City Council - workshop

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a Redmond City Council study session held on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026, commencing at 7 p.m. Council Member in attendance in person, our Council Member Forsyth, Council Member Parsi, myself, Council Vice President Nueva Camino, presiding in lieu of Council President Stewart, who is attending AWC in Spokane today. She's joining us online along with Council Member Procrea and Council Member Sonny. Council Member Kritzer will also be absent from the meeting tonight. Is there any objection to excusing Council Member Kritzer from the meeting? Seeing none, she is excused. Also, just as a point of information, Mayor Birney will also not be attending this evening. There are three items on the agenda tonight, and that is the Joint Redmond and Bellevue Electric Grid Capacity Study Findings and Next Steps, along with the RZC Amendments, Temporary Non-Commercial Signs, and Council Talk Time. The first item on the agenda is the Joint Redmond and Bellevue Electrical Grid Capacity Studies Finding and Next Steps. Jenny Liebeck, Sustainability Program Manager, will introduce this item. Welcome back, Jenny.

Thank you, and good evening, Council. So again, I am Jenny Liebeck, Sustainability Manager. And with me tonight is the project co-lead, Glenn Coyle, as well as Erin Cherry and Kenton Phillips from AECOM, and they both served as the technical consultants on this project. I also want to recognize representatives from Puget Sound Energy as well, who are joining us this evening. But just to set the stage for our conversation, so your packet included the full report, which represents more than a year of work in partnership with the City of Bellevue and Puget Sound Energy, where we explored the capacity of our local electric distribution system. So we partnered with Bellevue given our similarities. So we're experiencing comparable growth, we share PSE infrastructure across our borders, and we have similar climate and electrification goals. And working together also allowed us to share costs and bring economies of scale to the project. So the report includes findings for both cities. And tonight I'm just gonna, we will all focus exclusively on the Redmond component for obvious reasons, but just wanted to flag that. So I also just want to note and encourage you to keep in mind that this study is a starting point for the city. So we're really seeing significant changes in how electricity is used and delivered. And this study is helping orient us in that landscape just to better understand where future investments and coordination will be needed. So for today, our goal is to share what we've learned and where we're headed next as we continue planning for Redmond's future growth and electrification. So the report in your packet contains again that really technical analysis and so today we're gonna try and bring that up a level and focus on the key findings and what they mean from a planning perspective. We'll also touch on why we embarked on this project, the key questions that we're trying to answer, and the overall scope. And then I'm gonna hand it over to Erin and Kenton to review the technical components of the study, including how they did the analysis and the key findings. And then finally, we'll briefly discuss what these findings mean for the city and some of the next steps that we're gonna be taking. But just to understand, give a little context as to why we undertook this work, it's helpful to just take a step back. So I think first and foremost, with the adoption of Redmond 2050, we know that we're planning for significant growth over the coming decades. We know there is going to be a growing population, new housing, more employment and businesses that are coming to Redmond. And at the same time, meeting our climate goals means that we're transitioning much of our community away from fossil fuels and towards electricity that's powered by an increasingly clean electric grid. And we have state policies, right, like the Clean Buildings Performance Standard, the Clean Energy Transformation Act, Advanced Clean Cars, and all of these policies are helping accelerate that transition and shaping how our community will use electricity in the future. And so together these trends mean that electricity will play an increasingly critical role in supporting our community's transition from a suburb to a city, as we outlined in Redmond 2050. And at the same time, we know that we're already beginning to see signs of some of those increasing demands. PSE is receiving larger load requests, and in some areas those have been more challenging to accommodate in timely manners that support economic development and growth. And we know that utilities are continuing to plan for these future needs, but for all of the reasons I just outlined, we want to proactively understand where opportunities or constraints may exist so that we can better coordinate and plan long term. So looking at the goals for this process, at its core, this study is designed to help us answer three questions. So how much electricity will Redmond likely need as our community grows and electrifies? Is today's local distribution system capable of supporting that future demand? And if not, where should the city and PSE begin planning together? And so to answer those questions, we evaluated the future electricity demand at the substation level. And Kestin, we'll talk about that, we'll explain that, why we focused on the substation level a little bit later in our discussion. But I did want just to flag that this is not an engineering design or a replacement for PSE's own planning processes. They conduct really detailed and robust utility planning processes using their proprietary operational data. So instead, this is an independent planning assessment. We used publicly available information and local planning assumptions just to better understand how our future demand compares with the system's available capacity. So it's intended to be kind of a relative, kind of give us a relative understanding for that. So there are limitations to publicly available data but the study provides that valuable foundation for the city to compare again our projected community needs with available capacity and help inform that future coordination with PSE as we're working together towards that reliable resilient and clean electric system. And then just as importantly this process itself was about strengthening our working relationship with PSE and creating a stronger foundation for ongoing infrastructure planning. So there were two primary components to this effort. So again, that first was that technical assessment of the local distribution grid. And again, because PSC already conducts its own planning, our goal wasn't to duplicate that work, but we instead wanted to have an independent assessment that evaluated our growth projections as we outlined in Redmond 2050 and our electrification goals as we've outlined in our ESAP using assumptions, again, in alignment with our planning efforts. And so this just helps us understand where that future demand may exceed some available capacity. And the second component was strengthening that coordination with PSE. So during the project, we convened four collaborative workshops with staff from Redmond, Bellevue, and PSE, as well as a consultant team. And those discussions allowed us to share those planning assumptions, really better understand each other's planning processes, identify emerging challenges and really begin to establish a more coordinated approach to long-term infrastructure planning. So again, everything you'll hear today was informed not only by that technical analysis, but also by those collaborative discussions with PSE. So with that context, I'm gonna hand it over and we'll walk through how the analysis was conducted and some of those assumptions behind the study and then I'll at the end kind of bookend us with next steps.

Awesome, thank you very much. I'm Kenton Phillips, a senior associate with AECOM and I served as the building lead on this project. And just a quick note on the study scope and context. This analysis is focused at the substation level, looking at load growth from 2030 through 2045. We're not evaluating feeder level details or the upstream transmission and generation system. We understand that generation capacity is important, but it was not evaluated in this study because cities do not have direct influence over generational planning and resource decisions. We also assume that Puget Sound Energy continues to actively manage growth through planned upgrades, such as adding transformers and shifting load. It's important to recognize that Redmond and Puget Sound forecast differently. Local level Puget Sound forecast focus more on the near term five to 10 year trends like customer growth and usage patterns, while cities take a longer term view centered on 20 to 30 year growth and policy goals. And just another thing to note here, large loads like data centers or major industrial uses were not explicitly included. We feel their size and variability would require significant assumptions that could skew the results. So we feel they're better addressed through ongoing coordination with utilities. And with that, we can go to the next slide. So just to talk through our approach to forecast future conditions, we first needed a clear understanding of today's system. We started by assessing current substation capacity and utilization, along with existing buildings and vehicle fleets to establish a baseline. From there, we looked at city plans, which really drives the forecast, things like housing and job growth, as well as electrification goals such as EV adoption and achieving climate targets. We also reviewed Puget Sound's forecast and assumptions so that we had a point of comparison. Because cities don't typically forecast electrical loads directly, we actually developed our own cities-based forecast by translating growth and housing and jobs into expected energy use. We assume that Puget Sound's planned system upgrades occur on schedule since those investments are critical to meeting future demand. And finally, we combined all this to identify potential capacity constraints and understand how sensitive the results are to key assumptions. So in terms of the results, future demand is driven primarily by the buildings and transportation sector. On the building side, we assume continued electrification. This means more heat pumps, all electric new construction. For transportation, we used EV roadmaps to inform adoption trends. And altogether, this roughly translated to a 70% increase in electricity demand by 2050. If we look specifically at building electrification, about 75% of that load growth comes from new construction being fully electric, while the remaining 25% come from electrifying existing buildings. Looking at EV trends, for instance, we're seeing that this is growing rapidly, roughly about 10% per year. In the near term, substation capacity is sufficient over the next 10 years. Longer term results vary more with three out of the 12 substations in Redmond potentially exceeding capacity, but this is not an immediate concern and can be managed with planning. I'll also add here that timing of the low profile for our demand forecast is also important. Buildings tend to peak in the early part of the day while EV charging ramps up in the evening. And so altogether, this results in a profile that will peak most likely in the early evening. I'll now pass it on to Erin to speak about our results in more detail. Erin.

