City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome, everyone. I now call the September 15th, 2026 regular city council meeting to order. I'm going to pass it to the clerk this time.

Thank you, Clerk. We'll now pass it over to the city manager for the meeting agenda approval.

Thank you, City Manager. Are there any changes to tonight's agenda? Council Member Kurt.

Thank you. I'd like to pull from consent the agreement with Snohomish County Surface Water Management. I will need to abstain from that vote.

Okay, so how about we move that to ordinances, like we're going to create a little ordinance section after the consent agenda and before the study session. Okay, let me make a note of that. Okay, thank you. And with that, are there any other changes to the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll move to public engagement opportunities. All right, we are working to build a community where everyone feels welcomed. So join us at an open house to learn about our DEIB roadmap and share your experiences and input to help create a more equitable Bothell. That will be held here at Bothell City Hall on Wednes

Okay. And I'm going to read from the agenda. Hold on just a second. Okay. Yes, I can do that. Okay. Thank you for looking out for me. All right. Whereas Hispanic and Latin Heritage Month is a month-long celebration observed each year, September 15th through October 15th, to recognize the culture, heritage, and countless contributions of those whose ancestors are indigenous to North, Central, and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Spain, and whereas the day of September 15th is culturally significant as the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries, Costa Rica, El Salvador

Thank you so much. All right, usually how we do proclamations is that I'll read the proclamations, and then at the end, we can take turns for pictures. So we would love to get a picture with you guys receiving the proclamation folder. Next up, we have a proclamation honoring National Co-Responder and Crisis Responder Week. And we'll have Brooke Buettner from RACER to accept. Let's see. I'm waiting for a proclamation to read. I'll read it first and you can join us. I'll get there. Okay. Whereas a crisis responder is a trained professional who provides immediate, on-site, or remote support to in

Would anybody else like to speak? You're welcome to. You might be in a more one-on-one role. Thank you so much for being here. We will pause and invite our groups to come and do pictures with council if you would like.

Next up, we have public comment. And before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that we are in election season and there are certain campaign-related restrictions regarding public comment on ballot measures. Public speakers generally cannot specifically address a campaign or ballot measure at a public meeting or during the public comment period. RCW 29B.45.101 prohibits government agencies from allowing the use of public facilities directly or indirectly for campaign purposes. Allowing speakers to speak in favor of or in opposition to a ballot measure or campaign during a public meeting

Okay, next up we have the city manager report and staff presentations.

All right, thank you for being here and presenting this to us. Does anybody up here have any thoughts to share? Council Member Curt.

Thanks. Thank you for the presentation. Feels full circle because I started working with the city and the planning department on this very thing back in the last decade. So I remember back to the previous cycle of Kenyon Park sub area updating. And one of the stakeholders that we want to bring on board early and engage often is the Business Park Owners Association. And I'm just wondering if you have regular connection with them or if you have plans to engage them kind of regularly or just during the outreach phase. What's your plan there?

That's great to hear. The other stakeholder I was thinking about is you mentioned the express toll lane improvements that are running right through the sub area. There's been curiosity in our community about how tree mitigation for some of the impacts to the improvements from WSDOT are going to be planned. canopy improvements throughout Canyon Park because that's the area where trees are being cut for the the project and so I'm wondering if that is an element of this process and if the community will have a chance to review you know some of the mitigation efforts as part of tree cutting I thin

Councilmember Dodd. Thank you. I don't have a ton of questions just because this is pretty preliminary, but I'm excited to look into it. I got to work on kind of the end of the last update as a planning commissioner. Another stakeholder that I don't know was either as relevant or as involved last time is the school district. There are two high schools in the business park, which is... different and fun and i think it's important that we hear from them to because those needs are i don't think going to be expressed through the business owners association and on that note there's a way to sort of

Appreciate it All right, go ahead Councilman Al Capra.

Thank you. I just want to say thank you for all this I read through the packet So everything looks great and I am very impressed that you actually memorized everything that you talked about. Because you were staring at the screen. I looked back. Where are all those words? They're in the packet. So really good work. Thank you.

