Community Budget Forum - Regular Meeting

Okay. Good morning. Snohomish County Council has called to order for our finance, budget, and administration committee. Today is Tuesday, 01/13/2026 at 10AM. We're meeting in the Jackson Boardroom and also remotely. I'll read the script for public comment, and then our clerks will take roll. So we will begin, we will take public comment beginning with in person and then remotely. In Zoom, click on the hand icon to raise your hand. If you're calling in by phone, press 9 to raise your hand and 6 to unmute. And each speaker will have three minutes to speak. Please start your comment with your name and city of residence. Next is roll call. Committee chair Dunn. Here. Vice Chair Nearing? Here.

Committee Member Lo?

Present.

Committee Member Mead?

Here.

Committee Member Peterson?

Here. Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Thank you. Next is public comment. Did anyone wish to provide public comment this morning? Okay. Was there any public comment online? No. Hands are raised. Okay. Seeing none, we'll close public comment, and we'll move on. We have three action items today. First is item number one, motion 20 six-two.

Good morning, counsel. For the record, Nicole Gourley, counsel staff. Motion 26 dash zero zero two would approve amendment number one to the county's contract with Dave Vangley and Associates, who provide countywide tourism marketing and management services funded by the hotel motel tax. Under the amendment, the contract will be extended for an additional year from 01/01/2026 through 12/31/2026, and an additional $1,500,000 will be added to the contract. Funding for this was approved in the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six adopted budget, and today's request is to move this to GLS tomorrow for consideration.

Any questions? Any objection to consent for tomorrow? K. Hearing and seeing none, this will move to GLS for tomorrow under consent. Next is item number two, motion 20 six-twenty one.

Motion

20 six-twenty one would approve amendment number one to the county's collective bargaining agreement covering the marshals. This amendment creates two recruitment incentives that employees under this bargaining agreement would be eligible for. One is the base recruitment recruitment incentive. This would run for the life of the CBA and give employees the option of one day of leave or one day of pay for recruiting someone who is then hired to one of the following positions, deputy sheriff, corrections deputy, mental health professional, nurse, or any other position identified as highly needed by the sheriff. Then there's a temporary enhanced recruitment incentive.

This would be in effect until 12/31/2027 or when 20 recruitments per position is hit. This incentive would provide employees who recruit either a corrections deputy or a deputy sheriff $10,000 for new hires and $20,000 for lateral hires. Both of these incentives will be paid in half portions once one will be paid, once the recruitee is off FTO, and the other half will be paid to the employee when that recruitment is ready for solo assignment. While this motion does not have any funding funding tied to it for illustrative purposes, if all 20 recruitments are met for both position types, you are looking at on a low end range of $400,000 and a high end range of $800,000. That would assume all 40 are new hire and all 40 are laterals, which is not likely.

It would likely be a combination of both. The bargaining unit representing the Marshals has accepted this proposal, and today's request is to move to GLS for consideration.

Questions from counsel? Okay. Seeing none, any objection to consent for the twentieth? Hearing and seeing none, this will move to the consent agenda on, January 20. Next is motion 25 dash five five nine.

Motion 25 dash five five nine would approve the executives 2025 through 2026 equal employment opportunity opportunity plan as required under SEC three dot fifty seven dot sixty. The proposed goals are outlined in the staff report, the plan runs through June from 06/01/2025 through 05/31/2026. Today's request is to move to GLS for consideration.

Thank you. Questions from counsel? An objection to consent. Hearing none, this will move to the consent agenda on the twentieth. That concludes our action items, and we have one discussion item today to hear from our economic development, partners. So we'll bring up our partners and Mike Fong to introduce everyone.

Okay. Well, I'll get us started, chair. Chair Dunn, vice chair Nearing, members of the council and committee, thanks for giving us the opportunity today to share a little bit of our work in the past year around economic development with the county executive and your support. I'm actually very pleased about the progress we've made in the last twelve months on a number of priority shared priorities that we have across the region. I'll just touch on a few quick things and really wanna emphasize today to give the floor to our economic development partners who are crucial to our mission, and each brings a different component to the ecosystem that we're so proud of, that leverages all our assets across the county, to maximize our reach, and as a force multiplier for the work that we do in house.

So, but a few highlights that I just wanna mention that I I'm very pleased with the work that our team has done this year around sustainable aviation fuels. Some of you joined us, just a few days ago for a significant milestone in the launch of the SAF Cascadia Accelerator, a nonprofit, and we're very pleased with the resources that we've been able to secure from the legislature, and outside partners to continue moving cornerstone, really, of our economic development strategy around research and development center out of Paintfield. So you'll hear more about that today, and, and much of that work has been supported partners here at the table. Second key priority for us has been to really, to some extent, reset the ecosystem itself, and to lay some foundational work in place for how we're gonna approach economic development, not just internally, but with our partners, but also with, local jurisdictions across the county. And I'm I'm really proud of the work that our team has done over the last twelve months, both in dialogue with local towns and cities, but also starting to lay the groundwork for more cohesive strategic framework that we can all work together on.

