Arts Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the January Parks and Community Services board meeting. Wow. Everyone's here. We are at quorum, and so this meeting is now called to order. Is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda?

So moved.

A second? I second. Alright. Let's vote. All in favor to approve tonight's agenda, aye.

Aye.

Any opposed, say no. The agenda is approved unanimously. Next up is the approval of minutes from the Park Board's November 2025 regular meeting. Is there a motion to approve the November 2025 meeting minutes?

So moved.

Is there a second? I second. Thank you. Let's vote. All in favor to approve the November 2025 meeting minutes, say aye. Aye. Any opposed, say no. Okay. The minutes are unanimously approved. Alright.

Next up is oral communications. The Parks and Community Services Board values community input and looks forward to hearing from you during its meeting. Please be aware that in compliance with Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during an election, no speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for an election, which includes your own campaign. Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. There are rules adopted by the City Council limiting the topics about which the public may speak during our meetings.

Under Ordinance 6,752, the public may only speak during public comment about subject matters that are related to City of Bellevue government and are within the power and duties of the Parks and Community Services Board. Following the Board's bylaws, the total time allowed for oral communications shall not exceed thirty minutes. Each speaker will be allowed to speak one time for up to three minutes. We will follow the order in which individuals signed up. If you do not get a chance to speak this evening, you are always invited to email your comments to us at parkboardbellvuwa dot gov. So now I'll turn it over to Ryan, who will read names from the online and in person sign in sheets.

Alright. Thank you, chair. We do have some preregistered speakers this evening, and I believe they may be coming up as a group if I understand correctly. So okay. I'll read off the names. Oscar Munn, Hudson Craig, and Nehal Seral. Welcome to come up.

Yes.

Good evening, members of Bellevue City Parks Department. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Nihal, and I'm here to respectfully request that the city of Bellevue consider the development of an asphalt bike park within its parks and recreation system. Bellevue is known for its commitment to high quality public spaces and active transportation, and an asphalt bike park would align well with these priorities. An asphalt bike park is an is a professionally designed paved riding facility that can be used by people of all ages and skill levels.

Because it is built with asphalt, it is usable year round and requires less maintenance than dirt based tracks. It is also accessible to bikes, scooters, skateboards, and adaptive mobility devices, making it inclusive recreational option for the community. My name is Hudson, and I would like to explain how an asphalt bike park would benefit the Bellevue community. This type of park promotes healthy physical activity and provides a safe positive space for youth and families. It reduces barriers to participation by serving beginners and experienced riders in the same environment.

In addition, asphalt bike parks encourage outdoor recreation, strengthen community connections, and support Bellevue's goals with active lifestyle. These parks can also attract visitors from neighbor neighboring cities, helping to increase positive recognition for Bellevue while adding values to local park system. My name is Oscar Munn, and I'll be and I'll conclude by addressing the funding and long term value. Some examples of places that we could build an asphalt bike park are Surrey Downs Park or Robo Tin Park, but there are other options we are willing to help work out. Based on similar projects in other communities, a budget of approximately 2 to $4,000,000 would allow Above View to construct a high quality, long lasting asphalt bike park.

Respected company for this type of project is Velo Solucentj, an international leader known for designing safe, durable, and inclusive asphalt bike parks. In closing, we respectfully encourage the Belden City Parks Department to consider exploring this proposal further. An asphalt bike park would be a thoughtful investment in recreation, accessibility, and community well-being. Let us know how we can proceed to reach our goal. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you so much.

That was great work, guys. Thanks for tell thanks for talking to us.

Thank you. I'd love for if staff could give us an update on asphalt bike parks in the future.

Alright. Thank you. And that's the end of our preregistered list. We do have some additional time and would like to provide the opportunity if anyone else, would like to speak this evening. So I'll offer that opportunity to anybody in the room first. If you would like to speak, please come up. Don't see anyone, and we'll offer that, opportunity online as well. If you can raise your virtual hand if you'd like to speak, please do so. Alright. Don't think there's anyone else. Turn back to you, chair.

Alright. Thank you, Ryan. Next on the agenda is city council communications, but, no council members were able to attend tonight. So stay tuned for that for our next meeting. And with that, the next on our agenda is director's report. So I'll turn it over to director Shiyazaki.

Thank you very much, chair Klima. So I as I think you know, this is hard to believe, but it is my final park board meeting. I don't know if many of you know, but when I previously had a staff job here in Bellevue many years ago, I was actually on the board of park commissioners in Seattle. So I've also been able to sit on, I'll say, that that side of the table. And, you know, I just really wanna thank you all.

I think sometimes people forget that you're volunteering for this. You could be spending your evenings doing other things, but, just really do appreciate your dedication and kind of that, very important community perspective to the work that Parks and Community Services does. So so important to have you kind of experts in the field helping us, you know, figure out, you know, complex parks issues, park planning issues, have a chance to kind of review the staff work that that goes on. So I just really really just wanna thank you so very much. And as I think you know, you know, this is the end of my almost thirty seven year career in everything parks.

And, you know, it really it's been a lot. It's been so rewarding. You know, every time I get to, you know, walk by a trail or a park that, you know, I've had to been able to have a little role in, it just it just kinda makes you feel good that, you know, you could, you could actually have an impact and, you know, hopefully, make a difference, long term community. Anyway, just thank you all again. And, you know, like they say, happy trails. So I'll I'll I'll be around. So thank you.

Alright. Thank you, Michael. With that, I think the board would like to make a very long toast to your amazing thirty seven year career with involving 400 projects with trails and natural areas and the Japanese garden in Bellevue. So incredible. So I'd like to thank, director Shizaki for his years of service.

It's been a delight working with you, Michael, on the board. I really appreciate all the candid insights you gave about the inner workings of the Parks and Community Service Department during our meetings. When I first started, you gave a talk at the Bellevue Botanical Garden about your childhood, family, and passion for gardening, and I really enjoyed it. And both Paul and I were in attendance, and we were really impressed by all your gardening expert puns and jokes that honestly kinda flew a bit over our head, and the crowd loved it. And I know you're an outdoor, an avid outdoor enthusiast and gardener, so I hope you spend a lot of your time during your retirement enjoying the outdoors and gardening.

And I hope you stay in touch and maybe give another gardening talk in the future. So see you around the neighborhood, and I'll pass it to whoever else would like to share a few words. Paul's leaning kind of

sip. Are we supposed to? Yeah.

I had go

I don't wanna your words.

Oh. Sipping.

Okay. We'll take little sips in between for Michael.

I don't know the protocol. But I did want to I mean, I do remember that great talk that you gave. And I mean, one of the things that kind of struck me as I was walking over today was this idea that much like a garden, a park system, or really anything that humans build ever requires cultivation, maintenance, ongoing work. And you've been obviously things okay out there? Part of a lot of great new projects that have been put in the pipe and are even completed in some cases.

But I just one of the things that comes that I come back to over and over again that people embark on about coming to Bellevue is that it's not just that we build nice new parks. It's that the ones that are out there and the open spaces and the trails, they stay incredible. And just the cultivation that have have has gone into that under your leadership is amazing, and I just wanna thank you for making this the best place I know to live in the world. Thanks.

Who's

oh, so I'll I'll make another toast. So I just wanna thank you for being there, not just for our board, but for our community. Because when I joined the parks board, I knew I have a passion for parks. I have a passion for being outdoors. I love the trails. But I had, at that time, no idea, other than general knowledge of how the city of Bellevue kept all of this up. It's not just about planting. There's infrastructure. There's systems. There are rules and regulations, international rules and regulations that I didn't even know existed.

And one of the things that you always bring is a very kind and gentle guidance to our board so that we're not just bringing random ideas from the community, that we're able to create solutions or support solutions that make sense in the system. And that's what is really making our parks and community services world class. It's not just the love. It's also the expertise. And so I I feel really grateful to have been able to be on the board with someone who has so much expertise to learn so much about how things are working and why they work the way they do. So thank you very much, Michael. Thank you for staying with us and bringing your expertise to the city. I'm really grateful.

Oh, Eric?

Michael, I haven't got a chance to know you, as much being new to the board, and new to engaging with the community. But one of the things that I pointed out in my actual interview is I truly believe that parks are the heart and soul of any community because it is what maintains those areas where we commune, hence, community. It brings the community together. It allows for us to enjoy and share each other's company, share each other's cultures. And you've been an incredible part of that for Bellevue, and I've personally have gotten to enjoy the parks that you have helped create here and helped maintain. So for that, thank you, and I wish you nothing but the best.

