tonight the award for the Civic Campus Construction. This has been a long process, but we're very happy that we had very competitive bids. We had eight bids that came in for the project. the lowest bid. There were a few bids below our target cost or our estimated cost, so we were very pleased with the turnout. And so the request tonight is for the Council to approve the bid award to Faber Construction and then to adopt a working construction budget that's about $4.8 million. I've gone through in the staff report a line-by-line analysis of the base cost, which is the construction cost. There are other costs such as contingency, et cetera, that we've identified as well as some of the alternatives. And then I just wanted to point out to Council that there already is a budget for this project for the design work and some of that other work that we've done. And so if Council awards this bid, there will be a budget amendment that just redirects all of the funds to Council. the correct places. Again, we feel really great about the bid and this company. We've done some reference checks and we've looked at their project that they did in Whatcom County that is very similar to this, where they are doing renovations of one of their civic buildings. So again, very excited about this and looking for counsel tonight again to um approve favor construction and then adopt a construction budget knowing that just like with the last presentation there might be some changes as the budget moves along thank you director right any questions

I had one quick question. On the attachment one, where it talks about the bid alternates.

Yes.

Alternate number seven, the Cat6A cabling was rejected. Does that mean that this bid... This work that will be done will not include that. And is that something we will still need to have done by someone else at some point?

So with this project, the alternate number seven CAT 6A cabling is a more advanced type of cabling. The project will have CAT 6 cabling for internet data and 6A would be an upgrade. The upgrade for that was about $46,000. dollars um so we declined that option and that is something that as technology changes in the future there would be the ability to pull the current um the proposed cabling and replace it with something different okay that's helpful thank you

Can you clarify the comment around the budget? The budget amendment will follow to reallocate funding sources, meaning you have a plan for how to spend those extra resources, or are you just intending to show that they've returned back to their original locations?

So within the budget, there are several line item codes that go to finance this project. And so it'll just be showing that those funds are being distributed specifically to this project. It doesn't look at any reallocation of funds. With that, I will say though, since this project and the museum do have some shared revenue sources. We have been looking at those two budgets, not as combined, but very carefully because they're pulling from the same pots of funds.

Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions? Do we have a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve Faber Construction Corporation as a selected contractor for Lake Stevens Civic Campus.

Second.

We have a motion and a second on the first recommendation. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion passes. Do we have a motion for the second recommendation?

I'll make a motion to adopt the construction budget not to exceed $4,795,955 for construction costs, soft goods, and supplemental costs as identified in Attachment A, acknowledging the total project budget is higher as identified in the staff report subject to a future budget amendment. That's a mouthful.

I'll second that.

Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say aye. Thank you. Motion passes. Thank you, Director.

Thank you, Council.

Moving into our discussion items. We have one discussion item this evening, the strategic plan review, and I will turn it over to Lori Erickson.