And some of that work's been done in partnership with Snohomish County tomorrow. Some of that work has been done in partnership with with our partners here. But I think we've really set the table to align the work as much as possible in 2026, and you'll be hearing from us more about what that alignment work looks like, clarity around the county's team's service portfolio, and also alignment of mission around the key focus areas that we have, one of which I'll mention is, of course, the economic potential of Paine Field. And council members, you'll recall, the county executive signed an executive order earlier in the year, laying the framework for how we would approach commercial passenger service expansion and terminal expansion in the coming years. And we are working hand in glove with, our friends at Propeller airports.

At the same time, we secured some state funding this year, grant that actually, I think, comes before you this week or did recently for us to finalize a scope with WSDOT that will allow us to move forward with some infrastructure planning and identifying needs for how we can actually accommodate multimodal needs for terminal expansion in the future. All signs are pointed in the right direction. And the last piece that I want to mention before I turn over to the team is many of you know that one key focus area for us this year was to make sure that the county was a key player and had a very strong footprint around how we were preparing, to meet the world stage here with FIFA coming in 2026. And, I'm very pleased with the work that we've done both in terms of grant making, technical assistance, marketing, really leveraging all the tools that we have in our toolkit and utilizing existing resources to maximize the reach and coordination of the region around how we can showcase Stomach County next, well, this year, this June, and take advantage of the fact that we're uniquely positioned, with between two FIFA sites in Seattle and Vancouver, we'll be able to share a little bit more about that progress.

But I I really highlight in that area is how we are leveraging, our tourism and marketing support to the extent possible, both in terms of FIFA, both in terms of taking advantage of this window to rebrand our county tourism branding from moving away from Seattle North Country and rebranding as Discover Snohomish County. And then more recently, even in times of crisis, our ability to leverage our tourism resources to support marketing and support for businesses that are suffering some decline in revenues as a result of flooding along Highway 2 and the ability to deploy some emergency resources to support activity campaigns to drive business in that area as much as possible to try to mitigate the challenges those businesses face. So I wanted to mention a few of those things just to set the table that we are trying to expand and diversify our reach as much much as possible in EcoDevo. I think what you'll hear from ESC, GSP, and Northwest Innovation Resource Center is how we're doing that together, and what we look forward to, not just a look back on '25, but how it sets the stage for 2026. So with that, if there are no questions for me, I will go ahead and turn it over to, I believe, Ray Stephenson will will start us off.

And a point of privilege here, I want to just mention that one of the first issues that we dealt with when I arrived in January was a question around how and who we would be partnering with as our ADO. And I think I can say, and hopefully Ray backs me up, that the relationship between ASC and the county, is as strong as ever. And we really do see our teams as extension of each other, and I think we are working in that manner to the best interest of the county. So so, Ray, thank you for your partnership, and I'll turn it over to you to kick us off.

Alright. Thanks so much. Chair Dunn and council members, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here be here and speak with you. This is kind of a reverse role for me. Normally up there listening to people, so hopefully, I won't I won't drone on here.

So I wanna share with you that our work in 2025 was guided by a simple principle, supporting strong resilient economy that works for businesses, workers, and communities across Snohomish County. Everything I share today, ties back to the county's priorities, economic opportunity, inclusive growth, industry diversification, and dynamic economy. This was about supporting businesses already here, preparing the future workforce, and strengthening the systems that connect our partners. As context, and Mike touched on this, 2025 really began as a year of transition for us. We completed an ADO request for information and a redesignation process that reaffirmed the economics alliances role as Snohomish County's associate development organization.

And that was a huge milestone for our organization. And frankly, I think a decision that really saved the alliance and the value that I think brings to the to the county. In early twenty twenty five, we, took the opportunity to realign our priorities and how to develop the work. As a result, in 2025, we very intentionally created a foundation building year that strengthen coordination systems and partnerships across the countywide economic development ecosystem. The alliance serves as the countywide conveyor and implementer of economic development.

We coordinate across Team Snowco and regional partners to avoid duplication and improve service delivery. Beyond coordination, we align partners, resources and expertise to deliver cohesive business focused outcomes. A strong example of Team Snow Co collaboration was hosting the Chubu Industrial Engineering Association delegation from Japan. Snohomish County brought the delegation to the region and just under a month to plan their partners, including the Alliance Greater Seattle Partners, the Port Of Everett and NWIRC and local companies, we work together to develop a cohesive high quality program. The visit was an opportunity to showcase advanced manufacturing and aerospace strengths and just as importantly how well our region partners collaborate.

The same collaboration model showed up in the healthcare workforce roundtables where we convened in connection with the health, our healthcare summit. And health care, as we all know, is in a terrible state of flux and a lot of challenges that we're gonna have to continue to focus on. The initial roundtable brought health care employers, educators, workforce partners, and training providers together for a candid discussion about workforce shortages, clinical training capacity, and retention challenges. The conversation was strong enough that it led to a follow-up roundtable allowing partners to go deeper and begin aligning around practical next steps. Business retention and expansion was the backs backbone of our 2025 work, and it continues to be.

