City Council - workshop

Thank you. I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a Redmond City Council study session held on Tuesday, September 8th. 2026, commencing at 7.06 p.m. All council members are in attendance with one council member remotely. Council member Procrea is remote today. There are four items on the agenda tonight, and Mayor Bernie is in attendance. There are four items on the agenda tonight. The creation of a new department to support development service functions, preparation for the 2027 legislative session, 2027-2032 capital improvement review, and council talk time. The plan for this evening is t

And I'm actually going to kick this off. Hi, I'm Mayor Bernie. I failed to share that. Didn't say that in the script. Sorry about that. I'm going to kick this off for all of you tonight. I'm really excited. Today we're presenting the plan for a new department in the city. And the reason we're calling it the new department is because it's not named yet. So new department in the city is the culmination of a long line of decisions and evaluations that the city has undergone recently. from Redmond 2050, our housing action plan, state permit timeline legislation, feedback from the development busin

We know you don't have time to look at this exact moment, but we wanted to give you hard copies that are much larger so you can take a look later.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Director Lynch and Mayor Bernie. And we also, I will recognize, have Director Cochran here for the financial pieces. She's just very popular today. We want to hang out with her all night. And additionally, I want to open it up to the council. I do see a hand. So you're first in line, Council Member Parsi. And I did want to just say before we... go around to questions not attached to the packet materials tonight is of course the matrix study which was delivered to the council in June and council the staff do know that we haven't yet had a chance to discuss th

Thank you. Starting with a comment before the question, there was a lot of helpful information that you shared tonight with us verbally that wasn't actually in the presentation. In the future, it would be really helpful if the full content of what will be presented would be available in full reading versus just presentation because a lot of detail can be missed.

Could I respond to that really briefly? We had the benefit of meeting with council leadership last week and they asked some really great questions. And so interim director Lynch did all that work to answer some of those questions. And so what we'll do following up with this is create a matrix and all of that information will be in it.

Fantastic. And to get to the questions, would you be able to highlight again how many new positions would be created as a part of this department? And how much would the cost of those new positions would be? And if I understand correctly, those would be funded through the development fund? funds, not part of general funds, or maybe right now part of general funds, but specifically funded through development. Is that correct?

Council Member Sonny. So just to follow up on that, these eight new positions, they will not be back, like, you know, any of the backlog. These will be a completely brand-new positions, maybe more administrative kind of roles?

Council Member Forsyth and then Council Member Kritzer. Thank you. Understanding that this is also an alignment to make sure we comply with new state law that goes into effect end of April 27. One thing that we as council members hear a lot is that the city seems to care more about developers and making sure developers are taken care of. but that it isn't necessarily benefiting and impacting the community at large in a good way. So what can we walk away from this conversation understanding and communicating with our constituents that this is a benefit for the everyday resident?

And I will also add, the long-term goal is also, though I think a resident might not feel it at the start, but the goal is to reduce the timeline for building as well as the fees that are associated with that. So if someone who's renting an apartment or buying a new home or buying a condominium or whatever it might be, those fees will be reduced there'll be less money there. So we create some level of affordability there too. So it's kind of twofold for community members that maybe aren't in the development industry for sure. But I think those things that Jason brought up and as well as the ev

I'll just follow up on that point with a comment and then we'll ask a quick question here. So yeah, I do think as a council president mentioned at the beginning, I think we missed an opportunity to be able to share out in presentation a little bit more of the matrix study findings so that we could connect what it is. As you actually mentioned at the beginning, Mayor Bernie, this comes out of even our original housing action plan we passed in 2020 where we said We want to be able to get to more affordable housing and what are the different tools that we can use to be able to increase housing af

If I might, so yes to, this was step one to show all of you what this due department would look like. And we're currently verifying what the public works and planning will look like outside of this group. So when we have those org charts, finalized and confirmed, we will be sharing those out with the other information that all of you are asking as well. So that's in the works. We just didn't have it completely confirmed. We didn't want to share anything that was inaccurate. But Kelly, do you want to talk a little bit financially about how we will share with them where we're getting the money,

Thank you. And before we go to follow-up, possibly, and then Council Vice President Leva Kamina had her hand up, I do want to acknowledge, yes, the council leadership met with the team before us to kind of get a preview of what the conversation might be. I appreciate, Director Cochran, that you are teeing things up for the first budget deliberation to be really clear as an enhancement The other thing that council leadership discussed with the team is the need to use tonight's conversation to be really clear on what our questions are, especially as it relates to the business case for a change o

No, I appreciate it. I'll just note because you were mentioning about the different departments that we'll get to see to also kind of all the affected departments, including fire or finance. So we can also see kind of holistically any ones that are being moved. What are they going to look like afterwards?

