City Council - Regular Meeting

of the Redmond City Council Committee of the Whole for Finance Administration and Communications on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026, commencing at 4.32 p.m. In attendance are Council President Stewart, Council Vice President Nueva Camino, Council Members Forsyth, Parsi, and Soni, and online we have Council Member Prakriya and myself, Presiding Officer Council Member Kritzer. We have six items on the agenda there because one item that was originally posted, the contract for fully managed video production was removed and will be on a future agenda due to more information needed. And so the first item on our agenda is the approval of annual physical access control Genetech support contract in the amount of $97,585. And introducing this item is our TIS director, Mike Marchand. Go ahead.

Thank you, council members. CIO Michael Marchand here. I'm with Jose May, our infrastructure operations manager, to introduce this item.

Hello. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Hello, council members. With TIS, Department of Infrastructure and Operations, my name is Jose, the manager. Bringing this contract forward to request approval to sign a contract to facilitate ongoing support for the physical access system that controls secure access to the city's buildings of the current month-to-month contract that we have is no longer meeting the city's needs. This contract will give some of the Wins here for the city will be better support due to the vendor providing parts. The current vendor doesn't provide parts, so anytime there is an issue, our facilities team has to also respond and bring parts, and sometimes this can cause delays and interruption to business operations. In addition to that, we also get a financial savings of 15% of the annual cost of what the city is currently paying for the ongoing support. Any questions?

Thank you. Are there questions from the council? Council Member Parsi, did you raise your hand?

Go ahead. I was wondering what is our current solution for this use case and how much does it currently cost the city? I saw that there was a note in the memo that if not approved, we go to a month-to-month plan, but I was curious, have we always been a month-to-month plan or have we been on a different contract and how much that costs?

Yeah, so current the previous. Previously, the city was on a yearly support contract with this vendor that cost was just over $120,000 a year. This current contract is $97,000 a year. And I'm sorry, what was the other question that you had there?

This answers my question, but if I may ask a follow up for this.

Sure.

So does this mean that for similar services now we're getting a lower cost or are we kind of changing the contract structure or different scope now?

And it's great at services. So in addition to the vendor, the vendor creating, providing critical parts in the event of an issue, the response time from emergency response goes from four hours to two hours or in business hours. So it's a it's better service. And also how it comes. They also have an existing contract with other agencies, including King County, and they come highly recommended as well.

Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you, Jose. Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate you being here. And thank you for pointing out the benefits of switching over to the new vendor. In addition to the benefits that we see, are there any concessions that we're making? Are there anything that we're giving up?

No.

Thank you.

No problem.

Any other questions? Council Member Sonny.

So I have a question on the for the key metrics just to ensure like, you know, we have a two and a four hour SLA windows. Are we going to maintain any of those metrics for long?

Yes. Yeah. The current contract stipulates that there's emergency response time during business hours is now two hours and then after hours is four hours.

Okay, any other questions? Not seeing any, I will note that this is being proposed to put on consent for our September 15th meeting next week. Is there any objection to putting this on consent? See and thumbs. All right, so let's put this on consent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next item on the agenda is the adoption of an ordinance updating the Revenue Municipal Code subsection 9.30.060 to remove conflicting code language. And I believe our Deputy Finance Director, Haritha Nara is gonna introduce this item, go ahead.

Thank you. Good evening, council members. We are here today to get council's approval on a simple housekeeping correction on one of the code 9.30.60. It's regarding gambling taxes on social card rooms and games. I have here our financial manager, Adam O'Sullivan, and our program coordinator, Denise Shonda, to introduce this item and if you have any questions on it.

Hi, council members. My name's Adam. I'm one of the finance managers, and I'm here with Denise as well, the business license program coordinator. So like Deputy Director Norris said, we're hoping to clean up an inconsistency in the code. There's been some questions from the community, and at this point, we're trying to get out in front of potentially future questions around what types of business activities are allowed in Redmond. So it would be helpful to clean up the code and make sure that we're being consistent with what's shared on our site.

Thank you. Are there questions from the Council? Council Member Stewart? Council President Stewart?

that's okay thank you and thanks so much team for introducing the item and one of my main questions had been around the kind of the origin of the question and how the conflict came to be so I appreciate hearing that due to some business interest we this is an issue we need to get ahead of I think it would be helpful to clarify and and to really articulate in this room what the conflict is and also to ensure that we are not actually making a policy change in terms of what types of activities are allowed in the city of Redmond. So could you speak to those two things?

Sure. So great questions. Thank you. We went back through to try and get some more of the history. It's a little bit tricky because this dates back to the late 90s, early 2000s. But what we're able to sort of understand is that in 1999, there was a ban on social card rooms and then there was an update to gambling tax a year later that did not specifically address social card rooms, but it appears that they never removed it from the table. So it's hard to say whether it was just something that's missed. We're sort of inferring a little bit how the decision was made. But in the meeting notes from 1999, it seems very clear that there was a flat ban on social card rooms.

Thank you. So if I may summarize then, the question in front of the council is to approve the removal of that as a possible taxable activity so that there isn't confusion about what may or may not be allowed in terms of social game rooms in the City of Redmond. We're not actually here to discuss the virtue or benefit of social card rooms in the City of Redmond.

That's correct.

Just clarifying this for the moment. Okay. Well, I support moving that forward to consent then. Thank you.

Councilmember Procrea.