I next. Well, happy retirement, Michael. I'm sure you're looking forward to it. So I think thirty seven years, I didn't even realize that's truly a dedication. And I think, really, some people could have as lucky as to have a job that you are passionate about, that's, like, your personal hobby, and you get to work on it. Right? Because I didn't know you enjoy gardening. You enjoy the outdoor space. So I think that that's a really like, to me, it's kind of rare because sometimes you kind of have a split. Your work is work, and then, you know, your your personal hobby is personal hobby.

So so I just do wanna thank you for your leadership and for all the legacy you leave behind for the city of Bellevue for us to enjoy. And I I I I I guess hope you have a lot of midweek hikes that you talked about. I don't know if you've been making plans for. And I, and I think you probably continue gonna garden, so that, hope you have a lot flourishing garden. And, I think you have earned every bit of the retirement, so thank you.

Yep. Oh, good.

That's good. Alright then. With that, perhaps it'd be really cool to get a a group photo of us. Maybe after the meeting, unless does anyone have to kinda jump out soon after?

Alright. See so right after to a

group You

know, I'll have to

say that one of the best things about the these last couple days and probably part of next week is, you know, it's like it's like you're awake, but you you get to be here for it. So it it's Not dead yet. But

Oh, miss all your oh, Michael's jokes during our meeting. You really brought up the I love the the atmosphere you bring. Alright. Thank you, Michael. And with that, one last cheer. Cheers, Michael. And that concludes the final director's report for Michael this year.

You know, I did just think of one thing I should add. And so, just in case you were wondering. So deputy director Shelley McVane has been named acting director, and she'll, start that role on February 1. So I just wanted you to know that, you know, this crazy department won't be off, you know, just, you know, doing whatever it wants in the wind because you you I know you're worried about that. So, anyway, Shelley Shelley McVane will be taking the helmet in an acting role. So just

Thank you so much, Michael. Yeah. Looking forward to working with Shelley in future board meetings. Alright. With that, the next item on our agenda is board communications. So how about we start off on this end of the table and share what you'd like to share during communication?

Just simple and quick. Happy New Year to everybody. I'm excited for us to get to work with 2026 and the progress that we continue from last year. Aside from that, I don't have anything else particular. Lots of family gatherings and food and eating over since we met last. So I'm ready to roll up the sleeves and get back to work.

I don't have a ton to add. I would I would, on a positive note, say that as one who has remarked on the copious quantities of off leash dogs at Ashwood that I have seen less of it. I don't know that I have a causation there, but I thought it was interesting that just even on the walk over tonight, did not notice nearly as many, and oftentimes, they are all on leash. So I don't know if something's happened, if there's been a little bit more county enforcement or something in the air, but it's good to see. So

Yeah. I had a good holiday. Also, not a big update. I had some out of town guests, so I took them to the garden delights at Botanical Garden, and they're from Jakarta, Indonesia. So I felt like I like, you know, going through the park and their feedback was very positive. It kinda make me feel really proud that that Bellevue is on the global map because I felt like for them to coming from, you know, big metropolitan area, Jakarta, Indonesia, I didn't have to take them all the way to Seattle. Right? Like, we have local things in Bellevue that I could have showed them for the holiday. So I thought that was really positive. I have a one question, though.

So, you know, World Cup is happening, you know, I think, starting June, they ending July. I was in the middle of actually looking at to to city of Redmond. They were, offering grant for people to host party, like, viewing parties, in in the city of Redmond kind of area. So I was kinda looking into their application. So I was curious if city of Bellevue has any plan to host, like, the final viewing.

I know Redmond is hosting a big viewing party for the finals at Merriamore Park, which I think it's in the July 19, if I'm not mistaken, like, somewhere in the July. So I was kinda curious if city of Bellevue has any plan to kinda bring the community together hosting some of the World Cup matches, especially the final.

So so Bellevue doesn't have any of kind of the official FIFA events here. I believe one is at Marymore. And I think part of it is just having the venues that can handle huge numbers with parking. So Bellevue is not one of those designated sites, even though I believe that there might might be other either, you know, community organized viewings that aren't officially sanctioned by FIFA. So there may there may be some of those, but some of those larger FIFA ones are not, going to happen in Bellevue.

I mean, the good news is, you know, obviously, Bellevue will be hopping because, there's a need for hotel rooms, and I you know, Bellevue's pretty sure they will be completely booked. So I think there will be a buzz. I think, I hear, a couple of the teams are staying in Bellevue, and so I think there will definitely be a buzz during that time for sure. And I and there is an interdepartmental team looking at those impacts, planning ahead, all those things. So so that is indeed on the radar screen of of the city.

Hi. Happy New Year. Thank you so much for the garden delights invitation. Always appreciated and a nice year round staple. I think I have two young daughters, and, park season is all year for me.

So now that we're in the winter no longer in in summer, you know, it's getting darker out. Thankfully, that's changing. But I've been on the hunt to identify all the different parks that have some sort of lighting after 05:30, which has been a fascinating little, investigative, journey, just to make sure that I'm not driving to parks that, again, like, the playground is too dark to play in. I know I I talked to Ryan about it a little bit. Park lighting, I wasn't aware it was such an interesting topic.

You know, what are park hours? What are policies? It kind of brought on a string of of questions and, hopefully, a nice little investigative activity for me to just figure this out. I know that in the rainy season, I talk about finding parks that have coverage or some sort of rain protection because we have to make it out there. Heavy heavy household user of facilities.

And then I'm so grateful for the activity guide you guys have given us. I just got an email that my daughter is, like, we, signed up in the wait list for the midwinter break, Northwest Arts Camp, the craft camp. But, again, it's a small capacity, and we got on the wait list, and I just got an email that, a spot has popped up. So it's really happy day. And thank you again for all these programs. Super grateful to have her do something really, you know, fun and invigorating for midwinter versus, you know, just a regular after school camp. So thank you, and thank you, Michael, for your service. It's been a pleasure.

Eve, what do you like? Sure.

Let's see. Well, happy New Year. During the break, we we our our family got together and and made good use of the monopoly game that that where it was gifted over to us by Michael. And I thought I was a pro MONOPOLY, but, apparently, my wife, she is the pro of the family. She won every single time.

So, yeah, we we had a lot of fun with it, and and it's a it's a it's a we we have another MONOPOLY board at home, but we're definitely using the the city of Bellevue one now. The other thing that wanted to another thing that that came up, I guess, one of the New Year resolution for me this year is is partly inspired by by Armin or Aileen. I'm sorry. Is she, you know, she started she made an effort to visit every every single park in the city. And I started doing doing that, and one of the things I found really useful is is I would turn on my ChatGPT and ask the questions about our parks.

And it's really, I found it really helpful because, there was a lot of historical information that that I didn't know about. For example, like, Robinswood Park. Like, what was this history, how it was founded? And, apparently, it it was founded by well, not the park itself, but Robinswood. It was was home was initially started by a homesteader in eighteen nineties by a Danish immigrant.

And I thought that was fascinating. So I'm gonna be using that as I keep on visiting the parks, as I I as I continue visiting all the parks in our our city. And then lastly, thank you, Michael, for for your service. And we you know, I still remember interviewing with you the very first time. Didn't think I would get the job, but I appreciate it. Thank you for your service.

Yeah. That works.

Yeah. Thank you, Steve. We also played Napoli over the break. It is such a fun game. Thank you. I don't have a lot to report out. I will just say I had some great discussions with my neighbors over the holidays, had some time to talk with others in Bellevue, and one of the things that constantly comes up is just how diverse our park system is. So when I ask them, like, do you have anything to say about the parks? And they'll tell me about, like, one park or two parks, and they're like, and then we found this park that we did not know existed. And it it is a point of pride that there are so many opportunities for families to go explore all over, and a lot of them did not realize that we have, like, one list of parks on the the website.

I mean, it's kind of a no brainer, but they they don't think about it until they're like, oh, yeah. All of this stuff is online. And, know, once they go there, they're like, we have so many things to do. So definitely was nice to hear lots of great feedback about the parks, and we just enjoyed staying local for the most of the holidays.

Thank you. For me, with diversity, I thought that the public comment today was pretty interesting. So if we could get any information about asphalt bike parks, that would be pretty interesting. During the winter, thank you tickets for garden delights. I took some of my neighbors there, and they had a wonderful time. And one thing I noticed is everyone takes, like, a million pictures on their phone, so that was kind of amazing. They were, like, full of wonder and amazement. So thank you for that. And then not too much to report. I use the the trail north of Woodlawn Park a lot with my dog.

It's a fun getaway. So if you're ever looking for a really short hike, Michael, you should check it out, and then say hi because I look pretty close. Yeah. So that kinda concludes my oral communication. Any final words? Alright. So with that, perhaps we'll jump into the discussion slash action items on our agenda. And the first one is about the Parks and Community Services Board bylaw amendment. And presenting this is our Cameron Parker, assistant director of the Parks and Community Services department. So thanks for giving us the overview today, Cameron.