Thanks for the question. Council Vice President. Thank you. And just confirming that all that you said was right on target. In the vein of we've got a tight turnaround. We're unbelievably now in the second week of September. And that feels odd saying that. However, here we are. We've got a very tight turnaround to keep us on track for our January 1 implementation of this. So my question is in that light of what are, and to keep us on track, what are some of the decisions or the input that council needs to deliver on to keep us on that track versus what decisions have effectively already been m

Well, what a great question. And yes, thank you for suggesting we set aside another study session time for this, knowing this is a big thing to discuss, and we want to make sure that there's a lot of clarity and you get all your questions answered. In setting up a new department, you know, council's role is to approve the budget for the new department, and that's through the budget process. The adding new FTEs is a budget decision or is a council decision as well. And then if the department is approved, then there will be a confirmation of the director. will be a council action. Trying to thin

Thank you. I want to check with Council Member Procrea, and I believe we can take down the slideshow unless others need to refer to it. If there are no questions from Council Member Procrea at this time, I'll go ahead and chime in with one of mine. Director Lynch, Council typically, well, I'll say first my overall feedback. I think that the case needs to be really crisp on how much faster are we building housing and how much are we saving and community members saving with new starts, new construction, new homes, additionally remodels and the like in order to implement the housing action plan a

Could you say that one more time a little bit slower actually would be helpful?

Okay, so for the matrix, I'd like to see that example included, including the 25-day savings and what that translates to. My feedback, actually, to the answer of the question, though, is a point that we did discuss a little bit. So I quoted the matrix study, which said we should expand the technical committee, and your answer was you'll see with the recommendation that we've cut the committee. But I actually have seen that nowhere because it's not included in the slides and I don't have a written proposal. So I'm wondering when you say you'll see that in the recommendation, if there's somethin

Thank you. That is a helpful bit of context, and I do appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Forsyth.

Just a follow-up on that comment about seeing something in the matrix. document that is different from what we're looking at. I'm seeing that in the fire section, the document that we keep referring to as the matrix document recommends seven staff, and we're only seeing five and a half on this structure chart. So just kind of along the same lines of trying to marry what we're trying to do here and what we're seeing in the report. Look forward to when we can dig into this report some more and have more conversation around it. But generally speaking, having more information around how we landed

We are, thank you. Yeah, we are working toward pulling all of that together for you for our next meeting that we're going to be having on this. The matrix report is very good for what it does. And then we took that and evaluated it and started to think a little differently about how we're doing things in the city. So though it is a report of recommendations, we didn't take all of the recommendations. We took more staff feedback to figure out what would really work for our city. The other thing, and I am uncertain if in that matrix report, it knew about our Senate bill that was coming through f

Thank you. We'll go to Councilmember Pacquia because he has not yet had a question.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. And at a macro level, I'm absolutely in favor of more across departmental coordination. I would like to see some more specific numbers to echo my colleague, Council President Stewart. But at a macro level, this is something I absolutely do support. My one concern is that, you know, we're bringing together planning, public works, fire, finance, all these departments, but I do not see any positions in this new department allocated towards TIS. So I kind of have a two-part question, which is I've had conversations with Director Marchand and others ab

Yeah. And I will just add that that's not the structure, the way the city's set up. We have, just like in finance, we have financial analysts that are dedicated to different departments. In TIS, we have TIS analysts, I'm sure they're called something else, that are dedicated to each department. And that's where that sits. So That's why you don't see that in this organizational chart.

Thank you. So first information that I would like to see in future is what are the biggest pain points that currently we have identified as causing the longest delays? So we can have a list of those pain points and have an idea of if we wanted to solve one problem first, what would be that one problem that we could kind of address first? The kind of point that kind of I want to go from here is at work I have been part of the design and orchestration of multiple reorgs and in many times what we have done is we look at what is the first milestone that we can achieve and address by identifying th

Thank you I can respond to her One will get you the current pain points on permitting and we're we're seeing some of the biggest issues We we have talked about that. So we'll get that to you before the next thing and Just as a kind of a bigger, broader picture, this is something I've been working on for the last seven years to improve our permitting process. And the number one thing through all this work that we tried many ways to improve it, the number one thing that was also recommended by the matrix study and by other conversations we had and looking at other cities of our size, because we'

May I ask a follow-up quick on that topic? So if this is still under planning, I can still see it having a unified one leader who owns this org or this charter. I still can't see one unified leader in that direction. opportunity as well. So that doesn't necessarily kind of break down the responsibility, but we'd love to see more.

Thank you, Council Member Parsi. Just because it's quick and I'll add on, when we get the matrix, I don't know who's taking notes, so I'm kind of like looking in the ether, but for the matrix, for the council questions, some version of that question was a question I had, which is the matrix study has a very simple recommendation on a single department, which is different than the full-size page. So if we could understand maybe how we went from the recommendation to there, that would be helpful maybe in telling that story. My apologies, Councilmember Kritzer, you have the next question.