It is clear you know what you are talking about. Thank you. I will also just add that way back when I started out on the planning commission too, and this was one of the very first things that I got to participate in was the sub-area plan. And so there was a lot of conversation, talks, dreams for the area. And so I'm looking forward to hearing the update on maybe how... how far have we gotten to sort of the vision that was laid out those five years ago? And what are opportunities that exist? And so I'm really grateful that you're coming back to us with an update on changes that have occurred b

Council member Al Capra. Thank you Deputy Mayor. I wanted to bring something I learned today about you know a dear member of our community. He and I did not always see eye to eye. I learned about him five six years ago and we had some interactions but he always just like we get agenda packets every Thursday night, he shows up every Tuesday night. And that is Terry Losh, may he rest in peace. I just learned of his passing recently and I just wanted to send my thoughts to his family and say we're gonna miss him as a community member.

I really appreciate that, Council Member Alcabra. I got a text from former Council Member Mankey about it, and as I said to Ben, I really appreciate that he would show up, give an opinion, and respectfully disagree. I think that is an art that not everybody has mastered, and it becomes very important. So I appreciate you calling that out. Thank you.

I'll also add that it's refreshing to see regular attendance from a community member at council meetings. And he's a great example of that. And so we won't be seeing him and that is missed. So thank you for sharing. And our most regular attender is not going to be attending with us anymore. And so my condolences go to his family I can share an update. So in the last couple of weeks, I've attended the Resilient Communities Committee from NUSA and sharing that there's ongoing work happening there. A lot of the conversation was around updates to KCRHA, which we did here, or at least the Human Ser

Today we had a successful LTAC monthly meeting. StreetSense, our marketing services vendor, provided a 23-24 matrix. All our committee members, we are full now. Thanks to the council for approving two new board members. We are a full seven member committee and also we met a consultant recently with Claire and Nick. So we are looking for a couple of options for the consultant to help on the new strategy that we wanted from our retreat with events and whatnot. So overall it's going fine. Yeah, just wanted to give a quick update. A lot going on, but a lot of questions we asked Street Sense, the v

I attended the MISWAC, Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Council meeting last week. Among stimulating conversation about solid waste rates and public comment for that, if you're interested, give me a shout, was kind of the legislative session. docket of items that are of interest to the folks in the committee. So I can share that out. I was also, I still get, somehow my Microsoft Teams is linked to K4C. So there was a lot of notifications during the meeting that I can't attend anymore. And I saw that that committee is also coming out with a legislative sort of wish list or list that they're track

I have not seen that agenda or the legislative priorities, and a quick search of my inbox doesn't pull it up. And so I'm hoping that staff could maybe request a copy of that.

It might also not be ready, but there are people that were just chatting about it.

I'm working on it, yeah. When it's available, yeah. It hasn't hit my inbox, and I too would like to see it. Awesome.

I was going to confirm K4C is the Hotel California of committees. You are never off of it. Going back, Deputy Mayor, to your question about the Human Services meeting, I really appreciated it. It is... very true every time we meet that Anand does great work as our human services coordinator. And what I've been really thinking about since is Council Member Miles brought up the idea of really trying to put into words the goals around the grants and how they meet the things we've identified in our needs assessment. And so I wanted to put that out there to the wider council because three of us are

The committee is Council Member Miles, Deputy Mayor Alderks, and I. And you've come in when Anand's been here for a while, and it's more fully formed. I think when we started, anyway, it's evolved. And so I appreciate that you're seeing where it is now, and you're like, this is good, but it could be better. And I think we're like, oh, my God, we've come so far. So it's really nice. It's nice to have a spread of perspectives. Good. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I'll just throw in my two cents about the power of storytelling when we're talking about impact. And so not only can we collect the data to show impact, we can also tell the stories of how people are supported and helped through the human services grants. And I look forward to being able to not only have that shared to the council, but also to be able to share that to the community. And I think I heard there is a study session coming up not too long from now for human services. So that'll come back to council.

Great. All right, if there is no more conversation, which thank you everyone for a lovely conversation tonight. I will move to projected agenda discussion. Does anybody have any items to add to a projected agenda? All right, seeing none, I will take a motion to approve the consent agenda. Councilmember Dodd.

I move to approve the consent agenda as amended. Thank you.

I have a motion to approve by Councilmember Dodd and a second from Councilmember Kerr to approve the consent agenda as amended.

Okay. And now we are going to move to the amended part of the consent agenda. So, um, count, uh, Snohomish County later local agreement to provide surface water billing services. So that's AB number 26 dash one six five. Um, is there any discussion that we need to have about this before we motion to approve?

