City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Finance Administration and Communications Committee of the whole of the Redmond City Council on July 14th, commencing at 4.30 p.m. All council members are in attendance. We have seven items on our agenda. The first item on the agenda is the adoption of an ordinance for the 2025 to 2026 budget adjustment number seven. I'll turn it over to our finance director, Kelly Cochran, to introduce it.

Good afternoon. We are here with one of our recurring sort of clean up budget adjustments and Haley Zurcher is here to help walk you through some of the items there. We do need some direction when it comes to one of the items that's included on the memo for a capital project. We're a little out of sequence and Public Works will be explaining more about that project to you next week. So we just need to have some direction at the end of this meeting if you'd like us to keep that adjustment included or if you'd like us to hold off until after you've heard about it. So I'll hand it over to Haley and she'll walk you through what is included in the adjustment.

Good afternoon. As Kelly mentioned, this is one of our regular adjustments. So the adjustments you're seeing in front of you mostly are for new revenues related to grants that you have already seen come through or reimbursements for smaller projects throughout the city. The project in question that is a little bit out of sequence is the downtown Redmond Link RCC landscaping improvements. So I just didn't want there to be any confusion that will be explained in more detail at the quarterly CIP update next week. THIS ADJUSTMENT IS AUTHORIZING THE TRANSFER OF SOME RENTAL INCOME THAT IS ELIGIBLE FOR THIS PROJECT, SO WE JUST WANTED TO GET THE TRANSFER ON THE BOOKS. IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS PROJECT OR IF WE WANT TO PULL THIS OFF, WE CAN CERTAINLY WAIT UNTIL OUR NEXT BUDGET ADJUSTMENT, BUT JUST WANTED TO GET THAT AUTHORITY FOR THE TRANSFER. Everything else should be pretty business as usual, so I will hand it over to see if anyone has questions.

Thank you. So just to understand, we will hear at the Committee of the Whole about that item, or it'll be at the business meeting in which we would have already approved the item.

It will be at the business meeting, so I understand that that's a little, we don't try to sequence it that way, so I'm happy to pull this off and we can bring it forward to the next, for the next adjustment.

Council members, Council Member Percy.

Would you be able to elaborate what would be the pros and cons of keeping it or not?

Yeah so I mean if we were to keep it on here and authorize the transfer that just authorizes the budget authority of moving the money from one fund to another if we were to pull it off we would just go ahead and bring it forward again and and and you approve the project later we would bring this transfer forward again at our next adjustment so the alternative to is if we.

if we get the budget authority and we budget the transfer but later get direction that the project isn't moving forward we do not have to book the transfer it's just the budgeting of the transfer council president stewart uh thank you so much for my part it does sound like we need a little bit more information on this than we're able to probably get through in the long agenda we have for this committee um so that's my take on that question additionally i just wanted to comment We're gonna be talking about one of the city's priorities a few different ways tonight, and that is housing and producing more affordable housing. So I wanted to make sure that the public was aware in this budget adjustment, we've included our acceptance of a connecting housing to infrastructure project. This is in support of our partners at Bellwether who are producing 330 units of deeply affordable housing in the Overlake neighborhood. And I'm glad to see that Redmond continues to be a great partner to that project. Thank you.

Council Vice President.

Thank you chair i'm really great to have you here. Going back to Council member percy's question I shared the same one, but I still wasn't hearing like I understand we either go forward with it, and then we can transfer the funds or we just wait, but what I didn't hear from myself was. Okay, so then what is the pro if we go ahead and we transfer those funds? What advantage do we then have of that? And if we were to wait, then what would be any potential loss possibility, opportunity cost? What would be the pros of cons of both if we move the funds or if we wait until the next time?

Yeah, I mean, this really is a timing issue. I think when I brought this forward and put together the memo, I hadn't realized that it hadn't gone through to you all yet. So it's really, I put it on here so we wouldn't forget about it, and then when I realized that it hadn't come forward to you all yet with the update, It was too late to pull it off the memo. So we are if we if we wait, we won't lose any opportunity because I do plan to come forward again for a budget adjustment at the end of the year for one final cleanup for the biennium.

Council Member Forsyth.

That was my question. So thank you.

Great, so to recap, should we decide to wait on doing this until after we have learned more about the item? It wouldn't actually impede the item, it would just be that we will do our accounting for that within our budget adjustment later, is that correct? That's correct. Great, so council members, I guess with a show of thumbs, who is supportive of including that item in this budget adjustment? Okay, it looks like we do want to wait and spend the time to learn about it before we include it in a budget adjustment. I would agree with the consensus. So if you can take that off. Does anyone have any other concerns about anything else that's in this budget adjustment? And thanks for the call out, Council President, on the CHIP item. All right, not seeing any, then is there any objection of moving this minus that one item to consent on July 21st? All right, let's move ahead then. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the approval of pre-membership in the Washington City's Insurance Authority, WCIA, and the pre-membership interlocal agreement. And we'll have Kelly Cochran introduce this item again.

Yes, thank you. So for those that were on council a couple of years ago, you may recall sort of a jarring renewal experience for us. We had had a large claim, and during renewal, landed with an insurance provider that was sort of outside of our norm. It's a smaller agency, and it was much more costly for us at that time. but because of the large claim, it really was sort of the best situation that we could put ourselves in. Since that time, during each renewal, I have Kelly Shih here. She is our program manager in charge of risk management. We've been looking for opportunities not only to help reduce our costs but also to increase the services that are available to the city through our providers not only in terms of the coverage but in terms of programs that they provide to us that help us to be more proactive in things like safety or preventative measures that we can be taking during instruction classes and things like that. During this last renewal period for us is when we learned that we are eligible to join WCIA, which is

Did I say that right?