Well, I'll just build on this to say that I think when you come back, one way that might be helpful just hearing my colleagues would be if we might be able to have several policy alternatives side by side with some criteria or pros and cons, you know, to be able to look at the status quo, what the matrix study proposed, what you're proposing kind of side by side. I think it could be helpful for us to be able to look at some of that. as we look at this decision and whether there's anything else that could be another option. One question that I have just as we think about moving to this central

Can I just add a little detail? I think that will help a little bit of that, not fully to all your questions, but one of the intentions around creating this new department is to ensure that this department is successful as well as the other departments that have people pulled out of them, that they're successful as well. And so some of the money that has been set aside is to bring in support for change management to help the staff members mobilize and become part of this one department. That's part of why it's not named yet is because I want the people in the department to name the department

I'LL GO TO COUNCILMEMBER PROCRIA AND THEN COUNCILMEMBER SONY. AND MAYBE AS WE'RE GOING AROUND FOR THIS NEXT ROUND, PLEASE DO ASK THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU'D LIKE ANSWERED HERE ON THE SPACE, BUT ALSO FEEL FREE TO OFFER UP THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU'D LIKE CONTRIBUTED TO THE MATRIX BECAUSE AS WE KNOW, WE WON'T HAVE ALL OF OUR ANSWERS HERE TONIGHT, BUT SPEAKING THE QUESTIONS INTO THE SPACE IS BENEFICIAL FOR ALL OF US. SO THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER PROCRIA.

YES, THANK YOU. AND THIS IS DEFINITELY A MATRIX ITEM. But one thing that I would like to see is kind of that dichotomy between, I'll say, little D development and big D development, because not every permit is created the same. When I went around knocking on doors last year, there were a lot of folks who said, look, I can't get the city to approve this permit for my sink or this permit for what have you, these smaller permits. And I would like to see, I guess, not necessarily just the bottlenecks for permitting in general, but also permitting that, I don't know exactly what the threshold would

Thank you, much appreciated. Councilmember Soni?

I have read the very quick questions. So January 1 2027 is when we are starting the implementation, when actually we expect that the transition period will be will be completed when the department will just become self sustaining. So that's one. And the second thing is like, you know, how does it impact the small businesses?

Yeah, go ahead, Council Member Soni. If I can just have a quick follow-up on that. Suppose a project comes on January 1st, 2027. What difference they will see in that? So the difference that they... Can be put down somewhere, you know, for a visual ease for people to understand.

Council Member Forsyth. Thank you. For the matrix, I'm interested to know what comparable structures are in other cities. If there's another city that has a similar structure to this, if we could see kind of a layout like we do when we see looking at comparable salaries or looking at comparable policies in other cities. If we could see something like that, I think that would help with the conversation as well. And then I'm also really interested in any conversations that have happened or around the longevity of this department. We've been experiencing an expanded period of growth over the last

I can a little bit answer that question. In 2008, there was a great recession. And because this is an enterprise fund, because the money that goes in pays for the people, the city laid people off. And so that would be the same case if development were to slow in the city and we didn't need all these people to do this work. The one thing that would be improved, however, is our process itself would still remain continuously improving to make sure the timeline still remained good in spite of anything else that's going on. So that the economic situation should not impact the improvement in the pro

Thank you. I had Council Member Noiva Kamina and then Council Member Parsi. Council Vice President, excuse me.

Thank you. On a macro level, I love the concept of this. I'm seeing overlap of some of the things that we saw actually in our Committee of the Whole meeting earlier with ReadyAR on the questionnaire and where some of the frustration with staff lies. In the Matrix report, we see this again where some of the frustration lies. not being able to get a clear answer at a single point. So there's things I'm very excited about this. For the matrix, I would love to see in the matrix report, it was said that the recommendation, the org chart looked very different than this. So echoing what was earlier s

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Percy? All set. I have one more question. I'm seeing no other hands. I'll go ahead and offer it. And all to say, we've obviously populated a really big matrix. But I think that that helps us understand what the things are to focus on for next time. And I appreciate that a couple of my colleagues offered variations on let's evaluate the alternatives to prove to ourselves that this really is the best. Because if we can be on that same page with you and we've identified a solution that's going to help us build more housing faster and more affordably, that's ex

Thank you, Director Lynch. I appreciate that answer. It's not exactly the question I was asking. I was asking about the actual communication assets. So for instance, if I imagine there'll be some amount of materials that need to be created to communicate how things work now to the customers. Do we imagine that your teams internally will be creating these? You'll be able to rely on the communications team or may you need to hire additional consultant services to help with the development of those?

That's completely fair. And so my initial question was the cost of doing all that, building out the webpage, is that included in the $2.5 million needed for implementation or are we expecting some additional costs later on?