Hey, good evening, Council. My name is Lori Erickson, and I am the HR Management Analyst. I'm excited to bring this topic back to you all tonight, and this is a part one of two, so you'll see me back here next week to continue this conversation with you all. Before I share my screen, I will just call out you all have two handouts in front of you. We'll be talking primarily tonight about these documents and we won't cover everything in detail tonight. But first, let me talk about the method that we'll go through for tonight's discussion. I will kick this off with a very quick brief recap based on your recommendation or request rather for me to come back and dive into this topic with you tonight. After that, we'll look at those two documents in front of you and I will share them on my screen as well so the audience can see these. After that, we'll dive especially into the larger, the 11 by 17 document, which covers the strategic plan, including the projects and initiatives that I need you all to be thinking about, especially because we have our budget season kicking off in about eight weeks. So this is almost a precursor to that that will help guide that budget process and help us to figure out what our priorities are going into that budget season. And then looking forward into next week next week we'll actually dive into what those priorities are and i'll be asking counsel to please help us understand what the focus is for 26 and going into 2027. All right, otherwise, let me go ahead and share my screen now and we'll talk about the background on how we got here. Okay, so here we go. So to do a quick recap, our strategic planning efforts really started a few years ago back in 2023. During that time, I was asked to help facilitate a community engagement effort. We had a variety of community members who joined a workshop series over the course of several weeks. to help us revamp our city vision. You'll see the city vision there in the upper left-hand corner. Our new vision was adopted by city council in the fall of 2023, and it is now this. We are a thriving community that promotes a vibrant economy, preserves natural beauty, and supports an exceptional quality of life for all. Early the following year in 2024, we were asked to work on the mission statement. The mission statement was drafted with the help of city council at that time and also our city leaders. And you'll see the mission statement there, provide a safe and desirable community with open communication and dedicated public service. The vision essentially gives us our true north. It's the direction or the destination that we want to go to or that our community wants us to get to. The mission helps us to understand how we're going to make that happen. And then finally, we have our values that were updated in the spring of 2025 and adopted in 2025 as well. And you'll see those five values there as well. They were created by our city leadership with input by various employees throughout the city. Not listed on this handout is the rest of the actual plan and how it was created. In a nutshell, we, as a team of city leaders, we met regularly, did kind of workshop-style workshops, I guess, to actually build out what are our strategic priorities, what are the goals. What are the projects and initiatives? And then what are the metrics? For sake of tonight's conversation, I'm not going to cover all of the goals and all of those strategic priorities. You all saw those in January at the council or in February rather at the council retreat. So tonight's focus is really on the projects and initiatives. If in the future we want to look at the metrics together, I'm happy to do that. But tonight we need to really focus on what are the things we're doing to help make our vision and mission come to life. Um, also on the sheet, you'll see some definitions there in the lower right hand side. So this gives a little bit of background as to what is the methodology that we're using. It's called the balanced scorecard. It's a very common, um, strategic planning method used in local jurisdictions. And we chose it mostly because it gives a holistic view of our organization, including the employees who work here, the people we serve. the financials, obviously, and then the processes and services that we deliver. On the lower left side of the sheet that you'll see kind of a summary for how we're going to approach these workshops. So for tonight, our purpose is to deepen City Council's understanding of the projects and initiatives portfolio and how those are tied to the strategic plan, and to provide space for clarifying questions about the projects and initiatives. I know tonight we only have about 20 minutes left or so. So there's probably going to be several questions you come up with between now and next week. So I will be inviting you all to please feel free to email me directly with your questions. And I'll be gathering those, summarizing them and emailing you all back with what those questions are and the responses. As far as next week, what the format will look like is it'll be almost like a workshop style approach as well. I will be working right in front of you. We'll have our flip charts in place with sticky notes, and we'll have a paper version of the projects and initiatives for us to talk about, point to, and actually move around as we're figuring out what are the priorities for 26 and 27. To help with transparency for that approach, what we will do is we'll have graphics up on the screens and have those projected. And then also we'll take a photo of the final physical documents that we have on the flip charts and we'll get that posted to the packet after the meeting. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and switch gears and let's dive into the content that's on your 11 by 17 that's in front of you. The first thing that I would like to do is talk about how this is structured so that you hopefully can understand how it's laid out and the approach. So at the very top here, you'll see the strategic priorities laid across the top. As a reminder, we have five of them. So we have community vitality, accessible and optimal infrastructure, financial stewardship and economic success, organizational innovation and excellence, and environmental stewardship. Below each of these, you'll see the goals that correlate to each of those strategic priorities. We have decided to apply a numbering and alpha system to this to help keep it organized. So for strategic priority one, we have four goals, including 1A through 1D. And you'll see that cascaded horizontally through the other strategic priorities as well. Below those, we have the corresponding projects and initiatives. I didn't cover all of the definitions on the one pager that I just covered, but the quick way to think about projects versus initiatives is that projects are usually temporary, really focus-based efforts, versus initiatives tend to be a collection of projects and activities. I'm not going to read all of the projects and initiatives that we have here, but the way that you can look at these is the bold with a number in front of it corresponds with the goals and the strategic priority above it. And then we also have a status and a description for each one. As you're kind of looking over these, I will kind of, I'll go over one project and initiative per strategic priority. And feel free at the end of the sampling I will provide, if you have any initial questions, I'm happy to try to answer those. And if I don't have all the information in front of me, I promise I will come back and get you the info that you want to know about. All righty, so I'm going to go ahead and for strategic priority number one, community vitality, I'm going to go ahead and cover this example here. So it's PI.1.2, traffic calming and cameras. The description for this initiative is that it's an initiative that combines data-driven traffic calming measures with automated safety cameras to reduce speeding, improve safety for pedestrians and school children and and create a consistent enforceable framework around those schools. The status of this project is in process. The next one that I will cover is PI.2.3. This is the eds and code updates. The description of this is an overhaul of the city's engineering design and development standards to improve clarity, align with current regulations and practices, and provide consistent modern guidance for transportation, drainage, and utility infrastructure. This project is also in process. The next one I will go to is this one, which is PI.3.5. This is the fleet and facilities management plans. Description for this one is long-term data-driven plans for maintaining, replacing, and investing the city's vehicles, heavy equipment, and facilities so the organization can accurately forecast budget needs, extend asset life, and ensure reliable service delivery. This initiative is also in process. The fourth one I will cover is is this one here. It's PI.4.1. This is Artificial Intelligence, also abbreviated as AI. This initiative is a citywide effort to adopt artificial intelligence in a safe, structured, and methodical way to streamline staff workflows, automate repetitive tasks, enhance research and communication, and build a secure, future-ready framework for using AI across city operations. The status of this initiative is in process. And finally, the last example I will share with you is PI.5.3. This is the NPDES and Subbasin Planning Initiative. This one fulfills the city's stormwater permit requirements by collecting watershed data, identifying water quality and habitat problems, and developing sub-basin level plans and prioritized capital projects that improve stormwater management, protect natural resources, and support long-term watershed health. This initiative is also in process. Because of time, I won't cover any more verbally with you all, but I do want to open the floor up if there's any questions that you want to ask now, please feel free.