Thank you, Ken, for setting the stage there. So as was mentioned, our projections do assume that PSC's planned upgrades at four substations do occur on schedule. And you can kind of see very faintly in a pinkish-red color are the four on the screen, Hollywood, Rose Hill, Totem Lake, and Union Hill. So it should be noted, for example, that Rose Hill would likely experience capacity constraints in the near term if not for those planned upgrades. You'll see in the report that we do our planning in five-year increments, so it is assumed that three of these projects are completed by 2030 and then Hollywood by 2035. PSE also uses load transfers to relieve certain substations and help delay upgrades. Really the focus for the next five to 10 years is to ensure that those planned upgrades do occur on schedule. Constraints, as Kenton mentioned, were seen in outer years, but this does give us sufficient time for further planning, transfers, and upgrades. And Redmond can leverage the currently planned upgrades to improve future coordination and planning. Go to the next slide. So showing you some of the results here, our load projections were done geographically. We wanted to capture not just by how much the growth is, but where the growth is occurring. So we looked past 2035 all the way out to 2045 and identified the three substations most likely to experience capacity pressures. And if you click, those are the three, Avondale, Redmond, and Spiritbrook. These are the substations that are expected, as I mentioned, to experience the most constrained capacity, and it's really due to pressure drivers of growth in the comp plan and upzoning, and then that growth is amplified by electrification. So that's in areas such as downtown, Bear Creek, Marymoor Village, and Overlake. None of that should be super surprising. As I mentioned, there's still time to monitor the anticipated constraints, evolving conditions, and help mitigate those pressures. And in the meantime, work to improve forecasting and planning processes with PSC to stay ahead of issues down the line. Go to the next slide. Here, so just to summarize the findings, PSE and Redmond inherently forecast growth differently with different planning horizons and methodologies. AECOM developed an independent city demand forecast to identify potential areas of constrained capacity based on the Redmond 2050 plan. PSE substations, to reiterate, are anticipated to have enough capacity with the planned infrastructure improvements to serve the expected needs of Redmond over the next 10 years, even when considering the impact of electrification. Constraints were projected in outer years, giving sufficient time for further planning transfers and upgrades to occur in collaboration with PSE. A sensitivity analysis was used to stress test the electrification and population growth assumptions. This identified, unsurprisingly, that the primary driver of demand growth was population growth and its associated impact on electrification. The results also found that no variable had significant impact on changes to the overall load, at least by the year 2035. There may be a more significant impact to those assumptions in outer years, so it's just important to continue to reevaluate assumptions in coordination with PSE. And then lastly, the grid is evolving. It is becoming more decentralized. Demand response is a great strategy to shift demand advantageously to shave peaks. The study doesn't capture the potential use of demand-side management and distributed energy resources like solar, which can help reduce peak demand. So the study concluded with 10 coordinated recommendations providing actions for both Redmond and PSC to coordinate on moving forward. You can see more detail in the provided report. These recommendations were developed out of the workshop series that Jenny mentioned and build on the proceeding relationship building efforts between Redmond, Bellevue and PSE. The coordinated planning recommendations were really a focus of the next steps that Jenny will speak to because much of the technical recommendations were not within the city's control. So categorically, the 10 recommendations kind of fall into these three categories, harmonized forecasting and joint planning, which is about strengthened coordination and data sharing between the city and PSE. streamline regulatory processes and implementation. And that's about improving permitting workflows and coordinating project timelines to support timely grid upgrades. And then lastly, strengthen grid flexibility and resilience. Those are things like the demand side management I mentioned, distributed energy resources, etc. So I'll now hand it back to Jenny just to talk in a little more specifics about next steps.

So again, as for near-term next steps, I think our top priority is working to strengthen our strategic partnership with PSE. I think staff from across the organizations, we agreed after our final workshop was about discussing and prioritizing next steps. And we all agreed that we gained so much from those joint workshops. and we really want that to continue. So in the short term, we're planning to focus those conversations around forecasting, where we can discuss what are the private development projects that are coming down the line, and how can we better inform each other's planning processes. And also, as was covered, PSC has multiple grid upgrade projects that they have in flight. that are gonna be completed in the coming years. And so we wanna use one of those projects as a pilot to understand how can we intentionally identify communication and workflow improvements so that we can ensure those infrastructure projects are put into place smoothly and efficiently. Some of the other recommendations, as you may have noted, lead to policy changes, right? They are much larger than the city. So we're also exploring, you know, what's the information that we need to gather and look locally at to better inform what those policy changes might really look like. So again, this study and the process has given us a much clearer picture of our local grid landscape. But it also highlighted that there is so much more that we need to learn. So this is a highly interconnected issue. So it touches our land use planning work, our utility infrastructure development, our climate goals. And so again, we're thinking of this as our starting point and a launchpad for a lot of future conversations because so much is interconnected to this. So with that, I'm going to open it up to any questions. And we conclude our presentation.

Who would like to kick us off?

Can you?

I see Council Council President Stewart online.

Thank you so much and thank you to the team for this update and the chance to read through this study. Really, really fascinating stuff. And Jenny, you left off the conversation exactly where my mind went when I first read the study. which is around what we can do now with our partners in our neighboring city, as well as at PSE and with this strengthened relationship to help leverage better policy outcomes and to prove that cities like Redmond want to be part of the solution and want to do our part. So I really appreciate that you kind of ended your presentation on that topic. Very much look forward to your suggestions for our state legislative agenda that the council will be looking at again in September and any new thoughts you have about our already strong baseline on that policy. My question is actually about the substations that need improvement by 2050. You mentioned that with our improved partnership and understanding of one another, we could potentially use one of these substation improvements as a pilot project. to help better understand how these impact our residents. But I wasn't exactly sure. I guess I would like to hear more about what are the kinds of questions that that pilot would be wrestling with? What are the kinds of resident impacts we would be wrestling with? And why specifically was communication mentioned as part of a needed solution?

I think part of it, one of the things we learned through this process is just the many disciplines, specifically on the PSC side and how complicated a lot of these infrastructure planning projects are. So we just saw an opportunity and so much benefit from opening up those communication channels and where we got each other, where everyone came into the room and we were able to share assumptions and, you know, whys and that kind of thing. So the intent is that with these large infrastructure projects, there's a lot of process on the city side that PSC may not necessarily be privy to. They have, you know, new staff that may be working on the project. So there's an opportunity for learning there and then likewise for the city to be understanding their infrastructure projects and their processes better as well. So it's really an opportunity for co-learning, again, understanding where some of the pain points are so that as new infrastructure projects come down the line, we can use some of those lessons learned and document those lessons learned and again, make future projects more efficient has been the general conversation thus far.

on it. So it's really about like using it as a pilot in and amongst the partners, not necessarily the residents. That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Thank you so much.

Other questions or comments from Council?

Council Member Percy. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on the assumption of data centers are excluded, high intensity data centers are excluded from the current estimations. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit more so the council has better understanding of what potentially could be coming forward and how the assumption might change.

So yeah, when we say excluded, we didn't include specific high-intensity uses. That could be data centers. It could be industrial uses. That would involve making very big assumptions about where those are occurring and how big they are. And like Kenton mentioned, it could really skew the results and make it look like substations are overloading when we don't know that those projects are necessarily occurring or where they're occurring. So we felt that a better way to address that is just to continue communication with PSC about specific projects.

And then I'll also add just for a point of clarification, any existing large end uses are included on our analysis since a lot of our forecasts just looked at what are the new loads we're expecting to come down the pipeline.

councilmember for say Thank you so does that also then assume that we're not anticipating other large companies coming in as well, or because it sounds like it sounds like we're talking about not not estimating for data centers but also not estimating for industrial yeah.

In our analysis, we did account for new job growth. And right now that's being translated into like typical office or retail kind of current commercial buildings. So that is included in the study, just general commercial building growth.

Okay, thank you. Council Member Soni, I see you online.

Hi, thank you so much, Chair. I have a question on the budgeting. It's like, you know, we all understand that there will be a cost burden with these multi-million dollar grid upgrades and how that will be equally, like, you know, or rather I should say, like, you know, equitably, it's going to be balanced because there will be private developers, then there will be some city capital improvement funding and Then the PSC utility rate payers, you know, how are we ensuring that all of these costs, the infrastructure cost is not going to put a restriction or, you know, impact our affordable housing production? Like, you know, has that been discussed as a part of this, all this study?

We did not look at rates, and this is something we can certainly get back to you on a specific, because I'm looking to PSC as the ones I would prefer to answer this question, but they're not up here with us today. So if I can circle back with you on that, because again, that gets into rates and how PSC kind of how the utilities and transportation commission approves rates and how those can get past infrastructure costs can get passed on to customers. So again, but beyond the scope of this study for sure, but I definitely hear you and understand your question and we can get that information for you and follow up via email.

And Council Member Parsi.