Okay, thank you. Well, that thoroughly exhausted my question. Thanks for your patience, everyone. Any other comments tonight before we close this item and look forward to the next steps, which again, receiving some additional materials and having a touch in study session prior to budget deliberations knowing that of course this is a big piece of of the budget council vice president um quick housekeeping question uh four questions for council to um to send for the matrix for our next touch on this uh who would you like those directed to

I would love for them to be directed to Jason Lynch, the mayor, Melissa Files, and Lisa Maher, the four of us. That'd be great.

Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, great. With that, thank you so much, Jason. And we will see you again in a few minutes, Director Cochran. Thank you, Mayor Birney. Much appreciated. The second item on our agenda tonight is preparation for the 2027 legislative session. We have here tonight Amy Tsai, our chief policy advisor, who will be introducing our lobbyist as well, who we're so excited to have back again for this session. So Amy, whenever you're ready, I will pass it off to you. Thank you for being here.

I appreciate that, Amy. It may be worth having a conversation about the entire budget and then be able to get you the answer to that question. Thank you.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Amy and Brianna. Mayor Bernie, any comments before we go to questions? No? Okay. Well, thank you so much. And with that, we'll open it up to council questions, feedback, and discussion. And obviously, we do have a question and a proposal out there that we'll, by the end of the conversation, answer about the fourth proposal. So Council Member Parsi, why don't you kick us off?

Thank you. So generally 95% of everything looks great. So thank you so much for your work on this. There is one item that I previously prior to my time on the council I did some research on and I hearing the miles traveled policy and our support for it gave me a little bit of concern because when I reviewed that policy I remember I was concerned about miles traveled for a vehicle causing privacy concerns for tracking miles traveled for vehicle. Another concern that I had was heavier vehicles cause more erosion on roads rather than smaller vehicles. So charging all kind of per miles traveled wo

For me, it's more for a clarification. I know we are asking for like $3 million as a bold ask, but because maintenance and operations is a multi-year project, so will there be a possibility for us to ask down the line additional money or is this just going to be done?

Great question. Council Member Forsyth, and then the Council Vice President. Thank you.

And I echo the thanks for this because it's really thorough. I feel like we've been growing this over the last several years and it's really tight. It's really succinct. So I only have a few small comments. One being that in our storytelling about affordable neighborhoods, livability and housing, we don't call out that we are two-thirds renters. So I think that's a really important distinction to share with the legislature that generally thinks of Redmond as being single-family homes. So maybe the mayor is making comments, so maybe I missed it in there, but I think we should really prioritize

Thank you, much appreciated, and yes, I believe there was a sidebar just on the exact statistic of the number of renters in Redmond, but point well taken. Thank you. The Council Vice President.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Parsi, for bringing up the highway per use tax, and that has some unintentional consequences. I was recently driving across the state, and it was very stark how... Older vehicles, especially when it comes to lower income, older vehicles, not as having to drive much farther away, as well as right here in our own. So thank you for bringing that up. Also, for the record, I want to echo Council Member Forsyth's comment about AI, making sure that we're telling our story of whatever the percentage of renters that we are. when we get that dialed in. And also wante

Thank you so much, Brianna. The next question was for council member Kritzer.

Thank you. Appreciate the work on this. And it's, it's interesting to see how this agenda has also evolved during my time on council. Looking at the current agenda, I remember multiple years where different pieces that are now in here came on and different discussions that we've had. So it's also nice to see kind of how we maintain as a through thread and previous work that we've done and continuing to kind of consistently come back with certain messages of things we want to build on where we've had wins, but it's like a long term effort. I think it's helpful to have some consistent messages t

Thank you. We're still going around on round one. I will go ahead and chime in here quickly. Thanks so much. Like others have said, I love how this builds on year after year. And I really do appreciate the prior discussion regarding the now proposed highway use when I get it right, the highway use fee. The huff, oh boy, that we have just been discussing, because I just wanted to comment that this is actually an example where, and the conversation kind of preceding it, is an example of how we actually use the agenda matters too. So I love that our agenda states our values so clearly. Some of th

Mid-December. Okay, great. That answers that question. Wonderful. And obviously it is also important to be supporting with our neighbors in these state grant programs and the like, but it's helpful to hear the explanation. Okay. So for my part, the answer to proposal number four is a resounding yes. I don't know if anyone saw the Seattle Times today, but we have here in Redmond two of the neighborhoods in the entire Puget Sound region that received the most immigration and therefore also we know that correlates to the growth over Lake and downtown Redmond, which are TODs experiencing that and

I'll just add on to that in this part of the conversation. I know that level is probably set because most cities aren't doing what we're doing. But showing that we, that was the level we were at like five, six years ago. We've gone deeper. It's still working. I think that is a really important story to tell and appreciate the flag on that.