My apologies if you've already covered this or addressed this. Are the priorities in any particular order?

No, they are not. And that's actually what we need your help with next week is of these many projects and initiatives, help us understand what are the most critical ones to focus on for the rest of 26 and then into 27. So that'll really help us to help focus on our efforts for budgeting and figure out, you know, especially for the bigger initiatives, what are the smaller chunks that we want to take on next and how much do we need to try to budget for? Great. Thank you.

And I'll just add, Lori mentioned budget. And that's the real driver behind this is to check where the council's at, make sure everything is still in alignment. If it's not, we'll make that adjustment because this is the first step in building the 2027 budget. based off of your priorities and your vision for the city, we'll build a budget accordingly so that we can be successful as a team throughout all of next year.

I'll also call out as well, this is a five-year strategic plan. So in 2027, we're pretty much at that halfway point and it'll be a prime opportunity if we want to, to do a check and adjust on this plan. What other jurisdictions have done at their midpoint and beyond is gathered additional community engagement and ideas to help further prioritize of these ideas and plans, which ones are most important to the community. So I just wanted to plant that seed with you all that now I wouldn't recommend doing that work now, but if you want to pursue that kind of work in 2027, that would be a great opportunity to take that on. I think the only other thing I have on my list to share with you i'm i'm happy to upload these documents to your city council sharepoint site. And you also do have a summary like a one page summary of the strategic plan that's already uploaded there, it has our vision, our mission, the strategic priorities and the goals all on one sheet for easy reference. If there aren't any other questions, I just want to, again, invite you, please feel free to email me between now and ideally next Friday. That would be July 17th with what your questions are. I'm happy to try to dig around, get additional data and anything that you need to help make that prioritization exercise as easy as possible.

I have one question. Some of these projects and initiatives, I don't mean this in a negative way, but are a little vague, meaning there isn't a clear definition of what done means. Is that somewhere else? It's tough to put everything on one sheet, I get it.

Totally.

Is the definition of done for each of these captured somewhere?

So the short answer is no. For several of these, there's not a clear definition of what done is. Sometimes with initiatives, as you can imagine, there's several things that you could do or that you want to do. So some of these are more fleshed out than others. Are there any other questions?

To your point there, we do have a master list of all projects and the status of those projects. We could provide that to council if that would be helpful for you to kind of see where everything is at.

Yeah, and that may directly link to some of these and it may not directly link to some of these, right?

I'll work with Lori and we'll pull up POP, which is the master list of everything, and maybe we can highlight the projects that relate to this and get that over to you. Thanks.

Any other questions for lori. Anything else for us.

No, thank you so much Council.

This has been very helpful, thank you, we look forward to next week.

me too.

The next city department report is in your packet.

So the first one on the internship is a presentation from Anya. Yes. The second one is written only. Thank you.

Yeah. The first city department report is our internship program report. Director Warrington.