Yep. You bet. So you may recall we had a presentation on this at our November meeting to go over the content of the proposed edits to the bylaws. Per the bylaws, the presentation and discussion has to be separate from the vote. So we're coming back here with the vote.

That was going to be the extent of my staff presentation, except alert reader, chair Rowena, noted something that had escaped all of us, which is the red line version of that was in the packet that you all reviewed was actually placed on the the immediate previous version of the bylaws, which, so if you look yeah. I'll sort of walk through here, but in the section, where they talk about our meeting date, it says our old date of Tuesday, which we back in April 2024, the board updated the bylaws to change that to the third Wednesday instead of the second Tuesday. So to correct that, we have a a main motion to that would be proposed to do the red line strikeout version that was presented in in the packet that makes those sort of several changes, but two substantive changes around the, the term, for board members as well as the length of exclusion, for in the oral communication section that we talked about in November. We'll then ask for a, an amendment to the motion to clarify that the edits that we are updating in the bylaws tonight will be applied to the most current version of the bylaws, which were as of April 2024 so we can keep our Wednesday meeting date.

So we have sort of worked on structuring that all out so that we'll have the main motion. The main motion will be seconded. We'll offer the chance during discussion for a amendment to the main motion. That amendment also needs to be seconded, and then the board will vote on that amendment first. Assuming it's affirmative vote, then the main motion would be then amended, and the main motion would then be also voted on.

So we'll have two votes if that makes sense. If you have any questions on the process, we have it all scripted out, so it should go smoothly. Elizabeth was the the first to arrive, so she got the the job of making the the amendment. So any questions on the bylaw changes themselves or the process?

Okay. Great.

Okay. With that, we shall

begin. Is there a motion to adopt the proposed updated Parks and Community Services board bylaws?

The

So moved. Thank you. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Steve. Alright. Now oh, yeah. Do we have any discussions Bylaws. About the bylaws, if there are any amendments or anything like that.

So I I recognize the need for the amendment in order to move the motion forward, and I so move that we make the amendment to accommodate for the meeting change as was mentioned previously, or part of the presentation.

In here.

Okay. Got sense. Okay.

Oh, there's a paragraph right here.

Oh.

Oh, so I jumped in front of somebody because alright. So we move an amendment to to the motion to adopt the red lines in the proposed updates PCS bylaws and apply them to the most recent version of the PCS bylaws because the red lines in the proposed updated PCS bylaws were applied to an outdated version.

Okay. Is there a second to the amendment? A second. Thank you, Elizabeth. Okay. So Sorry. Oh, no. No. We're good. It's perfect. All in favor to the amendment of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Now we'll vote on a on the motion with the amendment.

So so now we'll vote on the motion with the amendment with sorry. All in favor of the motion with the amendment, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Say no. Okay. With that, the motion with the amendment has been approved. Alright.

Oops.

Oh, so

so I say say that again. Sorry.

Oh,

sorry. Okay. Now we'll vote should I do that again? No? Okay. So the most sorry. I really okay. So we, the outcome is we were all in favor of the motion with the amendment adopting the red lines proposed and applying them to the most recent version of the Parks and Community Services bylaws. Yes. That's good statement. Okay. Apologies for that confusion. Alright.

Thank you. Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry. Sorry for that error.

Alright. Thanks, everyone. I hope that me One's good with that. Thank you, Cameron. Alright. And now my papers are all slip. Next up on the agenda is program marketing and communications. We are joined today by Bridget Larson, marketing coordinator of the parks and community services department. So thank you so much for joining us tonight, Bridget.

Thank you so much for having me. So today, we're gonna be going over how we connect our community with our programs, specifically a marketing overview, for parks and community services. My name is Bridget Larson. I am the parks marketing coordinator, and I recently started in June. So there's been a lot of new work happening, And I'm just gonna kind of give highlights about how people can connect to our programs, our park information, and just kind of give a high level overview of how people connect with us and the tools that I'm using to get the word out about everything that we're offering.

So sharing our programs. We utilize three main tools, a multitude of tools, but three main tools to kinda get the word out about our programs, our events, all of the things happening in our parks. So activity guide is the first one which you all have a copy of, and that kind of gives a high level overview of everything that we're offering in terms of programs, special events. Our e news is our digital news letter, which goes out to our subscribers and gives general updates about anything we have going on with programming and updates with our parks. And then we also have several social media channels.

We have a a department wide channel as well as smaller channels for each of our community centers that we that have adopted that, and so they can really connect with community members in a personal way. So starting off with the activity guide, we have a printed and a digital version. So this is just a really high level seasonal overview of what we're offering, for about four months, for each period, and it gives a really good taste of big picture planning as well as kind of an easy to browse way to get through all of our various programs across all of our amazing community centers and our sites. So the copy that you have here is the winter spring for 2026. And if you look through, you can see all of the different programs we offer.

It is newly redesigned, so it is categorized by age group and activity type. So, you know, you can look through, and it's color coded based on if you want to find things that are more geared towards early learning, so maybe you have a toddler, and you want to find programs specifically for that. It also goes over family activities, so if you're just looking for things to do on the weekends or weekdays with your family, that's also easy to find. So my goal with redesigning it was really just to make it as easy to kinda navigate all of our amazing programs as possible, but it also focuses on kind of the activity type versus the location of each program, and so I kind of utilize that as a way to help guide people towards a community center or a site that they might not know about, or be familiar with. So, yeah, that's part of our printed material, and then we also have a newly designed digital option, which is on your screen here, and that is, the same content, but you are able to view it on your desktop, on mobile, easily search keywords, and it just makes it, you know, really user friendly for online use, and it's a great way to share our programs and share a general overview of what we offer through social media, through an easy to share link.

We also put that in our e news. So that's some of the new offerings that we have for the activity guide. And for using the activity guide, it's really just a great way to explore what's available, find the best fit based on what you're interested in, schedules, and also connect through online registration. So that digital option, I directly link a lot of those programs into Civic Rec. So if you're using the online version and you see something that you like, you can click it, and it'll take you directly to that registration portal.

We also redesign or renamed the, activity guide. So it was previously connections. It's now activity guide. Some of the feedback I received was just that it's not super clear when it's sitting on the shelf and somebody's new and doesn't know maybe what that means. Activity guide kind of encompasses, you know, that it's activity based, and these are things that you can do in our city.

And also, it's very translation friendly, so that was one thing that we looked at when navigating new title and language was does it translate well to other languages? And I also worked on incorporating more visuals, so just highlighting the people that are in our programs, the staff that are putting them on that you'll meet when you go to visit one of our sites, and kind of give it that personal touch. We also added pre translated inclusion financial assistance information so that that is not a barrier when you're reading through the guide, and you can easily find that information. So yeah. Where to find the activity guide?

It's distributed, through, several different facilities. So it goes to our community centers, our city facilities, mini city hall. It also goes through the Bellevue School District, and Newly, is also being, distributed through the Bellevue Library Library system. So, I drop it off with, the downtown Bellevue Library, and then they distribute it amongst their various sites. So that's a new, addition, which is exciting to kinda get the word out to kids who might not be familiar with our programs, And the digital version is also available on our website.

So e news is our digital newsletter, and that is something that was also newly redesigned once I started. So that is a monthly edition. It's sent to subscribers who specifically sign up to get that e newsletter, and it offers kind of a, you know, a really comprehensive overview of everything we offer, new and exciting things that are happening in the department, and it just gives kind of that visual aspect of here's what our parks look like, here's where you can come visit us. So just another great way to kind of connect directly through people's inbox. So what eNews does best, it announces new and upcoming programs, gives reminders and key registration dates, shines a spotlight on our park system, and also offers an overview of our locations and activities.

Somebody who might be familiar with one of our sites, but doesn't know kind of everything that Bellevue has to offer, it's a great one stop shop for that. Looking at some of the numbers that we've seen, it's been really positive in terms of that redesign and kind of the growth that we've seen since it's gone out on a monthly basis. So net growth since the redesign is just over 1,800 subscribers, average growth of about 300 per month, we're about just over 84,000 for total subscribers, so that's how many people we're reaching each month with our newsletter. Open rate is just over 54%, which is really strong for a monthly city based newsletter. And we're also seeing an average amount of clicks just over 1,400, which means that within the newsletter, people are engaging, they're clicking the links that are in there, and our average unsubscribe rate is very low at just 1%.