I was wondering for the section and the study that is about distributed energy resource management systems, I wanted to better understand, is that an area of policy that the council can be looking at further to identify? Because currently solar is mentioned mostly, but there are other types of energy that we could be looking at. So I'm curious if that's an area that we might be interested in more policy conversation or if that's already been discussed or where we can learn more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. Batteries being another example of that. That was a priority identified within the sustainability plan as well, specifically the demand management work. 100%, that is absolutely aligned with our ESAP and our goals.

Council President Stewart, online.

Yeah, thank you. And once again, Jenny, right where you left off, our revised environmental sustainability action plan and other climate goals do call for the consideration of an electrify everything policy, which we briefly discussed probably this time last year. And I wonder how the results of this study now look. influence the timeline in which you think the council and the city will be considering such a policy.

Yeah, I think that was one of the reasons why we wanted to do this analysis too, right, is to ensure that, you know, we hear anecdotally the grid would not be able to handle all of the electrification and things like that, and this is obviously showing that that is not the case, right? And so... yes um that that policy is specifically a city operations focused policy um and we do have that um in progress so appreciate you you're raising that but absolutely still remains aligned with our um our priorities our goals um and this is just showing us that we don't have any barriers to be moving that work forward which is is great great i appreciate the due diligence and heartily look forward to the consideration of that policy thank you

Council Member Forsyth. I'm not sure this is actually in the scope of today's conversation, but a general curiosity. I know we just finished the electrify east side portion right near my house. And I'm interested in knowing if you guys know what the expansion of to the grid that provided is. Knowing what we're looking forward to in 2035 and knowing that the Rose Hill area, which that project just went through, what the impacts were and the benefits looked like from that project.

great question um and i don't know that i can answer that for you today um that's okay okay perfect yeah again that's another one we can get back to you on thank you but i know it's a critical background backbone project right that ensures that we can get more power to our out to our community um so it was absolutely critical for our electrification work and the answer is we need more. And Carol has some insight there as well. Thanks, Carol.

And I know that took many years to get that up and launched. And I'm just very curious what we learned from it.

Good evening, Council. Sorry, I'm not joining you in person. I'm not feeling very well. But the Energize East Side project was actually a part of a redundancy project. And there was bulk 270 or 230 KV lines coming into both Renton and into Kirkland. And so what happened with Energize Eastside is they upgraded 115 KV lines to 230 so that they could better accommodate the kind of load transfers that Jenny and others were speaking of. I don't know the answer as to whether it actually worked increased capacity, but it ensured that, for instance, a center like Bellevue that had grown significantly could be served with larger bulk generation lines than was previously available with the 115 line.

Councilmember Pacrea.

Thank you, and thank you for the presentation. Just in terms of future resiliency, given these capacity constraints in 2035 and the general need to build out more infrastructure in the coming decades, I'm just thinking about undergrounding as a potential way to improve robustness. And I know it's very expensive. I'm looking at page 84 right now. the robustness strategy where it says PSE is making good progress on improved robustness by undergrounding a number of lines. I guess what in this study, did we look at, was it just a capacity study or did we also look at, you know, the feasibility of when we have to build out this capacity undergrounding the lines? And if not, could you give me just more context on the work that PSE is doing already as mentioned in the study?

So you're right that there was a reliability component to the study. We didn't focus today's presentation on that, but you may have noticed that we do have an appendix to the report on reliability. We did identify which circuits were experiencing more reliability issues than others, not to say that They were still better than state averages, but just more than others in the city. So those are good to keep an eye on. And then a table, I think it's, I don't know the exact table I'm seeing. A1 is for Bellevue. There's another one for Redmond that shows the causes of outages. So that gives good perspective as well. And two, you know, if it's equipment failure, undergrounding wouldn't necessarily help. But trees... um other sources of failure birds and animals undergrounding could be advantageous we see council member sony online and then we'll come back to council member parcy

So my question is, it's like, you know, as we are planning, as like your piece is planning that we may also, you know, need to have another physical substations and more infrastructure. I think my question is more geared towards the zoning and do we have have we already started looking into some of those potential areas? Because based on the report, what I see, it's like, you know, it is the challenges are more towards like a downtown Redmond, Marymore Village, and all these are already super dense areas. So, you know, I'm just assuming and hoping that, you know, we have also started looking out into some of those potential places because this is going to come very soon.

No, we didn't look at that through the scope of this project, but that's right, the intent is that then we can start these conversations early with PSE, so.

And Council Member Parsi.

I'm looking at the equipment failure as the top reason that Redmond has had outages. I wanted to see if you would be able to dive a little bit deeper into the types of equipment failure and if they were preventable or not, and how we can reduce the time to address the issue, because that seems like the top reason that was, top failure reason, but also it was the top item that took the longest to resolve. I don't know how to kind of, time to resolve, how to quantify that exactly, but SAIDI metrics, so I would love to see if there's kind of more in-depth information we can get on that.

Yep, you are correct. So equipment failures counts for 40% of the outages from 2020 to 2024 in Redmond. I can't speak to more specifics on the cause or types of those failures, but as has been mentioned several times, this is a starting point to those conversations. So now that we know that, you know, many more conversations with PSC to come.

Looking around, I don't see any other comments or questions. Jenny, thank you for the work that you've done as well as to the OECOM team and with our PSE folks that are in the room as well. We are absolutely taking on a very large task as a city and saying, yes, we want this growth. We want this development. And I deeply appreciate the collaborative work on this because it's definitely going to have to need multiple eyes for multiple perspectives on this. So thank you for modeling that. Thank you. Moving on to our second item on the agenda for this evening is the RZC amendments, the temporary non-commercial signs. Director Carol Helland is going to be joining us perhaps online. And we've got our fabulous planning team in-house as well.

Good evening, Councilmember Nueva Camina and good evening Councilmembers in the room and online. I'm joined tonight by Lauren Alpert and Jeff Churchill. And we are here tonight to support the Council's deliberations on changes to the sign code to allow for temporary non-commercial signs that are but in a legally defensible way. We're also being joined by planning commissioner chair, Susan Weston, who is going to provide some insight into the commission's discussions on this topic. So I'm going to turn this over to Lauren to provide a recap, and then we'll go through a brief presentation and answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Director Helland. Good evening, Council Members. So as a reminder, staff briefed you, the Council, on the temporary non-commercial sign changes on the June 2nd Committee of the Whole meeting. And as a reminder, the proposed amendments would establish a regulatory framework for the temporary non-commercial signs. These signs include political campaign signs, community event signs, and philosophical or religious message signs. At the June 2nd meeting, council members identified several discussion topics and staff has provided a written response to those topics in an issue matrix that's in your packet. Tonight, we seek council direction on these updates so that we can prepare for the council to take final action on these. And that final action is being currently planned for July 21st, pending council direction. and I'll turn it back over to Council Member Nueva Camina. Thank you.

Team, okay, so we have it back for further discussion to finalize questions, comments, anything that was lingering from the matrix and also from our last touch on this. Who would like to kick us off? Council President Stewart.

Thank you so much I really appreciate the team um making sure that the planning uh commission chair could be with us tonight I wonder if before we take Council questions we could also hear from the chair their characterization of the deliberations and the proposals that were considered thanks

Hi, I'm Susan Weston, chair of the Redmond Planning Commission. And I just wanted to say thanks for having me here to represent our work on this topic. As you will have seen in the packet, we had a much more mixed recommendation than our norm on this. We really appreciated the limitations on the physical types of signs and what was permissible. However, we broadly disagreed with the need for a permit system in this issue. We had concerns about whether or not that's actually encouraging free speech in Redmond and what problem we were trying to solve and if we were becoming burdensome. So we wrestled around that topic for a while, ended up striking pretty much the entire permit process and everything associated with it. And then, especially because I don't think we felt that it was very enforceable. It felt like the people who were doing the right thing were going to do a lot more work. And the people who are doing the wrong thing would receive no consequences for doing the wrong thing. And then it also put the city in a difficult position of potentially condoning speech that the city might not actually agree with the content of, but we weren't convinced that passerbys would understand the difference. Yeah, anyway, it was a really interesting discussion, but that's where we came out on the permit piece. And then there was one other lingering topic that we disagreed with staff on just about whether or not it was appropriate to place signs in medians and rotaries. Staff's position is that it's not appropriate to place signs there, that it wouldn't be safe. Our position is we didn't really see it as unsafe. So... Our ultimate, when we're looking at the entire right of way and who's using that space and where the signs fit into it, our goals are obviously safety. So that would be safety of drivers and their visibility, safety of pedestrians for sure, who are using the sidewalk, safety of bikers who might be in the bike lane, and then also safety of city workers who are responsible for going out and getting this. And in this case, we didn't really see a safety Penalty to any of those groups and we we went back and forth a little bit on the city workers, but then, once we realized all of these medians and rotaries are landscaped regularly. It felt like there must be some actual access to them that they felt was safe so. It just it didn't come together into something where we felt like there was a problem being created by the signs being in those spots and in many parts of the city, those are the only spots. where you can actually place signs. So for example, I live in Grass Lawn. The way the sidewalks were constructed in the 70s and 60s a little bit, there really isn't a stretch between a sidewalk and a bike lane that wouldn't bother either a biker going by at speed or pedestrian. And then on the other side, you have private land or parks where you can't place signs. So it really, it creates like zones in the city where you can't be part of the conversation, especially around elections. And then for folks who live on Education Hill, I think there was a little bit more of a thinking of just like, there's so many signs, it's really visual clutter. So a lot of their conversation was more worried about that, but still not to the point that it really made sense to ban them. That's where we got the idea for maybe the sweeps, which is way outside of our purview as planning commission. So it was a separate topic. But we just didn't see this as actually creating a hazard, having them there. And it is a great venue for speech, in our opinion. So we differed from staff there.