Good evening, Council. For those that don't know me, I'm Human Resources Director Anya Warrington. It's a pleasure to be here tonight, and I'm really excited to talk about our internship program. What we have in the packet is an executive summary of our program from 2025. So 2025, we had five interns. throughout the city, and this is a snapshot of what the program looked like, some of their key accomplishments, and then we'll walk through this a little bit, and then I have some more exciting news next to share. So like I said, we had five interns, we had human resources, community development, IT, we had a risk and emergency management intern, And all of these interns were able to work in between three and five months with the city. And what that looked like is they had a job duties list. They had several tasks, initiatives, and projects that they worked on in each department. They had an internship program that was developed by an intern in 2024 that is a very structured kind of learning path. They do lunch and learns. They have program requirements that they must meet, including attending a city council meeting. a city event. They need to do a capstone presentation to the executive team and attend education sessions and do some mentorship. Part of our program goal is to really teach young individuals not only about government and public service and what's great about it, but also creating a pipeline and a pathway for future employment in government. We know that the silver tsunami is still hitting and will be hitting, and there isn't a lot of talent out there. We have seen a decrease in talent over the years that are interested in government service and majoring in government type jobs like public administration and those types of things. So we want to make sure people stay interested. They know about government as a career path, as an education path, And this has been a great way for us to do that and serve our city residents. And a lot of our interns are actually from Lake Stevens because they're coming back from the summer and want to spend time with the city and work for the city they grew up in. And so that's been really fun to see because they're passionate about it and serving their community. Um, in this front page, you'll see the key accomplishments. This is a list of just a few of the many things I will say when I attended the capstone session, um, and many of the directors I think would say the same thing. It was very impressive. Um, all the, the tasks and projects they were able to complete. I can just remember several GIS projects that needed to be done. And the one right here that's highlighted is this, um, awesome bicycle infrastructure map that one of them created that is available on our website to show, um, all the pathways you can bike around the city. And you'll see some quotes in here from some of our interns last year that are kind of just a fun shout out. If you flip to the back page, we talk about our program statistics and kind of like your cost effectiveness of the program. So an average intern costs around $20,000 if you work them for five months. This is a really cost effective way to get some of the work done around the city that are items that are like on the want to do list for staff and not necessarily in the need to do list for staff or a little bit of both. To make an internship program successful, the staff also have to put in the work and educate and train them, but they also reap the benefit of getting more tasks off their plate by the end of the summer. that they otherwise wouldn't have had time for. You know, regular staff get bogged down a lot in other meetings or, you know, required things for their job, full-time work, and the intern is there to, like, really help get things moving, and we saw really the benefit of that. And some of the statistics on this cost-effectiveness graph here show that if you were to hire an entry-level position, for example, for a planner versus hiring an intern, you're you're doubling your cost effectiveness in that area for those five months. So you can see some statistics here on the right. I won't go over all of it. But what we've found is that we've really enjoyed this program. And this year, I'll go into that in a second, but I do want to highlight actually our future vision. And the last quote on here, I want to read out loud because it's my favorite quote. We do an exit survey with all the interns. We talk about how we can improve our program in the future, not only for them, but for the city employees. And this intern said, it's a great program and offers a lot of great opportunities. I really enjoyed being here. And I learned more in five months in this internship than I did in all of college. So, I mean, when I heard that and I read that, I was like, wow. Right? That really hit home for me. This is a passion of mine. And I love seeing the coaching and mentoring happening and that people are learning and loving government. And I do want to say it's been successful as well in the fact that several of our interns have landed jobs in government. Some of them, one has landed at City of Wenatchee, a county in Florida. One of them works for Snohomish County from 2024. So it's really great to see them getting the jobs that they're looking for and succeeding in public service. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce the 2026 class of interns that are sitting behind me. You may have seen them come up for a picture in the corner here. We're going to do some introductions of them. There's six of them this year, which is really exciting. So come on up. Don't be shy. And if there's a supervisor that's going to help me intro, if you want to come up as well. If not, I will read from the list. Okay. So Jessica, I want you to step up first. This is Jessica, she is our GIS intern. Jessica Zenger is the City Lake Stevens GIS intern for summer 2026. Originally from Edmonds, she has recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a master's degree in geographical information science, where she was awarded best overall contribution to the program. She has previously earned a master's in secondary social studies teaching from University of Southern California and a bachelor's in international relations from University of the Pacific. Prior to returning to school, Jessica worked for the state of Washington for eight plus years as a social worker in rural Eastern Washington. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, kayaking, watercolor painting, and reading. She's also currently working to gain her FAA Part 107 drone license. Way to go, Jessica, and welcome to the city. All right, next up is Miss Molly. All right, Molly here is the Parks Marketing intern. She is entering her second year at Chapman University, where she's majoring in business and marketing with a minor in creative and cultural industries. This is her second internship, having previously worked with the Ronald McDonald House of Orange County. In her free time, she enjoys playing tennis, spending time with her sorority sisters, and going to the beach. And I believe she's a local Lake Stevens graduate. Go, Molly. Welcome, Molly. All right, Carter, you're up. Carter Hendrick is our public works engineering intern. He is just about to finish up his senior year at Washington State University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He grew up here in Lake Stevens and through this internship hopes to learn more about engineering as it relates to public infrastructure and preparing for large-scale structural engineering. He loves mountain biking, backpacking, and just about any outdoor adventure.

