City Council - Regular Meeting

I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a regular meeting of the Redmond City Council held on Tuesday, September 1st, 2026, commencing at 7 o'clock p.m. I will call roll, starting with Council President Stewart.

Here.

Council Vice President Nueva Camino. Here. Council Member Forsyth. Here. Council Member Precrea.

Here.

Council Member Parsi. Here. Council Member Sonny.

Here.

And Council Member Kritzer. Here. Okay. The first item on the agenda is special orders of the day with a presentation on Redmond Library Updates by Mary Comstock, welcome.

Thank you, Mayor Burnie. Hello, council, hello, Council President Stewart. I'm gonna share my screen for my PowerPoint, if I may. All right, did that go through? Excellent, let's turn to presentation view. Awesome. All right, so as Mayor Birney said, I am Mary Comstock and I am the regional manager for your Redmond Library. And tonight I'm gonna be talking to you about some of the things that have been going on at the King County Library System in 2025, year to date 2026, and moving forward. So first of all, our mission in the King County Library System is to inspire the people of King County to succeed through ideas, interaction, and information. And I think we do that every day at the Redmond Library. So let's talk a little bit about KCLS, the King County Library System. We have 50 locations. And in 2025, we circulated 21 million items, believe it or not. And 11 million of those were digital items. Now this makes us number two in the US. Only LA Public Library beats us. I suspect we will keep trying to beat them in 2026. This is 2025, the race is on. And that makes us number four in the entire world. So this is a very, very busy library system. Now, one of the most exciting things that happened to us in 2026, just happened August 19th, we opened the biggest library book highway in North America. We call it a book highway because it is sorting 8,000 items per hour, which means that the holds that you want the items that you checked out but you checked back in at, say, the Bellevue Library. And they all have to go back to either the patron who wants them or the stack that holds its home. And so this is pretty exciting for us. We had a very old sorter that we were basically sourcing parts from eBay. It was so old. So we finally brought out our new sorter. And it is a wonder to behold. There is a link on your handout. So if you want to take a look at a virtual tour on YouTube, I invite you to do that. And I hope that you will be impressed with the way that we're working to get things into the hands of our patrons. So let's talk about your Redmond library. So in 2025, we circulated almost 1,800,000 items. That was about 950,000 physical checkouts and about 825,000 digital checkouts. Now, we add all that up. By replacement costs, should we have to buy them again? And that is a retail value of over $11.5 million saved to the taxpayers by using the King County Library System. I know, I'm shocked too. I actually talked to our data folks on staff and said, now, tell me how you did that. So they look at the replacement costs, and this is what it would cost to either buy those items or replace them. We had in Redmond almost 36,000 active patrons. We offered them almost 33,000 computer sessions over 2025, and we had almost 360,000 total library visits, which is an average of 131 people coming into our building per hour. Some days it feels like more. Have you been to a story time? It feels like a lot more. So here's some of our 2026 program highlights. Of course, the ever popular Community Court and Resource Center, which is in partnership with the City of Redmond and King County District Court. In 2026, we also had an all Redmond read and we read together, We Are Not Strangers. which is a fantastic book by local author Josh Tuniga. If you haven't read it, I invite you to do so. It is a graphic novel, so it's very accessible. And this was in partnership with the city of Redmond because we held it at the Redmond Senior and Community Center and also with the Redmond Historical Society. We also hosted at the Redmond Senior and Community Center our Rainbow Connections, which is the intergenerational LGBTQ community program that we've done two years in a row, and we're planning it for next year as well. We have a teen advisory board, and they are very active, called Red Tab. One of the pictures on your PowerPoint features our special guest at their community exploration fair. That was Mayor Burney, so she is there in that picture. We also partnered with the City of Redmond on soccer watch parties, and we do story times in library and at Farrell McWhirter Park, and at the Redmond Senior and Community Center. We are having some staffing changes towards the end of 2026 into 2027, so we'll take a pause on those outside of the library and bring them back hopefully later in 2027. We have talk time and ELL classes for adults every week. We have a welcoming ambassador who acts as a navigator for our new arrivals here in our community, our refugee and immigrant community. And we are working on climate and sustainability programs. have to call out our PCs for people recycling. We recycled in our parking lot through this group almost 3,000 pounds of e-waste that did not go to landfills. We also have a climate action group that meets monthly and next week on the 8th, we have the community preparedness fair to help build more resilient citizens and also create to-go emergency kits. We have our wonderful City of Redmond Library Board of Trustees. Joanna Kim is our chair, she's not here tonight, but Erin and Naveen are here, and then Alish Singh as well, who is not with us tonight. They are our greatest advocates and our advisors, and we are so thrilled to have them, and we so appreciate the city having this board for us. Now, what's coming in 2026? I'm excited to announce we are expanding ours in 2026. We will be adding hours into the night on Mondays and mornings on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. A more formal announcement will be on our website shortly, but I wanted to tell you that information tonight. Also, in 2027, we are turning 100 years old. at the Redmond Library. And we're using a working title of Daring to Dream since 1927. In 1927, a small group of women formed and called themselves the Nokomis Club. And their dream was a library here in the city of Redmond. And they pulled it off. And in October of 1927, the first library opened in the city of Redmond. And we want to celebrate that all next year. We feel like they dared to dream, so we're gonna dare to dream again in 2027. So we will be telling you more about that as the year progresses, but expect to see programs, opportunities for people to talk about how they dream for the library in the future, and also to talk about what the library means to them now, and how it's helping to build community here in Redmond. Last but not least, and this is just a small list of City of Redmond staff who work so closely with us to serve the City of Redmond. We have a shared group of community that we serve and we are so excited to work with all of these people in strategic partnerships and ideas for collaboration into the future. Please forgive me staff members who are listening to this if I say your name wrong. But Callie Beagle, Laureen Hamilton, Erica Chua, Laura Williams, Mack Leonard, Patty Nahr with the Police Department, Mary O'Brien, also with the Police Department, Xavier Wright, and of course, Teeza Rutherford, who just retired, who's worked with us for so long, Kim Dietz, Theresa Lee, and the wonderful Brooke and Alaric from Human Services. So I just want to say thank you to those staff members and the work that they do with us and the way that they help us to meet our shared goals. That is our update from the library. I wonder if you have any questions at all for me.