Yes. That many of our neighboring jurisdictions belong to, and Kelly has spent the last few months researching what impact that would have on us programmatically, what would the cost impacts be, and how would we want to move forward? It's our feeling at this time, given our current situation in comparison to our current provider, that this is a recommendation that we would like Council to consider in terms of moving forward with WCIA when it comes time for our renewal. We do have an opportunity to do a pre-membership with WCIA and sort of get oriented to the programs that they have, get things started before we actually become a member. That, of course, is interest to us. in terms of getting things started and being able to really hit the ground running after the renewal period and get some of those programs addressed, especially out at the MOC or where people are dealing with safety issues more regularly. But there is a risk of that if we determine that we don't want to move forward, we would need to pay around, I think it's about $500,000 for the period of time that they were covering us. But we wanted to kind of not only make council aware of this opportunity and recommendation before it's sort of time to make it, but also have an opportunity to weigh in on whether we explore a little more before we pull the trigger. I have Kelly here. She's going to provide you with an overview of some of the highlights of programs and resources that WCIA offers, and then we'll touch it.

Good afternoon, Council. I'm Kelly Shee, a program manager in finance, supporting our risk management program. yeah just to go off of what director cochran talked about um just this past like year and a half i've spent time researching wcia as that is one of the other main insurance models that is a good fit for our city and a lot of our neighboring jurisdictions are already members of it and i if you look in your packet there's just a huge list of the jurisdictions of similar size and similar operational complexities that are a good match for the city of Redmond. I have the deputy director, Rob Roscoe, he's on the call with us too from WCIA, and he's been great just informing me of all that WCIA has to offer. And during this pre-membership time too, He is more than willing to come and meet with council to talk about all the ways they can help support the city and kind of develop our risk program. They can also meet with department heads just to highlight some things just of the benefits of joining this larger risk pool. It's just like alignment with other regional cities and mutual aid partners, centralized comprehensive coverage. Currently we have a multi-entity carrier-based coverage. This one is a big pool that can cover our, you know, the biggest pieces of general liability. They also manage, they can also help support our property and vehicle insurance. And yeah, they just have a lot more risk, robust risk management and prevention control support. I think the prevention controls is a really big need too right now, especially as the city is growing and just there's no cap on these types of claims and compensatory damages. So prevention is really important, I think. And yeah, they have a lot of benefits and trainings regarding like law enforcement and just overall enhanced support for like public works and our maintenance and operations. Any questions?

Thank you. Council Member Procrea.

Thank you for your work on this. I was trying to look into what a number of our neighboring jurisdictions have done as well. And I was wondering if we had, there's a lot of comparison in here between WCIA and our current insurance mechanism. I was wondering if we had considered the WSIA, the Washington Self-Insurers Association, I'm looking at the member cities in the state of Washington. They largely consist of bigger cities like Bellevue, Kent, Spokane, Tacoma, but also cities that are comparable in size to Redmond like Auburn, Puyallup, which is smaller than Redmond. I'm just wondering if we considered this as another alternative.

Okay, I think I know why that may not, and luckily, Rob, he turned on his camera. I think he can explain this much better because that might be a slightly different thing than what we're looking at.

Yeah, actually, that is for workers' compensation. That is not for property or casualty insurance coverage, WSIA. So that's for those entities that self-insure for workers' comp. Thank you so much. Because the cities you mentioned are members of WCI, like Puyallup and Auburn.

Thank you, and good to have you here virtually with us, Mr. Roscoe. Other questions?

Council Member Soni.

Thank you so much. I have a question for the trial period. Do we know if there are any performance metrics that we are going to use during this trial period to find out if it is effective? And because we are not going to process any actual claims, then how are we going to measure

Yeah, so a huge one for me would be response time. So currently with our current structure, we kind of are kind of with a more boutique, I guess, insurance broker. So when I need support or ask questions and need adjuster assignment for these claims, it can take a while just because they kind of have only a handful of staff versus WCIA is just a lot more well-equipped and they have bigger teams to help support us. I would have a designated like risk team consultant and so they could still answer all my questions like even my current response times with our current structure can take a couple of days if I'm lucky, and then it does require a lot of follow-up. During this time, I spoke with other neighboring cities like Bothell, Issaquah, Sammamish, and they love WCA. They say they never struggle with response times or getting answer and support. As you can see, I'm just a person of one, and there's a lot of claims and stuff coming in, so I really do need kind of that outside support to help provide answers of kind of like how should I respond, what are the next steps? So I think response time is a huge one. The training resources I think we can use as a metric We're currently kind of very limited I think WCA has a huge library of all kinds of things and just the way their systems work and Their software is of what we could access Those are my two.

Yeah Thank you Sure, quick follow-up.

Yeah, in terms of the customer satisfaction, are they going to provide any specific metrics? My only concern is because there are no actual transactions that are going to be done. So when you're talking about the response time, it's like it is on the actual transaction that will be processed or based on, or it is more to do a research and picking up some of the cases with them and then putting up some of this data?

Yeah, I think, so with risk management, it's not so much transactional, right? It's a lot more of like the support we provide the community, how we re... like how we're supposed to respond to them, how we know what are the next steps and what we kind of need, what data we need to gather and like just guidance of how to handle the management of the claim. So that's kind of like, that's really a lot of my interaction. It's not so much transactional, it's more so from like a community support and yeah, and direction and guidance.

Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. So really interested in the element of legal services in this contract. That was new to me and I really much appreciate that. Interested to know if you anticipate cost savings due to that being part of this and if that was evaluated in the

attachment f that we've seen yeah um definitely and rob has said that their pre-defense support is huge and that's a huge benefit of joining wcia and it's included once we become a member i do anticipate a lot of savings especially because right now right we do have our city attorney and i do work with her a lot but there is a lot of times we do have to assign it to outside counsel and those billings

go high really fast even just in all this pre-litigation stuff so having that pre-defense support is going to save us a lot interested to see if we pass this maybe a year out what that cost savings looked like council president stewart thank you so much i appreciate the staff bringing this forward especially for those of us who were here the last time we had a change in it um in our carrier and it was not a fun experience not something we CHOSE TO TAKE ON. I DO HAVE A QUESTION THAT IS A LITTLE BIT MAYBE IN THE VEIN OF MY COLLEAGUE COUNCILMEMBER PROCRIA WHICH IS ABOUT THE ALTERNATIVES. SO IN THIS PACKET MATERIAL AND IN THE CONVERSATION TODAY WE'VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT THE ONE PROPOSED Choice that is being offered but I I will admit that this came a little bit out of the blue in that we were shopping around right now and the materials were Pretty clear that if council doesn't move forward We have about a hundred and thirty days to to shop around in a way that wouldn't benefit the city So I'd love to hear about some of the other alternatives It doesn't sound like though the one that councilmember Procrea brought up was maybe the right fit but are there other opportunities that we evaluated and ruled out or was this the only option that we evaluated?

