City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a regular meeting of the Redmond City Council held on Tuesday, September 1st, 2026, commencing at 7 o'clock p.m. I will call roll, starting with Council President Stewart. Council Vice President Nueva Camino. Here. Council Member Forsyth. Here. Council Member Precrea. Council Member Parsi. Here. Council Member Sonny. And Council Member Kritzer. Here. Okay. The first item on the agenda is special orders of the day with a presentation on Redmond Library Updates by Mary Comstock, welcome.

Well, thank you so much, Mary. It's always fantastic to hear from you and all the great work you're doing. And we just love the partnership. It makes it so easy when you're just across the parking lot as well. But really excited. So excited to see the sorter. Like that was amazing news. And I'm really excited that we'll be celebrating a centennial together next year. That's fantastic. So we'd love to open up to questions to the council. Council Member Forsyth first.

thank you um very exciting on the centennial please let us know how we can be involved and participate and celebrate and what an amazing story of those women and making that happen so please let us know um and you know if there there might be some council members that are very excited about that sorter and maybe followed it on instagram and saw it and if there's ever an opportunity for us to go visit oh please let us know absolutely there would there be interest i can arrange a tour

Yeah, just check in with us and we'll...

That's awesome. We'll go with Council Member Kritzer and then Council President...

Thank you so much for the update and for the really amazing work that you do. The program highlights, I think, just emphasize what a really wonderful space our library is. And I just want to commend you in particular for the efforts to make it such an inclusive space and inclusive program. Right now, I think in particular libraries and access to a diversity of books and making sure that we have access to stories that everyone can see themselves in and their own identities in is really important. And then combining that with really good programming to help people to engage with it is just... An

Thank you so much, Mary, for coming and giving these wonderful updates tonight. And I agree. I think the event with Redmond Reads was wonderful and would love to see it. You know, we were just talking a few minutes ago, actually, about the summer reading program. Maybe the first square that folks could get on their bingo card is participating and reading the book that's in the Redmond Reads program. But loved that program and that event and very happy to see all the collaboration that You've done a wonderful job of inspiring folks who haven't maybe been at the library in a while to go and chec

Yeah. And you've done a marvelous job of recognizing staff in the city of Redmond. I want to make sure that I give a shout out. I do spend a fair amount of time in the library. the patience and resilience and care and kindness that your staff exhibit on a daily basis to make sure that that library is a place where everyone is welcome, is visible each and every day, multiple times an hour. So they deserve all the kudos in the world. So thank you again for this wonderful update. And next week, the council will have a special meeting to actually interview a potential candidate to add to the the b

Thank you so much. Great question, Council Member Soney. Thank you. Thank you again for your partnership. You know, it's just always a pleasure to hear from you. Library was always like one of the, I think it's one of the first places families go when they move here. They always know they can get assistance and help, and it's always warm and welcoming, as Council President mentioned. And I just look forward to the years to come and hearing back from you again on all what's new and what's next. I will be back. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you so much. Our next item on the agenda is items

Next is Wolf Adriatico, then David Morton.

POINT OF ORDER. I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND SPEAKERS IN THE FUTURE TO BE RESPECTFUL AND ADHERE TO THE principles that we have outlined for public participation in this chamber. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll make sure that we reiterate that in the next public comment period, and perhaps we'll have to suspend people's public comment if they can't adhere to those rules. Thank you. Next is David Morton.

Thank you. And that is the end of everyone who has signed up.

Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to comment on the previous comments that were made after the previous speaker to clarify for our roles for the listening public that in our rules around items from the audience, that there are several pieces that are requests of the audience and several things that are rules. And there are only certain things that would lead to someone's commentary being ended. So just wanna be clear about that. We do ask everyone to be respectful and note in our rules. For example, we value a diversity of opinions and that we ask that all comments be free from hate, harassment, obsce

Thank you so much. Yes, I have the rules sitting in front of me. So after Council President made that point of order, I read through to make sure that next time we're ensuring that people are following our rules. So thank you for reiterating all that. Thank you. So items from the audience is now closed. Our next item of business is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any item to be pulled? SEEING NONE, AND WE DO HAVE A COUNCILMEMBER ONLINE. WE'RE GOING TO DO A ROLE CALL JUST TO MAKE SURE WE HEAR EVERYBODY. SO I WILL START WITH COUNCIL PRESIDENT STEWART. AYE. AYE.

AYE. THANK YOU. AND THAT IS 7-0. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY. Our next item of business is a staff report on design standards. Serafie Allen, Interim Director of Planning and Community Development will introduce this item.

Thank you so much. I'm going to go to questions for the council, but I just want to say with that presentation, I've just been so impressed with the staff work that's gone into this. I feel really fortunate as the city that we have you and others working on this. It is extremely extensive, very detailed, and I think it Shows how wonderful our comprehensive plan was and all of the work that's going into it since then and just just really phenomenal work Just just to brag on you all a little bit. Thank you council. Do you have questions for our presentation today?

Councilmember Kritzer Thank you so much for the work on this and I'm looking forward to seeing it move forward. One question that I had since we haven't been able to see the direct work that you're referencing, I noticed in the slides that you reference a lot of different buildings that incorporate color or kind of mural design almost on the side of buildings. Is that something that will be showing up in the standards or in incentives to be able to create more Just as as a design standard to have more color.