We engage with businesses across aerospace, manufacturing, clean tech, healthcare, maritime, small business and other priority sectors. That engagement happened through a mix of site visits, conferences, industrial events, one on one calls and close coordination with our partners. And across those touch points, businesses consistently raised workforce availability, permitting timelines, infrastructure and power capacity, rising costs, and trade uncertainty. Obviously, an environment that's noted for one thing and I think, absolute uncertainty, so it's a very difficult, environment to navigate. Our focus was on rapid response, making sure concerns were heard and businesses were connected to solutions.

Portal space system systems is a clear business and retention expansion success. Portal was already here, but the question was about their next phase of growth and where would that occur. Through close BRE engagement and coordination with the state partners, we helped ensure that expansion stayed in Snohomish County. We secured a $350,000 strategic reserve fund through State of Washington Department of Commerce. That was, this was supported by Snohomish County, Bothell workforce Bothell, excuse me, workforce Nohomish and Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance.

Portal space will soon create up to a 100 jobs and with and within five years expected to grow to 700 jobs. It's going to be a real powerhouse in this county. We will continue to pursue state and regional funding opportunities to support companies that choose Snohomish County as a place to grow and call home. Alongside retention, we continue to build a disciplined business recruitment pipeline in 2025 and beyond. That pipeline is sourced collaborative through the Washington State Department of Commerce, our partners, Greater Seattle Partners, and direct outreach to economic alliance.

A key focus this year was ensuring that more communities across Snohomish County have visibility and opportunities to compete for new business projects. We work closely with cities and utility partners to engage early in the process, starting conversations around site readiness, power capacity, and permitting to allow more lead time for local review and approval processes. We also actively seek recruitment referrals from companies already located in Snohomish County, particularly to strengthen local and regional supply chains. SelectUSA, the SelectUSA Seattle spin off and the Paris Air Show support this broader strategy by expanding top of the funnel relationships, increasing Snohomish County's global visibility and positioning our communities early in international business decision making. At SelectUSA, we met one on one with more than 20 international companies evaluating US expansion, many in aerospace, advanced manufacturing and clean technology.

Through the SelectUSA's Seattle spin off in partnership with Greater Seattle Partners, we hosted 30 over 30 international companies in Snohomish County, providing a firsthand look at local sites, workforce, infrastructure, and the coordinated support available to companies exploring their first US operations. At the Paris Air Show, we joined the Washington State Department of Commerce delegation for an action packed week that included 25 plus formal visits and 100 of additional interactions through global OEMs, suppliers and innovators. This presence elevated Snohomish County's aerospace profile, strengthened supplier and innovation relationships and reinforced while maintaining visibility at major international air shows is critical to keeping Snohomish County at the center of the global aerospace ecosystem. And we were grateful to be joined by a state representative and county council member, Stone Peterson. These efforts are aren't about immediate announcements.

It's about discipline, long term pipeline building. We supported several projects with countywide impact that included, and Mike touched on this, the Paine Field expansion, sustainable aviation and clean energy r and d, role in unincorporated area growth, World Cup readiness and planning and major transportation and infrastructure investments. We are proud to support the region's effort to advance sustainable aviation fuels and had a great event this last week reinforcing Snohomish County's leadership in aerospace innovation and clean energy. We continue to support critical infrastructure improvements, including Everett Link light rail expansion, completing the Spine and the US2 trestle replacement, both of which are essential to mobility, freight mobility and economic competitiveness. In parallel, we continue to support communities and businesses impacted by the devastating flood, helping connect affected areas with resources partners and recovery efforts.

Across all of this work, our role is coordination, engaging industry early, aligning partners across jurisdictions and helping projects move efficiently while delivering broad economic benefit for Snohomish County. Small businesses are essential to Snohomish County's economic resilience, job creation and supply chain strength. And through our Apex accelerators, Najomes County businesses secured hundreds of government contracts in 2025 representing tens of millions of dollars flowing to local firms and supporting participation in infrastructure, defense and public work projects. In the 2025 alone, Apex clients were awarded nearly 1,000 contracts totaling more than $20,000,000. And through small business development center, local businesses access capital grew revenue and supported jobs across the county.

Small business clients generated over $20,000,000 in gross revenue, accessed approximately $3,000,000 in new capital, created 45 plus new jobs and retained more than two eighty jobs in 2025. A highlight of our last year was the Northwest Puget Sound Contracting Conference. By convening more than 500 exhibitors and attendees, the conference connected local businesses directly with public agencies, prime contractors to tie the major infrastructure and public work investments. Another element of economic alliances, Naomie STEM that serves as a countywide backbone organization for STEM education and career connection learning, convening employers, educators, workforce partners, and community organizations around shared talent goals. And in 2025, STEM engaged more than 2,000 students across Snohomish County while programming spanning elementary, middle, and high school learners.

