Ad Hoc Committee on Police and Community Relations - Regular Meeting

Hi. Thank you. Don, I'm so sorry. Could you stop the recording for a moment? Yes. One moment. Okay. I am Hello, everyone. Good evening, and welcome to the Wednesday, July 23 regular meeting at the community and public safety committee of the, city council of Olympia. We have, all but one member here tonight, which is committee member Payne that is excused.

We still have a quorum of two. So first up tonight, we have approval of the agenda. So I need a motion to approve tonight's agenda.

I would move to approve the agenda as published.

Thank you, ma'am. I second that. All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

Alright. Our agenda is approved. That takes us to public comment. Don, did we have anyone sign in for public comment tonight? No. We did not. Okay. And just like that, we're on to item five, approval of the minutes. So we have two different minutes to approve, and we'll do that separately. And so first, I'll ask, for a motion to approve the 05/28/2025 meeting minutes for the Community Livability and Public Safety Committee. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Okay. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. The meeting minutes are approved. And so now ask for a motion to approve the 06/25/2025 meeting minutes for the Community Livability and Public Safety Committee.

I've reviewed the June 25 minutes and recommend approval.

I'll second that. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor, aye. Aye. All right. And those meeting minutes have passed, and that takes us to committee business. We have three items of committee business tonight, and we're starting with item six a, approval of the 2025 Olympia Fire Department community risk assessment and standards of cover of recommendation. And this is presented to us by Olympia Fire Department fire chief Matt Morgan.

Good evening. Thank you for that, and thanks for giving me a little bit of time this this evening. I promise I won't take too long. The the topic in the document I'm I'm excited to share with everyone is currently about a 170 pages long, so I promise, I'm gonna cover that in the next fifteen minutes. So, I have a short PowerPoint presentation. I'm gonna share my screen, and we'll just kinda dive in if that works with everybody.

That sounds great.

We're getting there. We're getting there. There. Does everybody see that?

We do. And we're also gonna see your notes if you're comfortable with that.

Oh, well, why do you see that?

You might have, shared, you might have just, maybe share a different screen, but take your time to get set up.

Is that better? Are you still do you still see the notes page?

We see the Zoom screen.

Oh, that's odd. I have it on the okay. Sorry. No. It's because I think I have the multiple screens.

Oh, I see.

You know what I mean? So Yeah. Let me do this and do it one more time. Okay. We'll just do it from here. Sorry.

No. You're totally fine.

So I don't know why that's happening that way. It's because I have three screens going and I don't know how to work three screens. So there's a reason, you know, you're the fire chief and it's not because I can work three screens. So No. Let's dive in.

And so this document, what this is, this is really exciting. So this is kind of a a continuation of our process in the fire department to kind of develop a long term strategic approach to delivering services, measuring our services, and improving our services. We started with our strategic plan that I presented to the council as a whole earlier this year, and this is kind of the step the next step in that. What this standard of cover is is it's a comprehensive business plan for the fire department, and it talks about who we are, the community we serve, the primary services we provide, why we provide those, and then the performance measurements that we gather to determine how those services are doing and if they're meeting the needs of the community. And so as we dive into this, this is a data driven document.

It's it's The focus of this is to gather data from as many different sources as possible to first of all understand one, the department, two, the community we serve and the needs and the risks that are present in our community, And then as well as, you know, to understand what data points we wanna gather to determine outputs as well as outcomes. And if we're actually starting to accomplish our strategic goals of building a safer, more vibrant community, as the fire department services, you know, feeding into the overall intent I think that we all share. So, the data we pull, we pull from multiple sources. A lot of it's response data, and so that comes from our communication center. It comes from our records management system for our incident management system.

We pull a lot of data from Esri, which is a GI GIS platform that pulls all the different census data and and things like that as we as we dive into this. And so why do we have a standard of cover? We kinda talked about that. But the biggest thing, what a standard of cover does for a fire department and for a community and for a governing body of that community, for our council, is it provides a platform or a plan that shows what's the path forward. So who we are, what are doing, and what's the plan and where do we develop our work plans from.

Think of it as a comprehensive plan, like the comp plan for the city, but specific to the fire department. It allows some really specific expectations, not only for the employees and understanding the role that the fire department has in the community and what we're trying to accomplish. But it it really does create a transparency in the community and so that our community members, and we have the ability to communicate to them what we do and how we do it and why we do it and and how we're how good we are at it. So the first thing that we did is, you know, we dug into the history of the fire department. So if you if you had a chance to look at the packet that was sent to you, the first part of this document is really just all about the Olympia Fire Department, where we came from, the origins and how we ended up.

And we kind of closed out with our current state of the organization, the size, the resources, the facilities, and what we have and what the services are that we're providing to the community. I think that legacy piece and how an organization kind of evolves in the community and has matched the evolution of the community as a whole is an important piece that we use in our decision making. We look at the different places in the community. We start to do what's what we call a really a comprehensive risk analysis, and we start to look at the buildings and the people and all the census data, and we start to look at it. And we break this down by the first thing we break it down by is our current deployment model, which is our four fire stations and their response districts.

So in the document on page 24 is a map that kind of outlines the four fire stations, their locations, and shows what their response areas are and how those are outlined. And those are our primary four planning zones for the fire department. So we look at each of those planning zones independently of each other and we look at all the different data points, the population, the demographics, the age, all of the things, income levels, the housing levels, all of the information that we can gather so we can have a comprehensive understanding of the community that we're serving. And then we begin to look at the the critical infrastructure, the roadways, the bridges, the buildings. And we look at commercial and residential buildings, and we begin to look at types of buildings, types of occupancies, and we begin to formulate a hazard or a risk assessment of the community that we serve.

And then we begin to lay over the top of that historical data that we have of the incidents that we have responded to within the community and the work and the services we have provided historically. Now we've been able to gather, I will say, mostly accurate data over the for the last three years worth of data. As we go prior to that or before that, it gets more difficult because the data management systems have changed. The data gathering process is different. The records management systems are different.

And so it becomes a little bit more manpower intensive and difficult to, get good clean data to use. And so typically we would want to have five years worth of data, but I think as this first iteration of this process, three years is a good starting point. And we consider the fact that the incident counts and the and the volume of incidents and work and services the fire departments provided over the three years is is relatively high. So it gives us a pretty good dataset. And we begin to kinda lay that over the top and we begin to understand what we do, why we do it, how we do it.

And then how do we start to measure those things? So we begin to look at this risk management profile and the methodology behind it. As as you reviewed the the the document, on page 92, it kinda defines the risk classification and categories. So we use the three axis approach and this all of this process and this information, systems that we used to do this is all defined through the Centers for Public Safety and Excellence, which is the national or international accreditation body for the fire service. And so it's a well established, well accepted kind of industry standard measurement tool that we used.

And it's a three axis risk measurement or risk assessment tool. And it looks at three primary things. One is the probability that something's going to happen in your community. And so we look at our primary services. We look at fire suppression, emergency medical, special operations services, things like hazmat technical rescue, marine calls, marine related calls.

And then we have wildland as another. And then we have fire prevention services including things like the fire marshal's office, inspections, and the CARES program. And so we begin to kinda look at those things in the services and we look at the probability of those things occurring and the need for those in our community. And then the next piece they look at is what's the impact on the organization to provide that service? Is it easy? Is it low manpower intensive? Is it high manpower intensive? How long does it take? Is it an incident that you're able to resolve quickly or does it take three hours to manage? And then the consequence to the community of that event occurring.

And so what's the outcome of that in your community? A fire in a vacant building versus a fire in a business that the business is no longer able to function has a much bigger impact in your community and overall health and wellness of your community than the vacant building that burns. And so we have to look at that type of thing. The the recent fire we had at the Georgia Pacific mill or the the paper mill, had had that building been lost to fire, that would have resulted in over a 150 employees not having a place to work the next day. And so the the potential impact or consequence of an event at these facilities or at these buildings in the community is a part of the risk assessment.

And so as you look at that methodology, then it breaks that down by the different high, medium, and low risks. And then we layer that into each of the calls or each of the primary services, fires, EMS, and so on. And we begin to categorize that. And the way we categorize that is basically by the score that that three, tangent assessment gives you. The bigger the number, the greater the risk in the community. Then we bring in more information. And and I know that I'm talking fast, I know I'm bringing in a lot of information. So please, if I say something, you have a question, interrupt me, please. It it will be quite alright. I'll be happy to stop.