I think there was a lot of information in the packet and that was fine. I am going to recuse myself from this vote out of an abundance of transparency. I work for Snohomish County Surface Water and while it is a public entity and we're not making money off of the contract, I just wanted to be really clear that I separate myself from my work in the day job.

Thank you. I move that we adopt a resolution authorizing the city manager to execute an interlocal agreement with Snohomish County to provide stormwater billing services to the city through their property tax billing statements.

All right. I have a motion and a second. City Clerk.

All right. So next up on the agenda, we have a study session. Since it does take some transition time to get down there, I'm going to propose a 10-minute break. Okay. We're going to do a 10-minute break. We'll come back at 6.54 down at the tables. All right. We are back. And next up, we have a study session on the proposed 2027-2028 budget. I will send it over to City Manager Stanner to introduce.

So that means we should encourage more usage of that to increase that fund, no? Joke.

Bear with me, but I'm very distracted by this. Why would something be categorized as a court remittance versus a fine and forfeiture? Because you mentioned the court under fines and forfeitures and it.

So you don't get to decide if you like it. It's just the system you have to use. Just how it is. Okay.

Before you move on, just a quick question. Property tax, can you explain for those who don't know how it works? Because property tax are collected by the county and then distributed. We do not get 100% of that, right?

Okay, since the deputy mayor emeritus brought it up. I've been working on this reverse pizza metaphor as Quan knows so Essentially because a lot of people don't even I didn't really for a long time understand property tax It's not that your bill goes up by how much your property value goes up every year. It's that as a city we decide or are prescribed depending on what it is how big of a pizza we're gonna build and then what everybody contributes is percentage based on the value of their property and then every year the size of the pizza can only go up by 1% but it's still a proportional share

I have some questions that may take us back a ways in the presentation. Yes. So in the proposed new revenues, that was back, that was probably when Quan was presenting earlier, will there be a separate study session on the public safety budget and how the criminal justice sales tax might go towards the public safety budget?

Okay, cool. Yes. I'm looking forward to that. Thank you and then Back when talking about debt service is the mortgage on City Hall included in that? Yes, okay just making sure and then you mentioned that the the school zone camera fines and forfeitures only includes what we're currently collecting based on like projections of current use. Um, do you also have projections if the, uh, camera zone, um, is expanded and would create more fines and forfeitures in that category?

Great. And then just because I'm curious, which PD facility is in the debt and interest expenditure line?

Thank you very much for a great summary of the details. And to balance this biennial budget, are we borrowing any additional money for this term?

This gets into a question that I have overarching, which is when we fund an ambassador, it's inherently a community outreach. position, right? And the community will also want to outreach to this ambassador if they notice things that are awry and need to be fixed or need investigation. And so as part of a wider story and one of our other council sort of ideas and goals is to look at our existing customer action requests and roll it into some sort of application or convenient way for the community to get responses and track stuff. So I'm wondering if that's kind of in this, or is it a separate

Along those lines, will that also expand access to engage Bothell to more departments in the city?

OK. I'm so sorry, . I think there's a lot of value in pairing up what comes through Engage Bothell to whatever CRM you end up using. So I hope that's a thread that you'll chase at some point.

I appreciate it. You know how I feel about things that talk to each other. So, thank you.

I'm really holding back until we get to the October 6th study session, so I'll let you get with this, because I have opinions on these things. We can talk about them when we actually drill down.

I like how you are in 2015 where lunch was only $10. That's what I'm saying. He suggested a 2015 price. $10. Which is, I don't know where you can find a slice of bread. OK, so I can't hold it back. The sales taxes, I mean, you mentioned CPIW. That's how you're basing the contracts and all that stuff. And June was a different story than it is today. I'm pretty sure it's going to be different next month and the month after. So my point is, inflation is only going to rise. Unemployment is only going to increase. Expenses are only going to get more. Houses are going to get more expensive, or less

So the criminal justice tax is just public safety tax you talk about? Yes.

Okay, we have some time to consider it again if things improve, no? Like we can say that here's the programs. We prioritize the programs, body-worn cameras, court, whatever, you know, this and that. And then we say, well, here are the things that we actually have to fund right now versus things we can wait another year or two until we figure out when we can pass something.