Well, thank you so much, Mary. It's always fantastic to hear from you and all the great work you're doing. And we just love the partnership. It makes it so easy when you're just across the parking lot as well. But really excited. So excited to see the sorter. Like that was amazing news. And I'm really excited that we'll be celebrating a centennial together next year. That's fantastic. So we'd love to open up to questions to the council. Council Member Forsyth first.

thank you um very exciting on the centennial please let us know how we can be involved and participate and celebrate and what an amazing story of those women and making that happen so please let us know um and you know if there there might be some council members that are very excited about that sorter and maybe followed it on instagram and saw it and if there's ever an opportunity for us to go visit oh please let us know absolutely there would there be interest i can arrange a tour

Oh, yes, there would be interest. Absolutely. Should I reach out to the mayor's office?

Yeah, just check in with us and we'll...

I would love to take you on a tour. I haven't even seen it yet, so let's do it together.

Yeah.

Except on YouTube, of course.

That's awesome. We'll go with Council Member Kritzer and then Council President...

Thank you so much for the update and for the really amazing work that you do. The program highlights, I think, just emphasize what a really wonderful space our library is. And I just want to commend you in particular for the efforts to make it such an inclusive space and inclusive program. Right now, I think in particular libraries and access to a diversity of books and making sure that we have access to stories that everyone can see themselves in and their own identities in is really important. And then combining that with really good programming to help people to engage with it is just... Anyway, just really powerful and important in this moment. So glad that we can help support that, especially with the Redmond Reeds this past year. Curious if you can tell us if you'll plan to do a similar kind of collaboration using the Senior and Community Center in the upcoming year with Redmond Reads, and also what the process is for choosing that book that the community reads.

Yeah, those are all great questions, and thank you very much. I just want to say that it's all the staff. You know, the staff work so hard to make sure that we are a welcoming, inclusive space. reaching out to community and doing co-created programs and just the partnerships with the city of Redmond show that. For the process of selecting the book, it's actually funded through our Friends of the Redmond Library, which is another group of committed people who support our library just like our board does. And so they vetted several books and chose this one among many choices mainly because it was very focused on the we have we have it I don't know if you've read the book before but it's focused on the Japanese American internment experience and this community had many of our Japanese citizens who were unfortunately part of that and this allows us to delve into our history while embracing our future of building community around we're not strangers and We just need to get to know each other. And so for us, it felt like a good opportunity this year to use that story. The fact that it's a graphic novel also makes it very accessible for even people who think, oh, do I really want to read a whole book? It feels a little thick to me. So in this way, it was able to reach a wider swath. So in the future, yes, we will continue to do Redmond Reads. We want to do them more often, so it's more, we do them like every five years. But I think if we do it more often, it allows that opportunity for people to start looking forward to it instead of forgetting about it. Oh yeah, wasn't that before? So it's something we're working on. And this Redmond Senior Community Center has that huge space. So we were also able to table people. So like Densho, which preserves the stories of the Japanese-American experience, they were there tabling. The Historical Society was there tabling when we had our big keynote with Josh, the author. So the answer is yes, and that's how we choose it.

Thank you. Council President.

Thank you so much, Mary, for coming and giving these wonderful updates tonight. And I agree. I think the event with Redmond Reads was wonderful and would love to see it. You know, we were just talking a few minutes ago, actually, about the summer reading program. Maybe the first square that folks could get on their bingo card is participating and reading the book that's in the Redmond Reads program. But loved that program and that event and very happy to see all the collaboration that You've done a wonderful job of inspiring folks who haven't maybe been at the library in a while to go and check you out. So well done here tonight.

I hope so.

Yeah. And you've done a marvelous job of recognizing staff in the city of Redmond. I want to make sure that I give a shout out. I do spend a fair amount of time in the library. the patience and resilience and care and kindness that your staff exhibit on a daily basis to make sure that that library is a place where everyone is welcome, is visible each and every day, multiple times an hour. So they deserve all the kudos in the world. So thank you again for this wonderful update. And next week, the council will have a special meeting to actually interview a potential candidate to add to the the board of trustees so um i personally served on that board and know it's a very rewarding experience and looking forward to chatting with your candidate next week thank you thank you thank you council thank you mayor bernie well thank you so much um is that enough all the questions was there oh did menka have one online no she does oh we have one online okay councilman yes i i do

Thank you so much. First of all, this was a very promising presentation. Sorry, I'm attending online because I'm in India for a family emergency, so I'm not there in person. From this presentation, we have seen how Redmond is growing and changing so fast. And next year, we're going to celebrate this 100th year celebration. Are there still any unmet needs from our communities where City of Redmond can partner? We all know that this is a budget year and we are working towards this. So definitely looking forward for having a partnership with that, you know, with Redmond Library to help us get some more inputs from the communities. And at the same time, if there are any unmet needs that we should look forward for the next chapter as we move from, you know, past from these 100 years.