We utilize the National Fire Protection Association's standards to identify the the criteria to which we assign our resources. And so NFPA seventeen ten talks about what are the resources needed to accomplish the tasks on these various different types of incidents? And and it's called critical tasking. And so in the standard of cover, we identify what those critical tasks are by call type or by service type and their risk level. So if you look at a high risk high risk fire, which is defined as commercial apartment complex, a medium rise like what we have downtown, assisted living centers that have a high life occupancy, things like that, that's considered a high risk fire.

If you look at the the the risk assessment, the probability is relatively low of these events historically, but the consequence and then the impact of the fire department are really high for obvious reasons. It takes a lot of manpower to mitigate one of these incidents. And then you look at the critical tasks, and it defines the different functions on that incident that have to happen and how many people it takes to accomplish that safely per the standard at the National Fire Protection Agency. So if you were to if you look at that high risk fire, which is a high risk score of 56, it takes 28 people to have an effective response force. And so we measure two things.

The first arriving unit on an incident and then and then the the balance of the effective response force. So you have an initial response force and then an effective, the complete response force. Those are two big measurements. So if you look at this, it says 28 people is what's needed per the national standards to mitigate an incident in one of these types of buildings. We have 24 people on duty.

So these incidents, we already know that we that we are going to be heavily reliant upon our neighboring jurisdictions to provide, assistance or mutual aid just to get to the that effective response force. And as you go down through this moderate fire, which is your one or two family house fire, that 17 people is what's required to manage that incident effectively. And so we measure those things. And so we start to lay those expectations on each of these and then we start to build what kind of resource package do we send to these types of events. And so people ask, well, why do you send three engines and a ladder company to a house fire?

It's only a a kitchen on fire, people will say. Because if you look at this list, I need to send 17 people because these are the these are the things that have to get done within the first sixty to ninety seconds on this incident in order for the incident to get better faster. And so that's why because we have three people on a fire engine. If I send three engines, there's nine. Three people on a ladder, there's nine at twelve. I start to build into my effective response force. And so that's why we send those. People say, well, why do you send an engine and a paramedic unit to a medical call? Well, if it's a high risk medical call, then that's the number of people to accomplish a task. If it's a cardiac arrest, CPR call, then we send a lot more people to that than if it's somebody with a broken ankle.

So we send the first due and then we send the balance of an alarm. Does that make sense to everybody? Is that kinda okay. Okay. And so we begin to build that process in identifying.

So there's a science or a methodology behind the resource allocation and the resource demand for your fire department to mitigate the incidents that it's responding to in the community. It's not just an anecdotal, historical, because we've always done it that way approach to things. It it it really should never be that, right? There's enough information and data, enough science and study to this now that that we know what it takes to get this done. People talk about the difference between having three people assigned to a fire engine and four people assigned to a fire engine.

I'm sure that some of you, if you talk to different people, they will use that terminology of a four man engine or a four person engine. And so if you if you're familiar with the recent news of the fire that occurred back east in Fall Rivers where they had the nine people die in the assisted living center, that fire department ran three person engines and they sent all of their engines. All 10 of them, they sent their entire fire department to this fire. Well, it was a public commentary about had they had four people on their fire engines, they would have had eight to 10 more people there in the initial alarm, and it could have they could have affected had a better outcome on that fire. That's the argument that gets made.

Right? And so it really is is much more than that in the conversation because it's about did you get an effective response force there within within a reasonable or a standard response time? And so if your effective response force is 28 people, it really doesn't the point of how many people showed up on each apparatus is not the point. Right? The point is, did you get 28 people there within your standard? Right? And so does that mean you have to send more engines? Okay. Right? Like, for us to get to the effective response source, we sent three engines and a ladder and the battalion chief and an aid unit.

If we had four people on an engine, we would send two engines and a ladder. It's about the number of people you need, not the number of fire engines or how many people show up on each apparatus. So it's a little bit of a of a misleading conversation. Questions so far on any of that?

I I have kind of a an overall question. Sure. Okay. And then if you wanna, you know, answer it at the end, that's totally fine too. So for, so reading the packet, you know, I mean, I'll be honest. You know, it's a 170 some pages. There's some areas I skimmed.

Oh, cool.

The whole though, I I certainly learned a lot. I wonder, just a very sort of foundational question is, what may you say, hey. Let's do this. Let's have this let's have a, let's have this sort of assessment and assemble this because I I believe this is new. Is that correct? The stamp I don't think standards of cover is new, but I think it's new to us. Is that correct? Yeah.

Started and never accomplished in the organization under a couple different administrations. It is an industry standard in fire departments. And the reason for it and the the bigger reason behind that is because I think if we're going to be talking about resources and allocation and fire stations and people and how many fire engines and all these kinds of things that the city to determine how we're going to provide our services and at what service level are we going to provide them, then we have to look at a very comprehensive set of data and not just how many calls do you run or how many people work there or how many fire stations do you have. It's so much more many layers to get to the answer that you need. And I'll dig into a little bit of that tonight, but that's really the conversation that tonight I'm asking for your support and and to move this to the council as a as a greater council to really workshop this as a council and to really dig into our service levels and dig into all of this data point and really talk about, okay.

This is the fire department we have today, and here's the performance of your fire department today based on the risk in your community. Are you comfortable with that, or do you want it to be better? And if you want it to be better, okay. So what's the plan to get there? Right? It's not gonna be something that we do in a day or a month or even a year. It's gonna have to be some long term, long range planning that includes, you know, budget development, that includes all kinds of steps to get there. Right? And so I think that what a standard of coverage provides for us is an in-depth analysis of not only the fire department, but the community and the services we provide. There's a potential you could find in here, go like, well, why do we even do that?

It doesn't happen. There's no consequence. And doesn't take any people. What what's the reason we do that? Right? And those things can come up and we can have those conversations. But I think ultimately the the step going from here, from this development of this draft is now to have a conversation with the with the council as a whole to just talk about, okay. So what are the standards? What what are the performance levels that we're comfortable within in the community to ensure that we have the outcomes that we want, that we're building and and ensuring that our community is what we want it to be? And that's not about just how many calls you run. Right? And so

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to answer that. Sure. That is that is very helpful.

Absolutely.

And it looks like council member Gilman also had a comment or question.

Yeah. Chief Morris, one thing that I I I wonder in terms of first, the the whole demographic description of the community is just so powerful and so useful beyond the fire department assessment that I I very much appreciate this this entire draft document. I think it's a great picture of the city as well as of of your service. And I the the one thing I'm I'm looking for and not finding is ice in terms of outcomes, is I see property value assessed, but I don't see a scorecard of sort of lives saved, less people injured, kittens and children, whatever, you know, whatever we count. Right?

Because when I in opportunities to meet with firefighters, it it feels like a very strong part of the ethos is about protecting life. And I'm what is is there a way to measure the relative success of of both structure fire and EMS calls? And I guess it's hard to know what would happen if you weren't there or if you had fewer people, but but I just I I wonder about focusing on structure value as a measure of as an as the primary outcome.

So so there's a couple of different ways to do that. And and measuring outcomes is always the most difficult thing in in any program or service that is delivered. And so because there's so many variables that play into that. So because what we say is we want the community to be one safer, and we want it to be more vibrant and more healthy. Right? And so one of the things that we lose looking is if you look at page 54, it talks about asset preservation and loss. And so we talked about this term of fire loss. Right? But for me to just simply say to you, oh, we lost $1,000,000 worth of of fire last year. That that really doesn't mean anything because as compared to what.

Right? And so if you look at this, it it talks about what the value of the property that was affected by fire and how much of that property was damaged or lost to fire. Right? And so if you look at the total for 2024, there was $18,000,000 worth of property affected by fire, but only a million dollars worth of calculated loss. So that's one of those outcomes that you can point to that that, you know, that was the the effect of your response from the Olympia fire department is that we limited had we not shown up and put the fire out, you'd have lost all 18,000,000 or more because it could have extended into other buildings.