Were you able to hear that, council member? Yep. Okay, good. Other questions? No? Well, thank you so much. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

Thank you so much. Our next item is ombuds report. The month of August is Council Member Prakrit.

yes thank you so this is the entirety of the month of august as we didn't have a meeting we received a number of inquiries from members of the community so we received a request for budget funding in the upcoming biennium for soil and groundwater pfas testing as well as an independent city employed arborist we received a proposal for a council allocated legislative policy analyst. We received a community member, a letter from a community member opposing the PSC rate increases. We received advocacy for funding for certain community organizations to be included in the city's funding. A community

THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER SONE, YOU'RE THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO REPORT?

Thank you. Any other ombuds for August? Council President and then Council Vice President and then Council Member Forsythe.

Well, thank you so much. Just really quickly wanted to give a shout out for the organizing and the great conversations at National Night Out, which we kicked off with at the beginning of August. Really great questions on conversations all night long. really enjoyed the opportunity to meet Redmond families in their neighborhoods. So thank you so much to the police department for including us in that event. I did have a few visitors to my office hours this last week. I have a couple of questions that I will follow up with Chief Lowe about regarding a pedestrian-involved collision earlier this su

Thank you. Again, thank you to Redmond Police Department for inviting us out to participate in National Night Out. This was another year of just really great conversations and both participating and participating in community with our community members throughout various neighborhoods, which was fabulous. For most of the month, I was out of town and not available. However, the first week actually and this past weekend was pretty busy. Several conversations around tenant protections as one of the council members who is a renter that lives in downtown Redmond. I get to walk around and be in comm

Thank you. And you were missed at the Rockin' on the River, I will say, at least by me in particular. So did attend the Rockin' on the River, the last one that got moved due to the smoke in the air. Sad about the smoke but grateful that that one got moved so I could actually attend. It was a wonderful event Diving into the rest of my report my colleagues mentioned a lot of the things so I will skip over some of those But again National Night Out was lovely Thank you to our police department for coordinating and I'm sorry that our fire department was busy dealing with the smoke and helping othe

Thank you. Thank you. Any other ombuds items? Council Member Kritzer.

Yeah, I won't repeat a bunch of that were already said, but I will say that I had some conversations at office hours as well as out in community, support for ADA projects, as well as some feedback on those. And also concerns about safety and encouraging more use of the MHP in certain situations and funding for that. Also had some questions about parking permits and some of the upcoming changes on parking. Also some feedback around event impacts on nearby businesses that I believe our staff followed up on. Also was shared some additional information about impacts of 6 PPD on our waterways and a

I look forward to hopefully when they finish up all the construction at Rockwell, we'll be able to take a look inside because, yeah, I can see it from the outside. It's quite a beautiful building. And a lot of work went into that. And our staff did an amazing job working with the district. So really congrats to all of them. Any other ombuds or yeah, ombuds still. Any committee reports?

Council Member Kritzer. I attended the Kokanee Management Committee meeting for our ILA with the cities around the lake and the Snoqualmie Tribe, and we approved an updated budget for the upcoming year for the Kokanee, for that ILA, including funding a lot of the newest kind of science-based practices that We're seeing working and scaling up some for bringing back our little red fish. And we also affirmed some additional practices on emergency voting because we didn't have those really clarified. And in the last year there was a moment where we really needed to allocate some funding in an emer

Thank you. Committee reports. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Attended the East Trail Regional Council planning meeting for our next quarterly meeting where we discussed the major topics we want to close out the year with and the new incoming chair potential and how we're gonna move forward next year with the Revisioning and making sure that after the ten years that we've been together. We are Moving forward with the best possible vision for the future.

Thank you ten years Wow any other committee reports council vice president

Way back, seemingly four weeks ago, seemed like last year, Council Member Forsyth and I attended the Disability Board meeting where not only did we take care of regular business, and we also discussed some language changes as well to make sure that we're continuing to be diligent and make sure that our retirees are taken care of.

THANK YOU. ANY OTHER COMMITTEE REPORTS? I HAD A COUPLE OF SOUND TRANSIT MEETINGS, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO REPORT ON THAT. HOWEVER, I AM GOING TO REPORT ON AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WE HAD TO SHOWCASE NATIONALLY SOME OF THE WORK THAT WE'VE DONE IN THE CITY OF REDMOND. AS MANY OF YOU KNOW, I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES ON HOUSING, WITH THEIR HOUSING SUPPLY ACCELERATOR AND THE GREAT HOUSING COMEBACK, WHICH IS WHAT IT'S CALLED RIGHT NOW. And they brought in a group of a few elected officials nationally, as well as some planners from around the country. They met in Bellevue. It was sponso

Thank you so much. Other questions for Mr. Whitney? I see none. Thank you so much.

Is there a motion to approve AM number 26129? It's been moved. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll also do a roll call vote just to ensure that we hear from our council member online, starting with Council President Stewart. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. And that passes 7-0. Thank you so much. The last item on the agenda is a closed session for labor negotiations, RCW 4230-144B. Without objection, the business meeting will adjourn at this time and the council will go into closed session. Hearing none, there's no objection. Hearing none, this business meeting is adjourned per state law. Public attendance is not allowed in the closed session. And Council Member Sonny, you should have a link to join us.