Yeah. So honestly, it's not necessarily that we were shopping around. I think just as I've been in this role almost two years, I've just seen the limitations of our current insurance structure and just being supported by a much smaller risk pool. And actually in that September meeting a few years ago, WCIA was brought up and actually it was mentioned as like this is one of the bigger pools that a lot of our neighboring jurisdictions of similar size are a part of. I just think staff was different maybe at that time and just didn't go into researching, because it does take time to understand if this is a good fit for us. But there aren't necessarily a lot of And I remember at that meeting, this one was mentioned as one of the, like a really good option. I think just at that time there wasn't enough time to research and gather all the data to make that choice.

Yeah, I would also say that if council doesn't wanna move forward with this, we would renew with our current provider. If they've provided us with service, we are certainly getting by. We are managing our risks. So there's not a possibility of us having to make another quick decision later down the line. We would stay with our current provider. During the renewal period, we have not seen a lot of options to choose from. If anything, it is sort of for less cost, you can have less coverage. And that's sort of the opposite direction that we want to be going.

Thank you. I appreciate the follow-up, and that characterization is so starkly different than what we got in our prep materials, and I wanted to make sure that that was made aware of how we were able to prepare for the conversation today. Just to recap, it is more coverage options at a slightly lower price than we currently pay, correct? So that is probably the bottom line for a lot of folks. So I do in the end support moving forward with the pre-membership model. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other questions, I'll just ask my quick question on, so just to clarify with the pre-membership, we wouldn't be paying double, we wouldn't be paying for this and also paying our current insurance

we would have to pay if we ended up not going forward to back pay and that would be kind of double payment is that right that's correct okay no okay rob shaking his head no mr roscoe go ahead thank you there is no cost for pre-membership other than if you utilize services like training and other different consults that we would then charge just for the training the cost for that training or that consult. So it could be like a $250 fee or a $500 fee, depending upon the resources that we would provide the city during the pre-membership time period. But there is no charge per se for pre-membership. It's just a way for us to educate the staff and provide those resources to them before they become a member.

Great. What was the $500,000 number that you mentioned then?

I believe we thought there was a cost if we, for the pre-membership, if we did not move forward with membership.

Right, so if, okay, so if we do the pre-membership and then we decide not to join WCIA, we will be billed for like any services we did utilize. Like say I did want to use these trainings and I distributed some. However, if we do the pre-membership and we do decide to move forward with full membership, then it's, there's no charge.

If I understand you correctly, Mr. Roscoe, it's not actually $500,000. It would just be the cost of whatever services we used?

Correct. There is no $500,000 upfront charge or any type of charge that we would back bill other than for services like the training. Let's say, for instance, we went out there and did a three-hour anti-harassment training, and we would normally bill non-members $500 for that training. That's what we would then ultimately end up charging you as a non-member. But if you become a member, obviously there's no fee.

Got it. Thank you so much. Of course. That helps with my questions because it seems like it's actually pretty lower risk to enter into the pre-agreement. Yeah. Council Member Parsi?

If you become a member, do we kind of get a refund for the money that we spent during the trial or is that kind of money spent?

So if we become a member, we won't have to pay anything for this pre-membership. Yeah, like this pre-membership thing that we're going with is really just to kind of ease council's comfort in this transition if we potentially join a different risk pool, right? That's why we're approaching it in two phases. As a lower risk pre-membership, you know, it's just a couple months. We're not agreeing to be a member of the pool. We can test it out and see if it's a good fit and if we see this improvement in support and risk management. And then, you know, if not, because other cities, when they join, they just join full membership because they've heard so many great things about it. But this one, we understand insurance has kind of been a tricky transition, so we're just trying to soften the transition as much as possible.

Thank you so much. Oh, Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. How would we know, how would Council be made aware if we're not a good fit? And what would constitute as not a good fit, other than very, very obvious things, but on paper, it looks as though this is a good fit. So what would be something that would indicate that we're not? And then how would Council... be brought up to speed and notified on that.

So are you saying as if like, so WCIA has already like voted that city of Redmond is a good fit. That's why the interlocal agreement, they've actually already signed off. It's really up to us if we want to join the pre-membership. WCIA has already signed off on that. So they've already had a discussion at their board level that Redmond would be a good fit. Really, it's up to us at this point if we like WCA and think it's a good fit for Redmond. My question still stands.

So we would be utilizing customer response support for the program, the trainings that we're able to get access to. So really, we'll be able to judge on what we're able to experience during that time. It's not going to give us a full understanding, just to start.

And then the part two is then if we decide, if staff decides that Redmond is not a good fit, for WAIC, then how will council be notified?

We will be at FAC in November at the latest for our normal check-in on renewal. If anything's going sideways, we would let you know before that. But November would be sort of when we would bring in the new renewal packet forward. Thank you. Yeah.

Thank you. Well, I'm going to move us to given some direction on this. Does anyone have concerns about putting this on consent on August 3?

All right.

Thank you. So we'll put that on consent. Thank you very much. And thank you, Mr. Roscoe for joining us. And we'll move on to the next item on our agenda, which is budget process update, long range financial strategy, fiscal policies, budget ground rules and communications and engagement plan.

