City Council - Regular Meeting

And this is the May 19th. Council members in attendance are Council President Stewart, Council Vice President Nueva Camino, Council Members Parsi, Forsyth, Sonny, Kritzer, and myself, Presiding Officer, Council Member Procrea. We have five action items on the agenda today. And I will note that this is actually a very packed meeting. We added a couple things after Council after the study session we had last week. So I may need to cut you off at some point when it comes to questions. The first action item is vision blueprint 2050, an update of Redmond's capital investment strategy presented by Glenn Coyle of the planning department.

I guess I'll skip your talking points.

Okay. Good afternoon, council members. I'm Glenn Coyle, senior planner in the Long Range Planning Team. Staff is requesting council to approve the Vision Blueprint 2050, which is the city's capital investment strategy. This strategic plan serves as the nexus between the vision, goals, and capital facility policies in the Redmond 2050 Comprehensive Plan and the city's capital investment program, known as the CIP, and the two-year budget. Vision Blueprint 2050 compiles the city's capital planning and financial policies as well as projects from the city's adopted functional plans and lays out a capital investment strategy to the year 2050. It should be noted that the city's long-term capital projects and needs are housed in separate functional plans. Vision Blueprint 2050 brings together these existing projects into one resource that can be used as a guide to plan, and coordinate the city's CIP as well as long-term planning for capital projects. It is not a budget document, but rather a planning document. Vision Blueprint 2050 will serve as a resource for the city's long-term capital planning. Similar to its predecessor, Vision Blueprint 2030, the plan is intended as a living document and will be updated during off-budget years in anticipation of updates to the six-year CIP. Lastly, I'd like to note that this was a true multi-departmental effort with numerous staff from Public Works, Parks, Finance, Planning, Environmental Sustainability, Police, and Fire involved in the reviewing and editing process of this plan. It is also the product of other important plan updates that needed to be completed before we could finalize this plan, such as the Transportation Master Plan, the Capital Facilities Plan for Government Facilities, and the Fire Functional Plan. As it was mentioned, staff is seeking approval by resolution on the consent agenda June 2nd, and I will turn it back to the chair for discussion and any questions. Thank you.

Wonderful. Thank you, Glenn. Any questions? Council Member Kurtzer.

Thank you so much. This is a very robust document and obviously reflects a lot of years of work on a variety of plans that are contained within this plan or things that inform this plan. Typically, when we look at something of this kind of scale, we usually have a study session. So I'm just curious, it seems like this is our first touch of moving it straight to consent. Can you speak to kind of the thinking on that or whether is it just because it This includes so much that we've already covered. Otherwise, I guess I'm just wondering if it makes sense for us to have a additional kind of touch on this.

I would say yes to the first thing related that all the material in this is already existing in other places adopted functional plans that Council had adopted the Redmond 2050 plan. even parts of the current budget and things like that. Um, that's one of the first reasons. The second also is that the city is going into an updated, um, budget process. The city is currently updated, updated in its CIP, which will be coming to council, um, the spring, summer, fall. And we did also didn't want to kind of muddle those kind of similar, but parallel processes with this document, um, which, um, WOULD BE TRIGGERED TO BE UPDATED NEXT YEAR AFTER THE NEXT BUDGET'S APPROVED. SO THAT WAS KIND OF THE THINKING. AND THE ORIGINAL SCOPE OF THIS PLAN ULTIMATELY WAS TO HAVE THIS ADOPTED A LITTLE BIT EARLIER IN THIS YEAR OR PERHAPS EVEN LAST YEAR. IT'S JUST WITH THE OTHER DELAYS TO SOME OF OUR FUNCTIONAL PLANS, YOU KNOW, JUST TRYING TO GET THOSE APPROVED, YOU KNOW, GETTING ALL THE NUMBERS AND METRICS THERE KIND OF UPDATED, THIS GOT PUSHED BACK A LITTLE BIT. SO THAT WAS KIND OF THE REASONING BEHIND THAT.

I guess I would say like for example I know we're in the middle of review right now on our fiscal policies which are referenced in Chapter 3 so my only concern about passing this is if this is kind of leveling up one is I think being able to be assured if there are any things in here that aren't policies we already approved or kind of direction that we already approved and being able to pull out anything that's net new in here, which is a little hard to tell from here. So and I know there's a lot in there. But then secondly, some things like for example, the fiscal policies, which we might have some changes to in the upcoming time as we still have work ahead on that. So but I again want to recognize all the great working and thank you so much for that. And so happy to see the floor to my colleagues, but just wanted to raise that as a question.

Thank you. So how are we feeling about this? Do we want another touch? Do we want to move this consent? Can we get a thumbs up if we would like another touch on this before moving it?

I think the thing I'll just add again, too, is that these are a lot of documents that we've kind of seen already, and you are going to have further touches on the budget with the fiscal policy and with CIP. And so I feel like We are totally open to have like another conversation about it and you will be likely having some of the similar topics come up later this year through some of your processes. So we're open to it, but just giving you the option.

Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. And I do really appreciate the question. I had, if the chair will allow, I have one additional question for staff. In my recollection, and I say recollection because We touch a lot of things on the council, but in my recollection, I don't remember having the opportunity to interact too much in the last four to five years with vision blueprint 2030. And that could be because we were in the middle of a giant comp plan update. So as you discussed, this is something that we can update in non-budget years, which is a general trend that the council is working toward on a lot of these policy documents. I did wonder how we can, have a piece of this document that does help us track where we're on. There's no like matrix in this document that helps us track. We are on track with this chapter. We are not on track with this chapter or the various policies therein. So I was looking for a little bit more of that. And so as I say this, if I am suggesting that I might be interested in another touch that that could be helpful for me to understand how we can use this as a tool along the way.