Programs research students in urban, suburban, rural, and unincorporated communities ensuring access to career exploration regardless of geography. Core focus in these areas has been around healthcare, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, IT, clean energy and maritime and directly aligning the county's priorities in these in these industry sectors. STEM like me led by Snohomish STEM connected middle school kids with local employers through hands on career connected learning that builds early awareness and in demand careers. And we also have in that education sector, the ECHO tour, which is led by Snohomish County STEM that provides and immerses employer hosted experiences for high school students exploring careers in health care. And it's a real, well attended and very much appreciated program for kids.

And so beyond student programming, SnoMichem supports educators through curriculum alignment and professional development and employer engagement helping classrooms reflect real world workforce needs. And employers play an active role in that hosting tours, participating in panels, shaping program content and helping to find skills students need to succeed. Our advocacy work is informed directly by employers and cities and counties and the county ensuring policy priorities reflect real on the ground business and workforce needs through countywide municipal research and employer surveys we've identified shared priorities across jurisdictions and sectors. In transportation and infrastructure investment, housing supply, permitting reform, industrial land availability and workforce access consistently rose to the top as key themes impacting business competitiveness. We organized and participated in Olympia Day as well as Washington DC fly in, and that's really an opportunity for us to talk directly to those that are affecting our business and our personal lives.

Maritime and ferry construction emerged as a critical focus area where we continue collaboration to understand procurement and regulatory obstacles that ensure shipbuilding and related supply chain opportunities, that remain in Snohomish County. And this has been an issue for me that's been very personal, I think, to see us lose the opportunity in the maritime sector to another state when we've embraced competitive wages. We have embraced internships for our workers, and then we find ourselves penalizing ourselves for it. There's something just not right with that, and we're gonna work work hard to to see if we can affect some change in that area. So just stepping back to 2025 was about building, durable relationships and systems.

We strengthened our county wide BRE framework. I think we've improved partnership coordination and enhanced performance tracking. As we looked ahead to 2026, we're focused our focus shifts to implementation, business expansion and attraction, scaling programs and service delivery countywide and advancing targeted industry priorities. And none of this happens without exceptional team, and I wanna thank Mike for the team that he's brought together, our partnership with with Greater Seattle Partners. It's really been something to to behold and something that I very much appreciate, and I wanna thank you all.

And I also wanna thank we have a talented staff. We're we're small but mighty, just 10 staff members, but I'm I'm one of these people that get up and start working at two or three in the morning. And, you know, I'm I'm sure I'm driving my staff crazy with text messages, but they always respond. So we're here to serve, and we really appreciate the relationship and the support from Snohomish County.

Yeah. Thank you. Do we wanna do questions at the end or in between? Okay. At the end? Okay. We'll save questions for the end after everyone's had a chance to go.

Okay. I'll turn it over to, acting CEO for Greater Seattle Partners, Rebecca Lovell. I'll just emphasize here that, and thank you, Ray, for for your presentation. As we shift from ESC to GSP, I wanna just mention one of obviously, of the core values for executive summaries is regionalism and GSP's role, in really, expanding our efforts to a recognition that we are part of a world class region that has global reach. And GSP is a strong partner in that work, and I think Rebecca will share some of the highlights of that work this year.

But I also wanna thank GSP, for their collaboration and efforts, and I think we're coming up with more and more innovative ways in terms of how we pursue international engagement. And and you'll see in 2026, our internal team, will be building out a far more strategic and targeted international engagement strategy for both outbound and inbound delegation work. So and some of that work, actually, we previewed with a couple of council members already. So, Rebecca, I'll turn it over to you.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, director Fang. Chair Dunn, council members, great to be back, and delighted to be in partnership with Ray, Diane, and the entire team here. I think today, in the brief time we have together, you'll hear some common themes, which is natural, a little bit of Venn diagram overlap, if you will. But what we hope you see is a really intentional handshake between these organizations and, as Ray said, I think one of the healthiest partnerships I've seen in my time with ESP. So really, really grateful to be here. Just to level set a little bit in terms of, as Director Fang said, where we are in the universe. We are a public private partnership. We're a five zero one c three nonprofit, so you won't see us getting engaged in advocacy.

You will see us, however, telling our region's story, engaging the world, and working again really intentionally on regional economic collaboration. So that is our focus. Today, what I'd like to share with you, just some brief highlights with respect to our work in Snohomish County, a focus on business attraction, global engagement, telling our story, that's marketing the region, the research and marketing support we provide for the county and our partners, as well as some of the in person experiences we've had here that enables us to amplify the great work you're all doing in Snohomish County. Okay. So just to provide a little bit of context for our broader work across the three counties we serve, we do serve Pierce, King, and Snohomish Counties.