Thank you. I was just wondering, first of all, I totally, totally support this change, but I was wondering if you could give a little bit as to the provenance of how we came to notice this seeming contradiction. I'm sure there are other issues with our code. It's just inevitable and a code that I think it's I believe it's well over 1,000 pages is our code. I could be mistaken. But I'm sure there are other issues. I'm just wondering what the process was to actually catch this one.

Yes, so this one came about. We received a question from a legal counsel, perhaps representing an individual, trying to better understand the types of business activities that are allowed in Redmond. And so they specifically called out the conflicting language within our code. And so we went back and reviewed. We also reviewed this with our legal department. And just to ensure that, hey, we're not missing anything. This does make sense that there was just a miss on that table that was added in. It's possible that when the table was added in, that included the collection of gambling taxes for social card rooms, that it was for any businesses at that time that were operating as social card rooms or allowing those types of activities, that we were still collecting that tax but not allowing new businesses to operate that way.

Thank you. Council Member Soni. Thank you. Oh, did you have a follow-up question, Council Member Pekria?

No, no, sorry. I was just saying thank you.

Great. Thank you.

So I was just reading that nonprofits are allowed to have a social card room on their premises in Redmond, provided they're licensed by Washington State Gambling Commission. So I think it would be very useful if we can clarify that this restriction would apply only for the commercial and not for the nonprofits. I know the language is just focusing on the commercial, but might be useful to clarify for the nonprofits.

Yes, thank you. That is a very good distinction. So this is just to remove the social card games as a commercial stimulant. So charitable organizations and nonprofits, this would not apply to them.

Thank you.

Any other questions here?

All right. Well, um, this, uh, I'm just gonna, sorry, pull up here. So this is also being proposed to go on consent on September 15th. Is there any objection to moving this to consent? All right. Thank you. And thank you for the diligent work on this to align our, our code. Uh, so we don't have inconsistencies. All right. I'll move that to consent. Um, So the third item on our agenda, as I noted, will be moved and we'll see it at a future meeting. The next item on our agenda is the payroll transition update and approval for consultant services contract for human resources assessment. And we have our Deputy Executive Director, Lisa Marr, here to introduce the items.

Good afternoon, Council. Lisa Maher, Assistant Chief Operating Officer and Interim HR Director. I'd like to introduce Krista McDonnell, our Interim Deputy Director for HR, and Director Cochran will also be providing the payroll transition part of this for you today. I'm here to address Council's approval and moving this to consent for a consulting services contract with Project Core in the amount of $318,000, 318. This is to conduct a three-phase, 20-week assessment of the human resources structure and processes that would include discovery, the current state, data gathering, payroll structure, and process analysis, and the completion of it with a final prioritized report and roadmap that I would come back to share with Council once that's completed. This assessment provides us with a third-party review of our human resource processes and procedures, our payroll accuracy, our hiring timeliness, overall workforce effectiveness, systems communication and alignment to support the city's mission and the long-term success of the department. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions.

And are we gonna discuss that? I know that we have Director Cochran to also give an update as part of this item on payroll. Do we wanna just have you give the update and then we'll take questions? Great, thank you so much.

Sure, thank you and happy Tuesday, I guess. So we transitioned payroll staff to the finance department on July 16th and since then we've been focused primarily on two things. One is stabilizing the work environment and the team for our existing payroll staff. bringing them into the finance department and really providing them with all the additional capacity that we can. We've also then been working on assessing and addressing risk that impacts the payroll process and experience in many different ways. First, we've been looking at our technology and what the path forward and we have validated that moving forward with the implementation of our UKG solution is in our best interest and so we are staying on that path. In addition to that, we are researching what a managed services approach would look like for the payroll department. So that would mean that we would have a third party that would be able to take the role of processing the payroll at some point in the future. What that does is allows us to minimize the risk that we have on a very small payroll department to generate the payroll on the semi-monthly basis, as well as the risk that we experience when we have turnover in a very small department. We are still researching what that would look like, when would be the appropriate time to move to an arrangement like that, and we'll certainly bring you along as we learn more and get to a point of decisions. There are a few things that are in our way from being able to do that right away. One of them being sort of the complexity of our union contracts, our CBAs, and our ability to automate a lot of the work that's required in order to pay people the way that the agreements are written. And so that's an area that we're working right now to figure out how do we automate more, how do we simplify, how do we work with the unions to get things in a simpler form, and how long will that take, we don't know. The other thing that we've been looking at is our processes and internal controls. We have quite experienced payroll staff involved in the implementation of our UKG system. And our payroll processes are being examined, sort of pulled apart and put back together as part of the implementation of the UKG project. But in order to ensure that past work reflects what it should, we will be recommending an audit to begin at the beginning of 2027. The timing is intended to allow the process to be completed looking at the HR issues so that we can fold any requirements that we need to into what we're looking at in terms of payroll. And it will look at not only did we pay people accurately, but did we have and do we have the right internal controls in place. Hoping to have that work completed in time for us to implement the UKG project so that we can hopefully start with a clean slate. No guarantees that the timing will work out, but that is what we are hoping for. We are also working on addressing kind of the customer service aspect of what we are providing to the organization. We're working on developing a queue that will allow us to more quickly respond to questions or concerns. It'll also allow us to track what it is that we're responding to and report out, not only now, but during and after the implementation of software so we can see the impact that that had. Once we have kind of a little bit more in place, we will communicate to all staff that this is our plan, and I will be going out and meeting with all departments just to make sure that we've captured concerns across all departments and at all levels before we start working with any external providers to help us move things forward.