So the the the efforts in the in the of the services we provided limited it to 1,000,000 loss. And so that's that's one way you look at it. You look at it through the eyes of cardiac arrest survivability, which is a medic one statistic that they show that about fifty four percent of the qualified cardiac arrests that we run we can resuscitate. So that's part of an effective response force. You can talk about things, pain and suffering, and we can measure that through surveys. And you can ask the people that we've interacted with and provided services to, did we ease concerns? Did we make you feel better? Did you feel more at ease or more comfortable once the fire department arrived? Because so much of this is about that. Right?

It's about the trust in the organization to show up and simply put your concern to at ease, whatever that is for you at in the moment. And then the the other thing that you can do is is there's pieces that you can make, I think, safe assumptions for, right, is is that in your least frequent but most consequential events in your community, which is your structure fires, your cardiac arrest, your critical traumas, You know, the the really high profile events happen the least frequently, but they have the most consequence in your community, and they also typically require the most impact on the organization or organization to support it. Right? And so what you want to be able to do there is do those extremely well. So internal quality assurance, quality improvement, scoring, reviews, internal reviews of an incident to make sure that, you know, did we have a water supply supply?

Did we make all the right radio communications? Did we get a primary live search complete within the first sixty seconds? You know, did we do our work according to industry standards? Because it's a safe assumption to make that if we hit those things, then we're going to at least create opportunity for a positive outcome. Even if we show up in ten seconds, sometimes people will still not survive an event and it's to no fault of the service that's provided, it's just a circumstance.

And so that's why you really have to look at a comprehensive, just multiple buckets of data to really try to start creating a picture that you're comfortable with. I wish we could put it on one data point and go, see, look, it's safer, right, because of this one thing. And it's just not as simple as response times. It's not as simple as, you know, call volume or or cardiac arrest survivability. It's it's a multitude of those things. So I hope that answers that.

Thank you, g. I I just I think it's it's gonna continue to be a challenge, But I I it's worth telling a story about hoping to have more coverage, more resources that the the talking about the life safety has gotta be counterbalanced with the the preservation of property. And I I'm just I'm thinking about all the news stories we've heard of people from the LA fires. And first, they're always glad that they and their loved ones escaped. Right?

That's that's way and then they're like, the house could be rebuilt or not rebuilt. The wedding pictures, maybe they're in the cloud or maybe they're gone. But I'd rather have my wife than the house intact. You know? So so I I just I I wonder if there's a way to weave that into our story drawing from this as we because because I think part of our job as counsel is gonna be to to help tell a story about what level of service we're aspiring to and ways that we can reach that goal.

Yeah. That's that's very helpful, I appreciate that conversation. I do. Because, you know, at the end of the day, what I share with folks is that the reason the fire department exists in the community is just to simply take care of people. Regardless of the reason, regardless of what it is, and the majority of the time it's not gonna be something that has a massive consequence in the community as a whole.

But it does have a massive consequence in their lives, right, and for them at that smaller level. And so as a community, it's a balance point of that and also protecting the community against the ones that do have a major consequence. Now you burn down a grocery store in your community, the impact of that is dramatic. A bedroom house of a family that's insured and everybody's okay and nobody got hurt, that gets rebuilt. Right? And really what the fire department wants to do is is when we arrive on a fire, we want the fire to get better once we arrive. Right? It should not get worse. So that's a performance measurement that we wanna look at. Right?

It's what were the conditions on arrival and and what were the you know, did it get better after that or did it get worse? And so that's one of those outcomes you wanna point to, the effectiveness of your services. I think customer service surveys and the ability to query are the people we interact with and ask them that in your opinion, you called us because this was occurring, did we fix it? Did we make it better? Right?

Did we resolve your issues and your concerns and meet your expectations or exceed them? I think that's really a telling sign of the effectiveness of your services. Right? And I think in today's world, people use nine one one as a service to resolve the thing that they can't resolve themselves. And that's what we do. Right? And most of it isn't going to make the news. Right? And so and that's okay. I'm good with that. I'm with fact that most of the things don't end up as a major consequence in our community. So

Thank you, chief. I didn't mean to pull you too far off your presentation.

I love these conversations. Absolutely. No. It's great. So the where we've kind of progressed from here is so these that picture, that's the picture of of the fire conditions on arrival of the first due engine on that Georgia Pacific Fire a few weeks ago. That's what they when they walked through the front door, that's what they had showing to them. And so you can see that they did an amazing job on this fire in the fact that that didn't burn that building down. And that is a sprinkled building, by the way. So it just goes to show you that that overran the sprinkler system. Right?

And so one of the some of the understandings that we've gained through this first pass of this standard cover. And I and I will say that this standard cover is a draft. I'm gonna call it 92 and a half percent complete. It is it is a really good standard cover and for a first edition draft, And we have a couple pieces in here that we need to kind of finish and add back in to call it complete. And that's this next conversation with counsel as a whole as we talk about, to your point, council member, is the is the outcome measurements, what's the service levels, what's the performance, and how we're gonna do that, and and and how what are we what's our goals, where are we at, and where do we wanna be.

So one of those performance measurements that the organization that's new to the organization that that I introduced when in my administration is this concept of availability versus reliability. And I think you've probably heard me talk about this before. And availability is the percentage of times that the resource that's in one of those four planning zones, the engine or the aid unit or the ladder, whatever it may be, that's if a if an emergency incident happens in District 2, that a District 2 resource gets it. Because as soon as I we have to send a resource from another fire station over into that state, then your response time, your performance will just you'll never meet them. Right?

As soon as you have to send engine four into station one's area to run a call because there's nobody at Station 1 to run it, it's gonna take a lot longer to get there and your performance is is going to suffer. And we know that those high profile, high consequence incidents, the longer it takes to get there, the poorer, the less of an outcome you will have. Fires get bigger. The longer people go without emergency medical interventions when they're not breathing or whatever it may be, they will get sicker and their likelihood of surviving is less. And so the sooner we get there, the better the outcome potential is.

And so we strive to improve our availability. And so when we look at our availability, our availability has improved dramatically dramatically with the addition of the two aid units that we added over the last year and a half. And so currently, all four of our stations' availability exceed 90%, three of them exceed 95%, and only one of them is at 91%, that's Station 3. And that's over on the other side of town from downtown. And so we're really happy with that performance that when a call happens in an area, the area the apparatus is supposed to get it gets it because then we have an opportunity to get there quickly and in effect a positive outcome.

Reliability is the ability to meet a performance standard when it comes to response times. So currently, we don't, as a city, have an established response time benchmark or a goal. Right? What we have is the national standard is seven minutes and six seconds. As a community, we can set that standard whatever we want it to be.

Right? There is absolutely no requirement out there that says it must be this or must be that. National accreditation standards will will will say to the community, it's it's really community dependent because what what works in one community may not work in the other. And so our our numbers and our performance today is measured simply against the NFPA seventeen ten standard of seven minutes and six seconds 90% of the time because that's the only standard we have currently. And that's the conversation I wanna have with counsel as a whole about are we comfortable with that or we do we wanna change that?

And so what does that look like? To the performance standard of meeting the seven minutes six second total response time 90% of the time, station one, station four are doing it about 75% of the time, 76% of the time. Station two's 44% of the time, and station three's 35% of the time. So the response times for for those stations to get on scene at 90% of the time, downtown we're doing it about eight minutes fifty seconds. 90% of the time it takes us, you know, 9% of time, nine times out of 10.

Station 2 is eleven minutes. Station 3 is eleven four, and station 4 is eight fifty. And so the analysis of that is the next piece that we do as a fire department. We start to look at those planning areas, those station zones, and look, okay. What is it that's causing the impact on our services and our response time? Because time is directly related to outcomes and it's directly related to your performance. How what is it that's causing those times to be what they are? And so it's different for every district. Right? And so if you look at the West Side, there's one fire station on the West Side.

It's a very large area. It's the largest response area in the city. Station 2 is 7.7 square miles. Right? And they'll run over 5,000 incidents will occur on the West Side. And it right now, that station has an engine, aid unit, and a paramedic unit running out of the one station. That one station where it's located as it relates to where the hotspot of the calls are, and you can see that as you read through the standard cover, there's a graphic in there that shows. The station's not located close enough to where all the calls are happening. Right? Now that's just historical.

That station was built in 1990. It's been there for thirty five years. The calls have changed. The locations have changed since then. So where the calls are happening are closer to the south end of that district, closer to the Highway 101. And so the drive time's eight or nine minutes at any given time. So we're never going to hit a seven minute total response time when we look at that. And when you couple that with a high call volume, it becomes even more a compounding effect. So the challenges on the West Side are about volume and geographical distance. The challenges we have in the three station three's area on the other side of town is really limited to just geographical area.