I'll try to make this quick so we can catch up on the agenda. So the first couple of items, long range financial strategy and the fiscal policies, we sent yesterday the updated matrix so you could see the responses that we've provided, edits that have been made, as well as the items that we've identified for discussion at the study session. Those items sort of narrow down into about six different topics. So if you take a look at that, have any concerns or feel that you want to add something for discussion that night, please let me know or our FAC chair, council member Kritzer know. We are gearing up for that presentation meeting with council leadership on Thursday to go over the presentation and make sure that It meets expectations and we feel like we can provide all council kind of the context needed in order to participate in some of that decision making. We've also attached an update to our community engagement plan as well as our holistic plan. Two things coming up in the near future is conversations with our boards and commissions to get their feedback on the direction we're headed with our outcome maps and measures. We are also then meeting with the CBOs. There are a couple of sessions that Deputy Director Hooverner as well as Deputy Director Nara are working to put together and that is coming together nicely and will be happening soon. If the budget questionnaire is also going live and you will see many of us from the budget team at Derby Days in the booth meeting with folks and having conversations about what's at the top of their mind. So that's kind of our update on those items. Really wanted to make sure that there was enough time to review the council ground rules and get enough direction for us to move that forward to consent next week if council is comfortable.

Council Member Percy.

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing the materials. Because it was sent on a Monday, I didn't have the time to read it yet. And I suspect that maybe other council members may not have had the time. So I don't know if it's possible for us to have a little bit more time to absorb the material and prepare. And the second concern that I had was that the attachments were shared with the council through email. I would really love to make sure that we have public transparency and the documents are available to the public. So do we have an opportunity to make these documents public?

They are public. They're available on the FAC agenda. So people can dig down in there, yeah.

Yeah, we'll double check that those get posted if there's any that were sent that aren't yet up on the site. Thank you so much, Council Member Percy. I will also note, just to double down specifically on preparation for study session, is just since Council Members may not have had time to review, if you can look through the matrix, anything that says for study session is going to be included. If it doesn't say for study session, then I think the assumption is either it says your edit was made or gives an answer to a question that someone might have asked and some of it was edits and some was questions. If you see something that doesn't say will be addressed in the study session but you think it should be, then you can either raise it now or you can email Director Cochran and we can integrate that into what we discuss at the study session. But can you give us a time by which council members should do so? If they could do it, I guess, because we're going to review on Thursday.

We will be reviewing on Thursday. And so hopefully, you know, our goal is to get everything that we can included in the packet. But if you catch something afterwards, I, you know, I'm not going to say no. We'll figure out how to make that work.

So let's say if everyone can send by Thursday morning, if you can just take a look through and if there's anything that you really feel needs to be in there that isn't already doesn't already say for study session, that would be really helpful. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. We kind of have three topics here. I'll make comments on just two of them, maybe to kick us off. So first on the fiscal policies and long-range policies and the matrix, and I do appreciate the concern around timing and can appreciate that a lot as a working professional that it takes a little bit of time to review all of these materials. When I had the opportunity to go through the matrix, item 17 on the long-range financial policies, which is regarding the setup for the civics results team and public participation. I think we could triangulate that a little bit with the community engagement conversation that's also in these materials. So I would like that item to come back for the study session. And then coming to the ground rules.

Can I pause there? I was going to do an intro on ground rules.

Oh, sure, absolutely. That's my feedback on the policies.

My apologies, Chair. Oh, that's all right. I just wanted to make sure that we looped on the first two items before we got to the ground rules, and then I'll call on you. But thank you very much. Are there any other items that people right now want to call out for the long-range financial strategy or the fiscal policies? Okay, great. And I would agree on number 17, so we'll add that one in for sure. Absolutely. So just a note on the budget ground rules and then I'll open it up for any feedback that anyone else has. I'll just note two things or the couple of things that changed since the last time the council saw this. The last time we didn't have the correct dates and have it updated because we had used the draft from the previous time. The other two main things that we changed was that we added on meeting length. Instead of saying up to maximum three hours, we said budget review meetings will run between two to three hours. So hopefully we all have the expectation. The goal is somewhere around two hours, but we won't go beyond three hours without a majority of councils supporting extending the meeting. And then we also, in Section 5, added specifically on Item C an extra sentence making it clear that if there's a new proposal and we want it to be funded, if Council indicates a majority interest in a service enhancement, the council member proposing it should work with staff to identify those funding options so that can be brought back for consideration so bring up the idea if there's general support to be able to work with staff since if we go through the budget you could sometimes say I found some money but it might not be quite the right funding source for the thing that we're trying to do but before we kind of go and search with staff we do want to get the affirmation from council that we're interested in finding that solution so that's that's the other change that's in there And so those are the only two that changed from the last version you saw. Now I'll open it up. Are there any other proposed changes or edits? Council President Stewart?

I'll just affirm a couple things. Thank you so much. No, as was said, I did have a chance to be involved with Council Vice President and the committee chair on this. I think that that order of operations is really important. We, and I should say, sorry, I meant to say this first. I'm so excited to do this project with you all like our team has really already accomplished a lot this year and going through the budget is is a big group project that we get to pick up or the staff have left off with the preliminary budget and it's going to be a ton of fun. I think these rules ground rules agreements however you want to think about them. they have proven to help us make sure that all the good ideas get heard. So we look forward to hearing your ideas along the way, but making sure that Director Cochran's time is some of the most valuable. And so making sure that we have agreement here on how we want that time to be allocated as some of the tougher questions come up toward the end. I think it's really important and look forward to going through this with you all and happy to be a resource if I can.

Thank you. Did you have a revision? I know you had to email me before the meeting on part B. I was referring to part C on the part that was changed. Did you want to bring forward any additional piece on that?

Sure, in case others, and I know that not everyone had a chance to review everything, I did find that 5B, just the structure of that language is a little bit unclear, and so I had just proposed some grammatical shifts in those sentences to add a few more periods and replace a few commas if the group needs that at all. Thanks.

If the group is amenable, would everyone be supportive if we integrate Council President Stewart's minor changes into there? Great. And so I guess I'll just ask, with that change, would the council be good with us scheduling to put this onto consent for adoption at a future business meeting? Or do, and with the, or do council members want more time to review, given that not a lot has changed since the last time we saw this? Council Member Forsyth.

Questioning why we need to put this on consent, if it's our ground rules, do we actually need to vote on it?