Thank you so much, Director Cochran. I think the intention was to be able to have that context as we start on the discussion about the HR contract as well. So thank you so much, or services contract. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. Maybe Director Cochran, if I can start where we kind of left off then. One of my questions coming into the room today was, about the project team that's proposed for the contract in front of us and Knowing that we were going to also be discussing payroll and I should say I think everyone in the room I should only speak for myself I'm sure there is a sentiment in the room that we believe you know in the city of Redmond every employee should be able to trust a role is accurate and on time and so I'm I'm glad that we're taking care of this work now and When I reviewed the project team that's in the proposal in front of us, I noticed that there was no forensic accountant. So I heard you mention an audit that begins in 2027. Is there no plan to do a backward-looking audit? Or could you help me close the gap in my understanding there?

That would be backward-looking. It would be a forensic audit.

Looking backward? Yes. And that would be a separate contract?

Yes.

Okay. Yes.

You're welcome.

Council Member Procrea?

Thank you. Yeah, I had a couple of questions. Number one is in the attachment, it says that work is planned to begin no later than August 17th of 2026. Has work already begun on this project? Because if we're approving the contract, I'm just wondering if that is out of date or if work has begun?

We have had a couple of planning meetings, but the date is out of date just for us to get this in the schedule of bringing it to council. But we received the proposal prior to going on or right about the time you went on recess. So it's just the delay in getting it in front of you for this committee.

I see. Okay. And... Can you tell us a little bit more about how this consultant was chosen?

Yes, we knew we needed to work quickly. And I sought out references and referrals from other cities and organizations that have We're currently working on HR or working with a consultant on HR projects. And this name of this group was brought forward by several entities, specifically one of them is Seattle SPD. And they're currently out looking for an HR director and had just completed an assessment very similar to this, but with more employees. And so we took the referrals, reviewed them. I spoke with other cities and entities that had them, and we sole sourced this consultant.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Pecoria. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Just going back to the payroll audit, can you just clarify? I think I missed something. Are we not doing a forensic audit?

We would be. This would be a forensic audit. I'm sorry if I was confusing. Our process is internal controls going forward. We are very concentrated on that through our project, but we need to look backwards, and that would be what this audit would be for.

Great. I was like, we can't do this without a forensic audit.

You're correct. Thank you.

You're welcome. The only other question I have is it was recently brought to my attention that we currently have a contract with our former HR director to finish out some projects. Can you advise if that what I heard was accurate, how that plays into this contract and any other overlap that we might see?

This does not play into this at all. Our former director has been brought back for a short period of time between now and the end of the year to solely work on the project that will come before you tonight, which is the new department proposal which has several classifications and FTE changes. Because of the turnover, the director is one of the only ones that can expedite that process for us if that proposal moves forward.

So that's on the department reorg, a new department. Correct. That we're talking about tonight. Correct. And only that project.

Only that. Thank you. I should add, there is a couple of legal trainings that need to be completed with our generalists for grievance. And I think legal process that the former director will also be finishing now. But those are the only two things. And that would end at the end of this year. Council Member Peercy.

I am curious, given that the transition has already begun to some extent. We have started work on UKG as the new application to do. This effort has not begun and is set to take roughly five-ish months. And this is not clear to me yet how the outcome of this work will influence what decisions we make. So can you clarify exactly kind of if you could list a few decisions that we could make differently based on what we learn from the results of this contract today that would help me a lot because the timelines don't make a lot of sense to me just yet.

I'm sorry, are you asking specifically decisions about payroll or just in general?

The outcome of, so I'm curious what the outcome of this contract, what decisions we have to make that the outcome of this contract will inform us to make decisions potentially differently. So how are we using data and results from this contract to make any decisions that we have to make?

I think that would not be just payroll, but HR. Certainly.

The point of this and to help make decisions in the future is one to go have a third pair of eyes or an outside pair of eyes looking at all of our processes and SOPs and to be able to make sure that we are operating as efficiently as possible. and to let us know what we could be doing better. And the end result would be, could we be providing more efficient or better processes or customer service to the staff?

Council Member Percy?

I think I would really appreciate to have some more specificity around this, because efficiency and customer experience are very kind of hand-wavy things, and I don't have a, reading the scope wasn't super clear to me, and kind of what I'm hearing is not really helping paint a better picture for me to be confident, and especially given that this was in a competitive bid, I'm not feeling I have everything that I need yet to be comfortable about making it kind of going to consent with this yet.

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. The timing of this is a bit precarious because although we don't know what is going to be coming back from taking a look at our processes and if there are significant gaps that are brought to light, and we're about to go into our budget, then what could there be? Are we considering what unexpected costs that we can have? And of course, when we're planning financially, we don't have a crystal ball, we don't know. But what we do know is that we're having a third set of eyes take a look at how we're doing things. If there are large inconsistencies or a significant delta, Are we thinking about that as we're heading into budget? And what should we be thinking about as we're thinking about budget and going into deliberations? Do we have funds set aside thinking, okay, if there are inconsistencies? Or are we kind of crossing our fingers and hoping for the best?