So some of the kind of analytics and tools that I'm able to use to see how our community members are engaging with our content is through this newsletter. I can easily see how many clicks for each link, where people are going and engaging with our content on our website, in our community centers, in our registration portal, so it really gives me great real time numbers and just gives me a great look into what people are interested in and engaging with. So for our last e news, the January edition, there were 243 clicks onto our city web pages, just over 400 for the SBCC twentieth anniversary schedule, which was really exciting because that's something that we were really trying to get the word out. You know, we're we're really saying a thank you to our community, and, you know, those were free activities that we were offering. 380 clicks for our Northwest Art Center's free fitness classes, and just under 200 clicks for our digital activity guide.

So just another way that people are getting that information. So, how to subscribe? You can go to bellviewa.gov/parks, and, there's a little, button to hit subscribe. You just fill out your name, your email, and that, newsletter will be delivered to your inbox. And a high level overview of social media, another way that we kind of personally engage with our community members.

Looking at social media, my goal is to make it visual first so that it's really giving that visual cue of what we offer, the beauty of our parks, our trails. You're really seeing the people that are in our community. It gives a highlight of the programs and experiences that you can, engage with, and then just kind of builds that connection connection with our community members. So really is a way to build awareness and trust over time and also helps people see themselves in our parks and in our community centers. Another great aspect of social media is the educational aspect, so showing people, you know, various offerings, how they can register, but also maybe things that they didn't know about our parks.

So this was a great example of that. We had a one of our trail crew members took a video of a bobcat, got great engagement, and it also had an educational element to it because we kind of told people what to do if they see a bobcat, not to necessarily be scared of them. But it's just a really beautiful way to kind of show what's happening in our parks and giving a view of what you might not see on in your normal day to day walking through one of our parks or trails. So just a really great way to engage with the community on a personal level and also educate the public about safety around wildlife and safety in our parks. So where to connect with us?

We have quite a few channels. Facebook, we've got our general Bellevue Parks channel, which is, shares a lot of those shares a lot of the content from our various sites and engages with those accounts as well. And then we also have more specific channels for engaging with tracks, engaging with Bellevue Youth Theater, Crossroads Community Center. We're also on Instagram. Our Instagram page is fairly new for the department, so if you'd like to give us a follow, it's at Bellevue Wa Parks.

And just another great way to really show the beauty of where we live, but also get the word out about what we're offering and meet people where they're at, trying to really engage with people on all channels and where they're comfortable. So that is, a high level overview of the marketing tools that I'm utilizing, kind of some of the changes we've made, and updates. And, yeah, I'll open up open it up for any questions.

Thank you for that awesome presentation, Bridget. I'll look around at the board. Who would like to go first with a question or comment?

Oh, go ahead.

This is really quick. Thank you so much for this activity guide. Actually, we got this before the winter break. And for the first time, I was really able to navigate it well. I really appreciated the bi, like, demographic thing. So I was like, oh, this area is for me, and was able to share it with someone who was actually interested in our parks. So really appreciate it. I love all of the pictures of people as well. I agree. It just makes it very easy to imagine oneself in those activities. And you can just see all of our citizens looking so happy, and it's really pleasant to flip through. So thank you for that.

Thank you. Who'd like to go next? Oh, go ahead.

Bridgette, thank you so much for your work on the activity guide. I feel like for years, the connections and now the activity guide has been kind of my way to know what's going about in every location that we have. I there's no other way I feel like you would be able to find everything other than looking at every single page on the Parks website. So, you know, it's a really useful tool. I I agree the redesign is super valuable.

You know, I have kids, so just go into the early learning or the camp section. Like, before, you would have to check out what each facility was was kind of doing, and, you know, that made it a little bit hard to you know, always, was writing down all the options, and now it's so much easier to do with with this. So thank you. I was wondering in terms of, you know, how you know, because, you know, you're you're showing increased traffic to different websites and pages. Like, are we able to attribute, like, the increase to sign ups?

Like, do we see different, you know, areas that you're highlighting? For example, those classes, you know, get a little bit of higher enrollment, or, you know, do you have, you know, any way to kind of track a little bit further downstream, like, your impact? I assume you're having one. I can never very hard to get spots in any of the many of the programs. Right? So somebody's looking and somebody's booking. So I'm just wondering, like, you know, are you too efficient? I mean, hide the marketing. Let's make room for for more. Either double the classes or you know? So, anyway, just wanted to hear your thoughts.

Yeah. That's a great question. So right now, most of the feedback I've gotten is word-of-mouth or personal anecdotes. There's been a few programs and community centers that have said we've really seen an increase in sign ups due to the marketing, so that's helpful for me to know. There are analytics in terms of sign ups, and in the past they've been really strong.

I haven't looked into them most recently. I'm gonna kind of see, because we have our day camp registrations coming up. So historically, you know, we've never had a problem filling programs, so for me, now looking at programs, I'm looking at, you know, are there any classes or programs that aren't filling as much, and then how can I best market those? So I don't have any, you know, direct data right now, just feedback that I've gotten from staff and things like that, but that has been positive so far.

Yeah. I think that that's a great idea. Right? If you have a group of classes that are definitely, like, underutilized, they don't fill up. And if you highlight them in the activity guide and those have increases, like, you could probably correlate, like, that particular marketing to the increase, for example. How was it doing before you made a change? How is it doing now? And did those classes in particular have a change or not? So good try.

Thank you.

You.

Thank you, Bridget, for the presentation. And I also wanna thank the staff. I think I don't know exactly which month. I think I in my report, I said I would love to know more about how Bellevue markets program, how the residents receive. So, obviously, you guys are listening. So thank you for I don't know if it's a coincidence or it's actually, no. It is based on what I suggested. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.

So so yeah. So it's great to kinda have a little more systematically to understand how these inflammations are getting to us. I have a couple questions. One, you mentioned there's, like, 80 1,800 some subscribers. So is that like, do you have a target you wanna reach? Because I think Bellevue has, what, a 150,000 residents. Obviously, this is 18, like, households. Right? Like, if you have family of four or five, it's probably one, the mom and dad or mom or dad is subscribing. But, like, in term I know the classes, like it sounds like it's really hard to get you know, to to sign up for.

But, like, is this is the city happy with this number, or you wanna double the subscribers? Like, what is kind of your goal on that?

Yes. I don't have any specific goals around subscribers. For me, what I'm looking at is how are people engaging with the content. So are, you know, are they still opening the e news digital newsletter? Do they are they getting out of it what they need?

Are they clicking the links within the newsletter? Those are the things I'm looking at just to ensure that what I'm sharing is valuable and, you know, it's not just being deleted and and people are moving on from it. And the same goes for social media. So when I see, you know, the bobcat video, for example, do really strongly in terms of analytics, what I'm looking at is how many people are interacting with the post, what kind of comments are they leaving. So a lot of the feedback that I look at for data is around how are people engaging with the content.

And then opening it up when I meet people or when we do surveys, you know, are you hearing what you wanna hear from us? What do you wanna learn more about? And just trying to be in tune with what people are looking for from parks and community services.

So is it fair to say you are more focused on kind of the click through rate to the open rate that you mentioned, like, how people engage towards the content versus, you know, double or triple the subscribers? Exactly. Is there any reason why that's the focus versus we want to get to, you know, I don't know, 50% of the household in Bellevue, for example?

Yeah. I think that's a great goal. And, you know, I'm always looking at how can we improve, how can we reach more people. Mhmm. So I think that's definitely a step in the process. For me, right now, I am working on getting a sense of what do people really want to engage with, and what are they looking to gain from the material that we're putting out. So definitely, we're always looking to increase in our subscribers, in our metrics, and what we're seeing there too is is really, going strong in terms of increasing those numbers.

Good. Thanks. My second question is, I actually was just flipping through, and I saw a few activities I'm interested I didn't know. Like, I was thinking about learning how to play bridge, and I'm like, oh, there's a free one. That's, like, a Wednesday, that maybe I can go check out. So then made me think about, like, how does a search what is like, if I was thinking, hey. What are the activities offered at Northwest Arts Center? You know? Or if I wanna play some board game, which I just note from another one. Like, what is the search capability like?

Because as Steve was saying, like, he can type in ChatGPT. Tell me the little history about this park. Does ChatGPT know this? I can say, hey. Bellevue in the city of Bellevue, if I wanna look for this activity, do you have this? Do you know?

Yeah. So everything that is listed in here is also lifted listed on on register.bellbur.gov, and you are able to search for keywords. So if you're just interested in pickleball, you can search the word pickleball, and everything will come up. You can also search based on location. So if you just wanna see everything that's happening at Robbinswood Tennis Center, you can go there, click on that location, and everything will come up. Also, within the activity guide, we have class codes in there. So if you just search for that class code specifically, that'll bring you directly to that time slot, that date range. So everything lives in in register.bellby.gov, and that's where you can sign up for everything.