I think the intention was to, I think in the past we voted on it, just so that way we had it as something that we've adopted, and we can hold ourselves accountable to it. Is there any, all right, thank you. Is there any concern about putting this on consent on a future business meeting with some minor changes?

Okay, great.

I'm seeing thumbs, so we'll move on. Thank you so much. Are there any other questions for Director Cochran before we move on actually from the whole item? All right, good. And we'll move on to the next item on the agenda, which is an update on our finance B-TIP projects. And I believe Kelly Cochran's introducing this as well. Go ahead. Yes, I'm still here.

You tried to get rid of me, but I'm still here. We've got a couple of exciting update when it comes to our technology projects. And I have Wanda Norman and Jay Freeman. Treeland just renamed you. here with me this afternoon. First, we've gone live with our software that helps us compile our annual comprehensive financial statements. And it's been amazing results when it comes to our ROI as well as our effectiveness in putting those together. We also have some updates on a project to automate our payables, meaning we're sending those to the bank and they're sending them automated instead of us printing a check. And want to give you an update on not only the communication that will be going out to the city vendors, so you've got an idea of what's being communicated when, but also wanted to make sure that you've seen mock-up of the check register that's being designed that will become part of your council approval packet. So I'm going to hand it over to Wanda to tell you the good news.

Hi, I'm Wanda Norman. I work for TIS PMO. I'm the project manager for these projects. And we wanted to give you an update on the annual comprehensive financial report known as ACFR. The project has been completed and finance is using the software today. and we wanted to give an update on the roi where we are at with that as of today the city avoided paying the previously budgeted consultant expense of 45 000 for the 25 um 2025 audit cycle More than 280 staff hours have been saved through the automation of processes that were previously completed manually. And looking ahead, ongoing staff time savings are projected to reach or exceed 520 hours annually as adoption stabilizes in the system.

Thank you. And did you want to address the automated payables as well? Yes.

Just want to make sure you don't have any questions on the CFR.

Why don't you do all of it and then we'll take questions. Thanks.

All right. So the KeyBank Automated Payables Project, which is basically outsourcing the check runs for the city, is currently underway. And as part of that, There will be an ACH campaign that will run, that will go out. The city first will send out letters and emails notifying all of our vendors that we have partnered with KeyBank and FIS and that they'll be offering ACH for any vendor that would select ACH instead of getting a check. it saves money and it's more secure for them to do it that way. So once we get a go live date, we don't have that yet. The communications will go out one month prior to go live from the city. And then two weeks after the city sends out their notifications, FIS will send out emails and letters that pretty much duplicate what the city sent out to the vendors, offering to set them up. on ACH if they choose to do so or not. We'll also have a blurb on our website, so if vendors are looking to make sure the letters are real and authentic, they can look at our website and see that we are partnering with KeyBank and FIS for that endeavor.

Thank you. Are there questions from the Council on either one of these? Council Member Parsi?

Yeah, my first question is you mentioned significant staff time savings. I was wondering generally as we report staff time savings, would it be possible for us to quantify that and a dollar amount so we can feature in the future track it more effectively to see if we were able to reach that number or not? And then my second question is for the scope of this memo, I was curious if we evaluate fraud at all in this process, and if so, how does this impact our fraud and other risk factors?

For ACH, it would reduce the fraud because the ACH would come direct from KeyBank to their bank account versus mailing checks in the mail.

Council Member Pacrea.

Did you have a follow up Council Member Parsi?

Council Member Parsi.

Could you quantify, you mentioned reducing fraud, like would you be able to kind of quantify how much that would say impact in dollar amount?

I wouldn't because I don't know what the fraud is today currently for offenders.

Thank you. Council Member Pacrea.

Thank you for bringing this to us. Just reading the outcome of the annual comprehensive financial report, I've got a couple of questions. The first is, it says the city adopted ClearGov Software's builder to reduce the manual work. What was the cost of this software?

I don't have that information off. $28,000.

Okay, great Thank you, and this is just something I was looking into, but I was looking into this this software vendor clear gov software and they have worked with other cities like richfield which actually took our crown as the fastest growing city in the state of Washington. But they've worked with cities like Ridgefield to develop financial transparency portals for the general public as an extension of the software that they use to make our financial reporting clear on the internal side. I was wondering if these kinds of portals were things that the city was looking into on the public-facing side with the same software vendor. This is something that I personally would be interested in.

We are, at least I can speak from the finance department, we are currently kicking off our project to create a dashboard or a portal. I don't know, we'll be having our first meeting in August, but we don't yet know what the foundational software of that will be. So certainly can keep you updated as we go through our project or ask for TIS to provide kind of an overview of what they are thinking when it comes to the dashboards and portals.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. Oh, Council Member Soni, and I'll have you be the last question just to keep us running on time. Sure.

I just want to ensure, so we spoke about the ACFR builder savings, but is it possible, like, you know, we can get similar kind of some details for an ROI using for the KeyBank project also? I saw, like, and it is just mentioned, like, you know, it reduces in overall expenses, but

We definitely will be tracking those things. We've had quite a number of improvements that we've made on the AP side of things and we continue to track those returns on investment and it's been really rewarding to watch. We've actually been able to save enough capacity to create the city's first dedicated accounts receivable staff person. So we definitely can keep track and can work to kind of quantify the dollar amount along with hours saved.

Can I I'll go ahead and add to that. So I know we submitted original ROI for that project to City Council, maybe a year or two ago. So once we go live, it will take a while to see, you know, the cost savings on that program. So six months to a year before we get back to you on that.

Welcome.

Thank you so much. I think we're going to close out on questions on this one, but feel free to follow up with staff if you have additional questions on this item. We're going to move on. Thank you so much. We're going to move on to our Respect, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion program update. Really excited to have our Deputy Director, Zach Hoover, here, as well as our new Ready program administrator, Teresa Lee. I'll turn it over to Zach to introduce the items.