I will address that. As part of the budget process and all of the funds, we hold what's called a salary and benefit contingency. Part of it being one time, if there's something that comes up and we need to close a gap, and part of it funded from ongoing dollars so that if we need to fund or absorb new staff, we can. Or if there's union contracts that settle for more than we expected and things like that. Due to the risk or the uncertainty we have, added additional funds into that contingency so that when we have a recommendation or a need and need to bring that to council, we have a way to react if needed. That covers not only staffing uncertainty but also the conclusion of an audit may show that we owe some dollars and so we have contingency set aside.

Follow up if I may, Chair?

Sure.

And how much is in that contingency fund?

The contingency total is $4 million. So $2 million of it is one time and $2 million of it is ongoing.

Great. Thank you very much, Director.

You're welcome.

Council Member Soni?

So out of seven processes, as we read, there are only two processes where we are going to do the deeper dives to understand and, you know, assess with the consultant. The other five will just have the light touch. So what is the confidence level that just by the deeper dive or a mapping with just the two processes will help us resolve all the challenges that we are dealing today with an HR and finance disconnect or other challenges that we are facing? I'm just a little concerned like is this enough scope or not?

With the amount of funds and the time that we had right now, the deeper dives will provide two of the higher level items and then hopefully will give us indication that there may be other and additional work that needs to happen. Those would be, I guess, back to the decisions that Council Member Parsi was referring to as far as are we using the right applications, do we have enough staffing? The lighter touch may be if there are red flags there, something that we would bring back in the final report to discuss with you if there is work that needs, additional work that will need to be done in the future in those areas.

Thank you. And I see there's another question from Council Member Prakrit. I'm going to go first round and then I'll call on you for the second round. One question that I have is this is not a budgeted expense. So can you share with us about generally list general fund as the funding for this? Can you speak to where we would be pulling for this to pay for it?

We will be pulling this from the executive leadership budget via salary savings with inside that budget.

Okay, and in terms of actually the bids that we got on this and ensuring that we're at the right level in terms of the cost for this, can you share a little bit of what the considerations were?

We did not receive competitive bids for this.

Council Member Pacrea.

Thank you. First of all, I was wondering if you could share any details you may have about the procedural startings and the timeline for the UKG payroll project. And then I have a quick follow up based on based on that.

So the UKG project has been going on for a bit. Our I'm looking at Mike. Our goal is at this point, I don't know if I'm making an announcement or... Here's what I can tell you. Our current software system is in support until June of next year. So our goal is to be live by that time.

Great. Thank you. And then my thinking on this contract is, first of all, you know, this is... almost a third of a million dollars. It's a non-trivial amount of money, more than we would budget for an FTE for an entire year. I'm sorry, my voice is a little bit scuffed. I'm a little bit sick. But more than we would budget for an FTE for an entire year. And I think that a third-party system, a third-party audit is needed here because this is a different scope of work than building out a new kind of software. We need to make sure that every employee in Redmond is being paid fairly according to the contract that they signed. My concern with this specific contract, this specific consultant agreement, is that there is nothing in the language actually making sure that we make sure every Redmond employee is paid fairly. And I would not be comfortable paying over a third of a million dollars to any consultant for this third-party scope of work without having that specific deliverable given back to the city.

Thank you. My understanding was from hearing the presentation is that this is for an assessment of our HR team. and it's separate from a payroll audit and assessment that would happen as a third party. And that would come afterwards, is that correct?

That is correct. We are working right now to outline what our requirements of an audit would be. We're working to get an RFP out or meet with recommended firms. So we're still looking for a service provider and looking to start the more forensic audit at the beginning of the year. this scope of work will be an input into that. We'll have a closed year. And so it will come to council at a later time.

And can you clarify whether it was at all sought to do a joint scope of work on this to include both items?

We did. That's where we started. The particular firm does not provide that service.

Thank you.

Council Member Percy.

I was wondering, beyond the context of the specific contract, I wanted to see if Council would be interested at this point to explore a policy around ensuring that staff is paid in a timely manner, that if there is identified discrepancy in pay, that could potentially impact other employees as well. If it's reported, we would be able to still notify others, or if we identify it, we would be informing those who may be experiencing such issues, or if we identify a broad issue, we would be able to handle it appropriately. So I wanted to see if there is potentially interest from council in doing that work or not.

Thank you, Council Member Percy. Would any council members like to comment on that proposal? Council President Stewart.

If I'm understanding correctly, the proposal and also the intent behind what you're asking, Council Member Parsi, absolutely I want this council to be able to use all of the tools that are available to it to ensure that we're able to be part of the restoration of trust in the city. I don't know that that's all necessarily in the scope of what we have going on here just now. But it does sound like we will have another bite at the apple with the forensic audit and policy choices that may come as a result of that. So there's a chunk of this conversation that I, like you, I think, am very interested in continuing the conversation on. But that answer might be related and different to the question of this committee item, but very much support.

the intent of your question thank you councilmember forsay i also support the intent of the question um and i'm curious director cochran if you could say if policy choices would be a part of that forensic audit because i'm hopeful but i don't know if that's actually part of that scope

I would expect that we to receive my desire is to receive a report that tells us what has occurred what hasn't occurred what should occur and what some recommendations are anytime there's a recommendation. that has an opportunity to influence policy. And I expect that that we will have those conversations.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Great. I would just put in a request that we build in time for that part of that conversation when it comes back.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Absolutely.