I'd also support at least having you come back with the information so that we can look at how that would fit on the agenda. I do think, especially as a city that's also used MFT as a tool, I think if Redmond's not telling the story and talking about it, then there's an important voice missing at the table. So I think we have a responsibility to be able to kind of share from the experience, especially because as we discussed when we were discussing MFTE recently, there are also some misunderstandings about MFTE sometimes or different applications. And for example, in Redmond, our application,

Thank you for that. Council Member Soni. This is regarding the size on the agenda for the permitting. It's like the builders and developers are also complaining about some of the state regulations based on the environmental and utilities requirements that's actually delaying the permits. We as Redmond are investing so much time and money to expedite all the permitting process, but if it is getting delayed because of that, maybe highlighting like, you know, I don't know what specific state rules that that has to be looked, but something that we can if we can highlight, like, you know, that woul

Thank you. Other comments or questions? Feedback on this draft?

Okay, did you have one more, Councilmember Parsi? One small thing. I was wondering if we can add the, in the technology section, add a surveillance component to it as well as privacy.

So I want to make sure we can get an answer from the council to your question. Let me make sure I understand it. We are on the bottom of page two, the safe, effective use of emerging technologies. Redmond supports legislation that protects data privacy and aligns with safety, vehicle miles traveled reduction and equity goals. Is that the sentence you're interested in having surveillance added?

Yes, so for example, protecting data privacy and preventing surveillance and the rest. What does the council think?

Sure. For example, let's take the vehicle miles travel reduction, as we discussed here. But I understand that the components might have changed. But that would be an example of a policy or a bill that could have surveillance implications. Even the component that you said might have changed, that there is a rebate program that people can get maybe some tax incentive for opting into, that to me still means that if you need additional money, you give up your privacy to get additional money and that kind of creates a really bad dynamic again in my mind. So that's a component that I think where sur

Just to check with Brianna quickly, does that kind of clarify the intent of the request? And then we'll go to the council after Amy's comment.

That's a great question. Let me give you an example. Data privacy could mean that if I go to my healthcare, my healthcare data is, say, protected and private from my employer. Another example of it is, for example, my private information being shared publicly online. That's not necessarily surveillance as in how government handles the data, This is about kind of one person sharing data or one instance of data. When I think about surveillance, I think about government collecting data on individual residents at large. So I think we can reference to kind of commonly defined way of surveillance. I

Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. I would also add surveillance pricing. I know that's a conversation that has come up in the legislature as well. But again, with the emerging technologies, we're hearing more and more about the use of potential surveillance pricing in grocery stores. Because you can afford more, you get charged more. We need regulations around this as well.

Thanks. Yeah, in general, just a couple of things. So when it when it comes to that, I would just say, maybe we can say, instead of just statewide standards on technological advancements, we can add standards and regulation. But I'm more than happy to also add the specifics, ie surveillance pricing, for instance. My question was about funding I believe this is probably covered in the city budget stability, but I just wanted to ask Amy and Brianna. For instance, I guess, what is the breakdown in lobbying between city and county government when it comes to an item that is brought up like the dou

So I think one of the ways I can answer this question is that there are some mandates from the state around nutrients into the Puget Sound, and that's part of why the county needs to increase its sewer rates to pay for all of the capital that they need to do to meet those mandates from the state. And so the answer to that question is yes, cities and the county are working together to work with the state to find a better solution to that than the solution they currently have at the state level. So that does indeed would impact our rates at a local level. It's not really, I wouldn't say it's a l

And finally, I don't need to add on to the great comments that already have been made, but for additional context. For the council, tomorrow morning, as Brianna mentioned, we will be at the Association of Washington Cities working on the legislative priorities. Tomorrow evening, Council Member Procrea and I will be at the Sound Cities Association because the Public Issues Committee will have its first reading of the Sound Cities Association legislative agenda. And on our county legislative agenda for the Sound Cities Association, absolutely a priority is addressing the affordability of utiliti

Council Vice President. Can we have a refresher of the fourth proposal that's on the table?

It was the 20-year MFTE clarification for transit-oriented development. Thank you.