Thank you so much. Okay, it seems like there is interest in taking another touch on this to provide direction both for the document and for the general purpose of the document. I'm seeing nods from around the table. So I think we can work together to find a time for that.

Okay, and it sounds like specifically maybe a request for how... how this work intersects both with the CIP, the short-term work into that longer term and how we're tracking that over time is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, that's what I seem to be hearing too.

Jeff, did you have a...

I just want to make sure that there weren't any other discussion topics you'd like us to prepare for at that study session. If others had specific items they wanted.

Council President Stewart had her hand up again.

I'm not sure if there's... Yeah, just to prepare the staff as best we can. So if I might suggest maybe a deadline with a chance for council members to send in their questions and then we can schedule some additional time working with the various chairs or finding time in study session if that'll work for everyone. Thank you.

Yeah, no, that sounds great. How about this Friday? Does that work for everybody? Next Friday. Next Friday. Awesome. We will get our questions into you by next Friday and then work together to find a time to touch back on this document. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your work on this. I think we're going to move on to the next action item, which is the approval of the King County EMS Services Contracts. for the 2026 to 2032 King County EMS Levy, presented by Deputy Chief Whitney and Amy Moorhead of the Fire Department.

Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Amy is unfortunately not able to attend today. She's got prior engagements that she's involved in. I'm going to take the first agenda item and the second agenda item together, if that's okay. because they both kind of play together. These two agreements continue relationships between King County EMS and the Reb and Fire Department. The first agreement is the BLS core services agreement. This provides funding for us to support our BLS responses and equipment that we have that we use on the rigs. It equates out to about... JUST 2.5 MILLION, JUST OVER 2.5 MILLION ANNUALLY IN 2026 WITH AN ESCALATOR FOR THE DURATION OF THE CONTRACT, WHICH IS THROUGH THE EMS LEVY TIME PERIOD, 2026 THROUGH 2031. IT'S INCLUSIVE OF BLS SUPPORT, ALSO INCLUSIVE OF OUR MIH FUNDING AT ABOUT JUST UNDER $500,000 ANNUALLY, AND THEN CORE SERVICES MONEY, WHICH IS USED SPECIFICALLY FOR TRAINING EQUIPMENT TO ADVANCE THE SKILL SET OF THE BLS PROVIDERS. In conjunction with that, we have the ALS services contract. The ALS services contract represents about $16.2 million annually in 2026 with an escalator throughout the duration of the contract. This is for us to continue to provide the services for the entire northeast King County region throughout King County, so inclusive of Redmond, Kirkland, and Woodinville area, Duval, Carnation, and all the incorporated areas within those jurisdictions. The request to council is to move both of these to consent for June 2nd, 2026. I'll pause there and take questions on that before I move on.

Thank you. Any questions for my colleagues? Council Member Soni.

Thank you so much. My biggest concern here was that King County can stop this funding with just 30-day notice.

Yes, if we, if we're, the only way that that would be actuated is if we weren't representing the funds appropriately. This is a relationship we've had with King County since 2002, approximately 2002, for us to provide these services. Primarily, this was designed on the backs of the EMS levy, King County EMS levy that's voted on by the constituents throughout King County to provide advanced life support services for Over the years, as the levees expanded, we've been allowed to include BLS services also in this for support. So the only reason that we would be denied through King County in this relationship that we have established with them is if we were not providing that service, especially the ALS side, appropriately to the other jurisdictions around us that we're required to support for, we the provider group for.

Say for any reason this funding stops, we cannot stop our medical services and any of these, we have ambulances and everything. Do we have some kind of a contingency plan in place just in case for any of such unforeseen circumstance that may appear?

We would still continue to provide services to the City of Redmond and Fire District 34 in the same manner that we do today. If we were put in that position, there would be negotiation with the King County to retract the services that we provide back to those other jurisdictions that I talked about. Those services would be picked up by another agency or another provider group to provide that service to the rest of Northeast King County.

Thank you. Any other questions for my colleagues? I do have a question, which is... Maybe this is better suited for the county, but what is actually the difference between ALS and BLS and why are the two separated?

That's a great question. So basic life support is all of our, every single one of our employees, the firefighters that are on the fire engines and aid cars throughout the day that are uniformed, what we call uniformed employees, are basic life support providers. So they're EMTs. King County is set up in what we call a tiered response. Every single 911 call that comes in that has to do with emergency medical services gets a BLS unit sent to their location. So a fire engine aid car for somebody that falls and breaks their legs is an example. The advanced life support is the next level of training and provider. This provides services that could be provided in an emergency room to the same level of what could be provided in the emergency room but provided in the field. That's the paramedic units that you see on the street. They only go on the most critically ill or critically injured patients. They go on, don't hold me to this number, but about 10% of the call volumes that the BLS providers go on. So the example for this group to understand is that we provide services to that entire area that I talked about. It's approximately 250 square miles. And we do that with three medic units that provide service to that entire area in a timely manner, but they provide it with all those other jurisdictions. So they're spread out. They don't run out of Redmond. We have a unit at the end of Avondale in the Cottage Lake area. We have a unit in Kirkland and a unit in Redmond. And those three units follow the BLS units. So the BLS unit arrives first within approximately six minutes to the scene or less. They start care and stabilize the injury or illness. And then if needed, the advanced life support paramedic units come in behind them, arriving within somewhere between six and 10 minutes and support that care to the next level. Again, bringing essentially the emergency room to the individual's home or bedside to support their, stabilize their care and then be able to transport them to the hospital to definitive care in the hospital for treatment. Again, much smaller. So each medic unit covers about 10 fire stations, if that gives you kind of an indication of size and scope. And very purposefully done in that manner in that those paramedics that do that work are only going on the most sick and ill patients. So their acuity of the patients they see are critical. And every patient they touch, they're using that same muscle memory for those very sick patients instead of trying to spread out all the calls and transport everybody and those not having high frequency touches with critically ill patients.