Well, I think there's always unmet needs in our community. I wanna say that we are always open to collaborative efforts. and just having those conversations where we can figure out where do our goals align because they align quite a bit. I was looking at the draft human services plan because I had the privilege of being asked by Brooke and Alaric to do that and we identified some collaboration opportunities. I don't have it in front of me but it's something that I hope that we can see if we can move forward on some of the ideas they already have in that plan. So I'm very excited to see where we can assist.

Thank you so much. Great question, Council Member Soney. Thank you. Thank you again for your partnership. You know, it's just always a pleasure to hear from you. Library was always like one of the, I think it's one of the first places families go when they move here. They always know they can get assistance and help, and it's always warm and welcoming, as Council President mentioned. And I just look forward to the years to come and hearing back from you again on all what's new and what's next. I will be back. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you so much. Our next item on the agenda is items from the audience. I have the sign-in sheet for members of the public to speak tonight. When I read your name, you will come up to the podium and have three minutes to address the council. Council members generally will not respond to comments or questions directly at the meeting. Members of the public are welcome to email the council anytime at mayorcouncilredmond.gov. The views stated by members of the public do not represent the opinion of the City of Redmond. And as a reminder, RCW 29B45010 prohibits any public comment during the council meeting in support or opposition of ballot propositions, measures, or candidates. All comments must pertain to the City of Redmond business as indicated on the sign-in sheet. There are three people signed up to speak in person, and no one has signed up to speak remotely. So I'll call up your name. I'll just call you up so you know who's next as well, and we'll begin. And I have to set the timer, though, because it's not set. All right, perfect. So we have first Hank Myers, then Wolf Adriatico, then David Morton.

Now for something completely different. I'm here to adjust budget priorities. Having been involved in making six budgets during my 12 years on council, we produce budgets with no surprises and money left over for capital projects. For the last three budgets, the mayor and council has spent millions on projects that help few of any current residents or workers. The time for virtue signaling has passed. What we need to do now is spend money on things that improve services for all. The first step is to revert to the historic policy of putting all unspent funds into the capital fund. The problem with using leftover funds for one-time projects is that they are generally new projects that must be funded in future general fund budgets. This has deprived residents of badly needed road improvements, but also increased future expenses and tax increases with little merit. Second, the administration and the council must ensure budget discipline. A couple of department heads seem to view your budget as suggestions and feel free to overspend or request additional funding. Finally, fully fund our police and fire departments. Our police department has the lowest ratio of sworn officers per capita on the east side. It is one-third that of Kirkland and half that of the level of several east side communities that use the King County Sheriff's Office. The city has additional funds available to it in the 1% public safety sales tax authorized by HB 2015. There are a few strings attached. The fire department is efficiently and progressively managed by Chief Shepherd. While all of you in the dais know we do not have an all-electric fire truck, it is a plug-in hybrid, I supported the purchase as Chief Shepherd and his maintenance crew will give excellent support to the manufacturer on ways to improve the product. The third priority is to improve our terrible pavement quality index. It is the lowest by far on the east side and several points below our own 70% standard. I live off Northeast 24th Street, and since the completion of the sewer project, the road is in even worse condition. In 2012, the council made refurbishing Northeast 24th Street a high-priority project and provided funding to the capital budget. It is now 14 years later, and the project is just getting started at greatly increased costs. Please address these three deficiencies first. For two of you, you may not have appreciated these problems when you ran, but you are the key to changing things. Redmond has gone from being the best of the best to being the worst of the worst. Finally, all of this can be done without raising taxes. The answer is a disciplined approach to budgeting and spending. Thank you.

Next is Wolf Adriatico, then David Morton.

Speaking of overspending, let's talk about modern needless excess. The status report on the new teen center project was frankly very upsetting for the teens I come here to represent. Last year, I was a stakeholder in the group advising whether to rebuild or renovate the teen center. I've already discussed how the data we were given was tailored to show false dichotomies and dramatize the cons of renovation and downplay the cons of rebuilding. With the new figures provided, our cynical theories are sadly confirmed. The city plans to upscale the 8,600 square foot former building, OFH, into a 20 to 25,000 square foot building. They've used only one story, as so many have been insisting, as a compromise. That's 90% of the entire parcel, including the parking lot. We stakeholders decided based on a comparison of $9 million to renovate and $11 million to rebuild, figures provided by the city, that 11 has since jumped to $35 million. The council was lied to at the study session discussing this. You were told that the difference was largely due to the prior estimate not including design and engagement. However, the FCA clearly breaks down its nine and 11 million estimates and factors those in. We were told that the project would finish 2028. That's been pushed back to 2031. The old Firehouse Teen Center was closed 2025. The interim Marymore location still alienates the teens who once found shelter in OFH, with teen services cutting its music programs and most of its staff under the dangerously incompetent boot of Parks Director Lorraine Hamilton and Recreation Manager Erica Chua. A six-year gap in adequate service for disenfranchised and alternative children breaks the generational link that made OFH's community bond so strong and helps those who need it most hear about it by word of mouth. The effect of the void of third spaces for kids is apparent. If you're bothered by the higher number of rowdy teens blasting music on the streets and breaking into construction sites, I challenge you to think of why this summer's not been as peaceful as usual. In conclusion, the parks director is, I've noticed, very, very good at convincing her employees to say things to the council that it seems they do not want to say, and that allegedly, ANONYMOUSLY, THEY HAVE SAID THAT THEY DID NOT WANT TO SAY AND ARE NOT TRUE. AND ALSO, SHE IS AN ASSHOLE. THANK YOU.