Thank you for sharing that perspective and the takeaway from the Planning Commission. I appreciate that. Coming back to Council for further questions or comments. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. I really appreciate, Chair Weston, your retelling of the conversations you had because those were very much a lot of the same considerations I had. I have a whole bunch of notes here and A lot of it came down to the staff time of implementation for permitting, how much of a burden that will create. We already know that our code enforcement is already overburdened. This would be another thing for them to do which seems like a low hanging fruit compared to say cutting down trees and the enforcement for cutting down trees and I saw that that whole conversation took place in the planning Commission notes, so I really truly appreciate all of the work there. And I just have so many concerns about. As you said, the good actors versus the bad actors like if a sticker falls off in the rain and then someone claims that that sign was not permitted. that could just create so much consternation within community that I tend to agree with the Planning Commission's take on this topic of it doesn't seem like we are equitably creating a better environment around this topic. So I truly appreciate the dissent from the Planning Commission.

um and i'm really interested to hear my fellow council members opinions on this as well thank you taking a look around the room who would like to jump in next council member procrea thank you um and thank you to both staff in the planning commission for their work on this i'm pretty much in agreement with what was just said by um council member forsyth um I think that the thing that stood out the most to me in Chair Weston's comments was saying that these proposed ordinances would punish the good actors and the bad actors would actually not have any detriment because our enforcement system is so overburdened. So I agree with the dissent of the Planning Commission, especially when it comes to the permitting system.

Director Holland?

I would just like to note that, yes, we have a lot of work to do in code compliance. But I would also like to note that, one, this wasn't the planning commission can opine on this, but operational issues are really for the departments to deal with. And the actual permitting itself actually will help reduce clutter in signage, which is a policy in both of our sign code and in our comprehensive plans, because essentially signs that overwhelm actually become meaningless and they just become basically meaningless. visual clutter that draws no attention to any sign. The advantage to essentially issuing permits that get onto stickers is that it can very quickly be determined whether a sign is permitted or not simply by that sticker. And that means a public works crew, park staff, code enforcement crew can easily remove it quickly without having to actually do very much more work. Sign sweeps would be a much more intensive process, for instance, four times a year to send out groups of people. And to the extent that there are lots that end up in roundabouts and, um, And like boulevard sections, that does place our staff at risk because most of the plantings that are located in those areas are intended not to overgrow them so they don't need routine maintenance. So they do have to go out into those locations with generally double duty staff and clean out those areas. And doing that four times a year would be way more than they approach the spots now.

Thank you for that. Council Member Parsi. I was wondering if we can refresh our kind of our memory for what is what is the number one driving force for if we were to have this line at this policy implemented? And so why? Why now? And what would be the cost that would be really helpful to kind of have that summarized?

So as our sign code currently stands, it's not enforceable because of some Supreme Court cases. We can't regulate our signs by content and that's what our current code has. So that's really the driving force behind implementing changes in the sign code. And so that's the why and the why now in terms of just this update in general. Did you want me to speak specifically to the permitting as well?

I think, let me just kind of go back. Was the Supreme Court case and like kind of, I guess, let's talk about the timeline of that Supreme Court. Was that recent or was that from kind of a while ago?

There was a case in 2015 and then there was a case in 2022.

So if it was from 2015 and kind of we're looking at it now in 2022, so I guess... I'm trying to understand what's driving the urgency for this item.

Maybe the best time to do this was in 2023, but the next best time is now. Yeah.

And I think the sort of the current drive is to try to get it done ahead of the next election cycle. So that we can at least ahead of, yeah.

Council President Stewart.

Yeah. Thank you so much to the staff and as well as the representative from the planning commission for the thoughtful and arduous work that it does sound like has gone into this. I do have a question that's a follow-up to the matrix, but before I ask that one Paul process kind of question would be, I believe we have in front of us a planning commission report and a staff memo and a few other materials, but in terms of the actual code, we still need to make those decisions tonight before seeing a code package that would be adopted. Is that correct in terms of process?

The red line strike of the code is in the planning commission report as the first attachment. So that's what it would look like when it came back to you in ordinance and be in a different format, but it would be the same substance.

Right, unless we made decisions otherwise tonight in the course of this conversation, correct?

Correct, and what is in the Planning Commission's report is what they recommended. So it does have the permit section struck, and it would allow signs and meetings and roundabouts. So that's sort of the baseline for the discussion.

Thank you. I do appreciate that. So my follow-up question to one of the matrix items is, I'm not one to often ask what are other cities doing, but I do think, again, being content neutral of the discussion overall and the type of signs that we're regulating, if we were to use the example of, say, school board candidates who have multiple jurisdictions that overlap with their jurisdiction, it does make sense that maybe there would be a set of regulations potentially. So I do wonder, I did speak with Issaquah council members about how this is working in their city. I appreciate the note in the memo about that. At this time, the matrix indicated that what the current state is for Kirkland and Bellevue, but I was curious if staff have any insight as to whether or not Um, this, uh, bringing changes to their codes in those neighboring cities or even Sammamish, um, if that, if, if it's on their radar at all, the, the matrix seemed to only state the status quo, not what might be, um, on the docket for them.

Yeah, we would have to see what was on, what their plans are for that.

Bellevue does appear to have a sign code update underway. There are amendments in progress in 2026, so that's a live issue. I don't think Lauren or I have read the proposal in front of the Bellevue City Council, but they are, like Redmond, they have to update theirs because as you see in the matrix, theirs is not compliant with the current court precedent.

understood yeah I so again this may be an area we're having to the extent that perhaps even the the council member you know some collaboration might be useful um I guess to answer um some of the questions that have been stated by my colleagues um I appreciate actually in the staff version the safety measures or the safety considerations rather on many of the placements so I really do appreciate that and I will just admit that I too struggle with the permitting piece I can see the argument and I still worry about our ability to support it but so that that's where I'm at at the moment and but but I do appreciate the safety measures and I wonder if there's discussion

of that piece of the staff memo also thanks council member sony and then council member foresight um i back your two questions my first question is Is there any, you know, rule or law? It's like, you know, the signs that are associated with city of Redmond business, are they only permissible? Are people from the other neighboring cities and other places and, for example, events happening outside Redmond and other areas, is there any law? that governs that. So that was my first question. And my second question is, in case if we have the permitting and say one of our constituents has to put up some protest sign on, say, Saturday, and that's like, you know, the time when the permit cannot happen, does it violate or, you know, put city into any kind of a legal lawsuit? for First Amendment, refraining from some of those things.

On your first question, Council Member Soney, it sounded like you were referring to signs from businesses. There are provisions in the sign code for commercial signs, but what is before the council tonight is strictly non-commercial signs. So nothing in this proposal would change the status quo for commercial signs. And they face a different standard in the constitution. And so we haven't addressed that at all in this package. If I understood your second question, asking about protest signs that were to go up on a certain day, that's definitely a noncommercial sign that is addressed in this code. They would be allowed if they met the dimensional requirements and the placement standards. If there was a permit system, that permit would be issued. Basically, you go online. you apply, you get your permit. So that would be a very quick thing. If there's no permit required, then there would be, that process would not occur.

So my question is, if there is a permit requirement, and it is a Saturday, so a person cannot get the permits over the weekend and asked to wait for Monday, but the protest is happening over the weekend.

Sure, I understand.

I'm just, yeah. Yeah.

Thanks for the clarification, so this is a permit that could be applied for online 24 seven if it's someone who has zero access. To a computer that would make it difficult, but with any access to a computer personal or public, it could be applied for 24 seven.

I apologize i'm raising my hand and i'm chairing the meeting i'm follow up question to that when you say that it's a very quick process that can be done over the weekend, then what is the turnaround time are we talking about an instantaneous.