Its district is big. They don't run that many calls. The incident counts are relatively low. But when they do run an incident, it's too far for them to get to, you know, to meet a seven minute standard. And so this it's really about just a distribution of resources, not a concentration of resources, where station two is about both.

How many do you have and where are they? Right? And so as we talk about our strategic plan on to address some of these performance improvements, the answer's not going to be one size fits all, I guess is what I'm offering to the conversation. And so some of those can be handled with some techno technology, some district realignments. We can talk about different types of resort you know, there's different ways to make those improvements other than just the big ticket items of fire stations and apparatus and and more people.

Right? And so, you know, obviously, as a city, we would do all of the things that we can before we get to those bigger needs. Right? And so and those are just kind of some of the early things that are rising to the top as we kind of begin. Now that we've kind of gathered all this and we've created the standard of cover and we're we're beginning to kind of dig into it all, those are kind of some of the things that we're identifying.

Our data collection and management as the fire department has not been great historically. I'll be totally candid. It's better the last two or three years as technology and softwares has improved and they've embraced and and engaged in those. But to go back further than that, a lot of these you know, the more data we collect, the better off we are. A lot of that data wasn't collected ten years ago, five years ago. And so we're collecting that data now. One of those things would be like on a on a on an incident, did we have secondary injury or or events occur? Meaning, did one of the firefighters get injured on a call? That's a consequence of that call and we should be tracking that. Right, and that's a data point.

Firefighters get hurt on the job. If if they're getting hurt on fires or they're getting hurt on medical calls, on on motor vehicle accidents, what what's occurring and why? And that hasn't been tracked as it relates to these data points. The concept of establishing an effective response force, we've tracked response times, we've tracked call counts, but we haven't tracked response times as how long did it take to get the first unit there and how long did it take to get everybody there that you need there. And so we have to do that.

And we were able to kinda retro that back and do that work for the last three years, but that's taken nine months to get three years worth of data done. And so we're not gonna be able to continue that pace to do that. Right? It's too much manual work. So that's why we stopped the the data management and and kind of the data cleanup at three years, and we're gonna start collecting moving forward better data.

One of those things is we're, going to purchase and and and secure a new data analytics software in in partnership with Lacey Fire District three, which drives the cost down. It's we'll we'll we're gonna cover that with existing budget money. We'll reallocate some some things and get it done because it's that important. It's not a huge cost, but we're gonna try to get that accomplished before the end of the year. And that creates what all of what we're talking about here and all of this manual data analysis, that software will do for us.

We'll just manage the data input. And so from a staff hours efficiency perspective, then we can sit down, pull a dashboard up, and just the conversation we're having, we can just do click clip and see it. And so really excited about that. And then the last piece is the response times that we're talking about. I we as as a city need to sit down and work together to determine what's our current performance and and where do we want it to be to ensure that we have the positive outcomes that we're you know, I think we all share a desire for.

Right? And so that's kind of the the bigger things that we've discovered to date. And as we talk about those things, it's all about planning. Right? Let's not manage this through crisis.

Although fire departments are really good at crisis management, I'd prefer not to run it from that perspective of crisis management. And I'd like to have long term conversations about, you know, in twenty five years, we're going to need to replace this, add that, subtract that, whatever it may be, and how much is that gonna cost and how much let's start allocating, you know, that funding today to ensure that we have the funding for it in the future And what does that look like? And that kinda drives the bigger conversation about resources and which is obviously the the big ticket item in in a budget is is those things, capital items and people. So and that's kind of the the really fast, really kind of, you know, a thousand mile an hour overview of what the standard covered is. It's the business plan, the comprehensive business plan for the fire department and the city of Olympia and how we're going to take care of our community in the future.

So that's what it's really meant to do for us and I'm pretty excited about it. There's been some people that have put a lot of time and energy into this over the last year and I'm super proud of them and thankful for their energy. Questions for me?

Thank you so much, chief. I think you could have had two slides and still, like, filled us with all the information. You were just I I saw your slide count. I was like, oh, that's a little lower. And, I mean, you covered all this stuff, though. But every slide, you're like, and this and this. So, clearly, you're knowledgeable and passionate.

I've doing a long time. So yeah. Thank you.

I'll just, let's see if, a committee mate has any comments or questions.

Do. Thank you, Chair Nguyen. First, I I agree that huge kudos to the team who put this together, and and I appreciate your leadership in in driving this. This is I I think it's it's a phenomenal picture for us to to frame the conversations that we need to have. And I'm I'm excited to to have your notion of reliability to to to have it not be quite such a simple or linear kind of question about coverage.

I I I think that's really gonna that's a useful part of the conversation. And I I have one little other nerdy thing to wonder about a response time. First, I'm gonna say I'm really glad that on these maps, I'm in the one minute zone, but unfortunately, Cher Hwinn is in the light colored seven minute traffic or, you know, driving time zone. So we'll have to make sure you have a fire extinguisher and a kitchen blanket handy at your place. So anyhow, but my my question about that is in in doing ride alongs this year with both OFD and the police department, we did a number of call to call trips.

And I'm wondering if those are tracked separately because as call volume is so high, the stations aren't necessarily the dispatch point to these different calls. Right. They're ping ponging all around their district. And then often, whenever there's yeah, I guess you don't call it mutual aid if it's within the department. But if they're responding to another one of the zones, they're ping ponging across the city and flying back through downtown. So is that something that is is already part of this? Or is that easy to pull from TCOM data whether people how often they dispatch from their station?

We don't track it that way because honestly, they're responsible for their entire response area. Where they respond from is is know, if the station just happens to be the hub. What we look at really is if it's their area and they respond to it within district, and they're responding from district. So we we we look to make sure they're responding from the district. So if if like, engine one might get a call in two's area, but engine one might have already been in two's area.

They just cleared from another call. So it's in in district response, right, is what we call that. And so that's what we're focused on. We recognize that the call volume has a direct influence on the ability to meet performance. And so to your point, call to call to call to call definitely has the potential impact it, especially if you're if you're on one side of a district and you gotta go eight miles to the other side of the district.

Right? That has the potential for it. That's why typically what you'll see is is is fire departments will will try to assign their resource closest to where they expect the next call to happen. So they put it in the the general vicinity of the call generating areas. Right?

And so if you look at like Station 4, the newest station, it has a very small it's only about a two and a half mile response area. And people would say, well, that's really small when you have another one that has, you know, six miles. But in Fours area, that has all of the medical facilities, the hospital, and dramatic call generating centers. And so if you were to expand their district much bigger, they would not be able to manage any type of performance. Right?

Whereas in threes areas, area's big, but the demand for service is relatively low in that area. So we can expand that a little bit because we're trying to find this balance point, to your point, council member, this this sweet spot between, you know, demand for service, capacity to run it, as well as, you know, the ability to manage multiple calls. And so that capacity and we talk we talk about capacity and and what's our ability to. We get one house fire, the entire Olympia or one apartment fire, a large scale commercial fire, an apartment fire. The entire Olympia Fire Department's on that fire.

There's absolutely not a single resource left in the city to run the next call. And if it's a major incident, that could be for the next couple of hours. And so those next emergencies, there's still people getting sick. There's still car accidents happening. There's still the potential for other events. Now we're solely dependent upon our neighboring jurisdictions to respond into our city to cover those calls. Right? And we're all in that boat. Tom Watson City of Tom Watson is in the same boat. Lacey Fire District three, we all we, you know, we can't do it all by ourselves.

We all rely on each other. But we just know that in that moment, that's that consequence piece of that risk assessment is the what's what does it take to mitigate that incident? And the peak load of call volume is the next piece of this analysis. What we need to analyze is when are all the calls happening, by hour of day, by day of week, by by, you know, week of the month, by the month, by the year, by the season, so we have an idea that we can kinda predict when the peaks will be. Anecdotally, people will tell you, you know, we run the most calls between, you know, 11AM and 11PM.

But we also know what storm days do to us and what snow days do to us and what, you know, wind days do and and what that does to demand for service. And so we should be able to predict that. And we should be able to anticipate what our performance will be in those moments.