Good afternoon, Council. I am super excited to introduce Teresa Lee to the City Council and the community. Teresa accepted the role of the Ready Program Administrator and joined us on July 1st. She brings deep experience in this field. Before coming to the city, she led diversity, equity, inclusion, and learning initiatives at Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, partnering with leaders and employees to create meaningful opportunities for growth and belonging. Teresa earned a bachelor's degree in women's gender and sexuality studies from Emory University and a master of education from the University of Illinois Chicago. She is currently completing her PhD in learning sciences and human development at the University of Washington, where her research focuses on belonging, identity, and community building among Asian American students. I've asked Teresa to say a few words.

Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. As Zach shared, my name is Teresa Lee, and I recently joined the City of Redmond as the Ready Program Administrator. My background is in education and learning sciences, where my work has focused on social cultural learning, identity, belonging, and how our experiences are shaped by the systems that we are a part of. At the heart of my work is a curiosity about relationships, our relationship to ourselves, with one another, and with the organizations and communities that we each belong to. I believe those relationships shape the culture we create and the experiences people have with their institutions. One of the reasons I was so excited to join Redmond is the city's commitment to the Ready Strategic Plan. I'm looking forward to supporting the continued alignment of this work with the city's mission and values and helping embed these commitments into everyday practices. My hope is that the work we do internally creates a ripple effect that is reflected in the experience of residents, businesses, and community members throughout the city. This is only my second full week, but I've already had the opportunity to meet employees across departments and connect with a community member. What has been especially encouraging is seeing a shared understanding that this work is a collective effort. Creating a welcoming, inclusive and responsive city isn't the responsibility of one individual or one department. It's something we all contribute to. So over the next several months, I'm looking forward to listening, learning and building relationships throughout the organization and the community. As I deepen my understanding of Redmond, I'm excited to translate that learning into meaningful action and support the city's vision in ways that are meaningful, thoughtful, collaborative and impactful. I'm truly grateful to be here and I look forward to the work ahead and sharing my progress with you all over the time. Thank you.

Thank you so much and welcome to the city of Redmond. So exciting. Council Member, do you have any questions or did you have another?

I had a few more updates.

Okay, go ahead, Zach.

So just part of Teresa's onboarding, she's going to be meeting with department directors, deputies, along with other staff in our organization. She's also going to be reaching out to our CBOs, facilitating ready training sessions. She's already attended the ready training session already with Kate Rogers and also leading and facilitating our welcoming committee. Teresa and I are both open to meet with community members and city council members. Please just reach out to us. We'd be more than happy to meet with council and to talk about our strategy, vision, and Teresa's role moving forward.

Thank you. Any comments or questions? Knowing that we're a little behind on our time, but I do want to open it up. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. Just a comment just to welcome you to the city. I'm looking forward to working together. Thank you.

Council President Stewart.

Thank you so much. Welcome to the City of Redmond. We look forward to hearing from you and hearing what you uncover you need to succeed in your role because we would love to make sure that's included in the upcoming budget. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much. And we'll move on to the next item. Welcome again. Get back to my agenda. All right, the next item on the agenda is a city communication strategy update and council engagement update. And it looks like Zach will introduce this item. Go ahead.

All right, to introduce this item is Kelly Schutz, our communication manager.

All right. Good afternoon, council. Thank you for having me here tonight to share with you and get some feedback. Before I dive into the proposed 2027-2028 comprehensive communications plan, I'd like to start by briefly talking about council communications and community engagement. Well, I started with the city after the approval of the current 2025-2026 budget. I'm aware that a point of focus going into this biennium was how communications can continue to best support council in connecting with the community. That's something that I and the whole comms division view as an important ongoing partnership. Our role is to provide the tools and strategic support that help you engage with residents while also ensuring that we're meeting the communications needs across the whole city and each of its nine departments. As these needs continue to evolve, we're always looking for ways to improve the resources and opportunities available to Council. Over the current biennium, we've taken several steps in that direction. Since 2025, we've assisted with writing and editing Council talking points for events, provided additional space in our quarterly printed focus newsletter for Council messaging, DEVELOP MORE COMPREHENSIVE COMMUNICATION PLANS AROUND COUNCIL CONVERSATIONS EVENTS, WORK WITH YOU TO TAKE FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE COUNCIL PRESENCE AT CITY EVENTS LIKE DERBY DAYS AND DRAW, AND LOOK FOR NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO INCLUDE COUNCIL IN THINGS LIKE HOSTING CITY NEWS NOW OR DEVELOPING SOCIAL REELS WITH COUNCIL AND COUNCIL LEADERSHIP. I KNOW THAT WE'VE ALSO SPOKEN ABOUT INTRODUCING A MONTHLY COUNCIL ROUNDUP ITEM IN THE CITY E-NEWS AS WELL, AND I'M CERTAINLY INTERESTED IN MOVING THAT FORWARD WITH YOU. all of this is intended to create more consistent opportunities for the community to hear directly from council and we'll continue building on that goal as we move forward in addition to support for council communications the city's overall communications needs have continued to expand when council approved the additional additional communications ftes in the last budget you positioned the division to meet those growing demands so thank you Between 2024 and 2025, communications project requests increased by nearly 37%, going from 1,099 in 2024 to 1,504 in 2025. We also saw a 26% increase in planning department communications project requests in that same time period, 24 to 25, driven in part by World Cup needs. Council had the foresight to plan for those needs in the last budget through those additional communications FTEs. Across all of this, the communications team continues to support communications, graphic design, web content, video production, emergency communications, and public engagement efforts for all city departments, six of the nine of which saw substantial increases in project requests between 24 and 25. These increased project numbers demonstrate that communications has become an increasingly deliberate part of city projects. Departments are engaging with us earlier in the process to produce more coordinated and proactive communications to better inform residents, which is exactly what we want to happen. That brings us to our communications plan that's before you tonight. This plan doesn't introduce a new communications program or make radical changes. The city has traditionally had a strong communications division and we're not reinventing the wheel. The purpose of our updated comprehensive plan is to document and strengthen the practices that the city already uses while identifying opportunities for improvement, modernization, and growth, especially as the community we serve continues to diversify and grow. Our overall strategy is to meet residents where they are, whether that's through print, digital, social media, video, or in-person engagement, helping them receive, understand, and take action on city information. I know we're tight on time, so I'll just quickly go over a couple of the plan's major pieces. Everything in this plan ties back to city priorities and items that council has already adopted. Our city vision, mission, and values, the biennial budget, and Redmond 2050. These guiding principles are important because ultimately, communications for an organization has the most success when it's built on a strong foundation. As you go through the plan, you'll see a breakdown of our current communications platforms, including goals and best practices for each. While we were putting this plan together, that formatting was important because keeping our goals for each unique platform top of mind is critical when developing effective communications, and plainly stating the best practices helps ensure that we're not wandering too far off the path. For social media specifically, the city's communications division actually didn't previously have a formalized social media strategy. So that was something new and exciting to really put into words. Within the current plan, our stated social media strategy focuses on building community trust, increasing awareness of city services and initiatives, improving community participation, and strengthening redmond's identity as an innovative inclusive and connected city we'll do that guided by five key principles inform engage storytell educate and prepare these principles help provide some guard rails for our social content and ensure that we're using the social media effectively from there in the plan document you'll see a breakdown of each of our current social platforms and the same sort of goals and best practices format I also want to call attention to the section of the plan regarding equity and accessibility. While these issues have never been disregarded by the communications teams of the past, this section has been entirely rebuilt and built out, more explicitly explaining our equity and accessibility commitments. Effective communications depend on residents being able to access and understand city information. So our communication strategy involves reducing barriers, whether that's language, disability, technology access, or literacy, so that all community members have equitable access to city information and services. Formalizing this information also supports the city's legal accessibility obligations. Further in the plan, we cover emergency communications, how we'll measure success, and what's on the horizon for communications going forward. In its entirety, the 2027-2028 Comprehensive Communications Plan is intended to provide a roadmap for clear, consistent, and accessible communications so that we can give the community opportunities to stay informed, participate in city decisions, and engage with us. Thank you. and I'm happy to answer questions, receive feedback, and I know we're short on time, so if at the end there's more things you want to discuss, feel free to connect with me on email, or we can set up time to talk.