I will also try some of the AI tools to see how much it can tell me. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Paul?

Yeah. I mean, the AI tools is is really interesting, and it's probably worth evaluating how the website performs with some some kind of one off or or maybe regular checks of what do the different engines do when we put in certain things. And that's and that's such a rapidly evolving thing that it's probably going to be tough to kind of pin down the performance of the website based on that. And it may be that the tools get so good that the changes may not matter as much, but that's there's so much up in the air right now. I'd hesitate to make a prediction on that.

Super impressed by that 54% open rate. I've worked in private sector marketing and a few other things. Not a lot, but a little. And that seems like a really high number. The, what, 45,000 some email opens every time that e news goes out is pretty impressive.

And I guess one thing I was curious about is when it comes to the social media accounts, do we have kind of a metric or a comparative sort of, here's a city that's doing really well in these accounts. Maybe they're a little larger than we are, just so there's a little bit of a stretch goal. How are we doing compared to them? And just to kind of see and maybe not just one city, but just to kind of get a feel for what does this look like in, yeah, other places with thriving park systems, well funded park systems. I know some places are just trying to keep the seesaws, like, from falling apart.

Not every comparison is what we're looking for. But yeah, I think that would be really good to have going forward. But they seem like great numbers to me right now. If anything, it might just give us something more to boast about.

So Thank

you so much. And yeah, that is definitely something I can look at. Thank you. There

was one more thing. On that very last slide, there was a list of sort of facility based social media accounts, like different community centers, skate parks, and whatnot would have their own account. I'm curious, are those run by the facilities themselves?

Yeah. So I, myself, and our public information officer, Christina Fainey, we generally have a a management role overview in each of the pages. And then also within each facility, they have managers that are also contributors of the page and manage the page. So there's typically two to three people designated for each each channel.

And do they have do those sort of come to be because a particular facility says, hey, we should do that? Or is that something more that you well, I know you haven't been here forever, but that your group or the director's office would say, hey, maybe you guys need to put up a page. I'm just kind of curious how that, how those particular ones it kinda makes sense, but how those particular ones ended up with accounts.

Yeah. So if there's an interest, then it goes through the the channels. And so it goes through parks and community services. It goes through con communications. And then once all that's approved, we start working on what kind of content are we looking to share with the community, their community specifically, their area, and kind of go from there.

So if there's an interest, meaning they kind of need to spearhead it if there's a new place, which, you know, I'm not sure what that would be. Looking at that list,

it seems there might be

a community center or two not represented there. But they would have to have somebody kind of champion it, essentially.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a always evolving conversation, always changing, because as with everything, social media is always changing. And so Yeah. We're we're always looking at adding, you know, new channels and how we can make the channels we have even more robust and more successful.

So

Yeah. Animals, I think, is the is the key. But yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Great.

I'd like to go next. For Steve?

Oh. Oh, sure. Sure. Sorry. Well, I I think thank you so much for for all the work that you guys put into the activity guide and and also the social media information. So FYI, just signed up for the the online e e news. E news. Yes. Thank you. So I I'm part of that. So you get one additional subscriber now.

Thank you.

But I really appreciate these activity guys because as for me, I'm, you know, from a generation that it's print something printed out is is really useful and scrolling on it and be able to write on it. So it's but then for you know, I noticed for my kids, how they interact with information is a little bit different. They're always going through their phones. And and if they are trying to register with something, you know, that's the first thing that they will do, right, is is they find information online and social media, Instagram, face oh, not Facebook too much, but more more on Instagram. And and so I really think the the connection that the city has by promulgating these social media platforms is really helpful for the future generation, at least for my kids.

And and I think kinda goes to what Paul was asking is is your I guess, if somebody wants to post more information and get that information out to the general public, is that does that information have to be vetted via you know, does it can anybody just post on it, or does it have to be vetted first before it gets posted on to the and being shared?

Great question. Yeah. So each of our contributors go through specific training to be able to post on social media within our staff, and then they're designated as publishers, so they have that permission to publish. And then there's also a drafting system in terms of, know, going through me, going through our public information officer, going through a supervisor. So we have designated managers and supervisors for each channel that would then ultimately approve those that content.

Got it. So let's say if if, you know, somebody is trying to promote bridge classes, and and if they wanna get that information out on Instagram, they would have to go through a publisher and and talk to them and maybe come up with ideas on how to post something on Instagram. Is that

And to clarify, are you talking about for city staff or for the general public?

For city staff. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And how about for the general public then?

I have not actually had a request to directly share anything from the general public, but I'm sure there's protocol for that that I could could look into or follow-up on.

Okay. Alright.

Thank you. Thank you.

It most everything's already been said. I really like the user friendliness of the new activity guide. It's easy to look things up. It's easy to identify and associate. But some of the comments made by some of the other board members, I love the idea of getting more subscribers and building that up and have a lofty goal, but I'm also hearing that classes aren't available. So if you increase subscribers, we need to make sure that on the other end, we're increasing the programming so that there's availability. Otherwise, you will lose that audience and find frustration among our community. So, outstanding job. Thank you.

Thank you.

Eric, I'll give a few comments. The activity guide looks very fun and welcoming with lots of bright colors and fun pictures, so, great job on that. And then I had a a few social media questions kinda similar to Steve's. Do is there are there, like I don't know if we use hashtags that maybe the public should follow or tag if that would be something interesting. Are there anything like that?

And and then for events or things like that. And then I was curious. So you have Facebook and Instagram, and have you explored other channels like TikTok or what whatever else the the cool kids are using other cool kids are using these days. So, yeah, just curious if there are other channels that you've looked into.

Yeah. So to address your first question, hashtags, that is always an ongoing conversation. You know, do do they add, do they take away from a post, in terms of just adding more that you have to get through? I think that hashtags are really valuable if you're looking at, you know, a specific event, or a specific trend that you're trying to follow, so I think that's a great idea in terms of having designated hashtags for some of our larger events and certain events, and I know that we've utilized those in the past, but definitely a great thing to focus on. And then for other channels, citywide, we have more channels than just Facebook and Instagram.

We've utilized Nextdoor, I know that we have an X account, and for for that, I the feedback that I've heard is that it's really dependent on the department and the content or, you know, the owner of the channel, how how many people engage with that. So some some industries might have a really strong following on x, and others don't have as much engagement on x and have more on Instagram. So when I'm looking at channels, Facebook and Instagram pop out as valuable to me because they're very visual platforms, and I think a lot of what our department offers is very visual, you know, beautiful open spaces, you're seeing people in your community. So that's a great opportunity in terms of highlighting that. But definitely open to exploring other channels, and I also connect with our communications team frequently to share content so that we can ensure that people are seeing content that goes out on the department pages citywide as well.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any final questions, comments?

Alright. With that, thank you so much for for joining us today and for your presentation. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Alright. So the next item on the agenda is the human services need update presented by Ruth Blau, human services manager of the Parks and Community Services department. Thank you for joining us today, Ruth. You. It's nice to be here.

Yeah. So I'm the manager of human services, one of the sister programs inside parks and community services. And I'm going to use this little clicker and give you an overview of what we've learned from the 2025 needs update, which is a report that we publish every two years to sort of paint the picture of, the needs in the community of the residents of Bellevue. Happy to take questions. I wanna mention that this report was underway from January to June 2025, and that was right as there were really, sweeping reductions to federal funding for human services and almost a dismantling of the human services infrastructure in the country.

And so we had surveys, and we were doing, subject matter expert interviews. And we were only at the very beginning of people really, experiencing some of the things that were happening. So that's a little caveat, I think, to some of the information that we heard and the statistics that we have. A snapshot of Bellevue currently, 59% of our residents people of color, about 40% are immigrants and refugees, fifteen percent of the population are 65, and about eight percent identify as having a disability. It's a very diverse city, and the population is growing.

And, that really has an impact on, people who are needing human services and what is here to, support them. There are over a 100 languages spoken in Bellevue, and about one in five residents report that they speak English less than very well. That's also a huge factor for helping people connect to the human services that they need. For our, report, we did 14 subject matter expert interviews. We had a 118 participants in some focus groups.

We complete we got, 535 community responses that was translated into nine languages and then 62 provider surveys. So those are providers of human services who we survey. The results that we get and the interviews and survey responses that we get really, really draw on the voices of the community who are utilizing the services and give us some important feedback for our work. There were four cross cutting themes across all of the data that we collected, that there are cultural cultural and linguistic barriers, access barriers, provider strain, and stigma and mistrust. These four concepts were just heard over and over.