Right. Well, thank you. I look forward to this going to the full council and to all of us learning more about it. And I just have to shout out one little there's one little section in the training that's about the virtual training facility off of Phones Road as part of

that

complex. And it's it's really cool. I got to do active shooter practice with the police department in the giant video screen simulator. And just I'm excited that we're we're also availing ourselves of of that training alongside of the the real life structures. Anyhow, that's what I gave gave a Yahoo when I read that section also. You for this work.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you so much, chief Morris. I have a question. So as you're doing this work, right, and and making sure that it gets to done, surely, you're flipping over all these rocks and finding all these different things. And so, were there I heard some things, along the way that you were talking about needing improvement on, like, I'm looking forward to getting, like, that data software, for example. So, is there, anything that the council should know about as far as, hey. We need this, and we can't wait for this.

Oh, I I don't think we haven't discovered that yet. I think that the aid units, it would were an absolute saver in the system. The ability to add those aid units and to put the availability and reliability back in into the busiest areas. Prior to that aid unit going in service at Station 2, the availability was in the low eighties. And so at 5,000 calls a year, figure 20% of those were having to be run by station one resources.

Right? And so there's quite a few you know, if you think about it, that's a thousand calls a year ish that were, you know, I'm just doing math off my head. Right? So call it 2 to three calls a day that we were having to run the a resource from station one downtown across the bridge and into the West side of of the city to manage an emergency incident. Well, that's a twenty to thirty minute run at times depending on where you're going, end of time of day, in traffic, and getting across the bridge, and so on.

You could could be twenty minute response times. If that's a house on fire, if that's somebody not breathing, if that's a critical trauma, the outcome of that call will suffer as a result of our slow response. And that's going to happen at times and and there's nothing we can do about that. But when we know it's happening two or three times a day guaranteed, it's just, you know, that's a scary proposition. Right? For my license. Wow.

Yeah. It is scary.

I'm sitting still too long. That's why putting that aid unit over there, while it's a transport unit, it has so many benefits to us. What it really created was the ability to manage the service demand in that specific geographical area at a much better level. And now we see 95, 96% availability that when an event happens over there, they're gonna get their closest resources assigned to the area. That the citizens and community will get the closest resource, that will provide the best chance for a positive outcome.

Thank you. I have another question for you. So I saw in the staff report that there is intention to have some of this information, probably the whole thing, when it's finalized on the city website. And there was an emphasis on making sure that it was available to the community. And so I just wonder, think thinking about the average person is probably not gonna read this entire thing. And so are we thinking that we'll put, like, this keep on updating the annual stats on the website? Is that okay. I see.

Dashboard and and Debbie Sullivan has been so amazing about putting that together and and creating both the internal and external facing piece of that. You know, we'll select the data points that that really kinda can represent the true performance of the organization and the community that that we think that will tell a story that that's, you know, people can understand. Right? We don't wanna get too in the weeds of the of the technical details of these things and, you know, that easy for me to talk about. But but we wanna put it out so the community can understand how's their fire department doing and how's it, you know, how how's it interacting with the community and are they happy with that or not?

And and I think that's the intent with that. Right? And so people wanna hear about how long does it take to get to get on scene, how many times a day are you doing it, How many of these happened? How many car wrecks? How many fires? How many you know, those types of things are typically what people want to know, and so we'll provide that to them for sure. And the standard to cover, the strategic plan, our work plan should all be transparent in nature and open for conversation and to share with anybody who wants them. Right? And because it's their fire department. And so, yeah, we're pretty excited to kind of share all of that.

I think that one of the biggest challenges in the fire department as we move forward, and to back to your previous question, is going to be about the concept of capital and the ability to fund the big ticket items that the fire department is going to need as we go into the future. Right? The replacement of apparatus, the updating and remodeling of existing fire stations, the addition of new fire stations to meet the growth and the service demand and all of the different things. As the community changes, it's going to change how the fire department needs to provide its services. When we talk about things like the Capital Mall Triangle and we talk about bringing in a higher density population in that area and building taller buildings and more people, you know, the more people you put in the same area, the demand for service will go up.

Right? That's just a given. So how do we respond to those areas and what's the best solution to make sure that we're meeting the demands that that will bring to our community? It it what does that look like? And and we have to have those conversations and start planning today for that in the future because those are very all very expensive items.

You know? We're we're we're we have two engine fire engines on order. We have another one that we need to order a third engine that we don't have, you know, the city that we don't have the current ability to order that at you know, right now, it's a twenty sixteen engine, and so it's already nine years old and it takes five years to get one. So if we ordered it today, it would be 14, 15 years old before we would be able to replace it and put it in reserve status. And that's getting pretty old.

Know, a fire engine lasts twenty four years and the idea is to get twelve years of frontline and twelve years of reserve. And so by the time we get that one replaced, it'll be fifteen to eighteen years in frontline. And so that's, you know, going to become a maintenance challenge and a and a reliability challenge in that apparatus. Right? And so and that's just why we have to do this long term. We we can't have these conversations in these, oh, I need I need $4,000,000 tomorrow. We we can't operate that way. We need to say, need $4,000,000 in six, seven, eight, ten years from now, and so how do we get to there from here, You know, so that it it's easier to manage. So and that's all I'm trying to provide as a as a as a map to that. Right? So

Oh, well, I'm well, I appreciate that. And I'm so glad that we have a fire chief in Olympia that is thinking about, the staff and the community members now, but then also late into this long term planning in place. So with that, I'll just ask, committee member Gilman, do you have any more comments or questions? No? Okay.

And

then, chief, did you have anything else you would like to let us know?

I appreciate the time. I appreciate the conversation. I look forward to the next conversation with the council as a whole. I'm excited to kind of work together and come up with a plan.

Oh, me too very much. Really appreciate your work and, the work of all of the department members on this. This is clearly a huge lift.

I will definitely share that. So thank you.

Thank you. So with that, I do need a motion for this item.

I would move to approve the recommended 2025 Olympia Fire Department community risk assessment standards of covered and cover cover and forward it to the full city council for approval.

Second. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

And motion passes. Congratulations. Thank you, chief.

Thank you very much. I will see you all soon.

Alright. With that, folks, we are on to our second business item of the night, which is approval of the a or of b, Cultural Access Advisory Board's recommendation to adjust the Inspire Olympia funding strategy, and this is being presented to us by the City of Olympia Cultural Access Program Manager, Mary Grace McGuin.

Thank you, chair Wynn, and it's nice to be here tonight, CLPS Committee. Amelia is gonna help me this evening with presenting slides. We've stacked up slides for both this business item and the next one, their agenda, in one presentation. So she'll run them for us.

Great.

And I will launch if that's alright. The Cultural Access Advisory Board takes time each July for a continuous improvement discussion to look at what's working well and what needs adjustment in advance of the next funding cycle. Because the program has both annual and biennial granting cycles, the time to discuss any significant changes falls in our odd numbered years as we prepare to launch the next two year cycle. The advisory board actually began this discussion at their January meeting and then continued it at a recent retreat on July 10. This evening's presentation shares the board's recommendations coming out of those forward planning sessions.

The recommendations would result in changes that would go into print this November as guidance for organizations preparing to submit applications in early twenty twenty six for the one and two year grant cycles through June 2028. So, we can go to the next slide, Amelia. Thank you. As a fund advisory body, the Cultural Access Advisory Board makes recommendations to council on how to distribute the cultural access tax revenues for optimal impact in support of Inspire Olympia's mission, which is shown on this slide. Recommended changes might arise in response to changes in the community, changes in city council priorities, or changes in the tax revenue flow, just for some examples.

At this point, with only one complete year of funding under our belt, there isn't much track record to work with yet, and we aren't seeing significant shifts in our community, either the community at large or our funded community, to respond to. So based on a review of program performance and the community feedback to date, the board is not recommending any notable adjustments to Inspire Olympia's funding structure or funding goals at this time. But the board is recommending adjustments to the granting levels and the spending goals for the future funding cycles to more fully utilize available funds and amplify the impact of INSPIRE LAVIS grants. The program is carrying a balance of about $3,500,000 into fiscal year twenty twenty six. That's the result of two things.