Thank you so much. And clearly a ton of hard work has gone into this and thought, so just really appreciate it. We are a little tight on time and it feels like we should give this the time that it deserves for us to have a discussion about it. So I did kind of wanted to ask the council whether we'd like to see this back at either a future fact meeting or have another touch on it at some point. So that way we could ask some more questions about it. Council member Forsyth.

As someone who does some of this work, I think this is excellent. I really appreciate the accessibility portion. I think that's really well thought out and captures a lot of the concerns that I often bring up. Also really appreciate the different voice and tone, very clearly called out for the different social media platforms, also work that I would normally do. So I don't have a reason to see this again. I think that it's excellent.

Sounds good. Thank you. Council Member Pacquia?

I echo everything that's been said. I think this is a very, very thoughtful plan. I just have one specific point I wanted to raise up, which is council events like the last council conversations we had at Idlewood. I don't believe that this was posted on Instagram. I was trying to find a place to repost it and had to create my own art or I believe I may have copied the post that was made on the City of Redmond Facebook page, but just making sure that these events that we want community members to go to are being posted on every social media.

Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Pecoria for bringing that up because similarly I was sharing out about the budget process and community engagement and I went to Instagram to reshare So having a better understanding of what is being shared out to the different platforms and what's a deciding factor, understanding that there are things that are more appropriate for one platform for the other, just having a better understanding of what is that criteria.

Thank you. And I guess I would just level up these two comments to note my one piece of feedback on this, which I really appreciate it, is that there really isn't any outlining of criteria communications around city council engagement with the public so perhaps in a v2 we can be working i know we have been working on that it'd be nice to be able to see more of what it kind of how we use communications tools to be able to connect the public with their elected leaders council president stewart yeah that's that's my comment exactly and i do appreciate the um

A lot of formalization and professionalization of the comms shop needed to happen in order to tell the city's story, and you deserve a ton of credit for having done that work. When the council adopted the budget and added more staff support for the budget, one of our other interests was having communication support for the council, so newsletters and other more direct ways for the council to communicate with the public. particularly around like news and timely topics as they were coming up. And there is not a section for that here in this version of the plan. As Kelly mentioned, there had been a proposal, like kind of dropped, proposal's even a strong word. A new section of the e-newsletter was mentioned to the council vice president and I, but it's certainly not a conversation that we've had. So really my calling of this out is really for the council that we should come back and discuss what are the communication tools that we need to be able to ask for and to be able to seek support on and to renew that conversation again later this year. Thanks.

Thank you. And perhaps it would be good for us to schedule that conversation after tonight's conversation as well, you know, looking at what our community has told us in our survey. So I think being able to have that conversation as well. But If we're able to do some work as a council with you to be able to identify some more communication strategies and then integrate in the future, I think that would be great.

I would love to hear from council about what, yeah, your ideas, what you desire, and work with you on that for sure.

Thank you. Well, it sounds like we're good on this. And if council members have any other comments on this, just please reach out. And we'll move on to the last item on our agenda. Apologies, everyone. Are we good to go over time by just a few minutes? Okay, great. So last item on our agenda is the regional animal services licensing update. And I believe we have Amy Tsai online to introduce this item.

Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. For the record, Amy Tsai, Chief Policy Advisor, and with me sitting down today is Norm Alberg. He is the Director of Records and Licensing Services Division, Regional Animal Services of King County, or RASC for short. I'm going to give a very brief introduction and then let Mr. Alberg take over. Our city contracts with RASC for animal services, and that includes animal control, sheltering, and pet licensing. He's here to give feedback, sorry, not to give feedback, to seek feedback on a couple ideas related to pet licensing. And pet licensing fees are one of the main revenue streams that supports the program. And we currently have about 5,000 pets licensed in the city, but we certainly have more than 5,000 pets. This presentation is informational only for purposes of getting your feedback. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Alberg.