POINT OF ORDER. I WOULD LIKE TO REMIND SPEAKERS IN THE FUTURE TO BE RESPECTFUL AND ADHERE TO THE principles that we have outlined for public participation in this chamber. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll make sure that we reiterate that in the next public comment period, and perhaps we'll have to suspend people's public comment if they can't adhere to those rules. Thank you. Next is David Morton.

Good evening, Council Members and Mayor. I'm David Morton. I'm speaking tonight to ask that three items be included in the 2027-2028 biennial budget. First, please fund soil and groundwater PFAS testing at two sites, the Evans Creek Relocation Project area. and the former Allwood recycling site, which was the location of a large fire in 2013 and is a Department of Ecology cleanup site, ID number 3793. The fire was extinguished with the help of firefighting foam, which likely contained PFAS. Neither location has had comprehensive PFAS testing, even though both sites are up-gradient to drinking water wells 1 and 2, and are located in Redmond's Critical Aquifer Recharge Area 1. Site work at Evans Creek is moving forward without a documented pre-disturbance baseline for PFAS. This is a modest, one-time cost that protects the City from far larger remediation and liability costs down the road. Second, please fund a city arborist position. As Council finalizes the tree regulations under RZC 2172 and 2178, every discretionary tree retention and removal decision still depends on reports from qualified tree professionals hired by the applicants, whether they are developers or residents. The code as drafted has no independent city review built into any of those decision points. That gap includes retention percentage disputes, tree removal permits, and hazard tree determinations. A city arborist would let staff and council verify those reports rather than simply accepting them. Third, please continue and strengthen funding for the Environmental Sustainability Program. As a volunteer forest steward, I see that environmental work depends on staffing, not just volunteer effort. The 2025 Environmental Sustainability Action Plan lays out five big moves and ten strategies toward net zero emissions by 2050. That plan is only as strong as the budget behind it, and I'd ask Council to make sure the program has the staffing and resources to implement it, not just revisit it every five years. I recognize the mayor's proposed draft biennial budget isn't public yet. I wanted to raise these three items early so they can be considered as the budget takes shape. I've already submitted written details to the budget team, and I'm glad to follow up in writing with more detail on any of these three items. Thank you.

Thank you. And that is the end of everyone who has signed up.

Point of order, Mayor.

Oh, I'm sorry. Point of order. Yes.

Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to comment on the previous comments that were made after the previous speaker to clarify for our roles for the listening public that in our rules around items from the audience, that there are several pieces that are requests of the audience and several things that are rules. And there are only certain things that would lead to someone's commentary being ended. So just wanna be clear about that. We do ask everyone to be respectful and note in our rules. For example, we value a diversity of opinions and that we ask that all comments be free from hate, harassment, obscenities, or other derogatory language about other people. That is a request. Just wanted to note that for the record. There are some other things, such as making sure your comments are focused on the business of the council. That is grounds for closing off people's comments.

Thank you so much. Yes, I have the rules sitting in front of me. So after Council President made that point of order, I read through to make sure that next time we're ensuring that people are following our rules. So thank you for reiterating all that. Thank you. So items from the audience is now closed. Our next item of business is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved or second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded. Is there any item to be pulled? SEEING NONE, AND WE DO HAVE A COUNCILMEMBER ONLINE. WE'RE GOING TO DO A ROLE CALL JUST TO MAKE SURE WE HEAR EVERYBODY. SO I WILL START WITH COUNCIL PRESIDENT STEWART. AYE. AYE.

AYE. AYE. AYE. AYE.

AYE. THANK YOU. AND THAT IS 7-0. THANK YOU, EVERYBODY. Our next item of business is a staff report on design standards. Serafie Allen, Interim Director of Planning and Community Development will introduce this item.

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL AND MAYOR. WE ARE HERE TONIGHT TO PROVIDE A BRIEF UPDATE ON THE 2025-2026 CITYWIDE DESIGN STANDARDS PROJECT AUTHORIZED THROUGH THE 2025-2026 BIENNIAL BUDGET TO CONTINUE WORK THAT IMPLEMENTS REDMOND 2050 AND TO MEET NEW LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS. This project also helps ensure our development standards support sustainable, walkable, and transit-oriented developments across the city. And tonight's update highlights the work that is still in development. It will go to the Planning Commission and come back to the City Council next year for a formal review and action update, but we just wanted to give you an interim update. And I am joined by Odria Cardenas, a senior planner on the Long Range Planning Division, who will be giving the presentation tonight. and Becky Fry, our interim long-range planning manager. I'll now turn it over to Odria Cardenas to support the report.

Good evening City Council and Mayor Burney. My name is Odra Cardenas. I'm a long-range senior planner and I'm joined by interim long-range planning manager Becky Fry. Together we are leading the update to the design standards chapter of the Redmond zoning code. This multi-year effort is a major implementation action of the Redmond 2050 comprehensive plan. This work is led by long-range planning and supported internally by staff from development review, transportation, sustainability, public works, and communications. It is carried out in partnership with a multidisciplinary consultant team.

It's not working.