One, tax collection began eighteen months prior to our first funding cycle. And and second, we underspent in our first year, particularly for the cultural access programs for schools where we simply overestimated how much we would spend, particularly for buses, for transportation. So the Cultural Access Advisory Board agreed at their January meeting to to plan for a gradual spend down of the funding reserve by increasing the funding amounts that applicants can apply for. And at the board's July, we focused on multiyear budget planning to determine what those increases might look like. And that's my next slide.

We began with the question, how much funding might be available for grants each year with a spend down with a gradual spend down plan? And we modeled a four year budget plan for '26, '27, 2829 with these parameters that we would target a final balance in 2029 of about 500 to $600,000, which is city finance department's guidance for us. They recommend that we have 20% of our committed contract amount held in reserve. Second, assume a carry forward balance of 3 and a half million, as I said, going into 2026. Assume the cultural access tax revenues will remain flat.

We're gonna be a little bit pessimistic given uncertainties in the economy, particularly for Washington state. So, we're gonna just assume our income is gonna be about $3,100,000 in each of those forward looking years. We wanna increase funding for the public school programs each year gradually as that program kinda grows into those shoes, which were a little too big for us last year. Increased funding for capacity building, that's professional development for our cultural organizations to help them be better at what they do, help them with, you know, the bureaucratic work of running organizations. It's often not with their pass that's not the passion that got them into it usually.

We wanna hold our administrative costs at 10% of that cultural access tax revenue in any given year. And then the rest of the funding, we wanna allocate toward grant awards directly to our cultural organizations. And so when we model those parameters, our outcome is that Inspire Olympia could allocate up to $3,000,000 to be adjusted each year for comprehensive and impact awards through 2029 and and hit that 5 to $600,000 reserve by 2029. And to stay within budget each year, the advisory board will review and adjust the target amount prior recommending grant awards to city council. So the next slide shows you what that looks like in numbers.

In yellow, you see, the total amount that we could budget. And and these are big round numbers. Okay? But that's the amount that we could budget toward, grant awards in any given year in these in these years, and then, our outcome is is about half $1,000,000 by 2029. 2029 is the magic year because that is the year that we will need to reauthorize the program. Yes, chair Wynn.

Yeah. Thank you. Could you go back to the last slide? And if you don't mind, can we just hang out here for a second?

You bet.

Just yeah. It's it's you have a lot of good information on here. I know you kind of, you know, gave some highlights for each one, but I just wanna make sure I'm getting it all. And and then I just have a just a clarifying question. So I see it's a four year spend down plan. So does that mean that it sort of resets after that, that it's these amounts would just be for four years?

This is a four year plan. Every year, we will do a little bit of a reset. We will do a check-in every year as we move forward. It does mean that in 2029, if we do follow this plan in 2029, we no longer have that reserve to support this level of of award amounts. And there may be an adjustment at that point.

But I've also held this income level flat. Right? And it's very likely that by 2029, our sales tax revenue will be higher than 3,100,000.0 for again, the one tenth of 1% of our sales tax in Olympia. It should go up. You know, I just I think we're just holding it flat for the sake of budgeting.

I also don't have inflation built into this. They sort of those would sort of negate each other. And as I said, these are big round numbers. But the idea here in round numbers is that each year, we will check-in. We're targeting about $3,000,000 over the course of this period each year. Does that answer your question?

Yes. Yes. And I and I appreciate the, you know, that you don't have a crystal ball. But, yeah, that's that's really helpful because, yeah, I was like, oh, what about after it's all gone? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. In 2029, you'll be reauthorizing, and that can either be through, councilmanic action now since that the legislature, provided that additional authority, or you can go back to the voters. Okay. So we can go to the next slide if you're ready. This is our current granting structure or granting model.

I'm sorry.

And we have two granting options, comprehensive and impact. Our goal has been to distribute the funding pretty much equally between these two funding pathways. The comprehensive grant category is designed for larger organizations and programs who are generally, very generally speaking, over $200,000 in budget or program size. They're more experienced groups that, generally speaking, offer more comprehensive services to broader population, and they often have multiple revenue sources and paid staffing. These organizations currently, can request up to they can request up to 15% of their average, budget income operating budget income for the past two years.

Right? So they take that their their budget, they average it for the last two years, they can ask for up to 15% of that, but but it maxes out at $75,000. So organizations that are, larger will hit that that $75,000 max pretty quickly. These organizations must be nonprofits. They have to have a two year history of public program, and they have to offer offer programs year round.

K? The impact to grants, as you could see here, are from 3,000 to $30,000. They can be a fiscally sponsored organization. They don't have to be a nonprofit, if they have a registered nonprofit as a sponsor. They must offer at least one public program a year, so they can just do one big event a year.

And they provide a one to one match for their requested funds. These groups tend to be volunteer run. Their programs rely heavily on in kind, services and volunteer time, donations, volunteer time. So they generally have much less organizational capacity. Interestingly, the impact group, has when you look at them and their and their program sizes, there's a significant cluster of of about 30 organizations, and that's about half of them, that are in the range of 100 to $2,000 $200,000, and that's including their volunteer the value of their volunteer labor.

So we have a couple of different ways that we can increase these funding opportunities, a couple different ways to kind of turn the dials. And the options affect different portions of the cohort. The easy example is if you look at the comprehensive, if you lift that $75,000 maximum grant amount, you're gonna benefit the organizations at the top. Right? They're gonna go from $75,000 a year to $85,000 a year, for example.

And these will generally be, organizations with incomes above $500,000 because 500 divided by 15% gives you that $75,000 lid. Increasing the 15% calculation for comprehensive awards would most benefit those in the lower end of this group in terms of budget size. An increase in 50 15 to 20%, for instance, benefits those with budgets up to $375,000. It's 20%, $3.75, is 75. That's your that's which is where you hit the ceiling.

If you combine an increase to 15% with the raising of the lid, then you expand the group that benefits just a little bit more upward in this in this cohort. Again, just talking about program budget size. Increasing the impact granting is a little simpler. Raising the maximum funding will will benefit most organizations at the mid to upper end of the impact group by program size again. And that's as I said, we're about half half of this group, are in in this cohort.

And the the advisory board also discussed raising the lower end of the impact grants because we're not seeing requests at $3,000. Our currently, our smallest grant is at 7,500. And that organization actually had capacity to ask for a larger grant. They just didn't choose to. And then the next slide, please.

So this is the recommended granting structure for 2628. The first change is to increase the comprehensive funding to 20% of the last two years operating budget income and raise the maximum award amount to $85,000. This increases the possible funding amounts for all applicants, but especially benefits those with budgets under $425,000. Second, amend the impact funding amounts to a $5,000 minimum and a $50,000 maximum grant award. The distribution of funding awards among applicants will still depend on the makeup of the applicant pool and the quality of their proposals and will still be based entirely on the applicant scores, the application scores, following the review process.

And then third, the board also, recommends adding a requirement for comprehensive fund organizations to provide youth programming. This is a change that would impact only one current organization. There's only one organization in that comprehensive group who, on paper, don't do youth programming, but in fact, they do. So it's not a huge adjustment for them to to to kind of step up their form formal program in that area. These amendments in total are expected to result in a broader array of funding awards at more impactful levels.

Total spending on grants will be managed to stay within each year's program budget as grant award amounts are considered in the spring. If approved, the changes will be in effect for, the one year granting cycle in 2026 and 2027 and the two year granting cycle that runs 2628 with revised guidelines to be published this November. And I'm happy to take your question now, Cherilyn.

Oh, thanks so much. Could you just, give me a a quick refresher on the comprehensive versus impact again or and, like, some example I mean, don't have to be real organizations, but just types of organizations.

So the comprehensive grants are generally to larger organizations. These would include the Hands On Children's Museum and the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. And I think actually giving you real examples is probably the easiest and the most helpful, Harlequin productions, Olympia Film Society, the Bridge Music Project, who else? Emerald City Music Ballet Northwest, Arbutus Folk School. They tend to be they have paid professional staff.

Some of them have grant writers. They are more sophisticated in their operations, their administrative capacity, and they generally do more. They serve more people, and they are able to provide more comprehensive services. I see. Okay. And then the impact grants, those tend to be our really small small to medium sized community organizations. At the larger end in that group, you might have I think there are a couple who are kind of on the cusp of the Olympia Junior programs. Mhmm. The Olympia Historical Society. Let's see.