That makes sense. Thank you. I saw Council Member Forsyth had her hand raised.

Thank you. Happy to support both of these and what a great overview and just wanted to say happy EMS week and please pass our thanks to the team.

Excellent. Thank you. It's fortuitous timing. Thanks. All right, secondly, next item, I'm gonna also combine these two because they come together as well.

So these- I think one thing, let me just, just for clarity, are there any objections to moving that both of the EMS contracts forward to consent on the June 2nd business meeting? Perfect.

And then go ahead and jump into it. Excellent. Thank you very much. I apologize for jumping in too fast. So next step up is I'm going to combine again items three and four because they do also go together. These are contracts, again, relationships that we have established. They're just time to renew these contracts for... We often call them wild land deployments, but it truly is all hazards. So think about the Oso event that happened several years ago. This is what we would consider an all-hazard event where we'd use these same contracts to deploy units to support that. The first is the Washington State Patrol Agreement. It's a state fire mobilization agreement that allows us for quick, rapid deployment support to jurisdictions that have been overwhelmed by an event, could be a wild land fire, could be events similar to Oso, where they have no longer units within their jurisdiction to support them or mutual aid units that can get there quickly enough. This provides the opportunity for other jurisdictions to quickly deploy into those areas and support that community for however long it may need. Uh, it provides us with, uh, uh, it really truly provides us with an opportunity to lean forward. We're paying it forward in the event that we have a big event that we need the support from other jurors or, uh, jurisdictions to come and support us. Uh, and it provides us with the resources to, um, fully be reimbursed from sending our units out to those agencies. The most recent example that I can give you that we used this agreement on was last year, a large fire in Cleom that we sent units that were on duty units, immediately sent them to Cleom to support that firefight. They were able to return home within 24 hours and back to this side of the state after DNR agreements were activated. The second contract, the number four item on the agenda, is the DNR contracts. So they work together. DNR contracts are for longer deployments. They're really affecting DNR land. They also give us the capability to send individuals that are part of incident management teams across state lines to support Oregon Alaska, Idaho, California as an example. This is not the deployment model that we used during the California ones. That's another agreement that we have in place that's under current contract, so it's okay. We don't have to touch it right now, but this really represents what we do in the state. Unless we have an individual that's on an emergency management team that we need to send out of state as part of a larger team, and that we get compensation for that individual too. I'll pause there. These are both agreements that are, again, we've had in the past. We're just renewing them. The first Washington State Patrol agreement is good through January of 2029. The DNR agreement will be good through July of 2031. And I'll stop there and take questions if there are any.

Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you, Deputy Chief, for all of that. That is wonderful. I love taking a collaborative approach because we never know when we're going to need some help, especially with as we've got more anomalies happening very frequently now, or more frequently than typical. The contract states available assets. So what safeguards do we have or have we been thinking about to ensure that Redmond remains

capable fully capable should we need something back home while we are mobilization is deployed yeah great question so first off we're not obligated under these contracts to send our units it just gives us the capability to provide the deployments if if we have resources available and we we judge that very closely we look at what the environment's like here we look at what our staffing models are and what's happening with staffing at the current time An example I'll give you right now is that we've already determined internally that we won't use, we wouldn't deploy during FIFA World Cup as an example just because we know the potential is with a higher population density in the area that our needs here may be greater than the benefit of sending people out to go fight fires in eastern Washington as an example. But we weigh that at every event, when an event's kicking up or we know something's happening, we look at what's the impact to us and what would we do here. And that can be tied to staffing. It can be tied to events, the weather events that are happening around us in the moment. It can also be tied to apparatus availability. So if we have a lot of vehicles that are out of service, as an example, we wouldn't send a vehicle out, one of our reserve vehicles out to do this event. We also have the recall capability. So when our units are out there, we don't like to do this, but if we had to, for some reason, if something came up during the time that they were deployed, if we needed them back, we can make that request and we would get those units back.

Great.

Thank you.

I saw Council Member Kritzer had her hand up.

Thank you. And I really appreciate that our firefighters can go and offer aid to others that need it, especially as Council Vice President mentioned, you know, we're seeing more intense wildfires in a lot of parts of our state and surrounding states as well, as well as other natural disasters that are happening, especially fueled by climate change. A couple questions. One is, So if there is injury or something that occurs that harms the health of our employees while they're on those jobs, can you clarify who is responsible in terms of supporting their care?

Yeah, so that responsibility still falls back to us as part of our organizational structure. It does not fall back to the other agencies that are involved, the communities that we're supporting, or the state of Washington. So they still fall under our benefit packages. They still fall under our obligation as far as OSHA coverage and those kinds of things. So this is a decision we make strategically to send them out to support these events, knowing that there's a potential that we would need the same in return from other jurisdictions to support us in a large event. But that's part of the risk that we take on.