Today we plan to go over the purpose and scope, show the timeline, provide updates on the work that has been completed, and go over our next steps. So the purpose of the citywide design standards update is to build directly on the strong foundation that was created by the June 2025 code edits and restructure done during the Redmond 2050 update. That work modernized the structure of our code and prepared us for the next phase. This update is organized around five primary objectives. The first is to implement the Redmond 2050 policy priorities of sustainability, equity and inclusion, and resiliency. The second is to support a citywide shift away from suburban development patterns and towards more urban, walkable, and transit-oriented patterns. The next objective is to test existing standards and ensure design outcomes remain aligned with city priorities. We also want to update our illustrations to make the code clearer and more accessible. And finally, we need to integrate new state requirements to maintain full regulatory compliance. The scope of the edits is informed by several key inputs. These include the robust community engagement completed during Redmond 2050, recurring questions from developers and development review staff, and updates required by new state legislation. In addition, we are applying insights from a comprehensive audit of the design standards and from testing the code sections that pertain specifically to building form. Our work is organized into five coordinated task areas that guide this update. We have completed a comprehensive audit of the current code. Work now is underway, which includes codes testing, drafting code edits, and conducting focused research. Testing is done in two phases. Phase one of testing evaluates how existing standards perform in typical development scenarios. And that is now complete. Phase two will test the proposed edits. And we're also researching alternative design pathways. And we will be updating illustrations and doing some community outreach. So the project began, our timeline, the project began in 2025. And as I was saying, we have completed a code audit, a graphic prototype, and phase one of testing. And now we are drafting updates in preparation for a second phase of testing. We have started initial stakeholder engagement and are finishing up the research portion of the project. Planning Commission review will begin in early 2027, followed by City Council review in action. After adoption, the implementation phase will include staff training and community resources. We will now go over the findings of the work that has been completed. The design standards chapter of the code was audited jointly by our consultant team and city staff, giving us a clear understanding of where the community design standards can be strengthened. We identified where the code can be reorganized for clarity, where formatting and language can be made more consistent, and where gaps or overlaps may create confusion for applicants and staff. We also identified standards where additional clarity would be helpful or where refining the alternative design compliance provisions can give additional flexibility while still meeting the intent of the standards. Finally, the audit confirmed updates that are needed to comply with legislation and highlighted opportunities to streamline administrative processes and where illustrations are needed. Overall, these findings provide a solid foundation for targeted updates that will make the code clearer, more predictable, and easier to use. The highlights on the testing, the testing has helped us understand how existing standards perform. Broadly, the testing showed that most design standards have only minor effects on development yield, and those can typically be compensated through alternative design compliance. This result confirms compliance with new legislative requirements. We also found areas where standards may be difficult to implement consistently or may not produce the outcomes envisioned in Redmond 2050. Another insight was the need for a few additional adjustments to support green construction practices, including mass timber. The testing pointed to opportunities to add targeted flexibility and refine standards so they better support walkable, transit-oriented, and sustainable development. These areas will be explored more extensively in the next round of modeling. Other updates underway, one major effort is research into alternative design pathways, including living, building, and universal design. As part of this work, we have met with experts and toured buildings that embody these approaches. These conversations and site visits have helped us visualize how these pathways function in practice and where our current code may create friction or barriers. This insight will inform how we will develop these pathways in future phases. The consultant team worked with staff to develop a graphic style and prototype that will streamline the illustration update and works with our updated branding. Once the code edits are finalized, we will begin drafting a full set of updated illustrations. These new graphics will make the standards clearer and easier to interpret for applicants, designers, staff, and the community. As for next steps, we are preparing now for the next phase of modeling, which will test the updated code edits. Initial outreach is underway, including a Let's Connect questionnaire available throughout September, and a developer workshop is planned for late 2026. We expect to return to council for a final review in the second quarter of 2027. After this project is completed and the updated standards are adopted, the next body of work will shift to a new phase focusing on inclusive design and placemaking. This concludes our report. We thank you for your time, and we are happy to take any questions.

Thank you so much. I'm going to go to questions for the council, but I just want to say with that presentation, I've just been so impressed with the staff work that's gone into this. I feel really fortunate as the city that we have you and others working on this. It is extremely extensive, very detailed, and I think it Shows how wonderful our comprehensive plan was and all of the work that's going into it since then and just just really phenomenal work Just just to brag on you all a little bit. Thank you council. Do you have questions for our presentation today?

Councilmember Kritzer Thank you so much for the work on this and I'm looking forward to seeing it move forward. One question that I had since we haven't been able to see the direct work that you're referencing, I noticed in the slides that you reference a lot of different buildings that incorporate color or kind of mural design almost on the side of buildings. Is that something that will be showing up in the standards or in incentives to be able to create more Just as as a design standard to have more color.

Yes, we are including stuff like public art, color and the examples are all from from the city of Redmond. So the ones that you see with all the you know the wonderful art are most of them are in Maramore. So we want to incentivize all of that in all of the city. So yes, we're including that too.

Thank you.

Thank you. Council member Sony.

Hi, my question was related to the Q4 developer workshops. Is there a measure that we are putting together to ensure that we are also including some local builders rather than just the large institutional developers?

We can include them too, yes. We will include them.

Were you able to hear that, council member? Yep. Okay, good. Other questions? No? Well, thank you so much. Was there anything else you wanted to add?