And all of these issues were sort of escalated by some of the things that were happening while we were doing this, the collection of the data. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. The federal cuts themselves have some important impacts. One is impacts to individual people. There's cuts to people's food benefits, cuts to people's health care benefits, and the other cuts have been to the agencies themselves.

So here in Bellevue, we have had agencies who've had to close entire programs. They've had to reduce weekend hours or evening hours or, you know, a van that they used to pick up clients to deliver them somewhere. They had to terminate their transportation program. So the cuts have been really, devastating for the community. These cuts have the hardest impact on older adults, people with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, low income families, and unhoused people.

After we gather all the data, we, divided everything we heard into these nine areas of need, which help our commission in their task of figuring out how the city should invest their human services dollars into the infrastructure. These areas of need are shelter and housing stability, financial assistance, food and basic needs, survivor advocacy and safety from violence, behavioral health, child care and early learning, medical and dental, navigation, legal, case management, and other supportive services, and fostering well-being in the face of bias, hate, and discrimination. In this work, we also identified that at this time, there are three areas that we might call survival needs or critical areas to sustain life. And this is in the face of the federal cuts, and those are financial assistance, food and basic needs, and shelter. Another statistic we always report on in human services has to do with people's ability to access services.

54% of our survey respondents were able to access a human service when they needed it, and 54% were able to access it in the language or culture that they needed. Those statistics have not changed very much from our report two years ago, and it still really indicates, some work that we have to do. I'm gonna really briefly go through a little snapshot of each of the areas of need with what some statistics about the need and then a little bit about how Bellevue addresses the need with their, financial investments. For shelter, I'm not gonna go through all of these, but just for a little snapshot, the number of children experiencing homelessness in Bellevue is rising. There were 651 Bellevue students who experienced homelessness in 2024 and 2025, and that's almost three times higher than it was in 2021 and 2022.

The school district tracks students who are unhoused throughout their systems. Homelessness is rising in the region. It's rising in Bellevue. And chronic homelessness, which is not someone who they they lost their apartment and they don't have anywhere to live for a month or two, then they figure it out and they they're housed again. But chronic homelessness, people who are losing their housing and they're not able to quickly figure out how to be housed again, it's now representing about half of the cases of people who identify as unhoused.

And that's a real shift from ten years ago or so. It's not a good shift. For the investments Bellevue makes, they are shelter bed nights, day centers, case management, and a myriad of other services that are funded to help the people in our region who are unhoused. Housing stability is for people who are housed, but they're kind of barely hanging on. They might be trying to figure out whether this month they can pay their rent or their health insurance or pay their car payment, or pay for their child's something that their child needs, clothing or food.

So we about thirty two percent of our residents here in Bellevue are cost burdened, which means they're they're not stably housed. They are perhaps a car accident or a medical crisis away from becoming unhoused. Bellevue's investments in this area are affordable housing, case management, and our home repair program amongst other things. The next area of need is financial assistance, and it's similar to housing stability in that people who are, working, they are they have a place to live. They are raising their family here in Bellevue, but they might need a little bit of help to fix a flat tire, little bit of, help if they you know, you break your cell phone, those kinds of things that can really set people back.

So financial assistance tends to help people with some bills that come in, like like if they get behind in their rent payments to help people stay, on their feet and keep the family together. Many, many, many Bellevue families are struggling to make ends meet. Bellevue's investments in this area was almost $2,000,000 in rental assistance, financial aid awards to households that might be for a utility bill or to help with a car payment, energy. And Bellevue also has a pretty robust, utility bill and energy assistance program that has helped, close to a thousand families residents. The next area of need is food security and basic needs.

It's an area that's gotten quite a lot of attention because the national cuts to federal food programs have been pretty, devastating. About, one in four children in Bellevue need help to get enough food and are enrolled in the district's food program. About 3,300 over 3,300 Bellevue households qualify for SNAP benefits. There the change in federal policy now, does prevents refugees from accessing federal food benefits. That has put an extra strain on the food banks that we have, and, we're definitely hearing from them that they're the need that's coming in the door of the food banks is banks is way higher than the capacity that they have staff wise, facility wise, and front with food.

Bellevue's investments in food and basic me needs is with meals, with bundles of essentials for babies and children, and with hygiene kits. Safety from violence is a category of need. There were nine hundred and twenty six DV cases in Bellevue in 2024. The police department tells us this is the only area of crime that's increasing is our DV cases. The investments that the city makes is for survival advocacy, for, legal support, counseling, support groups.

Child care and early learning is, very, very, very expensive in Bellevue, and there is a critical shortage of places for children for slots in the child care system. And it's a huge financial burden for families that are low and moderate income to try to have to keep a job and keep your family together and figure out how to pay for child care. Bellevue invests in early Head Start programs. Head Start is being partially or completely eliminated federally, so those systems are having to figure out a new way to do their business. Bellevue invests in child care vouchers and, invests in navigators who can help people, help parents figure the system out to get their children into child care and into child care that if they have children with special needs.

Behavioral health is both, mental health and addiction are both are are both included in the category of behavioral health. The overdose deaths in King County have been very, very high. And in 2024, we're at record high, and the cost for treatment is has increased. And here in Bellevue, there are long wait lists to access both mental health and drug treatment. Across the city, fire cares, the CCAP programs, and human services invest in lots of programs that help people, crisis phone calls, counseling, behavioral health groups, suicide prevention.

It's a it's a large area of need with a big investment. Medical and dental care, is a huge and rising problem, and a lot of who we see coming into emergency rooms are preventable things, but a lot of families don't have access to medical care and are under attended to in that way. Bellevue invests in dental appointments, medical appointments, and, some medical equipment. The category that's called navigation, legal, case management, and other services encompasses a lot of different services. Eighty one percent of our survey respondents experienced a barrier in accessing services, so navigation is a service that really helps people find the service that they need, figure out how to get on the wait list or how to get seen once you're on the wait list.

Lots of applications are difficult. There are a lot of aspects to getting help that are very hard.

And

because 40% of the residents of Bellevue are immigrants and refugees, there's a huge demand, especially now with everything that is happening with the challenges to people who have noncitizen status in Bellevue. Our legal providers are really, really overwhelmed right now. We do invest in adult day care, legal aid, culturally specific senior programs, and legal services, civil legal aid. And lots of of other services are in this pretty broad category. The final category is fostering well-being in the face of bias, hate, and discrimination.

This is a new category for us in human services, and it it was it's an intersection of an increase in some of the hate crimes, lots of discrimination complaints, and the challenge that residents are having who are immigrants and refugees and facing the challenge of being people of color and not speaking the language and trying to get the support and help that they need. I'm having the same thing you're having, which is sort of allergies, and that would be great. Thank you, Michael. The investments that Bellevue makes for, to foster well-being are Bellevue's, thank you, safe place program, cultural events, case management, navigation, and community building groups. And this needs update is one piece of the work that the Human Services Commission uses to make the recommendations for how to take the funds that we have that come to human services and to distribute it to the agencies that do the work.

I think where it intersects with you all and your work is that this diverse and growing population of people and families who are here in Bellevue, they love the parks as much as you all do, and they use and utilize all these services. And it's wonderful for you all to keep them in mind as you do your work to think about who is in Bellevue and where their lives can be enriched and improved by the parks that you all attend to and pay attention to. So open for any questions.

I'll just do a brief add here. And probably to put it in context of then the getting back to the activity guide, you know, I would point out that one of a couple pages in here on page 55 in eight different languages are financial assist assistance availability for our recreation programs and other, support people with disabilities. So I think we're trying to get the word out to people that don't read English about how they can better access financial assistance for these important programs that you heard about earlier. So just in that context of of this is how we operate our parks and community services system knowing the information, that Ruth just presented. Yeah.

Thank

you, Michael, and thank you, Ruth,

for your presentation and all your work on this. Yeah. The data is very, like, powerful and sobering. So thank you. I'll now open it up to a discussion with the board. Does anyone have any questions, comments? I'll turn it over to Eric.

First of all, thank you for the presentation. Consolidated with the the actual reports were a 159 pages or so, consolidating it down into a twenty minute presentation, you know, kudos.

Thanks for noticing.

That that that being said, there were a couple things that you mentioned I wanted to seek clarification on. When you were talking about the strain on food banks, you've made a reference to refugees being excluded from funding. Is that correct?

For federal SNAP funding.

Federal SNAP. So were you referencing refugees as an all encompassing all immigrants, asylum seekers, or actual refugee status?

I do not know if an immigrant who is in the process of changing their status to citizen, I don't know if they have been excluded from SNAP benefits. But previous to this year, if you were a refugee in The United States, you could get SNAP benefits while you're on that path, but no longer.