DIRECTOR HAMPSON- Thanks.

Councilmember Procrea.

DIRECTOR PROCREA. Thank you. I would like to go back to Council Vice President Nueva Camino's first question. on how this timeline lines up with the budget. It sounds from this conversation that there is great interest in hiring out, but both on the council side and on the staff side, in hiring out a forensic accountant. But I'm just wondering how that hiring lines up with our timeline of our budget in November. Director Cochran.

I am hopeful that, I don't know yet what the cost of the forensic audit may be, but I'm hopeful that it fits within our baseline budget. If it does not, I will come back to council for a budget adjustment. I just don't know, I don't, I can guess at what it may cost, but I would kind of rather get it right and bring it back when we know.

Thank you. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. I have one final question on the proposal that's in front of us. And I think you have a preview of some of our questions when we're able to bring the audit back. Thank you again for bringing this forward. I certainly do want to expedite the process of getting this project started. It sounded like in the room there was a little bit of a surprise that this contract was sole source. We don't, because it's not a public works project, we don't have a requirement to have multiple bids. So that is part of how we got to where we are. One of my questions that's lingering, and I realize asking this question could... Contribute to the like the question of is this the right contract I certainly don't want to delay however I'm concerned that it takes 20 weeks so I would be interested in hearing a bit more 20 weeks is longer than a college semester. It's like a semester and a half. And knowing that we have a new hire coming on here in just a little bit, and potentially that that hire could come on while the audit is, or the project is still going, rather than kind of arriving at that point where they're handed the plan and able to get going in implementation. So could we hear a little bit more about why 20 weeks is needed?

20 weeks would definitely be our maximum. We are working to expedite that. So we're moving as fast as we possibly can once, if council was to approve this on consent. The 20 weeks as involved as some of these things are involved many interviews from all the way from the individuals in the HR department to our hiring managers, the directors and deputies, people, staff that have had other experiences, whether they were positive or negative with HR will all be part of the interview process. It is a full review of all of our SOPs, all of our software that we use within all of our different tasks that we complete in HR. Again, a full review of the payroll, interviews with the payroll team, the payroll processes and systems that we currently have. It is an extremely thorough review dive into everything that our HR provides as a service, thus the 20 weeks to make sure that we're thorough and able to report out on all of those systems and things and services that we do.

Thank you, Assistant CO Omar. I can appreciate that and also would just encourage us not to let perfect be the enemy of good, especially for the team that needs the direction moving forward. So for my part, I will support moving this forward and getting the work going. Thank you.

Thank you. I will note that I feel a little torn here myself because of some of the things that Council President Stewart just said. We have heard concerns, and I do think that it's important for us to be able to move forward and get an assessment so that way we can address any gaps or issues that are going on to make sure this is a really great place to work and that we're providing the HR support that we need. And I would love to get to the payroll assessment sooner than later as well. Because part of what was raised to us was about our existing system, having one sole source provider rather than having gone out to RFP or to be able to get proposals to us to ensure that we have kind of more independence of who's doing this, I think is a question for me as well as on the cost that we're spending. So I guess I'm a little bit torn on whether or not it makes sense. I think... And it sounds like potentially the council does have some questions on this. So whether we could get some more details specifically on perhaps the background of some of the similar projects done by this provider, why it is that we have confidence in this, as well as for me, I think what would answer my questions to approve this would also be what process we'll go through to ensure that they can do a very independent um, assessment in that the results of this assessment can be directly delivered to the council as well to be able to review, um, would be important. Um, council member Parsi, and then I'm going to ask for a wrap up, uh, just to get a sense of where the council's at, um, in terms of bringing this to consent.

So I asked the question earlier about what this work could inform. I will ask that question differently because I feel like some of the council is kind of, there's question about if this work could block work on our end or not. And I'm not seeing exactly what work this, what decisions could be blocked based on this. So could you help inform us if this decision is blocking, if this work is actually blocking work from our HR implementation or our implementation of payroll? And if so, exactly, could you specify what would get blocked? So I think that would be really helpful to see if our work continues just as fine, if this work doesn't happen, or what exactly would be blocked.

There is no intent to block any of the work and this does not have any tied to interfering with the UKG payroll work at all. I don't see this blocking any thing for council policy wise, but yet just to inform you if we are doing the work that we should be doing for our staff out of the HR department.

And Council Member Parsi, I will just say, I think some of this also responds to the fact that the council received a letter of concern about some of the HR, about HR systems and practices. So this is related to the systems and practices, not to the payroll, which was also included in there, and that would be a separate piece. So that's my understanding. Okay, I'll go Council Member Parcheria, then I'm going to cut off this conversation. We'll get to, and we'll decide if we want to have another conversation on this. Council Member Parcheria?

Thank you. I was just going to share my perspective, which is that I do believe that this scope of work is needed, but in order to move forward to consent, I would like to see, number one, a list of other jurisdictions to whom this consultant has helped, the prior issues they had, what kinds of resolutions they were able to get to, and then just a more clear definition on the deliverables in scope of this contract. But I also really do want to appreciate all the work that has gone into this. You know, we have a billion dollar budget, right? And it's not easy to transform the way that the majority of the general fund goes into salaries, right? And it's not easy to transform the way that hundreds of millions of dollars of flows into municipalities.