Over the course of 2025, we engaged with 400 companies. That's the top of the funnel, as as Ray was talking about earlier. At any given time, including now, we have about 78, you know, 75 to 80 active projects in our pipeline. Over the course of 2025, we brought home six projects. So that tells you, as Ray suggested, long story arc when it comes to business recruitment, both national and international engagement, but well worth it in terms of the potential for job creation and capital investment.

And I will say again, and you'll hear this, I think, from all of us. When we do this recruitment effort, we're laser focused on our key sectors and wanna make sure that the businesses that we're bringing here are also values aligned. Okay. So here's just a snapshot of kind of the the key sectors that we're leaning into, and it's a little bit of an eye chart. You may have this in your inboxes at some point here, but also shows the country of origin for our most strategic partnerships.

South Korea and India as well as, The US really take a lead role there. And no surprise, aerospace, and certainly with Snohomish County leading the world, we believe in green aerospace and supply chain, is the vast well, the plurality of of of our engagements. Okay. This is one of my favorite visits we had last year. So focusing on business attractions specifically for Snohomish County, this is actually a shot at the Port Of Everett from last year's SelectUSA spin off.

We were blessed with perfect recruiting weather that day. Let's hope we get the same luck this year. So Ray referred to this already, but the SelectUSA USA spin off is one of our major signature programs. SelectUSA itself is the country's largest foreign direct investment, conference. I think it's in its thirteenth or fourteenth year maybe now, held in DC.

But three years ago, now we're going into our fourth year, we won the privilege of using that SelectUSA brand and hosting a spin off, which means that we'd get to recruit under that brand umbrella and bring companies here who are ready, willing, and able to invest in this region. And they stop over here before they go to Washington, D. C. One thing I think that's interesting is that having that brand has really enabled us to deepen our reach. But of the, you know, 25 to 30 companies that come through, only three or four of them end up going to DC.

They're actually here to get to know our region. And frankly, I like those odds instead of having to compete with every other state in the country. This has been, I will tell you from a programmatic standpoint, our most successful source of leads. To date, we've already landed seven projects, you know, from this program. And the way we engage in recruiting is we use lead generation consultants in country, in India, in Canada, in Western Europe.

We host in country webinars. So our team and right now, we are deeply engaged in this. We vet hundreds of companies because when we invite them here, we roll out the red carpet. They have a full day in Snohomish County, a full day in King County, a full day in Pierce County. So we wanna make sure that we are increasing our odds of of bringing some of those home.

So really excited to bring that back this year. It's early. It's at the April, May. So weather willing, we'll have some fantastic fantastic showcases here at Snohomish County. Of the 30 companies that we sourced on behalf of Snohomish County, 22 of them were from the spin off, and we've had continued engagement with them since then.

So this this is a big one, and we're delighted to partner with EAIC on programming that full Snohomish County Day. Okay. So in addition to those 22 leads, I I will say, and this has been referenced before, our team programmed and led an international delegation, including executive summers, to The UK and Ireland to continue to explore and research the op the opportunities we have in sustainable aviation fuels. One and and we were able to sit down with Shell, Phillips, BP, significant players in this space that need to reinvent themselves, I think, as the the world moves forward. Probably the hottest lead that we have coming out of that force, Snohomish County, is Firefly.

Really interesting opportunity. They've continued to engage with Snohomish, and it's around recycling municipal waste. And and, yeah, really, really exciting stuff. I hope you'll hear more about Firefly. In addition to the leads that we've done internationally and that we've sourced through SelectUSA spin off, in working with our own partners, with our consultants, we sent four additional leads to Dan, Ray, and team that I've listed here.

Alright. So this one is where there's a little bit of a Venn diagram. We exist to engage the world, and we have a unique lens on exports as a source of revenue. So this is a little bit of a business expansion program, a little bit of global engagement all rolled into one. But we are now three years into an export accelerator.

We recruit generally about 15 companies from across our three counties. And over eight weeks, it's a combination of in person meetings and online, one on one coaching, and full cohort instruction. We found that these companies have been able to significantly grow their exports, increasing the number of countries that they are engaged in as well as the revenue impact projected. In 2025, we had these three companies that participated: Apache Aerospace, Emissol, and Amu Nutrition. And we will be reengaging that this year.

We look forward to working with our partners to get some fantastic companies that are ready to grow through this through this revenue stream. And I will say, as Rave referenced, given the challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical environment, this program, I think, is more important than ever. These small and growing companies really do need that expert assistance to navigate the complex waters of exporting. All right. Still on the theme of engaging the world.

One of of our biggest efforts every year is co leading with the Greater Seattle Metro Chamber an international leadership mission. And this is both public and private sector leaders. It's really an exchange. It's not sort of extractive or transactional, where we really go with a learning mindset. This past year, and executive summers joined us as well, we headed to Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg.

This year, and I will be wheels up in about two weeks, we are headed to India, to Delhi and Mumbai. So really excited to continue there. And and Ray referenced this as well. Linking arms with EASC, we also attend the Paris Air Show that that alternates every year between Paris and Farmborough. And then last, I mentioned that international engagement in service of our staff work here in the county.

