City Council - Regular Meeting

of the Redmond City Council Committee of the Whole for Finance Administration and Communications on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, commencing at 4.32 p.m. In attendance are Council President Stewart, Council Vice President Nueva Camino, Council Members Forsyth, Parsi, and Soni, and online we have Council Member Prakriya and myself, Presiding Officer Council Member Kritzer. We have six items on the agenda there because one item that was originally posted, the contract for fully managed video production was removed and will be on a future agenda due to more information needed. And so the first it

Thank you. Are there questions from the council? Council Member Parsi, did you raise your hand?

Go ahead. I was wondering what is our current solution for this use case and how much does it currently cost the city? I saw that there was a note in the memo that if not approved, we go to a month-to-month plan, but I was curious, have we always been a month-to-month plan or have we been on a different contract and how much that costs?

This answers my question, but if I may ask a follow up for this. So does this mean that for similar services now we're getting a lower cost or are we kind of changing the contract structure or different scope now?

Thank you, Jose. Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate you being here. And thank you for pointing out the benefits of switching over to the new vendor. In addition to the benefits that we see, are there any concessions that we're making? Are there anything that we're giving up?

Any other questions? Council Member Sonny.

So I have a question on the for the key metrics just to ensure like, you know, we have a two and a four hour SLA windows. Are we going to maintain any of those metrics for long?

Okay, any other questions? Not seeing any, I will note that this is being proposed to put on consent for our September 15th meeting next week. Is there any objection to putting this on consent? See and thumbs. All right, so let's put this on consent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the adoption of an ordinance updating the Revenue Municipal Code subsection 9.30.060 to remove conflicting code language. And I believe our Deputy Finance Director, Haritha Nara is gonna introduce this item, go ahead.

Thank you. Are there questions from the Council? Council Member Stewart? Council President Stewart?

that's okay thank you and thanks so much team for introducing the item and one of my main questions had been around the kind of the origin of the question and how the conflict came to be so I appreciate hearing that due to some business interest we this is an issue we need to get ahead of I think it would be helpful to clarify and and to really articulate in this room what the conflict is and also to ensure that we are not actually making a policy change in terms of what types of activities are allowed in the city of Redmond. So could you speak to those two things?

Thank you. So if I may summarize then, the question in front of the council is to approve the removal of that as a possible taxable activity so that there isn't confusion about what may or may not be allowed in terms of social game rooms in the City of Redmond. We're not actually here to discuss the virtue or benefit of social card rooms in the City of Redmond. Just clarifying this for the moment. Okay. Well, I support moving that forward to consent then. Thank you.

Thank you. I was just wondering, first of all, I totally, totally support this change, but I was wondering if you could give a little bit as to the provenance of how we came to notice this seeming contradiction. I'm sure there are other issues with our code. It's just inevitable and a code that I think it's I believe it's well over 1,000 pages is our code. I could be mistaken. But I'm sure there are other issues. I'm just wondering what the process was to actually catch this one.

Thank you. Council Member Soni. Thank you. Oh, did you have a follow-up question, Council Member Pekria?

No, no, sorry. I was just saying thank you.

So I was just reading that nonprofits are allowed to have a social card room on their premises in Redmond, provided they're licensed by Washington State Gambling Commission. So I think it would be very useful if we can clarify that this restriction would apply only for the commercial and not for the nonprofits. I know the language is just focusing on the commercial, but might be useful to clarify for the nonprofits.

All right. Well, um, this, uh, I'm just gonna, sorry, pull up here. So this is also being proposed to go on consent on September 15th. Is there any objection to moving this to consent? All right. Thank you. And thank you for the diligent work on this to align our, our code. Uh, so we don't have inconsistencies. All right. I'll move that to consent. Um, So the third item on our agenda, as I noted, will be moved and we'll see it at a future meeting. The next item on our agenda is the payroll transition update and approval for consultant services contract for human resources assessment. And we ha

And are we gonna discuss that? I know that we have Director Cochran to also give an update as part of this item on payroll. Do we wanna just have you give the update and then we'll take questions? Great, thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Director Cochran. I think the intention was to be able to have that context as we start on the discussion about the HR contract as well. So thank you so much, or services contract. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. Maybe Director Cochran, if I can start where we kind of left off then. One of my questions coming into the room today was, about the project team that's proposed for the contract in front of us and Knowing that we were going to also be discussing payroll and I should say I think everyone in the room I should only speak for myself I'm sure there is a sentiment in the room that we believe you know in the city of Redmond every employee should be able to trust a role is accurate and on time and so I'm I'm glad that we're taking care of this work now and When I reviewed the project

Looking backward? Yes. And that would be a separate contract?