And what do you estimate in terms of, because it also mentions about some equipment. So when we actually send some of our staff to be able to respond, Are they typically taking also our vehicles and all of our equipment as well, or are they accessing others' vehicles as well sometimes?

It can go both ways. So if we do send apparatus from within the city to these events, within the contract there's cost recovery associated with the vehicles that go out, and it's fairly significant. So it's reimbursable not only for the apparatus but some of the equipment that's on there. Even excluding all damage and anything that would happen to the vehicle just for the use of it for the duration of time that it's there. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that part of your question is that we can also deploy personnel only and we could deploy them in conjunction with Bellevue as an example or with the Eastside Fire and Rescue just to augment the crews that they're sending with their apparatus. there's not apparatus available out there that we would put our people in that doesn't belong to the city of Redmond other than in a partnership with an agency that was already sending a portion of a crew that included a driver and officer potentially, and we would send firefighters with them to support that firefight. And that's happened in the past both ways. We've taken on employees from Bellevue or Eastside Fire and Rescue, and there's been times when we've sent our employees with them on their apparatus.

Thank you.

I saw Council Member Soni had her hand.

This is just in continuation of what our Vice President Iwakamena asked. So when we are sending the resources, it's very basic questions. I'm assuming it's definitely going to be an overtime kind of a situation in these kinds of scenarios. Now, because we are getting it reimbursed for those, are they also covering for any of these overheads or do we have to assume that cost as the city?

So we get reimbursed for all the time that our individuals are gone. So, you know, it's a little bit complicated. So let me walk through this with you. Anytime that they're working that they're not scheduled to work, they're paid overtime while they're on the deployments. If it's hours that they're scheduled to work, they get paid their regular hours during that time they're on deployment. But the contracts cover anybody that's backfilling their positions. So if it's a day that they're scheduled to work, but they're deployed, they're getting paid their regular hours, but the state... covers the backfill for those individuals here in the seats that they would normally fill here. So the way it's set up and it's designed is to make sure that there's zero impact from a cost perspective to the agencies that are sending units out to the deployments. And they bill us, they pay us back at the rate of pay for the individual that is in the seat. So if it's a As an example, if it's a battalion chief with battalion chief rank and pay, they compensate us back at the pay for that battalion chief as opposed to a firefighter, if that makes sense.

Thank you so much, Deputy Chief. Just one question on my end. I'm looking at the fire mobilization interagency agreement with the Washington State Patrol right now. I'm looking at the time period when it's dated. It starts January 1st of this year and ends January 1st of 2029. So I'm just wondering, like, if something were to happen now or next week or before we would approve this on June 2nd, are we still covered?

We would be. They would allow us to do it. It would be a decision that we would make internally within the city before we sent the units out just to make sure that risk was okay with it. As an example, it would be okay with it. Washington State Patrol has been a great partner. We know that we would be compensated appropriately. This is, honestly, we should have had this before the council. We didn't realize that it had expired. We should have brought it to the council probably in October or November of last year.

Gotcha. Okay, cool. Thank you. Any more questions on these items? Wonderful. Well, any objection to moving both of these forward to consent on June 2nd? Wonderful. Thank you so much, Deputy Chief. Thank you very much. OUR NEXT ITEM IS AN INFORMATIONAL ITEM ON Q1 POLICE ACTIVITY FROM CHIEF LOWE. I SEE DEPUTY CHIEF COATES IS ALSO JOINING US.

GOOD AFTERNOON. WE'RE GOING TO GO THROUGH THE POLICE DEPARTMENT'S Q1 QUARTERLY REPORT. so the first slide is just tracking our dfr activity for the first quarter so far we're just a bit above 500 missions or call for service right now tracking as we would expect for the course of the year right now we're slightly up about a half a percent in total calls thus far 6664 versus 6631 When we look at our arrests, we're up just about 7 percent in arrests for this particular quarter this year as compared to last year, in part because we have our staffing numbers are continuing to improve, and so we have more officers out in the field making arrests. All the thefts are down just about 67 percent in this first quarter. RESIDENTIAL BURGERIES ARE DOWN JUST UNDER 65%, AND WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN IN THE PACKET IS THERE'S BOTH UP AND DOWN, BUT, AGAIN, IT'S THE FIRST QUARTER, SO IT'S NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF ANY SPECIFIC TREND ONE WAY OR THE OTHER BECAUSE IT'S, YOU KNOW, FAIRLY EARLY IN THE YEAR. SHOPLIFTS WE SEE ARE DOWN ABOUT 27%. TRAFFIC COLLISIONS ARE UP. Traffic collisions and traffic in general, as you know, is a concern and an issue for the city. So we're tracking the locations, I'll call the high frequency locations for traffic collisions and conducting emphasis patrols in those particular areas in an attempt to mitigate this increase in the traffic collisions. Property crime down about 42%. Violent crimes down 56%. When we look at our assaults, we're up about 18% on assaults and called out specifically in that slide and what we talked about from last year and continue to talk about is about 50% of our assault calls are domestic violence related. As I mentioned, we're looking to partner with a community-based organization to provide, I'll call it a co-response type of model or wraparound services once the officers arrive on scene and stabilize that call and that situation in an attempt to address that, I'll say this community concern and issue. And with that, I'm glad to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Chief. I see Councilmember Parsi has her hand raised.

Thank you so much for the presentation. I was wondering if you partner with any other departments when it comes to traffic collisions to make sure that if there is a systemic problems with the street designs or other kind of signage that may not be clear to address those underlying causes of collisions.