Yes, there's not a staff review because it's content neutral. We're not reviewing content. The idea is that if it's a permit you apply, it's your name, it's your contact information. We would not ask the location of the signs because a person might not even know where those signs are going to go if they're going to hand them out to volunteers, for example. And the purpose is to get a permit number and with the permit also a reminder of what the rules are so that there's some education that comes with the permit.

you for that clarification uh councilmember forsyth thank you um so just circling back on the safety element i also agree with the safety element and making sure that signs aren't blocking sight lines and visibility so i did see that was still in the planning commission's version so i just i want to make sure that we're acknowledging that the safety component is in both versions both the staff version and the planning commission version Going back to the conversation around what other cities are doing, I have actually had conversation with our Bellevue colleagues and they are currently considering 120 day period and a QR code for their permits that would go on the sign so that you can easily renew the permit and not have to actually physically go back out for things like campaigns that last longer than 120 days so that the renewability process is not as onerous as as ours currently would be at 60 days and what Kirkland's I think is at 60 days. So I just think that's something for us to consider. And I agree with the comment of when we have something like a school board position that is in such a broad area that making sure that we're coordinating with our neighboring cities on this makes a whole lot of sense to make it easier for folks to be compliant when it crosses jurisdiction. I think that's really a critical part of this in my mind. And then I'm also very curious about I have a concern and I think this was probably brought up in the Planning Commission notes about community members policing and self-policing of these signs and how would our code account for community members policing and taking things into account into their own hands and how do we account for this with RCW 29484040, which is removal or defacing of lawfully placed sign and that counting as a misdemeanor. So how are we accounting for ensuring that community still knows that they are not the ones that should be policing this and they should actually be calling city and and not potentially committing a misdemeanor themselves.

That is a great point, thanks for raising that. Part of what gets implemented, whether it's permits, no permits, meetings, roundabouts, or no meetings, roundabouts, is education. So there are changes that will be in the sign code. There needs to be an education campaign that could certainly be a part of it to make sure people know what is the appropriate response to a sign that looks like it might be violating the sign code in one way or another.

Yeah, just then another follow up. The basis for doing this now was to avoid being in election season, but we're actually in an election season. We're always in an election season, quite frankly. So I guess implementation wise, would this then go into effect after the current election season? Or I mean, is that an option that we have in front of us to say, have this go into effect in December so that it it does capture that next election cycle.

Sure. So I think you're right that there's always an election going on somewhere. And also, it's not just about election signs. It's any kind of non-commercial sign. Ordinances have effective dates. The effective date can be set in the future, weeks, months, at the discretion of the council.

Looking around for any further conversations, Comments, questions?

One more from Council Member Forsyth. So this does not apply for commercial signs. Is that another thing we will be looking at? And what would that timeline look like? Because I think from my perspective, the commercial signs tend to be the ones that get more cluttery.

I know that the code enforcement officers have many ideas for improving the sign code for commercial signs and um it's not formally on a work plan yet but it is something we know um that is a certainly of staff interest to address given many years of enforcing the code and identifying what what's working and what's not

Well, Council, this is coming to us so that the team can get direction for going on consent for July 21st. I know that typically I would ask this, as I did earlier in the Committee of the Whole, but not always at a study session. However, is there any opposition to this going to consent? Do we have what we need? Is there any opposition for this going to consent on July 21st? Two questions on the floor, first with Councilmember Parsi and then Councilmember Forsyth.

I was wondering if we can understand the fiscal impact of this before we vote. So the fiscal impact as in the cost of implementing this, the cost of enforcement, the cost of permit generation, that estimation would be a really important information for me to be able to make a decision.

Sure, so I can say we've already talked with the TIS department about configuring Intergov, the permitting system to be able to handle a permit that can be applied for and received online. So that can be handled with the current staff and within the current work plan. The other major component is enforcement. And we have the enforcement staff already in the budget in terms of like having code enforcement staff, So maybe I'm not understanding the question then.

Council Member Percy, follow? I think I'm asking for the specific estimation, not whether we have the ability or not. So I think I'm looking for specific data for how much would this cost, if that makes sense.

So I might just respond. You fund the code enforcement program, and we're required to enforce all of the codes. Generally, it's on a complaint basis, but right now, The problem is there is a code on the books that the residents want us to enforce that is currently unenforceable. So I would say more time is actually spent right now on answering people's questions as to why we can't ensure that signs get removed from the right of way versus us actually removing the signs from the right of way if they're noncompliant. So what this would do would actually provide certainty and predictability for the public. It would provide certainty and predictability for code compliance officers. And this would not just be a code compliance effort that was shouldered by the code compliance staff. because there are many sections of, um, staff in public works and in, uh, the parks department, as well as code compliance that would be able to observe signs that were out of compliance and collect them. And that happens to some extent now, for instance, signs are prohibited on parks and public property, police pick them up, public works pick them up stat and, um, Code-compliant staff picked them up. Park staff picked them up. So it wouldn't add to their workload that doesn't already currently exist. It's a part of their normal course of work.

Thank you, Director. Quickly, and then Council President Stewart is behind.

Director Haaland, is the cost of a TIS implementing the permitting process included in what you shared?

TIS actually is funded from the overhead from our departments, and that is part of their work program as well, is to maintain and address and adopt new permit types essentially into the InterGrav platform. It is a routine part of our business.

Council President Stewart.

yeah thank you and this question is is for the staff as well um I'm wondering kind of where director Helen left off it does sound like we need to take care of this kind of no matter what whether that be for a certain cycle or not um and it potentially the permitting system could save the city money in the long term um Could we interrogate the bad actors argument for just a moment? So if we walk through the example just in plain language, a unpermitted non-commercial sign is found in the planning commission version that can be even in a median, and that's the safety measure before the medians and the roundabouts. I would be very comfortable removing signs from roundabouts. as the staff recommended, but an unpermitted sign is there. It's very difficult to know who is responsible for that sign. So under the version where we would have permitting, would the staff be able to remove it simply because it doesn't have a permit? Yes. And that would appear to be a

faster solution for the staff i do understand okay thank you councilmember forsyth i have a moment of cognitive dissonance here so you can apply online and get your permit but the permit needs to be affixed to the sign so i'm not understanding how you can apply online in 24 hours and get a permit and yet you have stickers to put on a sign

In talking to staff and the people that would be implementing this, it could be a sticker. It could be just writing the permit number on it. It could be affixed in any way, as long as staff could read the number of the permit. Or you could even put it in, I mean, if you go to the sign shop with your permit number and have it printed right on the sign with your graphic.

Reused and so that doesn't quite work.

If you renew it, it should have the same number. I think annually it would be a new number that could be affixed over it.

So a sign that is maybe reused for three or four instances would have three or four different permit numbers written on it?

I don't think so. But there is no requirement for a sticker per se. The requirement is that the code enforcement officer can read the permit number.

right i i'm struggling with this because i still think that there's a lot in the implementation that is missing for me within the permit conversation so i think i'm still leaning more towards the planning commission's recommendation which still has the safety elements in it and i'm in i'm in support of keeping in the medians roundabouts i could go either way because i too live in the grassland area and understand that That is often the only place you can legally place a sign. So I just I still have a lot of questions around the actual permit functionality and the true implications of how that would work year over year and just ability to have a sticker that falls off or ink that rubs off in the rain. There's a lot of questions I have around this still. So I'm personally not ready to make a decision. And I also think that we should spend some more time to talk with our neighboring cities to make sure that this is a little more in a line with what all the conversations in the region are. Thank you. Council Member Soni online.

I have a question. It's like, you know, if you're talking about the permits, like permits can help us to determine that this has been permitted or not. But is this also going to talk about the timelines? Like for example, if a person has applied for a permit, they get their permit. And for example, like, you know, it's a 60-day policy or has to be removed after seven days. Like, you know, how are we going to enforce that along with the permits? And does the permit, like if a person has applied for a permit and is Taking out the permit is it going to give them a timeline that this is what they have to do. Following like you know these timelines as well.

Yes, the permits would be for 60 days and the staff recommendation renewable. The absence of a permit would would also be the absence of a timeline to remove the sign.

Council Member Percrea.

So I might be misinterpreting this, but if the permits are for 60 days and we're doing sweeps four times a year, what is stopping someone from just putting up signs for like in between the times when we do sweeps and not following the permitting process?

Chair Weston.

I just want to clarify, the four times a year sweep was an idea presented by the Planning Commission, but we have zero authority over that, and it was a nice to have. So we should assume that right now there are no sweeps at all unless signs have been placed that are a problem or they're hate speech or they're condoning violence, like that sort of sign I'm imagining would be plucked. as swiftly as possible but um we shouldn't the sweeps shouldn't be really part of your math on this because it was just an idea that we had but we don't um to Director Helen's point before we don't control the budget we didn't even look at the budget piece of this and we don't have any control over operations so we only looked at the zoning thank you for that

Further questions or directions at this point from the council? Well, we've heard kind of mixed as far as if we are ready to move this forward to consent on the 21st. My last count, but I want to check in to see who is currently opposed to this going on consent. I see One, two, three. Council Member Proctor, are you raising your hand to confirm that you are not okay with this grant consent, or did you have a comment to make?