Council Member Parsi? Would it be possible for us to have more written input on that? I have a hard time, similar to Council Vice President. It's getting a little late in the day, and I'm having a hard time. Would it be possible to get this in writing, please?

think our goal would be to have it reflected in the next draft that come back comes back to you in october sure then that would be great i'm seeing lots of head nods around the table that uh that that is a welcome exercise so if we could have that back on october 13th that'd be wonderful uh council member kritzer yes i'm supportive of that um i was just going to make

Just support, I was going to just email it, but I'll just say if we wanted to close it on the surveillance, I was thinking if we wanted to kind of holistically address a couple things that came up and also take in Council Member Procrea's idea, we could in the first sentence have it say standards and regulations on technological advancements like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, surveillance capability, because that could kind of cover like doing, studying a bunch of different things related to surveillance. And then that can cover, because I think the use of this would also be, l

Seeing lots of head nods around the table. Council Member Kritzer, if you and Council Member Parsi wouldn't mind like working together to firm up a suggestion and sending it over to the staff, I think that'd be very helpful. Okay, great. And this is a great opportunity to say by way of we're beginning to wrap up this conversation also, that if you've not yet worked with Amy Tsai on a regional board or committee, you will know that each and every syllable that is produced in many of those regional boards and committees has gone through a careful filter with Amy. So if you have copy edits, now i

Thank you so much, Amy. She took amazing notes. Did anyone hear anything in the list provided by Amy that they would not like to support in a future draft, including the state potentially addressing the renter fee situation? Okay, great. Well, we look forward to the next draft. And thank you so much, Brianna. Drive safely. And thank you so much for being with us. With that, we will take a brief recess before beginning our conversation on the Capital Improvement Program. We will be in recess until 9.15. Thank you so much.

Thank you. We are now back in session, and I will pass the gavel to our budget chair, Councilmember Kritzer, to introduce the next item, which is our 2027-2032 Capital Improvement Program Plan Review.

Thank you so much, Council President Stewart. So this is the first of meetings that I will have the opportunity to chair this fall or sections of meetings that I'll have the opportunity to chair. And while this isn't the beginning of our budget process, it is our first kind of look at one piece of the budget that we will be working on approving this fall. So as a reminder, as we kind of enter into this, one of the things that council passed in advance of the budget process was a set of ground rules and how we'll go through some of the work. And I'll try to make sure that we're guiding our conv

Yeah, just a call for questions. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Very quickly, on page eight, there was a call out for the City Hall MNO. It had a significant increase in 2033 and beyond. 2033 is kind of around the corner. So can you give us a heads up of what might be coming down the line?

Thank you so much. In the six-year CIP revenue forecast that was shared on slide three, are there any assumptions in this forecast that are based on the council approving any new fees or taxes in the budget?

So we, earlier in the year, we discussed the pavement management program and how it may have an increase, a recommendation for a change or increase in the transportation benefit district. Is any kind of recommendation such as that reflected in this? It's not. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions? All right, let's move on to the portfolio.

Thank you. So for the projects that we looked at, our interest on the potential debt proceeds and inflation taken into account into the pricing that we see here. And also on these projects, some of them, there is somewhere between 10 to 20% contingency, but on some of these, there is no contingency. So for example, for something like MOC, if there is another 20% to the kind of end price, that would make me really worried. So I would love to know if a cost like MOC includes those data points or not.

Yeah, a few elements. Interest for the debt proceeds?

Thank you, and one note I was able to confer with Director Cochran before this, since we have the slide deck that we're getting tonight, but we also will be getting a more complete packet for each of these projects where we'll have more information on each one of the projects that will come to us. Can you remind us of the timeline of when you estimate?

So the council will get a chance to be able to look at those and dive a little deeper. So this is kind of introducing, but if you end up when you look through, you can also send some additional questions on those items. Did I see your hand? Okay, great. Are there other hands on this one? um i will i will raise one question um can we go on the teen center project i'll just say we don't have to dive deep on this tonight but i would like to have more discussion about the timeline that's projected on this project um i think based on some of the council direction i think we are going to have more t

Thank you. Appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure because I think Some people may look at this tonight and be concerned. So I just want to make sure that that's clear out there. And I appreciate that. Also, we may have more information by the time we approve this budget to be able to have that information reflected in here. Council Vice President Nueva Camino. Thank you.

And the question that I was originally had my hand up and was going to email, but then are waiting for more information. Since you had brought up the teen center, it was on the teen center. And Director Hamilton, thank you for speaking to how broad of a, how conservative we're being with this number of 35 million, because many of the public and listening, you know, remember a different number that was put forth, but understanding why this is not saying that the rebuild will cost 35 million, but rather this is what we're budgeting out. We're setting it aside because it is a priority. So by no m

Thank you. All right, I'm not seeing other questions, so why don't you continue on?

Thank you. I'd first like to acknowledge the map that was briefly shared, actually. I, one of the things that council discussed early in, in this particular year was our interest in closing the playground desert in our fastest growing neighborhood. We did have conversations with the parks, with the park structure, and we know that the parks plan is due for a refresh next year. And I understand all of that. But I do think it's worth acknowledging once again, That neighborhood called out again today in the Seattle Times, one of the fastest growing neighborhoods, one of the neighborhoods that is

Thank you, so I I guess I I still have questions about what this project is But I'll look forward to reading the project sheet when we get oh, I understand sorry and when it comes to this neighborhood I know we have planning staff Still on the call with us, so I I want to call out that actually that neighborhood has a large site with a development agreement on it that the council's not been updated on in a really long time. So it may make a lot of sense to have maybe end of year, early next year to have an update on the Saratosh site because there is expected to be, I'm going to get the acrony

And thank you, Director Hamilton, for acknowledging that there's a lot more work in the city than would otherwise be represented in this capital budget. I think that the letter that the council received was largely focused on the capital budget. Yes. But absolutely, we do have the joint session coming up. I do just want to express making sure that we are not the council who put it back on the shelf for 20 years.