I just wanted to add, if you didn't know, that Odra also has an architecture background. And when you walk by her computer, she tends to have a different building form and has us guess where in the world it is. And so this has been an excellent staff person to be leading this work. So I just wanted to give a shout out, especially to Odra.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Our next item is ombuds report. The month of August is Council Member Prakrit.

yes thank you so this is the entirety of the month of august as we didn't have a meeting we received a number of inquiries from members of the community so we received a request for budget funding in the upcoming biennium for soil and groundwater pfas testing as well as an independent city employed arborist we received a proposal for a council allocated legislative policy analyst. We received a community member, a letter from a community member opposing the PSC rate increases. We received advocacy for funding for certain community organizations to be included in the city's funding. A community member reached out to us about the possibility of an international community garden. We received advocacy on passing tenant protections in the city of Redmond, concerns about our tree code limiting homeowners' ability to implement wildfire mitigation, invites to numerous community events, concerns about the grass lawn tennis court activity, grass lawn tennis court reservations being used primarily for youth activities. We received thanks from community members for helping to support their initiatives on youth-led bike, e-bike, and e-moto safety, and feedback about the Bell Red bike lane, as well as feedback about the sidewalks on West Lake Sammamish from 47th Street to 51st Street. We received a commendation, actually, on the work of our fire department, so that was... That was very cool. And then also road conditions on Northeast Union Hill Road, spanning from Avondale Road to, on Avondale Road, sorry, from 520 to 208th Avenue Northeast. Concerns about recology, more concerns about the Northeast 40th ped and bike, the work that we're doing for putting that bike lane down there. AS WELL AS CONCERNS ABOUT THE IMPACTS OF CLOSURES ON GILLMAN STREET TO LOCAL BUSINESSES. SO THERE'S STILL A FEW EMAILS, MORE THAN A FEW EMAILS THAT I HAVE TO REPLY TO FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST, BUT THOSE ARE THE INQUIRIES THAT WE RECEIVED AS COUNCIL.

THANK YOU. COUNCIL MEMBER SONE, YOU'RE THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER. DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING TO REPORT?

Yes, there was an email that was received with the comments from residents regarding the project planning, construction and timing, which has actually impacted the surrounding community as part of refurbishing the curbs to the ADA. And, you know, that has been forwarded and we are, you know, to the staff to give the actions. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other ombuds for August? Council President and then Council Vice President and then Council Member Forsythe.

Well, thank you so much. Just really quickly wanted to give a shout out for the organizing and the great conversations at National Night Out, which we kicked off with at the beginning of August. Really great questions on conversations all night long. really enjoyed the opportunity to meet Redmond families in their neighborhoods. So thank you so much to the police department for including us in that event. I did have a few visitors to my office hours this last week. I have a couple of questions that I will follow up with Chief Lowe about regarding a pedestrian-involved collision earlier this summer, and then had some hearty conversation about current and projected commissioner openings. The resident who visited is interested in finding a way to give back to the city. This is also my opportunity to say that we are currently recruiting for a new planning commissioner here at the City of Redmond. So check out our website if that is of interest to you. Via email, the biggest question of the month was the timeline regarding the removal of automatic license plate readers. Chief Lowe has kept the council up to date on this item and let us know that it can be 60 to 90 days after the closure of our contract before the company is able to come and retrieve their equipment. So that has been an ongoing conversation throughout the month of August. And I wanted to call out, in addition to the wonderful report that my colleague council member Procrea gave, I noticed a significant number of emails into the council mailbox and the council mayor shared inbox this last month that are particularly around the infrastructure that we'll have an opportunity to discuss next week when we talk about the capital improvement program and the projected budget for the next biennium. Lots of conversation about roads and sidewalks and ADA ramps and the things that are Quite frankly, the city's responsibility and nobody else's. And I just wanted to call out that theme. Couple updates on behalf of the council. We have a lot of special meetings in the month of September. So you can check out the schedule. We'll be starting a few minutes early most weeks this month. On September 10th, the Council will be at Spiritbrook Park from 5 to 7 p.m. for our Council conversation, and then back in Downtown Park on September 17th for the Downtown Redmond Art Walk. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Council Vice-President.

Thank you. Again, thank you to Redmond Police Department for inviting us out to participate in National Night Out. This was another year of just really great conversations and both participating and participating in community with our community members throughout various neighborhoods, which was fabulous. For most of the month, I was out of town and not available. However, the first week actually and this past weekend was pretty busy. Several conversations around tenant protections as one of the council members who is a renter that lives in downtown Redmond. I get to walk around and be in community and have these conversations. It's been wonderful to get feedback on that. Also more conversations around recology versus waste management for our trash removal, our garbage removal. And I think that one of the things that is always apparent is whenever there's change, there are going to be some hiccups. However, going back through a lot of the material that we had and the contracts, pointing out where Recology was actually giving us better service, although it's more expensive, that had we stayed with waste management, it would have been even more expensive. And sometimes that can be lost while we're dealing with frustrations. Also, I had a lot of conversations while riding the train just on the light rail love. Several people were commenting about how they were a bit skeptical at first, and now they absolutely love riding the rail, whether it's just to downtown Bellevue or all the way across the lake. This year, I was disappointed to miss all of the Rockin' on the River concerts that we have. I know that a couple of my colleagues were able to attend those, so I'm looking forward to hearing their report out on that. But before I did leave to go on the recess, I was able to join Councilmember Forsyth on the Mini Sweeper Ride Along. Now, the Mini Sweeper is like our street sweepers, but a mini version of it. And it's wonderful in clearing debris out of bike lanes. This is, again, pretty important to a couple of us, several of us here on Council, as we We are bike riders. So this was wonderful. While we were out on the ride along, there was a car that was parked in the bike lane. So then the sweeper could not do its job and needed to move around. So just a friendly reminder to... not park in the bike lane so that can get done. But it's also able to get onto the sidewalks. Here in the Pacific Northwest, we've got a lot of moss and debris that will grow on our sidewalks. And with this small but mighty piece of equipment that we have, we're able to use it in multiple purpose ways. So that was a really great field trip that we were able to go on. That's the end of my report. Thank you. Council Member.