And and similar to that, we've been seeing an increase across the country as it specifically relates to our Somalian population. Not that it needs to be answered now, but I would appreciate some type of feedback on how that's impacting here in Bellevue, our human services that are being provided. Also, I don't I think it was page 23. You mentioned thirty percent of students withdraw from activities due to mental health. Is that thirty percent of students surveyed, or thirty percent of our students are actually all students in the Bellevue School District are actually withdrawing from activities?

It's thirty percent of all students, and that's a statistic we get from the school district. So they're not withdrawing from school.

Like, the activities that the schools offer. Is is that what I'm understanding?

I'm not sure what the what is in their definition of activities, so I'm not sure if it's withdrawing from a soccer team or a band.

I I see. That that adds a little bit of clarification for me. And then the other thing, and this is something you can maybe get back to me before, it mentions Bellevue PD safe space program. I'd be interested in knowing exactly the number of businesses and organizations that are actually participating, in the program. It's a valuable program for, all of our higher risk population communities, and I would, like to know, you know, how diverse that is within our communities and, the types of organizations that are participating.

Great. I will get

that for you.

Outstanding presentation. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Eric. Who'd like to go next?

Eileen? Thank you for the presentation. I feel like it's such a heavy topic. Yeah. And then I noticed that in the activity guide, there's a low cost and no cost, which I think it's great just to highlight, you know, these programs are free. I have I think it's one question and one I mean, maybe two questions. One I noticed is that 32% of the 32% of what that's cost burden was the housing is that price? Households? Households is, like, 32% of the residents in Bellevue or the people surveyed? Bellevue residents.

Of the people are saying they're either behind mortgage, or they can't pay, or they cannot pay the rent. Or what does They that

define cost burdened as spending more than 30% of your

income on rent. On rent. That's So only people who 30% of people who rent are cost burdened. No?

Rent or mortgage. On housing. 30% on housing. Sorry. So a third of the families in Bellevue are spending a large percentage of their income just to stay housed. And that is a factor that's getting worse Mhmm. Because things are more expensive and income isn't keeping up with that. And that is one of the things that moves people out of that housing stability. We're here for the long term. Things are going smoothly. It's that

But if that were the case, I feel like there should be more than 5,000 units that are short for affordable housing. Right? Like, if a third of the Bellevue residents are spending more than 30% of their income on rent or mortgage, then the I mean, I don't know. Like, it feels like the affordable units number would have been higher. Yeah. That's a really

you're right. And I would have to look into the where that 5,000 units Mhmm. Comes from because I don't know that they are counting everyone who's cost burdened as needing a unit.

Just a comment, houses are so expensive. You have to make so much. You can be cost burdened and make what looks like on newspaper, really good money, but you might be the only person in your family earning money. But you would have to cut your income by, like, 50 to set like, 75% to qualify for affordable housing, which I think was a quote that they said. Like, we don't qualify.

So affordable housing means for poor, but it doesn't actually comprise all the affordability that we need, like for a family of two teachers or a family where, you know, mom is or dad is at home with the little ones or something like that. That's that's how I interpreted that Yeah. Because they're so expensive, our house is.

Yeah. I was just curious, like, any correlation or how those numbers were derived. I mean, after all these numbers and presentation, which is great, but I'm just kind of curious, like, what can we do as a city, as a community? Right? Today, actually, was I I just happened to make a call to City of Bellevue Utilities Department. I had a couple questions. And then I waited for, I think, twenty some minutes, which is really high. So by the time I got hold of one of the gals the guy was helping me, was questioning. He's like, yeah, we had really high volume today. I said, oh, what happened?

He said, today is the first day in the year and a half that Bellevue is shutting down water for those who haven't paid, the utility water utility. I think it's the first time they have done this in a year and a half. And so maybe I don't know how many households are impacted, and that seems like it generated a lot of call volume. That's why the hold was really high. So then it was interesting that, you know, you had this presentation.

So I'm just thinking, there's a lot of people who have a lot of needs. Right? So what can we do as a I don't know what's the goal for human services department this year for 2026. And what can we do as a community? I mean, probably there's a lot of things, but maybe you can highlight a few. Because I was like, oh, because first of he said, shut down water. I'm like, is my water going to be shut? He's like, oh, this, this, so I I was like, wow. That must have impacted a lot of people because the the call volume, I mean, the wait time kind of was very long. Yeah.

So so it seems like it's a lot of needs there. People are not able to pay or fall behind their utility, which is kind of the basic needs, and and know what's next. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are a million wonderful things that people can do and a community can do. But just as an individual, agencies many, many agencies utilize volunteers to get their work done. And some of that volunteering might be people y volunteering.

Some of it might be unloading groceries and stacking them on the shelf. I mean, there's just a lot of volunteering opportunities. I also just think being aware of of the differences of the people who we are all who we all live with and just be just being aware can be really helpful. But things that you can do, the first thing that comes to mind is volunteering. Is there a place like, maybe you

encounter a lot of the agents who need a volunteer. Like, is there a possibility for the city to highlight? I mean, I don't want to add more work to human services, but, like, agents that were I see, like, medical, dental needs. I see, like, legal. I mean, there may be other more greater needs that are out there that Citi can help highlighting to people who can offer such expertise.

Yeah. The Citi can't take on that task because the agencies might need help this week, but not next week. They all manage their volunteers internally. Maybe they do a monthly training for new volunteers. They have a whole they all do it differently, and they all do it their own way. So we the city of Bellevue doesn't really have the capacity to, promote that. I could certainly send you a list of of agencies.

Yeah. Even just highlight these agent agencies that people could look into, and they can kinda take their own responsibility of contacting these, not asking the city to manage these volunteer program because that's a big task on its own. But even just highlighting because, like, for me, like, oh, I wonder what are the these agents that are out there.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Eileen. Any other question, comments? Oh, Paul? Hi.

Thank you for that. I am curious about the status of the safe parking program. I think I had heard that there were some some facility glitches there.

Yeah. Facility failure. So the building got condemned on pretty short notice. So the agency for tomorrow that was managing safe parking pivoted to they got people into hotels pretty quickly. And they are actively looking for a new site for safe parking. I don't know if there's if they're close to that or not. In the meantime, the people that they were working with, I believe most of them got housed, and then they weren't taking in new clients.

Okay. How long ago was the condemnation of the property?

Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. I thought

I heard about it sometime mid late mid to late last year, but I don't know.

It was late last summer, some over that that timeline. Yeah.

Okay. And the building is is done. We're not gonna rehabilitate it?

No. I don't believe. It's it's it's probably not worth the reinvestment, but, yeah, It was rather agreed.

Mhmm. Okay.

Yeah. No, I mean, was interesting because that program did depend on a fortuitous piece of real estate that happened to be in the city's possession, but there's not a lot of that. Unused, I should say. When it came to the kind

of the

increase that we saw in a number of different homelessness metrics after 2021, 2022, Is that related to COVID? Do we have like any causation suggested for that?

I'm sure it has a COVID factor. Housing's only gotten more and more and more expensive. I think during COVID, we had a lot of people who lost income, lost jobs, lots of businesses closed down. But I don't specifically know any of sort of the metrics of how that would have happened.

Yeah. I mean, because the change was more of a step function than something you might expect from the sort of incremental increases in housing costs. So it's it it points more, at least from a first pass analysis, it seems to point more towards something more than just an ongoing trend happening. But okay. But, yeah, it it seemed to manifest in all aspects, whether it was student homelessness or just the total metric or, as you pointed out, the number of folks that are in a chronic state as opposed to more of a transient homelessness. So

yeah. Yep.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep. You're welcome. Thanks, Paul. Steve?

Just following up on on some of the statistics, are there any I guess you guys aren't the the boots on the ground. And do you guys are are there any projections for the up you know, in the near future? Are these trends which way are they trending? Right? Is it gonna does it look more positive, or does it look more pessimistic, these you know, the going forward?

Yeah. So what I would say is that we're in a pretty unique period where, local efforts could be paired with statewide efforts, could be paired with federal efforts to help people with costs of childcare and help people with costs of housing and with food. Because the currently, the federal administration is, ending the funding, For instance, violence against women, the federal funds for violence against women are have been zeroed out. And so that means the burden for a lot of help for domestic violence really falls to the state and falls locally. So I would say that it's grim, incredibly grim, what's happening right now.

But I but it's hard to know you know, it's just immediately really, really grim, but it's kinda hard to know what what's gonna be happening next.

Following up on that then, in in terms of the human services budget here, With are those are those being funded by the well, I guess there are many levels of funding, and I'm assuming a lot of that funding will be cut because of the fed on the federal level?

So in the human services department, we have one little pot of federal dollars. It's called CDBG, community development block grant. It pays for the home repair program. Some a little bit of the money goes to Porchlight Men's Shelter. A little bit of the money goes to For Tomorrow and a few other agencies to do some microenterprise.