So, you know, once these projects like Addlewood and Southeast Redmond Neighborhood Parks, once these are done, what would be the projected increase in the parks maintenance and operations budget?

Thank you. I want to share my support also for multiple things that Council President shared as well. I would love to see how Council can support moving, kind of bringing forward the support for East Redmond Corridor, In terms of playgrounds, I also want to see more playgrounds in our fastest growing neighborhoods as well. And I would love to see more diverse playgrounds with different capabilities to offer different experiences to kids. In terms of Idlewood concession, I would love to see data to verify the priority and justification for that. having living very close to Idlewood I don't see

And I guess I would just add on that. If, as we think about budgets, if the, if there is a budget consideration for having more adaptive lighting or other types of lighting considerations, we might consider that as part of the budgeting as well. Any other questions? I will, I will just ask or make a more of a comment on this. And I guess a question that I would have for, for follow-up on kind of building on some of my colleagues' comments. I think one thing that would be helpful for me as we look at this budget as part of the budget process would be on some of the ones that are further out und

Great, thank you. And I will just say, I think your answer you just gave is an example of what I was saying. I don't need you to answer all these things tonight. But I do think it's an example where that context is very helpful. So I assumed, you know, it's not a huge, it wouldn't be a huge lift for us to be able to add $70,000 into our CIP in the near term. There must be a different reason why it's in the farther out term. So I think on some of these other ones of what kind of the reasoning why it would just be helpful for us especially when we get feedback from community on why aren't we doi

Thank you. Just wanted to give a quick... Thumbs up for the ADA park equipment for different abilities and another reminder for which I believe director Hamilton you've already been, but if not the Seattle Children's Play Garden and their accessible play for all different abilities.

Alright, well let's keep moving on here.

I do want to note that we're getting a little bit later on time that we started this item. later than we expected, so we may not get through this entire packet tonight, and I anticipated this in discussing with Director Cochran before, so we may schedule some more time to be able to finish the entirety, but let's keep going.

I just have, you know, for all these art installations, like, you know, one thing that you would love to see is, like, you know, having an equity so that all installations are not just getting installed or, you know, in one area. Like, we would love to see more art installations coming than areas, like, you know, which are in upcoming rather than everything just coming within the downtown. So just to balance that.

And the council also had a study session on this earlier this year. So I think we can also follow up with any additional questions here. And let's keep going.

Thank you so much for the highlights. I do see at least one question. Council Member Percy.

Thank you for Northeast 40th Street shared use path. I wanna acknowledge that majority of that road is commercial and corporate owned and very little of that area has residential kind of front. So I'm curious if there's opportunity or interest to expand this a little bit into, more residential areas as well, or if not, if we can later get additional input on kind of usage studies from data from Strava or other areas so we can have a better understanding of this. I understand that this goes directly to the light rail, and we want to expand access over time, but I do want to acknowledge that cur

Yes, I had a question at a point I wanted to bring up about a project that was in the wastewater CIP. I'm not sure if I should do that now or wait if we're going to get to that.

I think that'll be in the next section, yeah. Okay.

Well, I guess for this section, I wanted to ask about the general methodology behind... I know we created a plan, but how was the plan implemented for deciding which... PAVEMENT PROJECTS TO GO WITH IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS.

Okay, great. So it was made just purely, purely using that strategic plan.

And before we go to next questions, which I see a couple hands up, I did want to acknowledge the time. It's 1026 and our meetings are usually slated to go till 1030. The council can choose to extend the meeting. We do have another item that's coming after this as well. So wanted to check in with the council in terms of whether we want to extend our time on this or I acknowledge that we would miss having the Council talk time since I believe we would need to extend in order to then be able to revisit that.

Is that correct, Council President? That's correct. We can actually stay in this item as long as we would like. If there is no motion to extend the meeting, it means that we will not start a new issue, meaning we would not have council talk time. So if we'd like to conclude this conversation and be able to continue the conversation to its conclusion, then we would need no motion to extend the meeting. And if someone really wanted to make sure we got council talk time in at the end, you would need to make a motion now. But I will leave that to the body.

So I'll ask, would anyone like to make a motion to extend the meeting by 15 or 30 minutes just so we have the time to be able to do council talk time as well? Council Vice President?