I do want to, I appreciate all your points. I live a lot of them. austerity gets really challenging. I think we saw this city delay the 1% increases and any tax increase it could for a long time. And then we spent a long time catching up and our budget was a nightmare. I don't want to leave that legacy for our residents or the people who hold our jobs after us. But I also, in tough times, the balanced budget helps us give services to people. So I don't think it's the time for crazy increases, but I actually made a little chart of how much the proposed criminal justice tax and human services ta

I 100% agree. And one of the cities that I'm not going to name that Juan listed has actually faced that. And that's why the rates are crazy right now. It's going to get crazier. So I think I agree with you. My point was, as we're going through this exercise of budgeting, can we look at the alternatives and then decide which direction we want to go? Because right now, there's only one alternative I'm looking for. Two or three, perhaps. I know it's tough and we have to make the tough decisions, but it's good to have those things and have those conversations.

Actually, speaking of that, maybe it'll be helpful to understand, to remind us, I'm sure, how many people like you exist, come to Bothell? Commuters, you're right. So that will be commuters to Bothell. Maybe that will be a helpful thing to talk about. Okay, that would be great. Because then we talk about part of the equity conversation.

Is it possible to split out sales tax by generated by? It's not, right?

Okay. Because it would be, I'm thinking about like isolating like holidays, but then you'd have to know the difference between like a car sales holiday where we might be getting, you know. Anyway, thank you.

Can you remind me for this? So a lot of the ways that we deliver human services are through a grant program. So when it, I mean, we do, fund the behavioral health program through the Y, but would it have to go to that or could it go through the grant program? Like what are the limitations?

Until Amanda spends her $100,000, like she mentioned earlier.

I do have a question on how do you distinguish new going, and so this is maybe save it for October 6th, and that's fine, but If it's only ever for new services, then how do we renew a grant that we started? We saw some really great impact from this funding that was used, and then we want to renew it. Does it have to come from a different fund and not from the sales tax?

I'll just say I'm really excited for that study session. This is an area that I work in and I have ideas and I'm excited about applying some of the research and best practices to how to correctly and steward and manage these funds well. So I'm looking forward to that.

Are we, is .01 part of the Human Services Committee recommendation or is that something you guys came up with?

That translates, how much do we make with this increase? How much money annually we will be able to collect because of that 0.1 cent? It's about $200,000 a year.

So what you're saying is move to Bothell, we have good water, and it doesn't cost as much.

So, a question about this. So, are we gonna have a deep dive? Just a question that I think will be good to address is, there's two questions. One thing, we kept talking about no increase in utility tax, but we increase the use. And maybe this has been discussed before and I'm completely blanking. Why do we have a rate and a tax?

I did want to ask when we come back for more on the utility rates, I'd like to understand the long-term response to the increased sewer rates and how long we can really fund that. My gut says expanding low income assistance in response could be more helpful to people who really can't pay the actual rate. And then I don't know off the top of my head what the utilities that aren't the city utilities are doing in response to that because we have like four wastewater utilities that serve residents so it should be roughly in line we also can't control what the other utilities do but i wouldn't want

in past years when we've done the budget cycle um and and please tell me if this was some kind of like transitional uh plan but i really appreciated when we were able to just like throw questions at you either email team like all the ways we just threw questions at you and then you came back to us in council meetings like here's the questions we received and here's the answers like And so, will we have a question bank going forward?

Can I add a question to the study bank? All right, Miles is ready. It's sort of along the lines of what Council Member Dodd was saying. So like why now? Why is it appropriate now to smooth out the utility rates? Like what are the chances that future economic instability is coming and it will get worse and it might be better to delay that strategy for a later time when the conditions are worse than even now. So that's sort of my question. Is this the right time to do that? I know we don't have crystal balls, but my question is why now?

That's why it's for the question, I think.

I mean, I've already sent six pages of questions. There you go.

That's right, for all those who are watching, the three people.

Actually, that would be a good thing. What can we not fund? Based on the earlier question, right? We don't have to answer it now, but in the future when we have those study sessions, it would be good to see if we don't have this revenue. I mean, these are the services that are being requested or required by our residents that we're not going to be able to supply.