That money has been stalled and then restarted. And currently, it might for 2026, it might happen. So, that's the bulk of our money is general fund city of Bellevue dollars. The city is focused on human services. They are generous with what they budget for the human services team to invest in the work.

And so fairly flat funding from 2425 to what's ahead. It's looking like it's not we're not taking a cut. So, yeah, thanks for asking.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve. Oh, go ahead.

Thank you so much for for sharing this. I know I've heard a lot of this in the news at the federal level, but it is really helpful to see how this is impacting us, in particular, in our communities. I wanted to speak to what Aileen had said earlier because that was the similar to what was on my mind, but I think it bears repeating that right now, especially, people know what's going on, and they don't know how to help. They they want to help. They literally don't know what is my next step if I get out my door.

They don't know where to go online. Like, I want to do something. And when I heard the report, one thing I heard again and again is that people have trouble accessing services. So it's not a tech highly technical need that we have to to get people connected. And if there's anything that we can do to help connect people to those volunteering opportunities and make sure it's on the website so that people have a button to push, it would just be immensely helpful.

Because I was reading I was scanning through the report looking for how can people help, how can people help, what are people who could do something skill wise. Or even if I'm unskilled and I have one language, what can I do? I would love to hear it, and I'll reach out to you offline, Eileen. Like, we can help connect people to the city if they are looking for volunteers. Because in times past, maybe even just five years ago, I know my kids and I had tried to volunteer, and they're like, we're full of volunteers.

We don't need any. And that's very, very recent memory for me of not being able to get a volunteer position at a homeless shelter because I had so many folks, but it's different now. So thank you for all the hard work you're doing in spite of so much, you know, so much bad news and and so much hurt that people are feeling. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And and just to add on that, I mean, I'm just thinking, like, for all the I don't know how many families who don't have water today. Like, the water got shut down. You know? It like, how much they owe in on the water bill. Like, where can they turn to get help? Right? And how much is it short? And what percentage of that those families can get some help and then maybe get water turned back in the next day or two. Like, I'm just kind of like, you know, it's just unexpectedly I found out today, and I was just thinking about those families who don't have water tonight.

Yeah. I hadn't heard that. Yeah.

And I hope I heard it right. Yeah. That's what I just happened to make a call to utilities today.

I'll I'll see if I can get any information about how many people or what was behind that. I hadn't heard that.

Yeah. Thanks. Oh, Michael, go ahead.

So on a bit of, I'll say, better news. So and I just got a little message here that unlike what Ruth and I just talked about, so safe parking is actually operational. It's still in the Lincoln Center parking lot, and, but it's being operated on a little different model because those buildings are still condemned. So the city has provided portables for a day use center, and they purchased a shower trailer for use by the program participants. So it's meeting the need in a slightly different way.

That's a Big deal. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's good to hear.

Thanks for the update, Michael. You have a comment or no?

Okay. I have a couple comments. Yeah. The data was so interesting. I was when I saw I don't have a child. So to see $3,400 a month for child care costs, which comes out to, like, over $40,000 a year, and that's a lot. And then I think I read in the report that 23% of people around here earn less than $25,000 a year. It kind of doesn't work out, which is kind of pretty wild. So my really quick question I must have missed it maybe. I wasn't quite sure. The $5.35 people that did the survey, what were they like, and

how did they find the survey? We put out a press release with a QR code, so we got some responses from that. But we distributed it to, our agencies, So they had them at porch light shelter for their clients. We did some tabling at Crossroads Community Center and at, one of the Bellevue School District, events at one of the schools. So we it's it was a lower number of survey respondents than we've had, and we had a lot of people who were really, really reluctant.

That April, May, June was at the time when there were that DOGE federal team was coming in and, closing federal offices. And at that time, there was a lot of mistrust of why we were collecting people's information. And we're asking your age, and how many people are in your household. And there was even when we were tabling at Crossroads, people would come and talk to us, but they didn't want to do the survey. So that was sort of a unique challenge that we had with data collection this year.

The focus groups and the provider survey and the subject matter expert interviews really helped to fill in a lot of the data that we didn't get from as many surveys. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing that.

It's really insightful looking back at what the world was like just a few months ago. I've and then I have a really minor I flipped through the the document, and then I noticed on page 33 this is really specific. Specific. Sorry. Sorry. I was looking at the number of opioid over opioid or overdoses, and I noticed it peaked in 2023, and then it went down, which I thought, okay. That's kind of a good sign. So are there things that are working that are helping bring that down? There are things that are work

there are multiple things that are working. Naloxone is now free, and you can you don't have to have a prescription, and people carry it on them to help someone else. And so that has really, really, really reduced the number of people who die from a fentanyl overdose. There are also, you know, they're learning about this. This was a fairly new drug.

They're really learning about how to intervene in this. There are treatment programs that are working better. And frankly, what we hear anecdotally is that young people are not interested in fentanyl. So the people who have been dying of fentanyl overdoses are in their 30s and forties and that young people are not interested because it really is so deadly. And so it's not it sort of had its heyday, and then, frankly, people that were really into it died. And there there's just a lot less use on the streets, and it's not popular with high school kids. Thank you for that. Hopefully, the trend will Yeah.

Hopefully, yeah. Continue downward to zero. Well, that's kinda all my comments. Any other final questions, comments that may have come up? Well, thank you again for this presentation, and, yeah, looking forward to learning more about ways we could all help as a community.

Thank you. It was really nice to be here.

Thanks for being here. Thank you.

Hope your cough gets better.

Hope your cough gets better.

Oh, thanks.

Great. Thank you.

Alright. And then the next item is the December 2025 report and communication to counsel, and the presenter for that is our Ryan Walker senior planner.

Great. Thank you, chair. As is typical, we have a quarterly slash portion of the year report, for city council, and staff worked with the chair and vice chair to draft that as typical. And you probably saw that in your packet, but just a couple of the highlights that are included, from the September through November meeting time frame. The Eastgate Neighborhood park, Eastgate Commons, now the formal name and adopted name, discussion of that process and the board's extensive involvement and, ultimately, city council, adoption of of the name was highlighted.

Other informational presentations were highlighted around Crossroads Park, around the levee, opens parks and open space levee marketing as well as naming processes generally and looking at those sort of guidelines. And then finally and on the, accreditation and reaccreditation for now the fourth time fifth time, actually, I guess, if I'm counting right, for the department. And so that's a way to let city council know of that great achievement, that all of us are are involved with. So, I will leave it there on the summary. Back to you, Chu.

Thank you. So we'll open it up to discussion. Does anyone have any questions or comments about the memo? Okay. With that, is there a motion to transmit the report for September to December 2025 to city council as presented?

I move to transmit the report as presented to city council.

Thank you, Elizabeth. A second? I second. Let's vote. All in favor to transmit the report for September 2025 to city council as presented, say I. I. Any opposed, say no. Alright, the motion to transmit the report for September '25 to city council as presented has been approved. So thank you for that. The next item on the agenda is new business. So I'll turn it over or turn it back to Ryan. What agenda items do you expect to cover during the February meeting?

Yes. Thank you. And, well, I just wanna say great meeting tonight. Really good topics. I appreciate you bearing with us through the motion process earlier, but we I think we're through the bylaws for the moment.

So all good stuff. For, BellRed for February, we have a BellRed, master planning part process, on the, radar, and that will be the kickoff meeting for that with the parks board. That's a new park facility along the West Tributary. And, so that's what we're looking at for that meeting right now, and we'll see if there's anything added on to that. Couple of notes on that meeting, I think, as we mentioned way back in November, that falls during President's Day week.

It's February 18, which is also midwinter break for schools. So we were interested in getting a feel for where people are on availability for that date. And if anyone knows that they will be absent for that meeting if they are intending to participate remotely, that would be helpful to know as early as possible. I

am participating remotely if it is indeed held on the eighteenth. Yes.

Okay. Same here. I will need to, participate remotely.

And I believe I'll be in the same boat.

Oh, you're coming along with us? Yeah.

I'm both. That's alright. Yeah. See you there.

Available but remote is better than not available. So Okay.

Alright. And then folks have until noon the day prior

to when we

resolve them.

It sounds like we should be good for a quorum, though, and that was one of the we wanted to make sure that was possible. So sounds like we're good to go there. So we will we will push forward with the meeting, knowing there'll be some folks remote, and probably check-in before the meeting to confirm any of that. Yeah. I think that's all I have.

Okay. Yep. Thanks.

Any other questions or comments about new business? Alright. With that, we've completed all the items on tonight's agenda, and so I'll call the meeting now adjourned. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you.