So from a department perspective, we do collaborate. We are participating with other agencies on the east side around some of the nuisance vehicle related issues such as a modified exhaust and those types of things as far as the design components and pieces of that if we believe that that is a contributing factor to it then we would work with our traffic engineers and other departments to look at that issue specifically guess i'll counsel president stewart next

Yeah, really quickly, I appreciate my colleague bringing up this topic. More of just a comment for my colleagues. This caught my attention as well. And come the budget season, we've accepted grant dollars to help with campaigns to reduce speeding and distraction. And this information right now is showing up as a crime stat. But when it comes to budget time, I look forward to being able to make some further investments in our safe streets for all action plan. We developed that so that we have the high priority list of needs around the city to also be able to fund the things that are going to keep people just a little bit safer on our roads. So I really appreciate the question and look forward to the more conversation later this year.

I think I saw council member Sony or was it? Okay. Uh,

My question is more geared towards the shoplifting. We know that a lot of small businesses already in Redmond are suffering because of the overall economy and then we are not able to fulfill all the vacant spaces. Shoplifting is going to further make it worse. Is there some kind of a strategy maybe that we can, are we putting together or should we put together to prevent some of these shoplifting? And is there any analysis done, like, you know, which specific areas are facing this most? Like, is it like Redmond Town Center, downtown area, or more towards the Overlake or other sites? So, you know, that analysis will be very helpful to take some corrective actions.

Yeah, so the shoplifting issue, both locally and regionally, involves more of our chain stores and big box stores. So organized retail theft is a systemic problem, not just here in the Pacific Northwest, but I'll say nationwide. So we do track that. We do work very closely with the loss prevention staff at said big box stores to I'll say both address and mitigate some of the issues we conduct specific I'll call it emphasis operations at some of those locations where officers are physically present in the security offices and we have officers available to I'll say react and respond immediately upon a theft occurring we don't see it much in our smaller mom-and-pop locations you know because those from a logistical perspective generally a smaller footprint they're able to engage with the customer when they you know come right in which is one of the prevention strategies but where we typically see it at are the you know the qfc's the targets those types of locations home depot etc thank you i think i saw council member kritzer next thank you um

Well, I also just want to note, so many of these rates have been going down. So just kudos and thank you to our police for the work that you're doing to be able to make a significant impact on shoplifting, property crime, auto thefts. One question I had about auto thefts, you mentioned that it is only a quarter worth of data, but compared to the previous years, it is significant decrease. So I'm just curious if you can share anything that you think has been working to be able to drive this decrease.

So there are a number of things and reasons. We've kind of seen, I'll say, this trend not just here. There are regional auto theft task force that exist. There are a number of individuals or crews that have been incarcerated as a result of that. License plate reader technology has been very helpful in the communities that still have it or had it because that would drive down both the auto theft and individuals knowing that If those tools are in place, those aren't the communities to go to. The other part of it is, as I said, some of the groups that were responsible over the last couple of years, I'll say have aged out. so they've now become adults, so there's actually consequences for the actions, because for about a two-year-ish period, they were juveniles, and so I'll say the system's approach to accountability towards juveniles was not, well, was nonexistent, whereas now, like I said, they're adults, so that contributes to it as well. So there's a multitude of factors.

Thank you. If the chair, one minute, just one other comment. On traffic collisions, my colleagues raised, one thing that I've just noticed from seeing some of the police reports is that some of the recent collisions, especially from kind of, have featured under, or young drivers. And so I would be interested if we have the data kind of demographically on traffic collisions to just get a sense of that and whether it's, this is something that's a trend, or if it just happens that some of the recent collisions that have made more of the postings have had young drivers, because if so, it might be that there's some sort of educational thing we could do or type of PSAs to be able to encourage safer driving.

Yes. And then as the council president pointed out, we do participate in our regional emphasis patrol. So about every month or every few months, there is a specific emphasis, clicker ticket, distracted driving, et cetera. So we do participate in that as well. But yes, we will look back at the demographic data from the traffic collisions and be able to provide an update as to I'll call it age ranges of the drivers involved.

Council Vice President Nova Camino.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Chief, for bringing this forward and for having it move from the read-only where it was as for informational so we could have a broader discussion. I appreciate it. I love seeing Redmond's numbers falling in line with the regional trends as well. knowing that it's also regional in addition to the work that we're doing here in Redmond. Going back to the traffic collisions, are we able to see, and forgive me if this dashboard exists or this data is already out there, where we can see where the traffic collisions are happening if they are in a concentrated area. I know 166th and 85th has come up several times recently as being an intersection of concern of folks heading north, going up Education Hill, and taking that left, and whether it's been pedestrians have historically been struck in that intersection, and multiple traffic collisions as well. But if there are other areas that we can kind of pinpoint and have a better understanding, does that information exist?

Yes.

Wonderful. Where can I find it?

So it would be on the overall crime map, and then we can actually provide a map of those locations. So, you know, I'll say not specifically, but kind of more holistically, a lot of the traffic collisions, you know, involve distracted driving. You know, speed is oftentimes a factor, but oftentimes it's... some level of distraction that occurs, and thus the emphasis patrols. Some of the things are when it comes down to, I'll call it street design and some of the infrastructure parts and pieces. I'll say that is generally very well done, so it's generally not like a street design that is necessarily the cause of a collision. It's always operator error of some sort. And so, but yes, we do have on the crime map and dashboard, the actual traffic collisions and locations.