Yes. So we can ask questions now? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's what Kyle also mentioned in one-on-one. First of all, I request my fellow council members, I may have a few questions, and I'm sure Council Member Alrix or Council Member Todd, you guys are very organized. So if something is in the packet, please feel free to let me know. I will note down which page it has. I can go back and look at it. So first question I have maybe for City Manager or the Kwan. Based on our retreat, we had our priorities. Based on the priorities, is there a section where we have budgeted for the specific priorities that we worked on?

Yeah, just in case, if we can have, if there is a section, I will go back. But if there is a section, okay, based on eight priorities, we are able to add an item to achieve that priority, $100,000 or $1 million. because we have eight priorities that we put together. Just wondering if there is a section we are adding.

Yeah. First of all, I'm really happy with the very detail. And I loved the introduction, the demographics, top 10 employers, or whatnot. I really liked the demographics, community diversity. So it gives the first picture. So I really loved overall everything. I'm just asking some questions. Not necessarily I'm looking for all the answers wherever possible. That's completely fine. And when it comes to the personnel, are we adding how many employees we have as a city? How many employees we plan to add? Is there a section like we have 300 now, we are planning to have 350? Like number of employees

Okay. Can I jump in? So actually this was some of the feedback that I wanted to share with staff is that I really appreciated attachment one. on page 85 and 86 of the budget because it broke down proposed budget additions and it even includes a column that has, you know, new hire full-time employees, so FTEs. That total at the bottom is 14. Yeah. And my request, really enjoy this table, but I thought we could make it even better by adding a column that would direct that would direct our attention and the community's attention to how do these fit into council priorities. And so, you know, for e

suggestion cool thank you and within the CFP that's what I was waiting to say is that if you go through the I like I got the book but whether you have the the physical version or the Kindle version you can see where a lot of the projects do align and further the council goals but it's also some of it is oh yeah that matches this thing so some of that direct correlation could help but yeah

some of the wish list that I have if I may add we talked about DEA downtown I think sub area plan we talked about DEA like a specific art pieces or something this could be part of some of the committee's but wondering the reason I'm asking is I just wanted to raise that so that we don't miss the opportunity of budgeting. If it is already part of any of the committee budget, that's great. Is it possible to have, like, some specific budget for specific art? Our vision is for a day or a lifetime, no matter who we are, where you come from, Botel is everyone's hometown, and we had a discussion on t

Sounds good. Thank you. The other one is we talked about youth internships. I think you mentioned city manager. Around 10, we do it right now. Even if we can do another 10 or 25 internships, would it be possible to add youth internships? I was looking at demographic data. that are at Cascadia and UW Bothell, which is great. We have a lot of students that are studying. I know we have businesses that are giving internships. How about City of Bothell also can give, like council member... Alcabara also mentioned about youth program starting it. So if we can add even another 10 internships, instead

Thank you. Compared to previous budget, our current budget, 25-26 versus 27-28, are there any expenses that we removed or, like,

And maybe the last question, it may be there, are there any new revenue opportunities? One is the taxing. I think the tax increases where we can collect more revenue. Just a question, are there any Interesting ways we can have our did we find any interesting ways to make more money for city of bottle I know last time you mentioned about collecting the interest on our deposits That's a good money that we are making on the deposits that we have right now on the fixed deposits or something CDs We have CDs Maybe we have none, but are there any did we plan anything any interesting revenue revenues

Exactly. So there you go. We'll say any legal and interesting ways. Exactly.

It's legal. But anyway, what do you want?

I was going to add to what Council Member Anguleri said. I am unshockingly very keen to have the talk about how we can work with our lobbyist to push more revenue and more progressive revenue options for cities. So I don't want to bring it up all the time, because I know stuff takes time. But when do we get to talk about that, roughly?

So that's the agenda, but if we want to go to the legislature and advocate for options that don't exist today, which would be passing legislation, when do we work on that?

Well, none of us are the kind of expert that could do that. But I think to find new options that aren't just the bits we have available to us now, like there... The options we are granted by the state at this time, I think don't meet the needs that we've identified collectively and October 20th through the end of the year is not a very long time

Thank you so much for being here, for leading us through this process and being patient with us. So next on the agenda, we do have an executive session or we do have a closed session. So we are going to adjourn to closed session for 30 minutes, which would wrap up at 8.58 by the clock. And so we're not expecting any action and the council will adjourn from there at 8.58.