The former.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you. And Director Helland.

I'm wondering if we could, if it appears that there is not adequate support for this to go on to consent. The staff, we would like some direction on how to proceed from here. I think the first thing that I've heard was there were comments about duration, 60 days versus 120 days was one. There was questions about safety. There are many safety provisions that are in the planning commission recommendation, but the staff differs on the planning commission recommendation with request respect to medians and roundabouts that we would like some clarity on. And then there is the enforcement angle. And please understand that right now we have a code that we can enforce that our community is expecting us to enforce. And that puts staff in the middle between the community wanting an outcome and the staff not being able to deliver. I'd also just like to note with respect to hate speech and other kinds of things that we don't agree with, we have no ability to read a sign and conclude whether that's hate speech or not. We cannot remove those signs. So right now we are incapable of having good sign code enforcement unless there is a sightline issue or unless the sign has fallen into disrepair and is potentially in the streets or is no longer a sign, it's just the metal H frame or something else. So this is to Jeff's point, if we didn't do it exactly when the Supreme Court said we were supposed to do it, the next best time to do it is now. Maybe we're so close to the election that we put it, that we change adoption, but it would be helpful to get clear feedback on duration, the safety, the permitting issue, and then the effective date so that we can actually come back and try to align with your expectations.

Thank you, Director.

Council Member Forsyth. So thank you, Director Haaland, for that recap and summary. I am, and from my perspective, I'm interested in moving forward with the Planning Commission recommendation and looking at 120 days duration, if that is in some sort of coordination with the regional cities to know basically what the implications are for Bellevue, for Kirkland, for Issaquah, I think Lake Washington, does Lake Washington go up to Woodinville? Not sure. Okay, thank you. So making sure that we're taking some of that consideration as well as the implementation later in the year, as you stated.

Council President Stewart.

you so much and especially to the staff um for their thoughtfulness and i i i do hear um the logic and i do recognize that this conversation is a bit circular is definitively circular um and has already been had uh with our planning commission and is here again in front of us um i also think that it's helpful to leave this discussion um with some of these things clear So for me, I will just say on duration, if there is a consensus that is emerging with neighboring jurisdictions, would love to join in, but sometimes Redmond has to go first. And I do understand that. For me, it does seem that a date for this program to begin, if we do have a permitting, January 1st, 2027 feels the most appropriate. um because of where we are in the calendar year um and expectations that already exist um i this hasn't been said as much but i i just saw it again in the matrix we have unfortunately like it's very difficult not to to keep the conversation again this is content neutral our city in recent years has experienced a lot of misleading information on non-commercial signs all around our city that has changed the dialogue that happens in our own council chambers and everyone's backyards in line at the school drop-off. And that kind of confusion is something that we've struggled to intervene on and communicate over So as much as I am hesitant to the permitting, I do see the opportunity also in that for us to be able to intervene if we had something enforceable. And then lastly, on the safety things, again, I don't know where the rest of the council is, but I believe that the roundabouts get too crowded and sightlines do get disturbed. And the purpose of having a roundabout is to reduce those points of conflict. and increase visibility. So I will go along with the Planning Commission recommendation if that's the will of the council, but I haven't heard others specifically state whether or not the roundabout. So duration, where there's consensus, if there is, yes to omitting the roundabouts and the medians, and a date of January 1st, 2027. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else like to weigh in for what you would need to see for this to be moving forward?

Council Member Forsyth. Thank you, Council President Stewart. I appreciate your comments. I am in agreement about the roundabouts, but not the medians, just knowing the different neighborhoods and the complexities that were already stated by Chair Weston. So I'm okay removing roundabouts, but not medians. I think that made sense. Did that not make sense? Keeping medians, not allowing roundabouts or clarity. Got it.

Council Member Procrea, I hate to put you on the spot, but I know that your hand, I just want to confirm that your hand did go up. That you were ready for this to go forward as is or did you have issues what i'm looking for specifically is. For those that were opposing this to go to consent to be able to give clear direction to staff so that staff will be able to meet expectations that we can get something in line.

Yes, no, thank you. I don't have any, I was opposed to it moving forward to consent as is, but I don't have any further direction beyond what Council Member Forsyth has given.

Wonderful. And Council Member Soni.

So, you know, what I'm proposing is to come up with some hybrid model. Basically, there are, you know, I do see a value in the permitting process as well. So definitely, like, you know, in support of having a permitting process, but as there are logistical issues and challenges which we have not addressed, as Council Member Forsyth was mentioning about, you know, how do we how the science will be reused. So that is an open-ended question. We still don't know an answer to that. And we have an elections. It's like, you know, it's just coming up so soon and the science will be out. And if we are trying to do it right away, we might be creating a lot of confusion. So from that perspective, I think it might be good for us to take some time, look into some of these issues and challenges, and then maybe come up with some kind of a proposal that we can look at that addresses the open issues with the permitting and also takes care of, you know, in terms of like the roundabouts and meetings, because definitely I do agree with the planning commission on that because a lot of, not every neighborhood would be same. So I think we have to look into some of these things and then come kind of on a hybrid, model that can help us to address this thing. So if it is not in the next meeting, can we still do it? Like, you know, address these things and do it in the next meeting?

Council Member Cerny, so this is going, they're requesting to go to consent on July 21st, so that's not the next meeting. So we do have some time since, again, it's been stated earlier that the best time to have implemented this was probably 2023. However, it being 2026, I do see that there is urgency to get clarity and move this forward expeditiously. I see Director Helen has her hand up and would like to add something.

I'm just going to attempt to summarize what I'm hearing. So with respect to the safety, I would like to make sure are we including um are we moving roundabouts back into a prohibited safety area and leaving medians out could we get kind of a thumbs up or thumbs down on that from a majority so we could know if that's how we have to redraft the code

Removing, so what's there is removing roundabouts, prohibiting signs on roundabouts, and continuing to allow them in a median.

Correct. That is the majority. Yep, you got the majority. Okay, so that's clear on the safety. With respect to the duration, I would just like to note It's not just school districts. I mean, think about congressional districts. Think about county districts. They go all the way. I think Sarah Perry's district goes to Timbuktu, it feels like, in the east. So we are probably never going to get consensus. And to Council Member, Council President Stewart's point, it would probably be best for you just to decide. Right now, it's 60 days with the opportunity to renew and and there's a proposal for 120 days, one or the other, without the permitting function, which we'll ask the question in a minute, we're not going to be able to actually enforce duration for a period of time, but it would be helpful for us to know what's on your mind. And think about it in the context of, if you're thinking about election signs, election signs usually go up some amount of time before an election and hopefully people collect them after, And a permit would allow them to plan for that. So do you want signs up for four months or do you want signs up for six months is basically the genesis of the question.

60 days being two months, 120 days being four months.

Four months, sorry.

No worries, just clarifying so that council knew what we're gonna be doing an informal thumbs up on. Looks like a clarifying question by council member Forsyth.

Thank you. Yeah. I thought I read that the 60 days, like as it stands, the 60 days could be automatically applied for renewal. I think Chair Weston and I both raised our hand at the same time about the same topic. So since if we're talking election signs, elections are longer than four months or 60 days. So you would be continually reapplying for an extension during that time.

cycle correct could we could we allow for an election sign permit that closes two weeks after the election could we no we can't essentially because that would not that essentially targets a political sign which is our problem right now it has to be content neutral so right now an a candidate would need to think, oh, I want to make sure that my volunteers collect the signs within two weeks of my election. Therefore, I can put them out, you know, approximately six weeks ahead of time. Does that end up equating to three months?

I'm sorry, my math is not very good. I personally already thought we had a 10-day limit after the election period, and that's always been the policy I've operated under.

Except that's one of the things we can't enforce right now.

Okay, so I would lean towards the 120-day to make it less cumbersome on, you know, if you're wanting to advertise a festival that's maybe... three months away and you get a 60 day permit, then you're going to have to remember and go through that extra effort. So I would personally be leaning towards the 120 day.

Okay. And it has to do with clutter because I get elections are a bit longer, but essentially 60 days with a renewal, if it's easy, essentially might discourage a sign for a festival that's over a weekend that someone puts out on day one or just three days before the festival still being there into next year.

Chair Weston.