Alright. And here, again, pictures worth a thousand words. Here are just some great shots of the significant delegations that we've been able to lead. Okay. In addition to going around the world and inviting them here, it is, in our charter to welcome inbound delegations, specifically those with a business focus, although there's there's always a bit of diplomacy that happens there as well. Ray all already referenced this incredible mission of delegates from Chubu. Our our global engagement lead, Josh Davis, was able to to join and and support that day. So that was a significant lift. Nanotech was also here in region. We think that that's a pretty fantastic opportunity.

And this was a bespoke full day tour of Snohomish, separate from the SelectUSA spin off. And he's actually planning to come back this quarter. So yeah. Alright. And here again, just kind of the year in picture, some of the delegations that we've welcomed from around the world. One of my favorite expressions that that Josh, our global lead, uses is when they when we go there, they come here. It has to be an exchange. It's really important for us to show up around the world and let them know that there is a warm invitation for them to return. Okay. Shifting gears a little bit, telling our story.

It is our job with partners to market this region, to focus on our key sectors. Our regional branding campaign is called Uncommon Thinkers Welcome. And we we leverage that across all of our communication channels, our own website, LinkedIn. We actually have a YouTube Shorts now where we've got a viral sensation in some of our short videos. So all the social media channels you can imagine.

Over the course of 2025, we visited various strategic sites in Snohomish County and amplified those across our channels. So that is part of the work. And frankly, when we come in and join with our partners here in Snohomish County, it's both for us to get better at understanding the assets that you do have so we can match make with strategic opportunities. And it's also to, again, amplify and market those assets to the world. We I will say 2025 was a significant year for our marketing team.

We've just redesigned our website, and we had a 650% increase on our engagements from '24 to '25. So over from from our own organic, impressions, over a million impressions. When we add our paid media engagements to that, it's 7,500,000 impressions in 2025. So we're really proud to be able to leverage all of the tools in our toolkit to to market Snohomish County. Ray mentioned the significant win around the expansion of portal space systems.

Jeff Thornburg and portal space was in fact one of six honorees that won our uncommon thinkers award. And that is in partnership with Geekwire, where all of the honorees have a lovely editorial profile, a podcast interview. That, I will tell you, is the lion's share of those impressions from Geekwire. So delighted to have a portal space in the mix there. And if you if you haven't seen it, the profile is fantastic.

What and what a great, humble, collaborative leader he is as well. Let's see. We've got, here, six other other assets that we amplify. Let me just scooch this over here. We speaking of Payne Field, that was one of the first visits that we took knowing that this was a strategic priority for the county.

We spent some time in plug and play in Everett. They they've got a, you know, a really exciting program that has grown by leaps and bounds even in the six months since they launched supporting startups with significant investment from SNBL in Japan. We led a team to visit Pfizer, a former C Gen facility, to kind of learn about their cell manufacturing operations and talk about our leadership in Snohomish County, in particular, in biomed manufacturing. It's just a lovely complement when you think about the region's leadership in life sciences. We have both r and d and biomed manufacturing capacity.

What am I missing? Everett ship repair. We spent a full day at the Port Of Everett. And kind of speaking of, you know, the unfortunate loss there, really important for us to to talk about our maritime capabilities and investments. And last but not least, Zap Energy and Boeing Future of Flight. So you can see and read all about that on our own media channels. Okay. Part of what we do, again, is to try to support capacity building across the region and enhance regional economic collaboration. And we have two incredible leaders on our team, our research director and our marketing director. We share a monthly update with all of our regional economic development partners.

I send out an investor update that really pulls back the curtain on all the activities that we're doing. Our research director, Victoria, led monthly lunch and learns where she took bespoke requests on the fly and walked all of our partners through the databases to which we subscribe subscribe on behalf of the region. And we've done a few bespoke research requests, whether it was for aerospace regional comparisons, Snohomish County deal flow when it comes to startups and investment, as well as housing research for an RFI supported by EASC. So we, again, partner very intentionally. And we, speaking of small but mighty, we are a team of six people.

So we can't do this without partners and and and love working with everybody at this table. There you have it. I think I got us in under the wire at ten minutes, but, great to be back. And I think we'll hold for questions until after Diane's presentation. Thank you all.

Thanks, Rebecca. Okay. I will quickly turn it over to Diane Kamianka, NWIRC. And I I have quickly come to the realization that Diane is our region's, secret weapon because she has been working on recentering the gravitational pull for business attraction and development, to Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom County for some some period of time now. And I've come to really appreciate the unique approach that she has applied in pairing workforce development and small business innovation and entrepreneurship, in a unique way to really highlight the assets of what our region has to offer. So, Diane, I'll turn over to you and, give us what, what's been happening in '25 and what's in store for '26.

Thank you. Diane Komianke, executive director of Northwest Innovation Resource Center. Thank you very much to all of you for the opportunity of sharing a little bit more about what we've done and what we are having the works for next year. It's been a pretty exciting year. Mostly, I would, want to talk a little bit about the focuses that we have emphasized on technologies and the rapid changing of technologies that are needed for both innovation and for workforce and small businesses and some programs we put in place for that.