Thank you, Council Member Pacrea. So, Council Members, I'm going to ask, since it sounds like there are still some questions and concerns, would Council Members want to put this on new business? So that way we could get some additional information that's been requested by the Council and have a separate vote on this? Or would we prefer to just see this again at a committee after we've gotten our answers to our questions? I guess I'll ask, are Council Members good putting this on new business if we don't get... Okay, so we have, so let's put this on new business and please follow up. I'd say council members, if any of you have questions or information that you would need in order to vote for this item or other information that you would require before that vote, please reach out to assistant COO Omar and director Cochran as relevant. All right, I'm moving on to the next item on the agenda, which is approval of the 2027 pay plan updates. And I believe Assistant COO O'Mara is introducing this item.

Before you is the 2027 pay plan update. All paid plans this year will receive the same COLA increase, which is 4.1% due to the CPIW first half. All union and non-rep pay plans, so 17 of those in total, will receive the same COLA, which is extremely rare for us, but is related to us having all the negotiations and all the old negotiations complete at this time. Another rarity is that there are no new classifications being added to the pay plan at this time. So two kind of rarities there. The only change in two pay plans will be the movement of three classifications to higher bands, I believe, which was attached in your packet. All other pay plans had their pay increased as the 4.1, but these changes, I don't believe are redlined, but are in the attachments that you received. So all 17 are in there. Also attached, there was a market analysis for the pay plans that are changing, which is executive and non-rep pay plans. If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer anything about those. This is looking to move forward to consent on the September 15th business meeting.

Thank you. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Just a thing to note, I noticed some of the draft ordinances still have Daniel Kinney listed as our city attorney. So I'm assuming that needs to be updated and changed. And I just wanted to more make a comment in hopes that our Salary commissioners are listening. I know I commented this before. I personally feel adamant about the fact that the council vice president does not get a pay bump. When I took over as council president with council member Kritzer as vice president, we turned that into a role that was co-led and leadership and making sure that we're meeting together and it was really a big shift and that has continued thankfully. And I don't feel that it is an accurate representation of the work to only pay the council president a little more. So I'm hoping that those salary commissioners are listening and that they can accurately reflect the work that is getting done by our awesome president and vice president here. So just wanted to state that on the record. I also did wanna call attention to, we are now one of the lowest paid councils in the region with Bothell sitting around 55K. So just pointing that out as well. And then looking overall at the 4% bump, I feel like there's gotta be a more equitable way to be doing the payroll analysis because with a 4% bump, if you're already making above the AMI, it can be a very significant bump, but less so when the salary range is lower. and it creates compounding pay gaps over a lot of time. So I think that it would be beneficial to us to really make sure that when we're looking at those pay bands, we're not creating further compounding pay gaps over time. For example, a 4 percent bump on a salary of around $174,000 is a $6,000 range. And on a salary that's around $30,000 is a $1,000 range. So this is creating inequity within our systems. And I really do think this is something we need to be considering moving forward.

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. I also wanted to bring up when we're taking a look at salary bands, I'm so proud of the benefit package that as a city, we're able to provide for our employees. It is robust it is generous it takes care of our employees so well again i can't i don't know if i could possibly find the words to explain just how proud i am when we take that into consideration with that being said i think then when we're looking at whether or not our pay is over or under market or if we're on par that's a piece that i don't know if and i'd love some clarity if we do take in consideration our total compensation package, because then it bumps up if an FTE is slotted for say 120,000, then the actual cost of the city is more around just over 300,000. And that's a lot different conversations, a very different conversation if we're talking total compensation package versus salary and if the salary is at market above or below.

Thank you. One question that I had was that usually I think we see this item and we approve it in conjunction with the budget. And it's being proposed for us to do this within the next week. And I think some of this discussion, especially as we're looking at, for example, in the Office of the Executive, some of the pay bands and some of the roles there, I believe there's still some discussion that might come with the budget around that. So it does mention in the memo that it would help to do this earlier to be able to address, to be able to make some of these changes in advance. But can you clarify if we could wait on this item to be able to do it closer to our budget conversations?

I believe that if it can be agreed upon in the November timeframe, that just the November 10th adoption of the budget date that's targeted, it just compacts the amount of back end work that we have. But we would need to have this approved and in place for the January 1st start of the year.

Thank you. And I believe we typically had approved this at our first meeting in December. So if we were able to approve it in November, it would even give an extra month from the usual timeline. But I guess I will ask Council Member Forsyth.

On that note, does that delay any of the negotiations going into effect that we've been so eager to get on track?

I don't believe so. No. Council President Stewart.

I think we haven't had a chance to discuss this. And there's a full committee. So I would welcome seeing this back in committee again. And I think there's plenty of time to make sure we're able to meet the November deadline.

Great. Thank you. So I guess with the comments we've gotten today, just so that we can keep moving on the agenda, I think we'll bring this back for more discussion at future fact committees. And if council members have any additional questions on this that they want to send in between, then they can do so I think there are a couple for me there's a couple conversations I think we want to have before we move to adopting this so. Great all right well let's move on to the next item on our agenda, which is the. Which is the update to the elected official pay plan for the mayor's salary. And our CEO Melissa files is going to introduce this item. And council members, I will note we are three minutes from the end of our time here is everyone good if we extend I will try to keep us as efficient as possible.