Thank you. And you were missed at the Rockin' on the River, I will say, at least by me in particular. So did attend the Rockin' on the River, the last one that got moved due to the smoke in the air. Sad about the smoke but grateful that that one got moved so I could actually attend. It was a wonderful event Diving into the rest of my report my colleagues mentioned a lot of the things so I will skip over some of those But again National Night Out was lovely Thank you to our police department for coordinating and I'm sorry that our fire department was busy dealing with the smoke and helping other departments So they weren't able to attend this year. I'm sure they were they were sad and I know there were some kiddos that were sad about that as well and Heard some support for our MHP program and making sure that we are amping that up as we've seen some new and more frequent incidences around town. I had a request for how to find events that are happening in the downtown park and responded to that community member. Had some conversations around ADA issues and standards, the West Lake Sammamish traffic patterns with new infrastructure redesigns happening in that area. Conversations around street closures in relationship to events. um helped coordinate with a resident at the health through housing project and we'll be meeting with that resident and king county council member to hear those concerns as council members know that is a king county project and we do not have a lot of purview but i'm helping coordinate to make that resident make sure that they are heard and supported conversations around school zone speed cameras, flock cameras, junk fees and rental properties, property taxes, attended the Move Redmond Open Streets Festival, the Street Sweeper, which was lovely. And yes, please make sure that you are not even parking on the lines for the bike lanes because that actually will impede the ability for that Street Sweeper to get through because they don't want to scratch your car. attended the Port of Seattle Working Waterfront event, if anyone is interested. I grabbed the environmental sustainability report that they had for 2025, so I'm happy to share that with you all. Attended the East Side conversations around housing with our smaller nonprofit organizations, and we identified some really interesting gaps that are hopefully now going to be and hopefully resulting in more funding going out to some of those smaller organizations and had an email about the flock cameras and one of our local HOAs wanting to have those donated to that HOA and told that HOA that we are not able to do that because that is the property of flock.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other ombuds items? Council Member Kritzer.

Yeah, I won't repeat a bunch of that were already said, but I will say that I had some conversations at office hours as well as out in community, support for ADA projects, as well as some feedback on those. And also concerns about safety and encouraging more use of the MHP in certain situations and funding for that. Also had some questions about parking permits and some of the upcoming changes on parking. Also some feedback around event impacts on nearby businesses that I believe our staff followed up on. Also was shared some additional information about impacts of 6 PPD on our waterways and also got some feedback supporting our decision around flock cameras as well as some questions about it. I also got some questions about other police tech related technology and some ideas from residents on that. Also got some additional feedback on the city's permitting enroll with the Norman Rockwell construction. And I will also note that I got to go when I dropped off my daughter for school and see the new Norman Rockwell building, which was really, really cool. and actually saw the school principal giving a shout out to the city of Redmond for its partnership in that construction. So, you know, hopefully there'll be a moment. I know I've seen some residents who would love to be able to see the inside since it was a very beloved building. Now there's an even new beloved building and it looks really beautiful. It was exciting to see all the kids on the first day of school this week going in to check it out. So congrats to the Lake Washington School District on that one and really glad we could collectively fund that. And then I'll just note, I also got to go to the first two Rocket on the River concerts that happened. And we'll put in a plug that I felt that the prom date mixtape was a huge success. I haven't seen the 80s rock band, but the dancing was off the chain on that one. It was amazing. There was like a huge dance party on the city campus at that particular Rockin' on the River. So I'll just put in my two cents that we should bring back the 80s at the next one. Thank you.

I look forward to hopefully when they finish up all the construction at Rockwell, we'll be able to take a look inside because, yeah, I can see it from the outside. It's quite a beautiful building. And a lot of work went into that. And our staff did an amazing job working with the district. So really congrats to all of them. Any other ombuds or yeah, ombuds still. Any committee reports?

Council Member Kritzer. I attended the Kokanee Management Committee meeting for our ILA with the cities around the lake and the Snoqualmie Tribe, and we approved an updated budget for the upcoming year for the Kokanee, for that ILA, including funding a lot of the newest kind of science-based practices that We're seeing working and scaling up some for bringing back our little red fish. And we also affirmed some additional practices on emergency voting because we didn't have those really clarified. And in the last year there was a moment where we really needed to allocate some funding in an emergency. And we realized we didn't have a good tool for being able to do that vote. We outlined some of those practices and agreed upon them and I think we were happy from the city side of being able to have a little bit more clarity there on decision-making. We also had a management committee meeting for RIAA 8 and we looked at the upcoming RIAA 8 budget, which we'll actually be looking at and approving in the upcoming month. with the whole Salmon Recovery Council, but got to go through in detail with some of the management committee members, also looking at some of the membership So we'll be seeing some votes on that in the upcoming time. I also had the chance to meet with several folks within the One Redmond network to be able to discuss some different strategic items going forward there, as well as to meet with One Redmond. This year, One Redmond got a new state lobbyist. So to be able to just, or state and city lobbyists. So to discuss kind of the role of advocacy from One Redmond with them. And we'll be seeing a report from one Redmond coming up at City Council reporting back specifically was able to or will be hearing from the executive director about that about the outcomes of the city's contract with them. And so was able to discuss that a little bit with their ED and then I'll also note today we had the lodging tax advisory committee. meeting and the LTAC finalized our recommendations to come to City Council for the grant distributions for community events and city events and the decisions on that were unanimous and so you all can look forward to seeing that in the upcoming month coming back to Council and I'll be sure to give all my commentary on that at that moment but but to note that we had some really good discussions there and can look forward to seeing that there was a bunch of new event proposals this year in addition to some of our favorite returning events.