Thank you. Yeah, I had a couple of questions. Number one is in the attachment, it says that work is planned to begin no later than August 17th of 2026. Has work already begun on this project? Because if we're approving the contract, I'm just wondering if that is out of date or if work has begun?

I see. Okay. And... Can you tell us a little bit more about how this consultant was chosen?

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Pecoria. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Just going back to the payroll audit, can you just clarify? I think I missed something. Are we not doing a forensic audit?

Great. I was like, we can't do this without a forensic audit. You're welcome. The only other question I have is it was recently brought to my attention that we currently have a contract with our former HR director to finish out some projects. Can you advise if that what I heard was accurate, how that plays into this contract and any other overlap that we might see?

So that's on the department reorg, a new department. Correct. That we're talking about tonight. Correct. And only that project.

I am curious, given that the transition has already begun to some extent. We have started work on UKG as the new application to do. This effort has not begun and is set to take roughly five-ish months. And this is not clear to me yet how the outcome of this work will influence what decisions we make. So can you clarify exactly kind of if you could list a few decisions that we could make differently based on what we learn from the results of this contract today that would help me a lot because the timelines don't make a lot of sense to me just yet.

The outcome of, so I'm curious what the outcome of this contract, what decisions we have to make that the outcome of this contract will inform us to make decisions potentially differently. So how are we using data and results from this contract to make any decisions that we have to make?

I think that would not be just payroll, but HR. Certainly.

I think I would really appreciate to have some more specificity around this, because efficiency and customer experience are very kind of hand-wavy things, and I don't have a, reading the scope wasn't super clear to me, and kind of what I'm hearing is not really helping paint a better picture for me to be confident, and especially given that this was in a competitive bid, I'm not feeling I have everything that I need yet to be comfortable about making it kind of going to consent with this yet.

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. The timing of this is a bit precarious because although we don't know what is going to be coming back from taking a look at our processes and if there are significant gaps that are brought to light, and we're about to go into our budget, then what could there be? Are we considering what unexpected costs that we can have? And of course, when we're planning financially, we don't have a crystal ball, we don't know. But what we do know is that we're having a third set of eyes take a look at how we're doing things. If there are large inconsistencies or a significant delta, Are we thinkin

And how much is in that contingency fund?

So out of seven processes, as we read, there are only two processes where we are going to do the deeper dives to understand and, you know, assess with the consultant. The other five will just have the light touch. So what is the confidence level that just by the deeper dive or a mapping with just the two processes will help us resolve all the challenges that we are dealing today with an HR and finance disconnect or other challenges that we are facing? I'm just a little concerned like is this enough scope or not?

Thank you. And I see there's another question from Council Member Prakrit. I'm going to go first round and then I'll call on you for the second round. One question that I have is this is not a budgeted expense. So can you share with us about generally list general fund as the funding for this? Can you speak to where we would be pulling for this to pay for it?

Okay, and in terms of actually the bids that we got on this and ensuring that we're at the right level in terms of the cost for this, can you share a little bit of what the considerations were?

Thank you. First of all, I was wondering if you could share any details you may have about the procedural startings and the timeline for the UKG payroll project. And then I have a quick follow up based on based on that.

Great. Thank you. And then my thinking on this contract is, first of all, you know, this is... almost a third of a million dollars. It's a non-trivial amount of money, more than we would budget for an FTE for an entire year. I'm sorry, my voice is a little bit scuffed. I'm a little bit sick. But more than we would budget for an FTE for an entire year. And I think that a third-party system, a third-party audit is needed here because this is a different scope of work than building out a new kind of software. We need to make sure that every employee in Redmond is being paid fairly according to th

Thank you. My understanding was from hearing the presentation is that this is for an assessment of our HR team. and it's separate from a payroll audit and assessment that would happen as a third party. And that would come afterwards, is that correct?

And can you clarify whether it was at all sought to do a joint scope of work on this to include both items?

I was wondering, beyond the context of the specific contract, I wanted to see if Council would be interested at this point to explore a policy around ensuring that staff is paid in a timely manner, that if there is identified discrepancy in pay, that could potentially impact other employees as well. If it's reported, we would be able to still notify others, or if we identify it, we would be informing those who may be experiencing such issues, or if we identify a broad issue, we would be able to handle it appropriately. So I wanted to see if there is potentially interest from council in doing t

Thank you, Council Member Percy. Would any council members like to comment on that proposal? Council President Stewart.