I'd like to move that we extend the meeting. There's some things that we do need to just make a quick plug for for council talk time. I second.

For how long? Would you like to extend until 11 o'clock? We don't have to go all the way to 11. You can just extend as a maximum, like 15 minutes, please. Okay, there's been a motion to extend the meeting by 15 minutes, we'll say till 1045. And has it? Is there a second? Great. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, passes. So we'll go until 1045, and if we get up to that point, then maybe with another motion, but hopefully not. Council Member Forsyth, go ahead. Oh, Mayor Burnie?

If you don't mind, Council Member, the questions around how do we prioritize, we actually go through an extremely robust process, and we've been very intentional about this in the last seven years or so. where prior to that it was more we got reports, people complained, and really wasn't a very strategic way to go about ensuring that we're taking care of the most needed places in our map. So to all that the staff said, but I just want to reiterate that we have a really robust plan that uses a lot of data to make the decisions that we have put forward here intentionally to make sure that we're

Thank you. Just real quickly, just really appreciate the stats at the top around, we have 366 miles of street. Interesting to see that it's only 80.5 for bikes. Would love to see that. 42 more miles as the very floor and that will take us up to a third of our streets having bike lanes. Very excited also to see the call out for being able to use those impact fees for these shared use paths. We did that, so that's very exciting that we opened up that funding. But I'm also going to put a plug in for making sure that any of these projects that we can level up and make that a protected bike lane, t

Yeah, I was looking into some data and I know like, you know, overall together, this is also targeting towards vision zero. But, you know, there are a lot of projects which is like more of a maintenance, like, you know, taking care of some of those things versus trying to just protect, prevent any kind of the collisions or accidents or this thing. Is there a way we can classify that in some number? You know how many are targeted towards the Vision Zero versus the like, you know, maintenance or building new cups or something?

Thank you. I just wanted to add for the bike in the justification and data. I think my main point was that I hope that the one there is public benefit equally distributed and also if there is a possibility to have a visual map to say to indicate future planned work or kind of existing connections, that could be really helpful in terms of us being able to visualize how this specific path will connect to the rest of the spine network. But I'm definitely aware that we have our plan spine network for our bikes plan through the transportation master plan. So I appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you so much. And I appreciate the conversation. And like has been said, we have, especially in the last few years, we have been very busy building plans with lots of lists in them. So part of our job in this review of the CIP is to confirm that the lists are correct, and they should be. And I really do know that the staff have worked really hard to make sure that our values are represented here, and by our, I mean the city's, because we've asked the city for a lot of feedback in the last few years. So overall, I think we are absolutely in the right path. I think that in the next to

Thank you so much. Any other questions? All right, not seeing any. I think our next piece is kind of diving into both the forecast and then the portfolio projects on utilities and then on wastewater. So I'm wondering whether we might pause here and then plan to revisit this item. I could put it as an agenda item on FAQ for us to get the presentation update and council members could send in any questions that they have on these items in advance as well. And we can cover any any items that have been pulled out if that works for everyone. Okay, great. And I want to thank all the staff that came p

Wonderful. And I will also reiterate that after Director Cochran sends out some of the more complete information about each of these projects, If council members have questions and want them to be included as part of a matrix we can look at at the next fact committee, we just ask that you submit your questions by a week from this Friday. So that way it gives you a little time to review, but also it would help us to be able to have the staff look at it and be able to get it into the packet for next month's committee meeting.

september 18th the the deadline to submit thank you so much um all right well with that um i'll close out this item and i'll hand it back over to council president stewart to close us out thank you very much for your time thanks everyone um and thank you chair kritzer thanks for helping us

kick off our budget process. Since the time was left open, I'll quickly mention a couple things about Thursday's council conversation in Spiritbrook Park. I imagine that's what the council vice president had in mind. Awesome. Want to let the council know, well, first of all, if you're still listening, we will be in Spiritbrook Park at five o'clock on Thursday night. We can't wait to hear from you. We want to hear your feedback, especially if you've been listening to this meeting tonight. We'd love to hear what comes to mind for you. As in the past, we'll do a round of introductions before kind

Yeah, I just wanted to inform like this. I may not be able to attend because I have a flight that same evening.

Understood. Yeah, safe travels. It's an important trip you have. Other items for council conversation or council talk time? Council Vice President.

Thank you. Just a reminder that the city is going to be hosting a 9-11 remembrance ceremony outside City Hall. on Friday, September 11th at 8.20. And then also, even though it is next week, and we will see each other before then, but we won't be doing a council talk time, is the reminder for the downtown Redmond Art Walk on the 17th. If you have already signed up for your table time, wonderful. If you would like to sign up for an additional table time, there's a couple more slots that still needs to be filled. And for the listening public, our first public hearing regarding the budget is sched

Any other items for council talk time? All right, seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a lovely evening.