Thank you. Committee reports. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Attended the East Trail Regional Council planning meeting for our next quarterly meeting where we discussed the major topics we want to close out the year with and the new incoming chair potential and how we're gonna move forward next year with the Revisioning and making sure that after the ten years that we've been together. We are Moving forward with the best possible vision for the future.

Thank you ten years Wow any other committee reports council vice president

Way back, seemingly four weeks ago, seemed like last year, Council Member Forsyth and I attended the Disability Board meeting where not only did we take care of regular business, and we also discussed some language changes as well to make sure that we're continuing to be diligent and make sure that our retirees are taken care of.

THANK YOU. ANY OTHER COMMITTEE REPORTS? I HAD A COUPLE OF SOUND TRANSIT MEETINGS, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO REPORT ON THAT. HOWEVER, I AM GOING TO REPORT ON AN OPPORTUNITY THAT WE HAD TO SHOWCASE NATIONALLY SOME OF THE WORK THAT WE'VE DONE IN THE CITY OF REDMOND. AS MANY OF YOU KNOW, I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES ON HOUSING, WITH THEIR HOUSING SUPPLY ACCELERATOR AND THE GREAT HOUSING COMEBACK, WHICH IS WHAT IT'S CALLED RIGHT NOW. And they brought in a group of a few elected officials nationally, as well as some planners from around the country. They met in Bellevue. It was sponsored by Amazon because they've been a big supporter of this work and of housing. And I was able to meet them at the Together Center and share with them that amazing project that we did in partnership with the Together Center. And then they also went by both Plymouth and Prisma as well, and we shared information about those two projects as well. And then I was able to join them the next day and give them more details about partnerships and opportunities. Not every city has the opportunities like Redmond, but that was the theme I shared with them was like, look for the opportunities in your community. and look for ways to partner and bring this kind of housing online. So it was really exciting. I love, love, love talking about those projects in Redmond. And it was so gratifying to finally have them here in town and be able to show it to them. They were completely in awe of the Together Center and the work that happens there. And so I just want to share with you and with the community what an amazing opportunity that is, what an amazing project it is. And I think Council President Stewart's on the board there. But the team was amazing. Some of the board members were there as well to share their experience. It's just a really incredible opportunity to create housing with services in a space so close to light rail, so close to everything within a city. And just want to share that all with you because it was super fun. So one of the fun things that happened this August. Any other committee reports? All right. The next thing we have is new business. Is new business AM number 26129, FY24 assistance to firefighters grant, joint peer support training MOU amendment. Jim Whitney, Deputy Fire Chief, will introduce this item. Are you ready for us? And this is an unusual item. Normally we have more time between when it's introduced at Committee of the Whole to when it comes to business. That's why it's in new business tonight. But we had a short timeline and Deputy Whitney will share that with us.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Presented this today during Committee of the Whole to the group. Happy to take any questions that may have come up from this. Again, thank you for the opportunity to have presented earlier during Committee of the Whole and to be here tonight. I know the timeline's very tight. We're asking you to do this all at once in one day. The background on this is that it is a grant that was applied for in 2024 through Assistance to Firefighters Grant through the federal government. We were not part of the grant originally. The City of Bothell Fire Department pulled out of the grant because of the current ongoing RFA with Shoreline Fire Department, and the combination of those two coming together provided the opportunity that they were going to remove themselves and gave us the opportunity to be part of this grant. The grant provides us with a significant increase in our... membership being trained as part of the peer support team. So it'll increase our numbers by 18 of people that are trained, initial training for peer support, but it also gives us continued education hours for those that are already members of the peer support team and additional 18 individuals that get about 8.5 additional continued education to advance their training. And then also provides for 18 people to, and it'll be a combination of both, critical incident debriefing training so the that initial response to the scene or to the station after a large event happens or honestly across city departments if an event happens that impacts the city employees we are excited about the opportunity to be a part of this grant our impact to us is about seven thousand five hundred dollars give or take that is already budgeted money in the pierce peer support line item that's available to us, and that'll be our portion of the grant forward, and then we will receive this opportunity for all this training hours. Happy to take deeper questions if you'd like. I don't want to take up a ton of time because we just talked about this a couple hours ago, but if there are further questions, please, I would be happy to take them at this time.

Thank you so much. Other questions for Mr. Whitney? I see none. Thank you so much.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you again for letting us push this through.

Is there a motion to approve AM number 26129? It's been moved. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll also do a roll call vote just to ensure that we hear from our council member online, starting with Council President Stewart. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. And that passes 7-0. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

The last item on the agenda is a closed session for labor negotiations, RCW 4230-144B. Without objection, the business meeting will adjourn at this time and the council will go into closed session. Hearing none, there's no objection. Hearing none, this business meeting is adjourned per state law. Public attendance is not allowed in the closed session. And Council Member Sonny, you should have a link to join us.