Welcome, Carter.

Thank you. All right, Selena. Selena's the HR and emergency management intern this year. She is entering her third year at Oregon State University studying business organizational leadership and management with a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship. Selena enjoys working and learning from people across all fields of business and is interested in running for elected office in the future. At OSU, she is a writer and reporter for the school's magazine, Beaver Digest, and is the community outreach chair for the Entrepreneurship Club. Selena graduated from Lake Stevens High School in 2024 and enjoys coming back home during breaks to hike in the Cascade Mountains and go wake surfing on the lake with friends.

Go Beavers.

I think you might be able to find some folks up here to talk to about public service and elected office, too. All right, Jacob Brown. Jacob Brown. Jacob Brown is the IT automation and SharePoint intern for the summer. He is a senior at the University of Washington Bothell going for two degrees, computer science and mathematics. He is also a local resident of Lake Stevens and enjoys doing film photography and riding his motorcycle.

Welcome Jacob.

Last but not least. Okay.

Thank you, Ana. Good evening. I'd like to introduce Alicia McPhee. She comes to us from Central Washington University, where she completed her degree in environmental sciences. After that, she went on to do two years at Department of Commerce, where she was a climate fellow. And that's where she prepared their public resource documents that we used as a city to update our climate action plan. And then from there, she moved on to Western Washington University to complete her first year in urban regional planning. And now she's here for the summer. And here she plans to help us with, let's see, we have her public action plan that she's going to be working on. She's going to be doing some code updates and research for us, along with a fee update, which she doesn't know about yet, coming August. So stay tuned for that. That'll be coming with your budget package. And let's see, what does she like to do? Well, she finished a project, a hazard mitigation plan in her first year at UW with her master's degree in planning for the city of Granite Falls. So she comes to us with a lot of good experience and she likes to read, play soccer, see new movies. Let's see. And hang out with her friends. So if you see her around, say hi to her and we're really glad to have her this summer. Thanks.

Thank you. I think I'll spare them with walking the gauntlet and you shaking six more hands, but welcome the intern class of 26.

Thank you, Anya. And thank you so much to each of you for dedicating your time to our city. And we hope you learn some great things, but we're also really excited that you're here. So thank you so much. Great to meet you all.

Can I ask a quick question? How common are interns? I mean, if we have a positive model here, how are we communicating that with other cities in our region, the county, et cetera, et cetera? Hmm.

I know several cities have internship programs around Washington State that I've talked to. When we created the program, I reached out to several cities to look at how they had their structure. And as far, can you repeat your second part of the question about the county?

Well, yeah, just does the county, does Snohomish County have interns? Yeah, just how are we communicating what we're doing and encouraging other cities and organizations to do the same?

I'm not sure if the county has one off the top of my head. I would be interested to know that too. So I probably will follow up on that. But we have a website. And speaking of the website, we have a great video. It's five minutes. We were thinking about showing it tonight, but we decided to let you go look at it on your own time. It's a video of the interns. exit interview and what they gained from the program and it's also an advertising tool for internship program so we've had the website up for a while for two years. And we also advertise on handshake and with the universities, which with handshake if you don't know what that platform is it partners with all of the local schools, so we are partners with the Community college. and the local universities to advertise our program. We have done some other outreach. And then when we do go to like markets and things like that, like job markets or job fairs, we talk about our program there as well.