Wonderful. Thank you, Deputy Chief. I saw that you kind of gave that Senate over. So thank you for that support.

We do have a, just to interject, we have a very detailed power BI map and it actually has a heat map that shows all the high collision locations within the city. So it's a great tool for us.

Wonderful. Would you be able to share that with council? I don't see why not. Wonderful. Thank you. And of course, we've also got the issue of, you know, we're a very quickly growing city. So by no means do we want to put, you know, planning under the bus, so to speak, with how things have been designed. And we're a growing city, especially within our TODs and as population is growing and our transportation behavior pattern shift. So thank you.

Council Member Parsi and just to know we are running a little bit behind on time. So I think I'm going to make this the last question if that's okay with Council Member Soni.

Quick question. I was curious, now we're mainly looking at reporting our incidents as a total count, but as we heard, the population of Redmen is growing. So I was curious, kind of not really asking for this, but just putting this out there, are we also taking a look at our crime rates per population here? with a lens of population, because we would, I would anticipate that we see a further decline in crime per population.

Yeah, so the standard is per 1,000 residents when crime rates are calculated. So yes, but unfortunately, like many things in government, updates move slow. So the actual population numbers that it's based on would not necessarily be the most current. It would probably go back to either census or a minimum of like two years behind. So we would be looking at our crime statistic numbers being calculated against probably somewhere between 76 and 79,000 as opposed to the closer to 83 plus that it actually is.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Chief Lowe, Deputy Chief Coats, and to the entire police department for the great work. Like Councilmember Kritzer noted, a lot of the crime is down. So thank you for your work. Next up, we have a ready update from Zach Huvener of the Executive Department.

So the council's okay. I also wanted to share that the chief might not know this because his traffic folks are on it, but TP&E as part of the Safer Streets Action Plan last two weeks ago kicked off its first safety task force meeting where we're looking and we're going to have an update for the Safer Streets, but it includes almost every single department. And they had a very healthy discussion about like crashes that we'd seen and where and design and what's needed. And so just wanted to let you know that That was part of the adoption, was to kick off that team, and they're planning on meeting about four times a year, or as needed, if we're seeing a huge uptick, but just wanted to let you know that had been kicked off.

All right, well, good evening, Council. Tonight's update covers three items for the Ready program monthly update. The Ready program administrator recruitment, the citywide Ready staff training rollout, and upcoming Pride events. The Ready Program Administrator Recruitment, and first off, I just want to thank council members who were able to find time and able to connect on the Ready Program as well as the Ready Program Administrator Recruitment process. For those who we weren't able to connect, the invitation is still out there, so we'd love to connect and we will find time if needed. The position was posted on April 28th. It closed on May 17th. We received 61 total applicants with 14 applications meeting the criteria for further review. Six candidates were then chosen for virtual screening meetings, which I started conducting yesterday and finished up today. Of those six, five applicants have been moved to staff panel interviews on Thursday and Friday of this week. We then have a community panel scheduled for Thursday, May 28th. For this community panel, we've invited six community-based organizations whose work directly serves communities that are historically marginalized or currently vulnerable in Redmond. The smaller panel size was intentional, allowing for meaningful time for each panelist, a fair experience for candidates, and time to debrief. We anticipate broader community engagement opportunities with our community-based organizations as the position is onboarded. The role of the community panel will, and while the final hiring decision will rest with the city, the input from our CBOs will directly inform the overall evaluation, particularly assessing candidate strengths, areas of concern, and overall readiness to engage authentically with Redmond's diverse communities. Evaluation of how well each candidate's experience and approach aligns with community engagement expectations, as well as experience and perspective on candidate readiness to advance in the process. FINALISTS WILL THEN MEET WITH THE DIRECTOR'S TEAM IN EARLY JUNE, ALONG WITH A FINAL INTERVIEW SCHEDULED WITH THE MAYOR AND COOs WITH AN OFFER ANTICIPATED SHORTLY THEREAFTER IN THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE. THIS TIMELINE IS DYNAMIC AND MAY FLEX AROUND COMMUNITY PARTNER AND CANDIDATE AVAILABILITY. Second, the ready rollout. So grounded in the ready strategic plan and informed by the independent 2025 organizational health and workplace equity assessment conducted by the edge advisory group. We are ready to launch our structured citywide rollout to bring approximately 800 FTEs or 800 employees through an in-person half day training by year's end. The training itself will be mandatory for all staff and facilitated by Redmond staff. Those sessions will begin in June, and we're offering a range of dates and times to accommodate different shifts and schedules, and we'll continue adding sessions throughout the year. The content of this particular training will cover respect and organizational health, how trust, clear purpose, and inclusion improve both work outcomes and the employee experience. Respect versus being nice, the distinction illustrated through real workplace scenarios. Recognizing and mitigating bias with practical skills for interrupting unconscious bias at the individual, team, and organizational wide level. as well as a framework for connecting beliefs, behaviors, and results that gives staff shared language to address bias and disrespect without blame. This training and citywide communication will be sent out later this week. And this is really the first step in our journey of Ready. And so there will be a short video that will be prepared for staff that kind of explains the narrative arc of where we have been, where we're at currently, and where we're going in our Ready journey. Again, this is the first step, and I will be using the Ready strategic plan as kind of our true north as we implement and roll out our Ready program. And then last update, joining me is Planning and Community Development Deputy Director, Serafie Allen, just in case there are any questions. But as Serafie and other staff have been instrumental in putting together some of our events for Pride, it's June before we know it. And so just to highlight a few things, we have our Pride flag raising and proclamation on Monday, June 1st, 9 to 9.30 at the City Hall roundabout. We also will have a staff only resiliency together with Pride event on Tuesday, June 2nd. focusing on preparedness and safety workshop through an LGBTQ plus lens. The Parks Department has a rainbow bingo on Friday, June 5th, 6.30 to 8.30 at the Redmond Senior and Community Center. Last year this sold out, so this year I know that the Parks team increased those spots and have the ability to increase for a little bit more. As of this morning, there were still 90 spots available, so if people are interested, please go online to register. And then lastly, we have our Pride Promenade in the park, which is at Farrell McWhorter. This is a free event, but we do encourage registration. That is on Saturday, June 6th from 2 to 3.30 p.m. And with that, happy to open it up to any questions.