But also talk about some of the new industry development that is one of the things I think, doctor Fong was talking about in terms of a different way of approaching creating both innovation and small business and workforce expertise. So we'll talk about that a little bit as we go through. You all recall, I'm sure, the significant funding that Snohomish County provided for putting together a very robust data analytics program a a couple of years ago. And this is a picture of the last graduating class that we had. I I think some of you have participating in some of those classes and graduation ceremonies before.

So we have followed that up with some presentations that are free to anyone who wants to join the virtual about what how data can be used and, not so much the technology of it, but the value of it, emphasis on things such as privacy, security, that kind of thing that you have to be careful about when you're talking about data. What that led to, obviously, in this day and age is being able to also look at how we can help the businesses understand how to take advantage of data. With the emphasis on the workforce becoming skilled in data analytics, we were fortunate enough to work with Workforce Snohomish in putting together a program where some of our data graduates could actually provide project support for doing a data analytics project for local companies. So we had 16 companies in Snohomish County that our graduates could take advantage of opportunities to do a project. Two of them are.

You probably all are familiar with. What the graduate did was analyze crash data analysis and the situations and, you know, weather impacts and time of day impacts, things like that, and come up with recommendations of where the highest impact and changes could be made for the recommendations that makes to you all for for funding and changes for traffic. DES Electric was pretty interesting. They're a small electric service company in Lynnwood, a second generation family owner. And they had they were struggling with getting to be more productive.

They felt like their electricians had some inefficiencies in the activities that they were performing. So we actually analyzed all of their activities and came up with suggestions of where they could make refinements and change some procedures and standard activities where the the biggest gaps were. So they were able to actually increase their revenue and and have more margin per sales. So they're pretty happy with how that worked. And there are similar stories for the other companies, but the the important part is that the graduates were able to get some experience.

The biggest problem that the graduates have had, They're new to data analytics. The terminology is strange to them. They've not ever interviewed for a job in that category. So giving them an experience to put on the resume and the confidence to really start working on that has been, impressive. I spoke specifically to a young person from Darrington who was scared to death to have a job outside of Darrington.

Quite honestly, we had to talk this person into doing this project. I mean, we really had to work. By the end of it, they were making a presentation about this the progress they made and and the project they worked on, and, like, they had all the confidence in the world. It was very encouraging to see how things like that happen. So we're hoping to be able to do more of those kind of projects that are very meaningful, I think, to the individuals that are looking for a a boost in their life to to make a contribution to the county.

Obviously, of course, we we can't neglect talking about AI because that sort of happened to boom on us. Data analytics obviously leads to AI. So we have developed training courses for AI and, again, working with workforce Suhomesh created some opportunity for individuals who are unemployed or underemployed to receive training in AI. The other thing you'll see here, Everett Ship Repair, which has been mentioned before, they wanted to not only send employees, but they wanted to understand how to how to use AI in general for their company. They sent 13 employees to a dedicated course that we taught, and now they're they just finished it last week.

So we're talking to them about the changes that they could start making within their company as a whole for that. So, again, that was it's kind of nice to see the the appreciation of the businesses and the workforce working together to make those things happen. We are working with Impact Washington quite a bit these days with coming up with AI and manufacturing courses that we'll talk about again in some of the projects that we have coming up. In terms of entrepreneur support, we have, had requests from 21 entrepreneurs, and we've had in terms of volunteer support of the entrepreneurs, but also trainers for the for the AI and and the data analytics courses and other projects that we've had. We've had two hundred sixty two hours of volunteer time spent in Snohomish County helping with various innovative activities, including mentoring supports.

And And then I emphasize the AI impact because it's been noteworthy that over the last, I would say, three or four months, 50% of the entrepreneurs that are approaching us have some some kind of solution with AI, whether it's a tool that they wanna develop or heavily using it to do a certain project. It's been pretty interesting how how instantaneous that change has been noted in the entrepreneur world. So we're working on creating more resources to support that type of innovation for the area. So it will keep you posted on how that turns out. It's been mentioned about international support with both Ray and and Rachel.

Sorry. I'm losing it today. We we were very happy to be quite involved in several of the international activities that have been mentioned, but we also were requested by State Department of Commerce to participate, to represent the innovation that is available in Snohomish County to a group of, I think, about 30 startups from India. It's quite impressive. It was nine o'clock at night their time, and they all got on the phone and were asking questions and were very alert.

And it was impressive how energetic the international companies are and how enthused they are to be able to come to our area and and work. We have just now started to see some feedback from some of those some of the the SelectUSA spin off activities that we participated in and some other times that we've worked with GSP and EASC. We're just getting some follow-up calls of more information. So it takes a while, I guess, from the original talk to when they go back and and work relocation or expansion into The US into their business plan. So we're just now starting to see some of that.