Green. Good afternoon, Council. Thank you for having me here. Last agenda item. So I will be very, very brief. We're here very early, so no action. I'll give you, I guess, an elevator speech about regional animal services. I've been in this role, responsible animal services, for 15 years. We're coming to the end of a 10-year contract with 24 cities and unincorporated King County. We serve 1,000 residents across unincorporated. The ILA I think is a beautiful model. We're able to get a scale of service to provide great outcomes, and with those great outcomes comes great support. We have 26,000 hours of volunteers from across all the cities that come down and help us at the animal shelter. cleaning cages, walking dogs, doing laundry. We have people, they actually double our staff capacity in the shelter. We have fosters that take care of animals in their homes and that essentially doubles our shelter capacity and that just comes from the great outcomes. We're a public shelter, we don't turn down any animal that comes to our door. We have great partnerships for senior dogs and have great outcomes. We're a no-kill shelter, which is rare for a public shelter. We're looking forward to moving forward for the next 10 years. The county annually puts in millions of dollars that are not passed on to the cities. And we are in the middle of spending $20 million for a new animal shelter down in the Kent that those costs are also not being passed on to the cities. So it's a great program. It's been very stable. Redmond's been a great partner with us. And we're under a lot of financial pressure for our general fund. So the executive has tasked us with looking for ways to bring in more revenue to support the program. We have two initiatives that we're considering. It has to go through some feedback from the city, and then the executive still has to make his final decision, and then it has to go to the council to be supported. The first is which is increasing pet licensing fees. Not a popular item in this economy to raise the price of anything. If we raise $10 on altered cats and dogs, it'll essentially bring in $500,000 to the program. We haven't raised pet licensing fees in 18 years. Everything's gone up more than 18 years. So a $10 is, we think, a modest amount to bring in additional revenue. We're looking for city feedback. I will take that and give it to the executive's office. So July and August feedback. He'll make his decision most likely in September and transmit to the council. A second bigger initiative, and I'll be glad to come back, and Amy is very sharp. She's working with us monthly on our cross-city team, work with the county, is a lot of jurisdictions are having veterinarians report their vaccination data to animal control. It is a law to have your pet licensed. There's a lot of benefits. I think we need to really get a better positive marketing campaign about the benefits of pet licensing, but that's another story. And it's legal requirement to vaccinate your pet. People love their pets, their family members. 80% of pet owners or more vaccinate, but only 20, 24% license. If we close that gap, we would end up needing substantially millions of dollars of left of general fund support. So we're about what I would call midstream on the pet licensing. We're very, very early on rabies data vaccination. So we're testing the waters with the city. I'm still in active discussions with public health, where it is on their agenda. Do they want to move it forward this year? And will it coincide with the renewal of the ILA or not? So looking for general feedback, we know it's not a small proposal to... have that asked there'll be some controversy with it as i said my view of it is the pet licensing increase is the right thing to do that will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars coordinating vaccination we will have known pet owners that the vast majority will probably willingly license their pet if they knew it was required or they knew the benefits of it there will be some people that don't want to and we want to be on a education and benefit approach not an enforcement control approach Like I said, we're very early in the future of doing the vaccination. We'll be glad to come back and provide any briefings. The current ILA ends at the end of next year. So we're very early in the process, but as you can imagine, I need to get the executive and my county council to give us authorization to go into a contract. That's what we're hoping for this fall and winter, give you a final product that you can look at and go through your executive and legislative processes. And we're meeting monthly with representatives of all cities as we move through this process. So I'll stop there. I could talk for a long time. I love the program. I'm so proud of the program.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate having you here. Are there any questions? Council Member Soni.

Just have a question. So if we are a majority of people with an unlicensed pets, they might be in the low income neighborhood areas. And if you're increasing by another $10, the license fees, is this going to impact more pet owners do not have the license and that means not having the vaccinations? Like how all this will work?

Yeah, we could talk. There's a lot of speculation around it. It is socioeconomic. People that don't have the money perhaps don't vaccinate as much. We're looking at can we use the revenue to have low-cost vaccine clinics so people that have lesser income can get a vaccination and a pet license? There's a lot of benefits to pet licensing, returning your animal to home, taking care of them longer in the shelter, but it is socioeconomic. There are less licenses bought in lower-income areas, and we offer lots of low-income programs, pet food, free clinics, those type of things to try and help the community.

Council Member Procrea.

Thank you for coming all the way to present this to us. I'm just trying to figure out operationally, because we're one of 24 cities to contract with you, what does it take? Is it a majority of cities have to agree to increase the pet licensing fees? Is it just the county council? What is the procedural process?

Well, the final authority, we have to change our county code, so it'll be up to our county council. My boss, my boss's boss, the executive asked for feedback from the cities. We've got some feedback. Pretty much most support at $10 or neutral. The south end cities are really under financial strain and looking for revenue, so they're very interested. It'll make a bigger difference for them and some of the higher licensing and more better off socioeconomic north and east cities. So he's looking for a pulse on that. He's going to make his decision to transmit to the council, and then the council is the one that has the ultimate authority.

I see. Okay. So we're just giving feedback here. Pardon? We're just giving feedback here. Yes. Okay. Got you. Thank you.

Council, Vice President Ravikamena.

Thank you. Just for very quick, because we are over time. Initially, I'm actually in favor of doing an educational approach and doing the vaccines rather than because it's, I think the majority of Redmond pet owners are unaware that there is a pet license. So for the communities where socioeconomically we are able to take that on and make a considerable difference. And for those that are already paying to see another rate increase of any kind, we're dealing with a rate increase fatigue overall. So any way that we can mitigate yet another rate increase of any type, I'm for that. And I think that just by the education of it, like, hey, did you know? And here are all the benefits why.

I understand. Thank you.

All right, well, thank you so much for coming and really appreciate it. And council members, if you have any other thoughts, hopefully we can get your contact information so that council members can also send any individual thoughts as well. And we can send that out to the council as well. Thank you so much for coming and for the work that you're doing.

Glad to be here. I live in Issaquah, so it was a pretty easy commute. So thank you. I know you ran over, so thanks for the time. Glad to work with Amy and come back anytime you have any questions. Thank you.

Great. And that brings us to the end of our agenda. If there's no objection, this meeting is adjourned.