Thank you. We talked about this extensively on Planning Commission, so I just want to chip in some of the conversation that we had, especially because we have the benefit of several people who have run for office in the past or have been involved in the sign, volunteer, put out, take back maneuvering. And one thing that came up that actually removed our focus a little bit from election signs is the point that many people who've run for office have said that freshness is a really big deal. So they actually don't tend to put out signs for the primary and then leave them for months because they want the eyeballs at the point, jogged to vote at the point that they're putting them out. So at that point, we actually saw the logic and then stepped back from thinking about election signs and we were thinking about the permit duration and thought more about the free speech opinion signs. I think it's to Council President Stewart's point earlier about being able to remove speech we don't like. We have to be very careful to thinking that a permit or lack of permit would allow us to do that because my understanding is people can apply for the permit and then the signs can still be there. So the permits don't actually allow us to control speech at all or control messaging at all um the question is more they just allow the city to have a contact person one more point if i can that really um we went around about for a fair amount of time was the concern that any permit um is going to have a database as part of the public record And we felt that there was actually a real elections are one thing. It's very clear who's running. It's probably possible to reach them, but for free speech issues, it just felt possible that people wouldn't, they'd get to the point where they're filling in the permit application and they would have to put their own name and their contact info. And that would be for many people discouraging or intimidating. Um, and then it could be looked up in the future. anyone who submitted a public records request so we felt very squeamish about that um so there is a question about the permits but when you're talking about duration i would encourage you not to actually think about election signs and to think more about the freedom of speech from our perspective as a commission council president stewart online yeah thank you so much um and my words have been misrepresented twice now so

perhaps I am not communicating effectively here in this hybrid. I do apologize for being remote today while I also have my duties here at AWC. It does sound like if we're discussing permit duration, then we've decided to pursue the permitting. For the permitting, I'm most comfortable with 120 days of the options that we've been discussing. And from my understanding, if a If a sign goes up on day one without a permit and staff are passing by in the course of their typical duties and that sign is unpermitted, it can be removed. Is that correct, Director Helen?

Correct.

And so if that sign is causing confusion or misinformation in our community, that can be resolved on day one. Um, and that is a, a benefit, uh, that is very compelling for, for our conversation. So I'm, I'm okay with the permit direction of 120 days starting January 1st. Thank you.

Council member Percy. Is it possible to have multiple options for permanent durations? So, for example, you know, a drop-down option, either 60 days or 120 days, and whoever is applying, they can choose how long they want it?

We could likely do that, but everyone's going to choose the longest amount of time. It's free, so why would they not? I guess... Maybe here's another approach to think about. So we've addressed safety. Duration is inextricably linked to permits. If we were to have all the substantive requirements that the Planning Commission has recommended absent the permitting requirements, and those substantive requirements go into effect on January 1, we could essentially take that approach and in phase two come back and answer some of your questions about permitting and have additional information. But then we can put some of the conversation about substance behind us and come back with additional information on the process to answer some of the issues that have been raised and that you all feel uncertain about so it would be the planning commission recommendation just less roundabouts or adding background less roundabouts adding medians less roundabouts correct at allowing medians prohibiting roundabouts yes uh council member procrea

Thank you. I really like the proposal Director Allen just gave, because my concern with the permitting process, whether it's 60 days or 120 days, is that, you know, in my personal experience, I don't think I've ever had a single sign last 120 days out in Redmond, ever. You know, it is illegal for people to take down lawful signs, but people do it all the time. I would have been shocked if there was any sign of mine ever that lasted 120 days. So I just feel like these things already happen naturally over the course of time. And in the case of clutter, I remember last year, I couldn't drive through any roundabout without seeing like 100 signs, especially in the Education Hill neighborhood. But there were a lot of people running for office, right? I didn't really have a problem with it because I did see it as a free speech thing. So those are kind of my concerns about permitting. It just seems a little bit unneeded to me. But we do have a need, like Director Hohen said, to actually be able to enforce some of what we have, especially around hate speech. So we do need to do something. And that's why I like the proposal to put this into effect and then come back to the permitting question later.

i'm sorry the staff can can't kick me as easily when i'm online but um they would we would have to come back to you with a time time frame for doing that work where we would could check with surrounding jurisdictions we could do that work we could come up with additional information to lauren's point We would like to make it easy so when signs are being printed, the permitting information can simply be printed onto the sign. And if signs are reused, that printed information would essentially be able to be renewed under a new permit number. So we believe all of those things are possible. We can't give you the precise answers for them right now, but that's what we would work to implement. And if it would make you more comfortable to put the substantive pieces into effect to be for an effective day, it gets some of our work program off the plate and we can come back and just focus on the enforcement piece.

I'm going to thank you, director. I'm going to hop in because I haven't, I've been facilitating and not giving much of my thoughts in here. I am on board with not allowing in the roundabouts, continuing to allow in medians, understanding the permitting and some of the hesitation that that may create around free speech. I also know that there's a level of, can we control the controllables? What are the issues that we're facing right now? So I am in favor of permitting up to 60 days renewable I'm not completely attached to that I mean it's something to where as long as it would be renewable and then figuring out how do we make it easier for signs that are going to be reused and repurposed but that are not going to become evergreen and permanent in nature because it's You know, continuously renewable permit so i'd actually like to see like how how many times could those be be renewed, so that we don't then create a possible permanent. yard sign in the medians.

Besides that, we've got Council Member Forsyth. Thank you. I appreciate the in-depth conversation tonight. And to add on to Council Vice President Nueva Camino's point, I appreciate the how many times we could it be renewable, but I would also caution that we add per calendar year. So that, you know, if someone's reusing a sign over many, many years, they don't hit six and then have to all of a sudden have a new number printed or go through all of that. So I want to make sure we're being mindful of that. And thank you, Director Helland, for through your conversation, I saw the clarity and why the approach of Passing part of it now, which is not something that i'm normally in favor of doing arts, but I understand the workload issue and making sure that we have enforceable code for. Moving into early next year and making making sure that we get this permitting conversation right is something i'm really excited that we're all kind of being very mindful and thoughtful about, so I appreciate all of the thoughtful conversation tonight.

I'm seeing a lot of our Redmond values coming to play, both with project zero, sustainability, being welcoming space, creating a sense of belonging. So several of our core values. Director Haaland, I see your hand up.

I apologize for one final question. What we would like to know, especially since it is such an operational issue, Do we need to bring the, are you directing staff to take the permitting issue back to the planning commission? Or can we bring back as a starting point, the permitting issue and have the discussion with council?

Council President Stewart.

Thank you for the direct question, Director Helen. I think that this conversation is additive to the conversation that happened in the planning commission over a period of weeks. And I do believe that all told all of the issues and questions have been raised and the next step is to find a best possible path forward. So while I am very grateful for the deep conversation, um, of the Planning Commission. At this time, I don't believe that going back to the Planning Commission, especially when just a few weeks ago, we did add a new topic to their work plan for the year. I don't know that there is additional input that will benefit the conversation. I believe that there's been a healthy amount of conversation thus far. Thank you.

Any other comments on that from Council?

Council Member Forsyth. Thank you. I did see Chair Weston raised her hand. I saw a lot of nodding with the comments that were just said, but I would love to hear from.

Wonderful. Chair Weston. Hi, so I completely agree with that direction. I don't think that returning this to commission would receive a meaningfully different result, especially because of the limits of what we are allowed to look at. So we can't look at operations, we can't look at budget. So including we can't even really look at how the permitting system works, that's not in the code. So I think all of the things that are difficult are on your plate, unfortunately. So good luck. Thank you.

Okay, Director, I believe that we've got the direction. Do you have any further questions of what you need?

I just want to thank you very much. I think we have exactly what we need and we will, uh, we can prepare the planning commission recommendation for consent with the permitting is withdrawn. We will bring back the rest of the permitting conversation to you later, probably towards the end of this year, beginning of next year. And we'll have an effective date of, um, January 1st. Would that be appropriate to bring back on consent and close that book and move on to the rest of the conversation?

Yes. Yes. OK. We will see that on consent for the 21st.

Thank you so much for the conversation. Appreciate the clear direction.

Yes. Thank you, Director. Thank you to the team that's in-house. Thank you to the Planning Commission. Thank you to the team. here at Council for the very in-depth, robust conversation about this. Again, highlighting that it does play into several of our values as a city, so it's important for us. So thank you for everybody's participation tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you. Moving on to our last item on the agenda is Council Talk Time. Are there any items for discussion? Council Member Parsi and then Council President Stewart.

I have two items. I'll start with one that is relevant to our conversation earlier today. We looked at our grid capacity and one of the assumptions was about data centers. Having conversations with data center experts, they consume as much energy as hundreds of thousands of houses. So it would be really important for us as a council to think about how we want to envision Redmond moving forward with data centers. Data centers come in all sizes. There are different, we can look at a spectrum of what we can kind of envision in Redmond. But I did think that given the regional assessment of data centers, for example, Seattle making a decision recently, it would be good for us to have a conversation about what we want to think about. So I just wanted to bring this to the council and see if there's any interest from the council. This is something that I would like to kind of study a little bit. If there's any interest from others, I would like to see how we want to go about that.