Is the Puget Sound Estuary in here, or are they in they might be incomprehensive. Capital city chorus, capital city pride, hummingbird studio, moving parts dance, Thurston County conservation district, the jazz festival, Earthbound productions, they're all examples of impact grant organizations that tend to be volunteer run. They're a little bit on a shoestring. Many of them have fiscal sponsors, so they themselves are not nonprofits. They would not run without volunteers.

They just wouldn't. I see. And and the grants in this category are particularly impactful because for the first time, of these organizations are hiring are paying artists or paying their longtime volunteers or offering stipends. They're doing training for their boards in DEI topics, accessibility and inclusion. They are they're able to instead of running on volunteers, they're able to get professional help with media, social media, and advertising, and outreach.

And that's making a huge difference for them in terms of participation. So there's like a chain reaction that gets set in motion when these little groups get funded. It's just been amazing to watch.

Thank you. Juan, why don't I ask that question? That was very valuable to hear from you. So thank you so much.

That was the end of my presentation. This is the recommendation from the the, Cultural Access Advisory Board kind of in this final slide. There were other very minor tweaks that we'd be making to the to the to the granting guidelines, but they're mostly for clarification of existing policy. And and these are the things that really, we wanted to share with you, and the city council, as recommendations coming out of the advisory board.

Oh, wonderful. That was a great presentation. Very informative. Committee member Gillen, did you have any comments or questions before I start in again?

I I no. I actually I just am super appreciative of the Cultural Access Advisory Board putting in this work, and Amelia and Mary Grace, your leadership in developing that I think it's a really smart spend down. So when you're ready, I'll make a motion, but I'll let you make your other questions and comments first.

Oh, thank you so much. Yeah. I I agree. I I have, you know, a hearing year of working on this. And and my greatest concern at that time was about creating an expectation in the community that later on we couldn't, we couldn't fulfill.

Right? And so I just really appreciate your, and the team's smart approach to this. So and just the, you know, the desire really to get that money out into the community and make and make sure that it's being used. And so, yeah, I think that as very strategic with the why you say kinda told the fire chief this earlier in the last presentation, but you're thinking about the right now and you're thinking about the later, and we love that. So Yep. And I think both of

our chairs were planning to listen in tonight, so I just wanna appreciate them for their support in this work. They have been fabulous leaders in in this.

Oh, thank you.

That's that's yeah. Melissa Meaden and Anne Larson.

Oh, well, Melissa and Anne, if you're listening now or if you're listening later, we so appreciate appreciate you. Alright. And as a big show of appreciation, might I ask for a motion?

I would move to approve the recommendation of the Cultural Access Advisory Board to adjust the Inspire Olympia funding strategy and forward that strategy to the city council for consideration.

I second. All those in favor, aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion passes. Congratulations. And, that takes us on to the last business item, which is, with both of you again. And I think that we'll be hearing more this time from from Amelia Layton, our I just wanna call you the the special program manager. That's not it. Our special program manager. You are special, though. You really are.

Right. Yeah.

Yes. You are. No. No. Don't help me. I got this. Wrote this down on purpose. Okay. Yes. You are the senior program specialist. That is very special. Well, thank you so much. And go ahead and take it away with the discussion of Inspire Olympia and lodging tax advisory committee programs.

Wonderful. I'm gonna share again, and

feel

free to interrupt with questions. It's harder to see you as I'm talking, so I won't be offended if interruptions happen. There we go. So I just wanna start. Amelia Layton, senior program specialist for Inspire Olympia and liaison to the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee.

So both Inspire and the lodging tax program are granting programs that support economic vitality and Olympia's lovability with a focus on events. Each program is an authorized authorized by state and receives a dedicated tax income that distribute is distributed via competitive grant awards. Each has a fund advisory board and is supported by city staff. And annually, each body recommends funding to city council. So those are some of the similarities.

They're very similar in structure, but LTACH and Inspire Olympia have different statutory requirements and goals. Very broadly, before we get into the nitty gritty of it, LTACH supports work to draw tourists to Olympiathat's people from 50 plus miles awayand encourages them to spend a night in a lodging establishment, thus feeding into that tax and becoming a circular revenue system. Cultural access taxes are intended to strengthen and sustain a healthy and inclusive nonprofit cultural arts and science sector, benefiting specifically the Olympia community through increased access to creative cultural experiences. So one is really looking out and trying to draw people from outside in, and one is really looking in and trying to support everyone who's here in Olympia. There are some natural and appropriate overlap among recipient organizations of both programs, and there is a similar flow to grant administration for both programs.

So I'm going to take the time here to kind of get into some of the nitty gritty. We have a side by side. The RCWs are sort of the driving force of both of these. So on the left here with Inspire Olympia, the use of funds. Organizations with Inspire Olympia have unrestricted funds that can be used to support cultural and educational activities, programs, initiative, public benefits and communications, basic operations.

They can be used for capital expenditures or acquisitions, technology, equipment, and supplies. Organizations can really use our funds to best support the public programming that they do. And that might look different for every organization. For lodging tax, it's a little more focused and very much more strict. So it can be used for tourism marketing.

So again, to people who are 50 or more miles away from Olympia. The marketing and operations of special events and facilities designed to attract tourists from 50 plus miles away. Operations and capital expenditures of tourism related facilities owned and operated by a municipality or a public facility district, operations of tourism related facilities owned and operated by nonprofit organizations, so specifically nonprofits, and this cannot include capital expenditures. So our funding cycles are shifted to best support organizations in the community, but also staff. We have a July through June funding year for Inspire Olympia, and that was designed to better support organizations who work with schools.

And then lodging tax follows more closely our city's funding year or annual budget year of January through December. And then there's quite a difference in estimated revenue, as you see. For 2025, we're looking at about $2,650,000 going out for competitive grants. And in 2025, the revenue for competitive grants was $675,000 And that's also what 2026 is looking like for lodging tax. And like Mary Grace just said, organizations can ask for between, well, now 5,000 to $85,000 But currently, as it stands, 3,000 to 75,000.

Whereas lodging tax funds, folks can ask for what they need. So there's a lot of smaller grants, but there's also some much bigger grants that help support bigger programming. Our funding goals for both programs really change, are really quite different. So INSPIRE on the left here supports public programs in arts, culture, heritage, and science reduces barriers and enhance participation, especially for historically underserved populations supports minority cultural programs by and for culturally or ethnically specific communities or underrepresented groups, expands access to youth education programs in arts, culture, heritage, and science, and enhances sustainability and collaboration within and among cultural sector organizations in Olympia. For lodging TAC, priority will be given to activities that show potential to result in overnight stays by tourists in lodging establishments within the city.

Promote Olympia and or events, activities, and places in the city to potential tourists outside of Thurston County. They show potential to result in economic benefits to Olympia. They minimize duplication of services and encourage cooperative marketing and partnerships. Or they provide, maintain, operate, or enhance city owned tourism facilities or infrastructure. And then eligibility, this is a big difference here in these funding pathways.

It is a Venn diagram, so some live in between. But for Inspire Olympia, eligible applicants must meet all four criteria. They must be a registered nonprofit or fiscally sponsored. They must have a mission that is focused in arts, culture, heritage, or science. They must be located in the city of Olympia or the majority of their programming is in the city or primarily serves Olympia residents or public schools.

And they must provide public programming. Now, lodging tax, applicants can be nonprofit organizations of any kind, fiscally sponsored groups. They can be municipalities. So the city itself does get some of its own lodging tax for programs we offer. And they can also be for profit businesses.

Another big way that they Inspire and Lodging Tax differ is our advisory boards. So INSPIRE, again on the left, it must include citizen representations, representatives of constituencies and organizations with interests relative to the work of the programming, including but not limited to leaders in the business, educational, and cultural communities. And advisory council members should be residents of the city creating the program. And so basically, what we look for in those is people who have an interest in arts, culture, science heritage, and who potentially have some connections to school programming, teachers, administrators, folks like that. Now, the lodging tax RCW is much more strict.

So the lodging tax committee has to be at least five members, at least two who represent businesses who collect the lodging tax, so hotels, motels, Airbnbs, potentially parks, and then two members who are involved in activities who are eligible to receive the funds. So that could be our VCB, that could be folks who put on large festivals that draw tourists, people who can receive the funding. And then one member shall be an elected official of the municipality, and they serve as the chair. So those are really big differences in just sort of what people's expertises are. And then our review criteria here, they're each tailored to those funding goals.

