Remarks by Angela Birney
63 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 1 of 3
- Play at 0:29
“I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a Redmond City Council special meeting held on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, commencing at 640 p.m. Council members in attendance are Council President Stewart, Council Vice President Nueva Camino, Council Members Forsyth, Kritzer, and I will announce Councilmember Soni when she arrives. Tonight we are having a special meeting to interview our Library Board of Trustees and supposed to be Human Services Commission candidates, but she is not here yet. So we're just going to start with the Library Board of Trustees. Navin Yajaman, Vice Chair for the…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 2:10
“Yeah, Jenny, if you wanna just say a few words of introduction. Thank you so much for sharing that. And then I'll ask council members the questions for you.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 4:47
“Well, thank you so much. Do we have our, is this our human services candidate as well? Oh, please join us. And Alaric here.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:07
“That's all right. And we have a human service candidate as well. Allora, could you please introduce her? Sure.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 5:47
“Great, thank you. And Hannah, if you'd like to say a couple of words.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 6:31
“Thank you. So we have two candidates for two different boards, but I know you guys are brilliant. So you'll be able to maneuver through this. Council Member Forsythe.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 8:57
“Thank you, great question. Council Member Percy.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 14:31
“Great. Thank you. We have a council member Procrea online and we do have about six minutes left just so everyone knows.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 17:18
“Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino, we'll try to get to our other question, too.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 18:47
“Thank you. Council Member Kritzer, would you like to wrap us up tonight?”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 20:53
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:46
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 9:43
“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.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 15:42
“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.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 19:34
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 23:33
“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,…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 29:33
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 37:18
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 41:09
“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.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 43:35
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 48:17
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 55:07
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:04:53
“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.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 1:58:25
“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…”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026
- Play at 3:06:05
“Alright, well let's keep moving on here.”
City Council · Sep 8, 2026