Thank you, Zach. Any questions? Council President Stewart.

Thank you so much. Really glad to see all of this moving forward. And big thanks to the community panel who will be involved in this hiring. I already have purchased my tickets for Drag Bingo and encourage everyone to come. It's a ton of fun. Glad to see in this report the references to our organizational health assessment from 2025. That was the baseline measure of where the city is as we begin this next phase of our evolution. And for my part, I just want to say that I welcome a budget offer later this year to make sure that we're continuing to measure our progress in the next biennium. Thank you.

Council Member Percy.

I was wondering, so I recently had an opportunity to have a conversation with our community and they mentioned that it would be helpful for them to know whether or not police would be present at any of the events. Some mentioned that police presence would be encouraged and they would like to see it because they would like to see a more open collaboration with the police and some mentioned that it would be just good for them to kind of have a heads up about that. So if that's an opportunity to include that note on the event page, that would be helpful for the community. I also wanted to ask you about hate crimes and kind of priority of that with Ready program. And I am seeing elevated hate crime happening to sensitive communities in our neighboring cities. And that is a rising concern for me. And actually, we didn't go over that over police report either. But I would love to see if there's things that we can do to be pro to be proactive in this area.

Any other questions from my colleagues?

Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much, Zach, for the work, and we look forward to hearing the next update from you. Thank you. Yeah. The next item is information on the Community Stability Fund presented by Deputy Director Hari Dhanara of the Finance Department.

Good evening, Council. I'm here today to provide some information, financial overview on the Community Stability Fund that was requested by Council last week at FAC committee meeting. Joining me are Planning Deputy Director Sarah Fialan and Human Services Manager Brooke Buckingham to answer any questions in regards to expenditures and potential uses for the fund in future. In 25-26 budget, I'm sure all of you are aware of it, we have budgeted about 1.4 million for the community stability fund, out of which we have spent about 250 with the remaining balance of 1.15 million. This is all currently in the Human Services Fund, all the 1.15 million, and I will hand it over to either Serafie or Brooke, I don't know who is, I will hand it over to Serafie to answer any questions in regards to the expenditures to date and also potential uses of this funding for future.

THANK YOU. AS STATED, ABOUT $250,000 HAS BEEN SPENT, WHICH WE APPRECIATE THE COUNCIL HELPING IDENTIFY THAT. I WANT TO GIVE A SHOUT OUT TO THE HUMAN SERVICES TEAM FOR GETTING THAT QUICKLY IDENTIFIED AND ALLOCATED. As you may recall, part of the reason for identifying this from the council was to identify or keep options open for backfilling any potential cuts as we had a new administration. I cannot believe that that was only that long ago. And being able to have things available and consider prioritizing. So staff have been monitoring that and have options for one-time expenditures as needed and as become available. As we go through kind of this next budgeting cycle thinking about how again that might best be utilized So would be open to hear any further questions the council might have or if you'd like to hear more information about What the Human Services staff has identified Thank you any questions for my colleagues councilmember Kritzer

Thank you. So what I'm hearing is that of the $1.4 million that we budgeted, $250,000 has been spent this biennium, but we did budget it for this biennium. So I guess I am very interested in us having a conversation about how we spend it to be able to support our community now and hearing both the recommendations you have. I have a couple thoughts on things that I've heard from community as well. In addition to hearing feedback from the process that we did last year to do the $250,000 allocation and where we might see opportunity even with the organizations we supported there to go further in supporting the work they're doing. Sure.

Go ahead, Brooke. Yes, so we have been thinking about this and kind of trying to wait and see, and now we're coming to the end of this biennium. But some of the guiding principles, when we think about one-time funding, we do want to be mindful of that and not allocating dollars that will essentially show up services that we're going to have to scale down at the end of the year. So we just did acknowledge that really the backfilling federal cuts is not sustainable, nor sustainable. With 1.4 million even, it would just be a drop in the bucket. So that is something that we've been thinking about. We recognize that there are opportunities to mitigate some of the current financial challenges that our agencies are experiencing with the increased cost. So we have kind of three buckets, and I'll just kind of briefly touch on those and be mindful of time. and happy to come back and share this or have more conversation about some of these ideas. But the three buckets or categories are build organizational capacity and resilience. So this could be a RFP process to identify kind of one-time expenses such as technology, staff training, or development support. We need strong infrastructure for a nonprofit to be able to deliver services. So this would just be really building that support. And in that same bucket, grants to nonprofits that have incurred significant increased costs associated with the purchase of food and other essential needs. So this would be like food banks, essentials first for hygiene supplies. or KidVantage that purchases baby supplies. So those are just examples. And then community disability, we know that rental assistance, financial assistance continues to be a huge need, especially as we're seeing price of gas increase and other costs increase for community members. And finally, nonprofit capital needs, and that could be assessing any maintenance, repair, or renovation needs for a nonprofit. So some of these are just kind of preliminary ideas. Some may require further research or guidance from council on what you might want to prioritize, but those are kind of the three buckets.