So that'll be interesting to see as the as this '26 happens. Switching to 2026, we are really working on colocation of entrepreneurs and workforce together, which is one of the things that we've come to understand a little bit more in working with small businesses and the workforce development and the entrepreneurs. One of the big problems that entrepreneurs have is really understanding industry. They they have a very narrow focus on their product, their innovation. They don't always understand how their innovation can be accepted into the industry.

And they they think that they've got no problem at all that they have to deal with, and they are not knowledgeable about how the whole industry functions. And the workforce, on the other hand, oftentimes are very focused on existing strategies, existing work, their job. So we are putting together some efforts. We're having monthly meetings with workforce Snohomish Impact Washington. And because we're a regional organization, we also include Northwest Workforce Council.

So that gets us the five Northwest counties of the state all working on what we can do. We'll talk about building new industries, but with colocation of entrepreneurs and workforce training, especially in advanced manufacturing with focuses on industry development like SAF and fusion. So the opportunity of having the entrepreneurs understand more what the industry is like from the workers and the workers picking up sense of creativity and energize from the entrepreneurs, we're starting to test that out, but it seems to be being received well. And there's quite a bit of private funding that's also available to support that concept. So we're putting quite a bit of effort into making that a reality.

And just to talk about how we apply that, SAF industry as a follow-up. Yeah. You have the since you I figured couldn't read these, we gave you a copy of this at your at your table there. But following the announcement last week and even before that, I think when when executive summers announced the expansion of pain and the and the new funding on staff back in May or June, I don't know, a while ago, we started working on the thought that, you know, our organization is not going to be necessarily focusing on the production of SAF or fusion because that's kind of taken over by the r and d and the research people. But as the industries are developing, they'll need a supply chain, and they'll need innovation because both SAF and fusion is too expensive.

So you're gonna have to have innovations to get the price to where it's competitive and can be incorporated into the in into the business. At the event last week, we were talking to one of the people from quant Qantas Airlines, and they said that, you know, they would love to buy more SAF, but they need people who could blend it and deliver it and store it and the other things that are all part of the supply chain. So it was interesting to hear that confirmation. So what we're doing is focusing on workforce and innovation in the supply chain for staff. To do that, in talking to a number of leaders over the last several months, there seems to be three different areas that we can have some value in contributing to that.

One is in actually getting the word out to small businesses who really are there's a huge lack of knowledge about what SAF is. In in our region, at least, they haven't even heard of it. Even people that that you would think would in economic development, and, they don't. So getting the word out to the small businesses and individuals so they're aware of it can start paying attention is one thing. So we'll do a session session just on that here in in Everett.

We'll also, feedstock is a big deal. The types of feedstock, but also the expense. If we're using woody biomass, that's heavy. It's you know, it's gotta be brought together. And so there's gotta be innovations and and changes in that, and then also the workforce.

So in Whatcom County, Bellingham Technical College has the process technology. They were the center of excellence for that. They do the training for the foundry for the refineries in Whatcom and Skagit, so BP and and Phillips and Sinclair and the others up there. So they have all of the equipment. So we're talking with them about helping us with the workforce development aspect of it.

So I think it's important to bring the rest of the region into the picture so that they can contribute to building the industry that is really started here in Snowmish County. I see it somewhat like the aerospace industry. I mean, there are more workers from Skagit and Wacom that come down here to work than you would really believe unless you're traveling up and down I 5 with traffic all the time. But so I think the same thing's gonna happen with being able to get those areas to help with building the industries that are that are really starting down here and and have the foundation here. And then lastly, fusion, not that that is a priority for the county, but it it the big fusion producers are here.

And, being able to partner with Cleantech Alliance to make that happen is something that we're working on. They you're all aware that in the fall, Cleantech has historically done, fusion week here in Everett, and, we've partnered with them on those in the past. But there is a national fusion energy activity in May. It's the national day for fusion energy, and they have not done anything there. So we are proposing to them and and have agreement now to work together for the May as the fusion week in '26.

So we'll be putting on a fusion day, specifically to expand the knowledge of fusion and workforce opportunities and supply chain beyond the producers that are the ones that are normally highlighted at this at the fusion week here in Everett so that we can, as a region, really build on what what's happened and started here in Snohomish County to build the supply chain for that as well because you'll have more workforce involved and opportunities in that. So, I think as as everybody's mentioned, we've kind of all worked together on we've seen each other more this year than I think we've seen each other in previous years. It's been very refreshing to to, be able to work more con collegially, I never can say that word properly, with everybody. But, it's been great, and we thank you for the support of the county council on the activities that we're doing that we're doing. So we look forward to seeing more of that.

Thank you. That concludes our time. So we we'll have to pause questions. Maybe council members can send you questions individually. Just if you're online, we will have to take a one minute recess, and then we'll start our health and community services meeting. But I wanna thank you all for joining us from and thank you to our economic development partners and for the presentation. And then council is in recess for about one minute. Thank you.