If I'm understanding correctly, the proposal and also the intent behind what you're asking, Council Member Parsi, absolutely I want this council to be able to use all of the tools that are available to it to ensure that we're able to be part of the restoration of trust in the city. I don't know that that's all necessarily in the scope of what we have going on here just now. But it does sound like we will have another bite at the apple with the forensic audit and policy choices that may come as a result of that. So there's a chunk of this conversation that I, like you, I think, am very interest

the intent of your question thank you councilmember forsay i also support the intent of the question um and i'm curious director cochran if you could say if policy choices would be a part of that forensic audit because i'm hopeful but i don't know if that's actually part of that scope

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Great. I would just put in a request that we build in time for that part of that conversation when it comes back.

DIRECTOR PROCREA. Thank you. I would like to go back to Council Vice President Nueva Camino's first question. on how this timeline lines up with the budget. It sounds from this conversation that there is great interest in hiring out, but both on the council side and on the staff side, in hiring out a forensic accountant. But I'm just wondering how that hiring lines up with our timeline of our budget in November. Director Cochran.

Yeah, thank you. I have one final question on the proposal that's in front of us. And I think you have a preview of some of our questions when we're able to bring the audit back. Thank you again for bringing this forward. I certainly do want to expedite the process of getting this project started. It sounded like in the room there was a little bit of a surprise that this contract was sole source. We don't, because it's not a public works project, we don't have a requirement to have multiple bids. So that is part of how we got to where we are. One of my questions that's lingering, and I realize

Thank you, Assistant CO Omar. I can appreciate that and also would just encourage us not to let perfect be the enemy of good, especially for the team that needs the direction moving forward. So for my part, I will support moving this forward and getting the work going. Thank you.

Thank you. I will note that I feel a little torn here myself because of some of the things that Council President Stewart just said. We have heard concerns, and I do think that it's important for us to be able to move forward and get an assessment so that way we can address any gaps or issues that are going on to make sure this is a really great place to work and that we're providing the HR support that we need. And I would love to get to the payroll assessment sooner than later as well. Because part of what was raised to us was about our existing system, having one sole source provider rather

So I asked the question earlier about what this work could inform. I will ask that question differently because I feel like some of the council is kind of, there's question about if this work could block work on our end or not. And I'm not seeing exactly what work this, what decisions could be blocked based on this. So could you help inform us if this decision is blocking, if this work is actually blocking work from our HR implementation or our implementation of payroll? And if so, exactly, could you specify what would get blocked? So I think that would be really helpful to see if our work con

And Council Member Parsi, I will just say, I think some of this also responds to the fact that the council received a letter of concern about some of the HR, about HR systems and practices. So this is related to the systems and practices, not to the payroll, which was also included in there, and that would be a separate piece. So that's my understanding. Okay, I'll go Council Member Parcheria, then I'm going to cut off this conversation. We'll get to, and we'll decide if we want to have another conversation on this. Council Member Parcheria?

Thank you. I was just going to share my perspective, which is that I do believe that this scope of work is needed, but in order to move forward to consent, I would like to see, number one, a list of other jurisdictions to whom this consultant has helped, the prior issues they had, what kinds of resolutions they were able to get to, and then just a more clear definition on the deliverables in scope of this contract. But I also really do want to appreciate all the work that has gone into this. You know, we have a billion dollar budget, right? And it's not easy to transform the way that the major

Thank you, Council Member Pacrea. So, Council Members, I'm going to ask, since it sounds like there are still some questions and concerns, would Council Members want to put this on new business? So that way we could get some additional information that's been requested by the Council and have a separate vote on this? Or would we prefer to just see this again at a committee after we've gotten our answers to our questions? I guess I'll ask, are Council Members good putting this on new business if we don't get... Okay, so we have, so let's put this on new business and please follow up. I'd say co

Thank you. Just a thing to note, I noticed some of the draft ordinances still have Daniel Kinney listed as our city attorney. So I'm assuming that needs to be updated and changed. And I just wanted to more make a comment in hopes that our Salary commissioners are listening. I know I commented this before. I personally feel adamant about the fact that the council vice president does not get a pay bump. When I took over as council president with council member Kritzer as vice president, we turned that into a role that was co-led and leadership and making sure that we're meeting together and it w

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. I also wanted to bring up when we're taking a look at salary bands, I'm so proud of the benefit package that as a city, we're able to provide for our employees. It is robust it is generous it takes care of our employees so well again i can't i don't know if i could possibly find the words to explain just how proud i am when we take that into consideration with that being said i think then when we're looking at whether or not our pay is over or under market or if we're on par that's a piece that i don't know if and i'd love some clarity if we do take in consideration our total compen

Thank you. One question that I had was that usually I think we see this item and we approve it in conjunction with the budget. And it's being proposed for us to do this within the next week. And I think some of this discussion, especially as we're looking at, for example, in the Office of the Executive, some of the pay bands and some of the roles there, I believe there's still some discussion that might come with the budget around that. So it does mention in the memo that it would help to do this earlier to be able to address, to be able to make some of these changes in advance. But can you cl

Thank you. And I believe we typically had approved this at our first meeting in December. So if we were able to approve it in November, it would even give an extra month from the usual timeline. But I guess I will ask Council Member Forsyth.