And so lodging tax is a little more by the book because we are looking for specific projects that fund specific outcomes, which is bringing tourists to Olympia and getting them to spend a night in a hotel or motel. I don't know if it's useful for me to go into all of the exact point breakdown of the review criteria. I'm happy to if you need me to. But with Inspire, we are looking more holistically at the whole of an organization's programming and what they do, along with what they're proposing to do as their deliverables or their public benefit.

Yeah. Amelia? Mhmm. I'm I'm doing the cut in like you encouraged me to. So I just Yes, wanna check-in so that we could answer that question for you. Committee member Gilman, do you is it would it be necessary or helpful for you for Amelia to go through all the point breakdown? Or

No. I've I've read the criteria, and I'm I'm comfortable with it. So

Cool. Oh, great. I feel the same. Okay.

Go ahead. It's good. I just yeah. Moving through to the fun stuff, in my opinion, is the ways that we have been able to streamline processes for both of the programs. So I came in a while ago.

And I came in to help support both programs. And so when Inspire Olympia was passed, city staff recognized the value in bringing these programs together in administrative alignment. And so that was a part of my role from the beginning. And we were able to start a whole grant platform for the city. So prior to this, lodging tax applications were a fillable PDF that applicants would then need to drop off six printed copies of their application to the city, and then we would distribute that within the lodging tax committee.

And as you may or may not know, it was a burdensome process for both the applicants, but also for the reviewers to have to carry around binders full of paper applications. So luckily, with Inspire Olympia, we were able to get granting platform. And we use Submittable, which is an online application grant management site that we build the programs on. And so applicants can go to one single portal. And the neighborhood matching grant also uses Submittable too, which is great.

So folks who are looking for funding from us kind of all go to one program. This serves not only applicants, but it also serves us on the back end because it helps us with reviewing and contracting, reporting, invoicing, it all kind of lives in this platform, which is really great. So similar to the permit portal, users can submit and track their applications. They can submit reports, and they can direct message staff if they need to. We are able to view draft submissions, and this is super helpful during before applications are due when I'm doing support of applicants.

They can manage multiple applications from multiple funders. It's a common used platform in the funding world. And it also helps our reviewers evaluate, score, offer comments, and makes it easy for them as well, which is great. And then it also helps us just pull large amounts of data. Some things that we also streamlined so that you see similar information for both program is published application guidelines that clearly explain the rules, the questions, the funding process, and then the requirements for funded organizations.

So not only is it just an application process, but it's a how do you manage a municipal services contract and insurance and things like that. Staff, myself and Mary Grace, do not score applications, which means that we can provide unbiased support for applicants. So I can't write your application for you, but I can give you really detailed feedback to how you might make your application more appealing to reviewers who are using the eligibility requirements and stuff like that. Applicants can request one on one time with us, and we do that up until the day before the application close. And we do informational sessions.

And I work with applicants from both pools. And so often, even just yesterday, I was on a call with someone who was like, I have a question about the INSPIRE final report and my contract, but also can we talk about LTAC for the next fifteen minutes of our phone call? And so that was really helpful to them. That's the two programs. I do also want to just say I kind of skipped past it, my apologies, was the workload for both of these programs.

Lodging tax, on average is reviewing about 30 applications, where Inspire Olympia is seeing much larger numbers. And we're actually having our cultural access advisory board work with community members every year for review panels so that in those years when we're looking at 100 plus applications, we're not asking our advisory board to spend one hundred plus hours reviewing everything. So that's a key thing to think about here too. Any questions? I assume there are some.

I don't have any questions. Committee member Gilman, any questions from you? No? Okay.

No. I well, actually, I tell me, Amelia, whether or not it's it's comfortable to describe her. There was there was some interest that may have prompted this conversation about whether we might consolidate or even more align. And it it sounds like you're making a case that using common administrative tools is as far as we ought to go right now. But I I just I wanna make sure I'm not missing the point of the presentation.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of ways that Lodging Tax and Inspire do align. And we've we've found them, and we've kind of used them to our benefit and to our applicants' benefit. Any ways that we can ask questions in the same language so they could copy and paste information to not have to write two drastically different applications if they needed to. And, also, there are ways by statute, by RCW that they just have to be separate, and it there really isn't a feasible way to make them one thing.

So yes and. Just trying to share the the success of both of these programs, I guess, in the way that we've streamlined them.

Yeah. And I'm also I'm I'm so pleased and relieved to hear about both your work and the Submittable platform. As somebody who's done some grant writing over the years. The idea about having being able to speak with somebody at the granting agency about a draft that you can both see is that's just life changing. That's that's so different from sending the PDF or the hard copy at the 11:59 kind of idea.

So I'm I'm really excited to hear about what you're doing with the process, and I'm and I'm also convinced that there's not a a complete consolidation of the two programs together, that that doesn't doesn't seem possible. Yeah. Thank

Yeah. I have a question. Curious if, the the, CAP or the Cultural Access, Advisory Board and, the lodging tax lodging tax advisory committee if they had weighed in on this or if you had consulted with them.

If we talked to Kev about this, I don't think we did.

I think we told them. I told the chairs that we would be making this presentation, but I did not ask them for input. I mean, most of the things that divide these two programs and keep them apart are legislatively required. I see. So Yeah. Okay.

Oh, it sounds like you saw that early on. And so if you were gonna make yes. If you did have a leeway to make big changes, you would have brought them in, but there's not really space for this. Is that correct? Okay.

That's my belief. Yes.

Okay. Well, this has been this idea of any sort of streamlining even Sam's consolidation has been kind of bumping around some council meetings for a for a while and a couple of our retreats now. So I really appreciate having this this presentation and you two clearly putting your heads together to figure out, you know, what's doable. And, you know, it's been completely sold on total consolidation anyway. But but I'm glad to have some experienced folks look into it and see what we can do.

And, you know, those administrative burdens can be ripped sometimes. So I think that's a win in itself. Alright. Oh, sorry. Were you gonna speak

with Amelia? Thank you for your time.

Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from presenters or committee mates on this one? No. Okay. Seeing none. Alright. Well, thank you so much for the presentation. Appreciate your time as well.

Thank you.

Alright. I look forward to hearing from you next time. Okay. Well, with that oh, well, with that, that concludes all of committing business for tonight, and that takes us on to reports and update. So I'm gonna ask, does anyone have a reporter update?

We got one. Committee member Gilman. I

have a question. Sure. Kelly Kelly Perce Brassett has left after a long time of being the staff liaison to the community livability and before that, the general government committee. Are we orphaned, or what's next?

No. We we are not. And we have what next covered. And I'm I'm happy to share that. Stacy, do you wanna share what our plan is?

Well, so assistant senior manager Debbie Sullivan will continue to be, provide you the support, staff liaison support. And, right now, I'm serving as a in the interim role to fulfill some of Kelly's duties as director of strategic communications. However, we also have, excuse me, a contract with Jenny Folia Jones who's providing some strategic communication support to us as well. And we'll be contracting also with Genevieve Chan who's gonna provide us with some support on our continuing workaround looking at advisory bodies. So we've got we had big shoes to fill, but we brought in several different folks with different skill sets and strengths to help round us out during this interim period.

That is marvelous to hear. That's a strong team. Thank you.

Yeah. And just on that, while we're talking about it, committee member Gilman, spoiler alert, I am advocating hard for us to not go into next spring doing, the same process for onboarding advisory, body members just because it is so intense for everybody involved. And so, as we're doing all of this evaluation, we're also, my understanding is looking at what a new process could be.

Yeah. If I'm right, that's part of the scope of work with Genevieve is to also look at the recruitment and appointment process as well. Yep.

Yeah. And, also oh, does that clear everything up for you, committee member Gilman, on that one? I have a question slash request. So next month for this committee, we will be interviewing members of the community briefing board. Right? It's a new board. I really feel it's appropriate if we meet in person. Are folks amenable to that? Yeah. Are folks perhaps even excited about that? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Give me something. Okay. Anything else for reports and updates from anyone? No? Okay. Well, in that case, it has been really a wonderful meeting, and I am just tickled that we're just a little shy of 07:30. I wasn't sure if that was gonna happen for us tonight, but it did. So I am pleased to bring us back to our to our summer evening and call this meeting adjourned. So thanks so much, and have a great day. Thank you, everyone.