Good afternoon, Council. Melissa Files, Chief Operating Officer, and I'm here today to discuss proposed changes to the Mayor's salary. The timing of this request is in accordance with Ordinance 3166, which basically says that we will look at the Mayor's salary, Council will look at the Mayor's salary every other year in conjunction with the budget. So as you probably saw in your packet, there is no ordinance because this will be taken with the budget, assuming that you may need to talk about this. more than what we will talk about today. So I will be seeking council's direction on one, do we need more discussion about this once we go over it and then we'll make any changes again in the budget. The last time the mayor's salary was increased was in 2026 and it was a 2.3% increase, a COLA increase to the mayor's salary. And the salary is right now $173,914. In your packet were some market comparables. So there were a couple. One is an all cities comparable, and these are cities that have strong mayor forms of government. So... And then there were matched cities, and these matched cities were the closest to Redmond in assessed valuation, in the number of FTEs, in the population. So that's kind of the difference between those two tables. BUT ALL OF THEM HAVE ASSESSED VALUATION, POPULATION, THE CITY SERVICES THAT ARE PROVIDED, FULL-TIME EQUIVALENTS, CURRENT PAY AND BENEFITS OF THEIR MAYORS, AND THEN IF THE CITIES PROVIDE COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENTS. SO YOU WILL NOTICE THAT BELLEVUE, KIRKLAND, KIND OF OUR BOTHEL ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THESE COMPARABLES BECAUSE THEY ARE CITY MANAGER FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. As indicated, the mayor's current salary is at almost $174,000, and the mayor's position does get a $500 a month car allowance. So if council were to raise the mayor's salary by COLA and what Assistant COO Lisa Maher said, which would be the 4.1%, which is what we're doing for employees across the board, that would raise the mayor's salary to approximately $181,000. If we looked at the comparables, if you take the average for the all cities comparables, that would raise the mayor's salary, if you just looked at the average, to about 195,000. So if you look kind of on the tables, it has the average on there. So it's a little over $195,000, which would be a 12% increase in her salary. Then if you looked at just the match cities that look most like Redmond, the average of those cities would be $218,000 approximately, which would be a 25% increase in salary. So right now, of those three options, I'm recommending the middle option to look at kind of the all cities comparables and to raise the mayor's salary by the 12% or $195,000 approximately. I am recommending that because as you will look at those comparables, it doesn't raise the mayor's position up to the highest, but it's just kind of the average of all of those. So I am happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you so much for that recommendation and the background COO files. I am gonna note because we are over time on this item and we have or on this agenda and this item historically when we've looked at this has taken a lot of council discussion time, especially when it's been proposed to make larger than a COLA increase. I propose that we plan to have some more time either on a future FAC or on a study session. I saw our council president raised her hand. So in case you want to have a comment on that, I'd be happy to entertain if anyone wants to send in in advance of that next meeting. questions on this item. Does that work for everyone? Because this is just a big one. I think it's good to get the initial touch on it. If we wanted to go around, we could each ask a quick question if you wanted to be able to give that, or we could just move ahead. i'm seeing nods of moving ahead and scheduling some more time for this because typically this has been a meteor item of discussion, and we have a little time before the budget to be able to look at this so. All right, if that looks good to everyone i'm seeing head nods let's bring it back for a future fact, and if that's looking busy I might work with Council leadership to get a little bit of study session time on this item, and so I know we want to give it some careful consideration.

And if you do have questions in advance, I can do a matrix. So if you'll send me your questions by email, I can do a matrix so I can get those answers back to you before the next discussion.

Great, Council Member Soney, did you have a quick comment?

Yeah, just a quick comment. It's specifically for the new council members. It's very important for us to understand how these numbers are reached. Like, you know, I know you explained it based on the market, but are there other factors that needs to be considered depending upon every city, the budget, and, you know, the money and the revenues that we have. So that would be very helpful for us. Sure.

Great, thank you. And I will note for the council that it didn't get attached to the item, but I did ask and COO Files did send around a history of the mayor's salary to the council. And when we see this item again, hopefully we can have that attached for the public. But just to note that in 2024, we did have, we did authorize an increase to go from 2024 of 153,000 to 170,000 in 2025. So that was the last time the council considered a larger increase was two years ago. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. I know we're short on time, but I decided to raise my hand for the sake of listening staff and being sensitive to the comprehensive scope of the conversations we've had today. For my part, if the direction from the council is to have another touch on this, let's absolutely do that, especially for the benefit of our newer colleagues and learning about the work that we did two years ago to make systemic updates. My primary concern at this very moment is making sure that we know that Redmond staff are being paid and have been paid correctly and on time, and I'd really like to take care of that. before continuing forward with this item. So just to be very clear and also to sensitive to any feelings on the staff side that may be listening into today's meeting, wanted to acknowledge that those feelings may exist. Thanks.

Thank you very much, Council President. And with that, I think we'll move on and we'll plan to bring this back for another touching committee before we move forward with any decisions on it. Thank you. Great, thank you. That brings us to the last item on our agenda, which is our Respect, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion program update. And I believe, actually, earlier, I think I gave the wrong title to our assistant COO, Lisa Marr. Our Deputy Executive Director, Zach Hooverner, is here to introduce the item. Go ahead.

Good evening, Council. To introduce this item is Teresa Lee, our Ready Program Administrator. Take it away.