On that note, does that delay any of the negotiations going into effect that we've been so eager to get on track?

I think we haven't had a chance to discuss this. And there's a full committee. So I would welcome seeing this back in committee again. And I think there's plenty of time to make sure we're able to meet the November deadline.

Great. Thank you. So I guess with the comments we've gotten today, just so that we can keep moving on the agenda, I think we'll bring this back for more discussion at future fact committees. And if council members have any additional questions on this that they want to send in between, then they can do so I think there are a couple for me there's a couple conversations I think we want to have before we move to adopting this so. Great all right well let's move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the. Which is the update to the elected official pay plan for the mayor's salary. And our CE

Thank you so much for that recommendation and the background COO files. I am gonna note because we are over time on this item and we have or on this agenda and this item historically when we've looked at this has taken a lot of council discussion time, especially when it's been proposed to make larger than a COLA increase. I propose that we plan to have some more time either on a future FAC or on a study session. I saw our council president raised her hand. So in case you want to have a comment on that, I'd be happy to entertain if anyone wants to send in in advance of that next meeting. quest

Great, Council Member Soney, did you have a quick comment?

Yeah, just a quick comment. It's specifically for the new council members. It's very important for us to understand how these numbers are reached. Like, you know, I know you explained it based on the market, but are there other factors that needs to be considered depending upon every city, the budget, and, you know, the money and the revenues that we have. So that would be very helpful for us. Sure.

Great, thank you. And I will note for the council that it didn't get attached to the item, but I did ask and COO Files did send around a history of the mayor's salary to the council. And when we see this item again, hopefully we can have that attached for the public. But just to note that in 2024, we did have, we did authorize an increase to go from 2024 of 153,000 to 170,000 in 2025. So that was the last time the council considered a larger increase was two years ago. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. I know we're short on time, but I decided to raise my hand for the sake of listening staff and being sensitive to the comprehensive scope of the conversations we've had today. For my part, if the direction from the council is to have another touch on this, let's absolutely do that, especially for the benefit of our newer colleagues and learning about the work that we did two years ago to make systemic updates. My primary concern at this very moment is making sure that we know that Redmond staff are being paid and have been paid correctly and on time, and I'd really like to tak

Thank you very much, Council President. And with that, I think we'll move on and we'll plan to bring this back for another touching committee before we move forward with any decisions on it. Thank you. Great, thank you. That brings us to the last item on our agenda, which is our Respect, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion program update. And I believe, actually, earlier, I think I gave the wrong title to our assistant COO, Lisa Marr. Our Deputy Executive Director, Zach Hooverner, is here to introduce the item. Go ahead.

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. Teresa, so wonderful to have you. I hope that your transitioning and onboarding has been going well. Yes. Because you read along just like you've been here for quite some time. Great. Welcome. Glad to see you, that you're here. As you were reading, I was trying to follow along inside of the table. If we could have just some high-level slides that was pointing to some of those great points that you were calling out. This way, it's just a little bit easier because there's a lot of great work that you've put into this report. And I'd love to see it kind of high level. And then also, ju

Follow up super fast on that. Since we know that this needs to be a top down approach, walk me through the decision making as to why we didn't start there.

Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Teresa, for being here and sharing this information. Zach, when you're ready for Teresa to start meeting with us, we certainly welcome the opportunity. I will say for my part, the data that we're able to see here from the post-engagement survey, it just further provides for me the evidence that it's really important that we reinvest in the organizational health assessment. So I do hope that when we get to the preliminary budget, that that is there next month. And if not, that may be something that council takes up for consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. And since we are a little bit over time here, I'm going to close out on questions, but feel free to follow up with Teresa. Thank you so much for being here. We're excited to have you. I hope it has been a good first month. And looking forward to hopefully seeing people out at welcoming week as we begin. And as a reminder, we'll actually kick off welcoming our community on Thursday the 10th with our council conversations that are going to be in Spirit Brook Park at 5 o'clock. So just wanted the listening public to know to come and connect with us and then join in all of these great e