And I'll just add, Brooke, too, that being mindful of the staff capacity it takes to administer the dollars, too, and wanting to make sure we can find things that are truly one-time in nature and that help don't create, I would say, extra workload both internally but also for our partners as well. So running another RFP process means they also are applying for another amount of dollars and those kinds of things, and that's one of the reasons why us being able to work with Kirkland at the time in January to be able to add on to funds that they already had was super beneficial in terms of the kind of community response. So just wanted to add that as well.

Thank you. Any other questions? Council Member Forsyth.

I'll just weigh in with my thoughts of when we established this, it was really to provide direct support to community members. So of those buckets, I see food assistance and housing stability assistance as meeting those those goals. One that I didn't hear would be legal support as something that we've been seeing growing demand for. So that would be another one I'd be interested in having this funds go towards. Thanks.

I see Council Member Kritzer.

I just wanted to add, I think many of us received a message in the last week from Pride Across the Bridge in light of the really tragic murder of Juniper Blessing, and my thoughts are with her family. And I think part of the call to action that we have heard from our LGBTQIA community has been to be able to help support ways to promote resilience and stand with them as well. And I think one of the things that actually Pride Across the Bridge raised to me was potentially being able to support a new kind of program called the Rainbow Resilience Network, which I can share more with the council about. But that's just an example of something where I could see if we had some sort of nonprofit grant round and we might be able to open up since the last one I think was really focused on our immigrant asylum-seeking communities, that we might be able to open it to a variety of folks that are in vulnerable populations right now and feeling at risk. So we'd love to be able to talk about that as well.

I see Council Member Parsi, and then just as a note, it is 528. We have one five-minute item after this.

Plus one to providing grants to local nonprofits. And also I wanted to add one more item of medical providing cost coverage for medical fees would be really helpful if that's an opportunity.

Then I just had one other item, which is to touch on Deputy Director Allen's point about staff capacity. I know the $250,000 the council allocated of this fund in September of last year went to organizations that were already being funded, uh, with human services dollars. And does that, uh, if we, if we do that, does that generally help to reduce, um, the time to like do an RFP or does that help with staff capacity? If, cause I know the human services, um, commission already funds like a potpourri of organizations.

Are you asking if it's not as much labor intensive if we're funding existing organizations? Yes. Yes and no. So we're in RFP process right now, working with our commission to allocate 2728 funding. So some of these needs are identified for ongoing support. there is staff time associated with the many contracts if there is something specific that we're asking the agency to share with us about how might they spend a certain amount of money so yes existing relationships is kind of helpful but there still is some time associated with

See, wonderful. Any other questions, brief questions on this? I'm not seeing any. Thank you so much for, oh, I missed Council President Stewart.

That's okay, I'll be quick. Thank you. If the staff are able, and via email is completely fine, it would be interesting, again, if able, I don't know if we've had the reports back, but if we are able to see of the housing stability, legal services, and food security that was mentioned by Council Member Forsyth, Of dollars we have previously funded to organizations in those three buckets, have those dollars been expended? Are those organizations organizations that could take on new money and spend new money back in the community within the year? I'm interested in that. But again, a quick email response would be perfectly suffice. Thanks.

Awesome. Thank you so much for this info. Yeah, if we could follow up on those items, that would be that would be fantastic.

Yep, we can follow up with an email and share with you the broad buckets we shared and add in your notes that you added as well. So appreciate the direction. Thank you.

Thanks. The last item is the 2025 legislative conformance, business improvement and fences zoning code amendments presented by Lauren Alpert and Jeff Churchill of the planning department.

Okay, and while they sit down, I'll say last item. Lauren Alper is here to brief the committee on a small change to the Redmond Zoning Code amendments that council reviewed in the study session on April 28th and approved for consent on June 2nd. So I will turn it over to Lauren to review them.

Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. As Serafine mentioned, the council concluded its review of this package and its amendments on April 28th study session. The package contains amendments for the 2025 legislative conformance, business code improvements, and fences and retaining walls. Since then, the Department of Commerce has issued revised guidance concerning administrative lot splits and city staff concurrently at the same time has been talking to builders on this topic. So staff is recommending revising the proposed 2174030D2H as shown in your packet to clarify that lots created through this lot splitting process may be eligible for further subdivision through another process. so this reading is consistent with the commerce guidance and industry interpretation and just as a reminder this administrative lot splitting is a new subdivision process that's mandated by the state enacting these provisions until local code is required and so i just want to thank you for the opportunity to bring this change to you prior to your plan vote on june 2nd and i'm happy to answer any questions

Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you so much for taking advantage of the opportunity while we've got the code open. And I know it's increasingly common for us to be trying to build a ship while the materials are changing, or whatever your metaphor of choice is. My question is, in the revised language, lots could further be split, but not by the prescribed lot splitting process, but by these other processes. Could you just enumerate, what are those other kinds of processes that would apply in this case? I'm gonna turn it to Jeff.

So that'd be short subdivisions, subdivisions would be the most common.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Any other questions from my colleagues? I don't see any. Awesome. Are we good to move this forward to consent on June 2nd? Perfect. Well, thank you so much for this info and for moving quickly as well. Is there anything else for the good of the order? Awesome. Well, we've reached the end of our agenda and this meeting is adjourned.