Yeah, and then, I mean, just from my experience at Boeing, right, one of the purposes of the interns is to bring those talent in, not just so that they're in the aerospace industry, but that we bring them into Boeing, right? And obviously, yeah, ideally, we can then hire these folks into our organization down the road, assuming that we've got the space for them as well. And that's the first challenge, but building that pipeline, not just for general government jobs, but jobs here.

Yeah, great. Thank you. Any other questions?

Thank you. The next department report is in your packet, page 76. It is a written department report. It is information about increasing the city's cyber ransomware and cyber extortion sublimate under the cyber liability program through the Washington City's Insurance Authority. And so it is available to read. I believe that Max is on, is available if anybody has any questions. Max is available right here if we have any questions. And so I'll open it up for questions for Max. Thanks.

Just a comment. It seems like an annual cost for the enhanced coverage of $1,800 a year is a drop in the bucket for a $500,000 increase in coverage. Am I reading that right?

Yeah.

And so you're not looking for a budget amendment that's just going to roll within what you already have?

Yeah. Matthew Heist before the new director came on board and he assured that he could find that budget somewhere, correct?

All right, any other questions?

I was just wondering, Max, so this insurance, say we have a ransom attack on our system and they want Xbox, whatever it is, we tell them to go. away and we decide we're just going to have to replace equipment that might be received the bug or whatever. This insurance covers that? Is that situation? But if we said, okay, we'll pay you $50,000 because we have to get this stuff up and going, does this cover that? What does it cover?

Possibly. My understanding of this is that part of this insurance is also like incident management that will be provided by this insurer AIG. And it's my assumption, but I do have to follow up exactly, but it's my assumption that they will also guide the decision whether payment or non-payment is the best people. But if you want a definitive answer on that,

Well, I just wonder, it seems to me this is something that we would want to have a good protocol in advance so we would know how to use this. If the situation erupts, who do we have to talk to? How does this enter into whatever decision we make about what we want to do? So I think that's probably...

Yes, there's a cyber incident response plan. So, yeah. And yes, we have a managed detection response company that has an IR retainer as well. So if there is... breach they are there's a retainer on that and so that's a certain coverage amount for them to do the investigation forensics but that's just separate for that this is all about reimbursement for you know obviously damages um federal government you know highly recommends not to pay cyber terrorists so uh and that's kind of what our take is and and we have good backup controls so hopefully we can you know like either just replace hardware because you never know what you're cleaning out so that's really what this will cover

Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you, Max. Appreciate it. That brings us to council business. So it's been a couple of weeks since we've all gotten together. So I guess we'll start at the end with Councilman Packard and work our way this way. Any updates you have about any council business?

Yeah, I attended an event last week from Master Builders Association. I was in elected officials tonight out in Mukilteo. There was an interesting panel discussion that included Mayor Franklin from Everett, the mayor of Linwood, and I should remember who the other person was, but I don't. Anyways, good discussion. Our community has some very negative feelings about development, about growth in any capacity. And so I think we need to talk in this forum, not today, but at a later date, about how we can communicate with the community about the importance of some building development, right? Even from the standpoint of supply and demand. And if I want my children to have any chance of buying a home in the city down the road, there's gotta be more supply and the price has to come down. And does that mean I want substantial growth in the city? No. what does the right amount of growth for our city look like? And how do we find the balance that meets the needs of the city and meets the desires of the community, et cetera, right? So I don't know what this looks like, but I'm considering what does it mean for us to put on a series of workshops or town halls where the community comes in and talks to us about what positive growth looks like in our community, where we maintain the culture and community that our city has, but without turning it into something that we don't want, right? What does that look like and how do we get the community involved in that so that we continue to grow develop uh mature our community stay vibrant continue to provide places for people to come in diversify our community and keep it a place where people can and want to live down the future so that's all right thank you councilwoman edwards nothing for me this week councilman shipman

Nothing really to add other than I wanted to thank our Public Works and Parks Department. I'm assuming they partnered in all of our banners for our 250th nation's anniversary, birthday, whichever you want to call them. I saw your crews out painting the streets throughout town. New banners up here on Main Street. And I just wanted to give you all a shout out and say it looks great. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilman McManus.