Good evening, Council. I'll provide our monthly ready updates for you all today. As of August 26, we have held 12 Shared Respect Strong Culture Ready training sessions, and we have 36 total sessions that will be delivered by the end of the year. To date, 48% of the workforce has either participated in a session or signed up to attend a future session. Of that total, 33 have attended and 15 are signed up. Additionally, 65% of participants have completed the post-training questionnaire. And as you saw in attachment C, we have also begun capturing our KPI data, which is shared in that attachment. We will continue to provide monthly updates and reporting to council as this work progresses. So as I was developing the KPI report in attachment C, I anticipated there may be a few questions about how to interpret the data. So I'd like to provide a brief high level overview of the report and I'm happy to answer any questions at the very end. So first, a quick note on methodology. For the questionnaire-based measures, I'm using the top two box approach. So I'm combining the agree and strongly agree to measure progress. And the status key, which is color-coded, identifies whether a KPI is on track, in progress, needs attention, or is not yet reported. The table reflects the KPI data we are currently able to track. So at this time, the available data comes from our ready training questionnaire. We are continuing to determine how best to collect and measure data for the remaining KPIs, and we will add those measures as the definitions and data collection processes are established. I also want to emphasize that the current data is not representative of the entire workforce. It reflects employees who have completed the training and responded to the questionnaire. So as participation increases, we will have a broader data set to help us understand these measures across the workforce. And I'm gonna also share some key takeaways from the data that was also provided in the KPI reporting. I'm gonna start with strengths. Staff are reporting strong levels of connection and safety. 84% report feeling connected to their team and community. 83% report feeling connected to their immediate team. And 80% report feeling safe at work. So these are encouraging indicators and a strong foundation for the work ahead for us. I'll also share some areas for improvement. So the largest gaps currently appear in leadership accountability and pair implementation. 34% of respondents reported witnessing a strong culture of respect in the past 12 months in our workplace. Additionally, fewer than half of respondents reported that leaders are held accountable for their actions at 40% or follow through on commitments at 43%. So these findings will help inform where we focus our intention and how we continue to develop the READY program. Next, I'm gonna share program activities and updates. The READY program has several upcoming activities and initiatives, and I'm gonna highlight three here for us all. The first is Welcoming Week. Welcoming Week is taking place on September 10th through 19th of this year. In partnership with community-based organizations, the city will host a Welcoming Week event on September 16th from 5 to 7 p.m. at Together Center. The event is an opportunity to celebrate Redmond and build connection through the stories that we share. And the evening will include performance and food, as well as a short panel conversation featuring the mayor and several community-based organizational leaders. The second is our Welcoming Redmond Team. The Welcoming Redmond Team leadership met in August to discuss roles and responsibilities, and our monthly meetings with the full team will reconvene beginning in September. The last is community and regional engagement as part of my onboarding and to become more familiar with the communities and people connected to the city. I've been meeting with community-based organizations and the King County Library System. I'm also engaging with regional equity-focused groups. These relationships are an opportunity to listen, learn, share best practices, and build partnerships with equity-focused organizations across the region. So that concludes my ready updates, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Thank you. Teresa, so wonderful to have you. I hope that your transitioning and onboarding has been going well. Yes. Because you read along just like you've been here for quite some time. Great. Welcome. Glad to see you, that you're here. As you were reading, I was trying to follow along inside of the table. If we could have just some high-level slides that was pointing to some of those great points that you were calling out. This way, it's just a little bit easier because there's a lot of great work that you've put into this report. And I'd love to see it kind of high level. And then also, just very quickly, do we have demographics for what departments so far? And I know that it's because it is anonymous, correct? So do we have a breakdown of what departments have? Let me ask you the question that I really want to ask. Are we seeing participation top-down? And is there a way to see if our leadership team, because this is, when we're talking ready AR, this is top-down, like it can't be grassroots. We already know statistically data-wise that does not work. Can we see, do we know if from the top-down, if that participation has already happened?

I think I can answer your question, and if not, please let me know. We are having a leadership director focused ready training that will be held in September. And so if you look at my KPI report, there are some leader focused questions. And I say that the data is coming soon in September. And that's because we will be collecting that specific leadership data after that training.

Follow up super fast on that. Since we know that this needs to be a top down approach, walk me through the decision making as to why we didn't start there.

Can help answer that. So just with timing and the need to schedule 30 plus sessions and taking four hours out of the day, it just was a timing for most directors and deputies to get on the calendar. It was just a little bit delayed from the rollout in June or July.

Thank you. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Teresa, for being here and sharing this information. Zach, when you're ready for Teresa to start meeting with us, we certainly welcome the opportunity. I will say for my part, the data that we're able to see here from the post-engagement survey, it just further provides for me the evidence that it's really important that we reinvest in the organizational health assessment. So I do hope that when we get to the preliminary budget, that that is there next month. And if not, that may be something that council takes up for consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. And since we are a little bit over time here, I'm going to close out on questions, but feel free to follow up with Teresa. Thank you so much for being here. We're excited to have you. I hope it has been a good first month. And looking forward to hopefully seeing people out at welcoming week as we begin. And as a reminder, we'll actually kick off welcoming our community on Thursday the 10th with our council conversations that are going to be in Spirit Brook Park at 5 o'clock. So just wanted the listening public to know to come and connect with us and then join in all of these great events that you can find on Redmond's website under Welcoming Week. So with that, we'll close out this item. And that brings us to the end of our agenda.