And I see that Council President Stewart has her hand up. Was that for another item for Council talk time? Okay, great.

And Council Member Forsyth. Yeah, I definitely think that the data center conversation is something that we should be considering and looking at. It has major implications across our community, especially emphasized by the grid conversation that we just had tonight. And knowing that that component is not necessarily in those projections and what the unintended consequences could be. So I'm definitely interested in studying that a little deeper and I'm not entirely sure how we go about that, but I do think it is a policy conversation that we as a council need to have. I know Seattle just made some big sweeping decisions. I'm not suggesting that we go exactly that route. But I do think it is a topic of our time that we do need to consider. I will add that that was a component of the water policy that is supposed to be coming back to us soon. And that is a kind of a side quest conversation that we've been having with that topic. But I think the energy consumption element did come up in one of our recent conversations. And I do think we as a council need to have some deeper conversations around it.

hmm correct I recall that coming up that Redmond at one time did have a small data Center and that we weren't aware of it until after it had. It had moved it had closed and that we had seen a shift in in utilities and wondering why, and it came came out that we had a data Center, of course, small, I mean nothing what we see on the other side of the mountains. Councilmember Prakria.

Thank you. And actually, I realize I'm not adding that much value at this point. But with regards to the data center question, I think it is... I think Councilmember Prakria's point about data centers coming in all shapes and sizes is very relevant. I believe Seattle's was... uh, Ben was for a specific kind of data center, which, um, I don't really think I, I could be totally wrong. I don't really think, um, it's very likely to be built in Redmond, um, just due to the cost of the power, um, at all times. So I just want to caution us from, you know, necessarily trying to equate all data centers to, um, like the large ones that consume power at the scale of hundreds of thousands of homes, like was said. Just raise that as, but I do think the discussion is worth being had. Yeah.

Great, thank you. And as far as how we go about having that conversation, because, of course, with OPMA, we do need to make sure that we're having these conversations in public and so that public can view them, can see them, and also weigh in on them. And council leadership will discuss which next steps are for that and what is our path forward. Wonderful. Council Member Stewart, you had something for council talk time.

Yes, I have a few things and I think we can come back to that. I heard a couple of council members express interest in that last topic and maybe we can continue to keep the conversation open and potentially it's something that at the early 2027 retreat could be prioritized or any number of things. Okay, I have no further comments on that for tonight. There are a few sessions on these topics in addition to AI and data centers and the like here at the Association of Washington Cities Conference, and I look forward to participating in those over the next few days. Okay, so four quick announcements. Reminder that council received two documents via email from staff. These are kind of meatier topics, and they are very easy to miss in email. So the first was the development services study by Matrix Consulting, which was distributed by COO Files, as well as the council requested data sharing agreement information that was shared by Director Marchand. So please take a look at those and get back in touch with staff with any questions. Also a reminder that if council has any follow-up questions on the multifamily tax exemption program that was discussed in committee last week, Please remember that we do have a study session and staff are eager to make sure they know what your questions are so that we can get those answered next month. Council also received a few record requests in the last few weeks. I wanted to let folks know that the process for completing the records request is a little different here in 2026. So you will receive one DocuSign to respond to all three requests, and that is, in fact, the new process. There was a reminder from staff today, so please do submit any responses by the 30th of June and be in touch with staff if you have any questions. And finally, and most of all, please enjoy your fifth Tuesday next week. Remember that council will not meet, and however you choose to celebrate, I hope you have a lovely holiday weekend. We'll see you on the other side. Thanks.

Wonderful. Are there any other, thank you for that council president. Are there any other updates for council talk time? See another one from council member Parsi.

This is not necessarily an update, but a question again about interest. I wanted to see if there is interest about reaching out to partners in Lake Washington School District. We had a conversation earlier about environmental sustainability, but there is more conversations to be had in how we can be better partners. There have been some successful models, for example, City of Kirkland that has dedicated members of the council working more closely with dedicated members of the Lake Washington School District Board. So I just wanted to see if there is a general sense of interest from the council to have more collaboration. And I would be happy to kind of have a conversation, bring forward a proposal for what that collaboration can look like. But I just wanted to see if that's something that there is interest.

Well, I can tell you there is most definitely interest. And I see Council President Stewart has her hand up. So Council President Stewart, I'll let you take it from here.

Yeah, well, thank you. And feel free to chime in. But I will say thank you, Council Member Parsi, for your interest. And I did receive your email. I also let you know that I'm not able to meet with you this week to talk about where we are in the process of all this. So I'll fill you in on a couple of things here and then happy to continue the conversation and have you join with some of our enthusiasm on this journey. I think that the community in fact believes and hopes that our jurisdictions and the school districts, we have multiple school districts here in Redmond, do have good coworking relationships. And I think we've done a good job as individuals working on those over time, There have been it's been a bit of a journey, but last year we were able to have a joint session of our two bodies after much, much planning. But that was really helpful because we were able to share with the district with the board members about the land use pattern that Redmond 2050 was based on and how that would potentially be influencing school populations over time. And to really make sure, most particularly, that the accommodations for families in multifamily housing and how we are incentivizing that could really be well understood. That was just prior to their big planning retreat that they had in 2025. Additionally, we did have a school board member join us at our community conversations this year. There had been some effort to have more joint sessions over time. But thus far, they've proven a bit difficult to schedule, and that's putting it lightly. But there is lots of interest in this topic. And I think the community in particular does, in fact, you know, when you have a question, sometimes you don't even know, do I talk to my city council member or my school board member if I have a question about the sidewalk, for instance. So I'm happy to talk much, much more with you about this when I get back next week. And if any others have any comments, that's great, too. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for that. Council Member Procrea and then Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Thank you to Council President Stewart for her comments. I would be very interested in pursuing another joint meeting. I was actually in the audience at last year's joint meeting and I found it very insightful, both as a Lake Washington School District alumni and a lifelong I actually thought it was an annual meeting. So I was wondering if we were going to have one this year. I didn't realize it was a one-off thing, but I'd be very interested in pursuing that again.

Council Member Forsyth. Thank you for bringing this item up. Yes, this is something that we had been working on since I was council president of trying to get that joint meeting to happen. So very glad that that finally happened last year. And just gonna float the idea that yes, I would love to do another one of those. I think it was very powerful. And I know we have, and this is gonna be kind of out there. I know we have that additional, we have one council member who does not have a chair role. So I do wonder if we consider a liaison to the Lake Washington School Board in that position. Just something for us to think about, not necessarily wanting to open it up for discussion tonight, but we've been struggling with what that person does and what their role is. So this might be an opportunity for us to provide another opportunity for leadership.

Thank you for that. And definitely worthwhile of kind of planting that seed now. I know that for the rest of this year, We've got a very robust second half of the year, but definitely a seed worth planting for when we come back together as a council at the retreat in January, in the first quarter. And that's, I think, I alluded to it earlier, the importance of collaborating and not working in silos and there's some really great community-based organizations also that's doing work to alleviate some of that as well, especially throughout the school districts and East Side Pathways is one of those. So maybe that's a relationship that we look at rekindling again, as we were once a member. So food for thought for later on, for sure. Council President Forsyth, or Council President Stewart, I appreciate the reminders for some of the things like the public records. Definitely no meeting next week. It is the fifth Tuesday of the month. We did also get a couple of reminders. So I just want to make sure that it's on our radar because I know how quickly my month is going. And that is to make sure that if you are planning on attending for council, meet me at Marymoor to be in touch with that. Of course, for the listening public, of course, there is the meet me at Marymoor, which is July 19th at Marymoor State Park. You can go online and find out more information. It is going to be a ticketed event. However, it is free. So cost will not be a barrier for that. It's going to be a wonderful time. And also the deadline for the council store is open, I believe, until June 30th. So just a reminder, because if you're like me, then that deadline passes and then you don't have what you need from the store. If you have any questions on anything about the store and funding, then please let council leadership know.

Council Member Forsyth. Just wanted to add the Meet Me at Marymoor will likely sell out next week, even though it is free. So if you are listening and you want to get a ticket, do it soon. It does have a cap on how many people can attend.

Wonderful. Thank you for that. Thank you. Is there anything else for council talk time? Well, seeing none, thank you for a very robust conversation this evening. To our colleagues that are in Spokane for AWC, we're looking forward to the conversations after you return, especially with some of the tech conversations and workshops that you're going to be attending. And safe travels. We'll see you when you get back. We are adjourned.