Yeah, I also attended the Master Builders Conference and shared a lot of the same sentiment that Council Member Kalkerman also brought up. I thought one of the things that was really cool is that they had some really good innovative planning for ADUs. So the city adopted and worked with the Master Builders Association to create three floor plans. I think the biggest one was allowed 2,000 square feet, which doesn't seem like an ADU. It seems like a rambler pound here, but... But it was really interesting. So they had three basically plans that you could choose from. And if you choose one of those, it fast tracks all the permitting. So it's all kind of lined up. It's all pre-approved, if you will. It's just a site look and then off to the races. So I thought that was really innovative when you talk about trying to move fast, but doing it the right way. So I thought I'd bring that back to everybody. That was a really good idea.

And that was pretty much it.

Great. Thank you. Yeah, I've been to a couple of the Master Builders Association's events and generally walk away feeling like sort of energized and ready for further discussion. And so glad that that was your experience. I just want to take a minute and talk about the Association of Washington Cities conference that I attended two weeks ago in Spokane. The only other time I had attended that conference was virtually in 2020 because it was COVID times. So this was my first time being able to attend in person. And I've probably been to 40 conferences over my career. This was definitely one of the best conferences I've ever attended in so many ways. And you always worry a little bit when you go to conferences like, oh, is it going to be worth my time? I'm taking time away from my family and away from my work, but. Every single workshop I went to was relevant to what I do here in this seat. Every presenter was passionate about the topic that they were talking about, so it was interesting to sit there for an hour and listen to them. I went to workshops on budgeting, on bond financing, on public works, on flock cameras, on traffic cameras. all things that we're kind of talking about in our conversations here. And then getting to sort of network and sit with people from, with council members from cities with a population of 304, La Crosse, Washington, and then a council member from Tacoma was way bigger, but listening to some of the similarities that we all have and some of the struggles that we all have. And I just, I can't recommend it enough. I think if there's an opportunity for any of you to attend next fall, I would highly, highly recommend it. Just great booths, great opportunities. Also, I just have a couple of gifts that I brought back. There was a specific booth for clerks the municipal clerks booth and they had these great t-shirts uh behind every great municipality is an awesome clerk and so i was like oh gosh they're gonna have to fight over them but guess what i got two So there were some mayors and city administrators there. I don't know if you all know, but we have the best dressed city administrator in all of Washington state. I did find some association of Washington city socks for him. And that's all I have. So thank you. Thanks for listening to me ramble a little bit. We don't have a mayor here, so we don't have mayor's business. So that takes us. Oh, council member Donahue online. So sorry. I skipped right over you. Is there anything you would like to check in about?

Nothing this week for me.

All right. Thank you. Now it is time to move to number 13, our executive session.

Yes, so we have two topics tonight for executive session. This is a confidential session of the council per RCW 4230110. We have collective bargaining for 15 minutes and then we have property for 30 minutes. That's what we're going to start with. And action may follow. So we'll take a couple of minutes to clear the room. Council Member Donahue, if you can go to your team's link for this executive session.

So that's 45 minutes.

So we'll be back at, 747, we'll give like two minutes to clear the room.

Okay, so the Council has requested an additional 13 minutes.

We're back on.

We are going to give Council. Staff to prepare resolution to surplus 2111 grade road. and 12301 North Lake Shore Drive pursuant to RCW 39.33 and Lake Sevis Municipal Code 2.95 and negotiate the sale of these two properties subject to approval of the surplus.

I'll second that motion.

Great, we have a motion and a second. Any discussion?

Council Member Donahue, did you hear that motion? I know you were just coming back over.

I did, thank you. Did you hear me? Yes, I heard that.

Can you hear us?

Yes, can you hear me? Yes.

Ryan, can you hear us now?

Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?

can hear you too okay yeah yes i heard the motion oh you did here okay can you tell me the first and second again since i was apologize i it was yours i made the motion council member mcmahon a second okay thank you any discussion

I feel, I guess I can just start. I feel really comfortable moving in this direction. I feel like it is in alignment with city strategic plan and our capital plans. I appreciated the information that was shared and to help us just kind of all level set around the work that's gone into this up to this point. So thank you, Director Wright, for the information.

Yeah, thanks, Russ. That was really good. The overview was perfect.

All right, anything else? Okay, hearing nothing further, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you, motion passes.

And I would be open to a motion to adjourn. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn.

Is there a second?

I second.

All those in favor?

Aye.