City Council - workshop

Thank you. I'm calling this meeting to order. This is a Redmond City Council study session held on Tuesday, September 8th. 2026, commencing at 7.06 p.m. All council members are in attendance with one council member remotely. Council member Procrea is remote today. There are four items on the agenda tonight, and Mayor Bernie is in attendance. There are four items on the agenda tonight. The creation of a new department to support development service functions, preparation for the 2027 legislative session, 2027-2032 capital improvement review, and council talk time. The plan for this evening is to take a brief recess before we get into the capital improvement program. That'll give chance for staff to get settled and for everyone to have a little bit of a break. And then that item will be facilitated by our budget chair, Council Member Kritzer. So with that, we'll get started. The first item on the agenda tonight is the creation of a new department to support development services functions. We will have Jason Lynch, the interim co-director of planning and community development, kick us off with this item. Welcome, Jason.

And I'm actually going to kick this off. Hi, I'm Mayor Bernie. I failed to share that. Didn't say that in the script. Sorry about that. I'm going to kick this off for all of you tonight. I'm really excited. Today we're presenting the plan for a new department in the city. And the reason we're calling it the new department is because it's not named yet. So new department in the city is the culmination of a long line of decisions and evaluations that the city has undergone recently. from Redmond 2050, our housing action plan, state permit timeline legislation, feedback from the development business and housing communities, matrix report that the council has received, as well as staff feedback. Our goal is to ensure that we are supporting building that meets our comp plan goals in such a way that reduces time and increases affordability and maintains our high standards. It also allows our staff to do their best work. This new department will help us meet those goals. It encompasses development services, capital construction, inspections, real property, development engineering, code enforcement, and I'm certain I forgot a few other things, but everything pulled together is to ensure that we're able to meet our 2050 comprehensive goals in the manner that our community deserves. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jason Lynch, who will go through the proposal.

you mayor good evening council some of the background and contributing factors some of the supporting factors are one redmond master builders contractors our residents the matrix report which had 76 recommendations lessons learned from previous organizations over two decades of staff and management experience so tonight we'll be covering current state study matrix future state proposed organizational chart the financial strategy, the implementation strategy, and next steps. Under current state, Redmond is already a foundation of a one-stop shop that most cities are trying to model and are still trying to create. The city has already transitioned away from paper and implemented online permitting capabilities through the Redmond electronic portal system and our Intergov system, which is our online tracking system. online applications, online permit submittal, inspection requests, electronic payments, shared permit records. Staff conducts thorough reviews with high technical quality resulting in strong code compliance across disciplines. Part of the areas for improvement, lack of unified leadership resulting in siloed departments, poor collaboration, unclear authority, duplication between development engineering and public works, escalations of issues to executive leadership that should have been resolved at lower levels. The matrix has also identified that we have limited SOPs, inconsistent intake practices, different workflows between disciplines, inconsistent use of technology, unclear roles and responsibilities. While we've gone paperless, we still have major issues on how systems are being specifically updated, excessive manual work, lack of automation, different workflows between departments. The existing core structure within development services is planned submittal and compliance, land use and zoning, building, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, and fire plan review, civil construction, inspection, building trades, code enforcement, and construction utilities. That is the existing core structure. Under the matrix report implementation themes, there are six primary categories that the matrix study identified. One is leadership and accountability, creating a single accountable development services organization operating with a shared mission and consistent expectations. Secondly, workforce development, developing a highly trained resilient workforce capable of delivering consistent predictability and development review. Third, technical modernization, creating a fully integrated technology-enabled development review platform. Four, process improvement, improving efficiencies, consistencies, predictability, and regulatory compliance. Five, customer experience, providing and customer focused development services experience. Six, organizational realignment, aligning staff and organizational structure with service deliverable needs. Future State, based in our organizational review, the recommendation of Future State is to consolidate development related functions into a single department under one leadership structure. The primary benefit is having a single decision maker for the entire development process, rather than multiple departments making separate decisions. This creates a greater accountability, more timely decision making, consistent application of city policies and standards. By bringing together both private development review, public infrastructure, we create a true one-stop shop in development. This structure also aligns design standards, engineering review, construction oversight under one team. This means applicants experience a more coordinated process, staff collaborate earlier in decisions-making, and more predictable and transparent. Ultimately, this is about improving services while maintaining high standards of community expectation. The why. This structure provides a one-stop shop for all development within the city. It will lead to consistent application of codes, standards, and process in both public and private development. It creates a single department that can have clean lines of communication, authority, and dispute resolution. It will streamline operating procedures and processes and will increase accountability to our customers. It creates predictability and alignment around permit review timelines and aligns us with Senate Bill 5290. What we're trying to achieve is we were looking at goals within this area of the development review process that we were looking at cutting 20 to 30% off reduction in timelines related to commercial and multifamily reviews. This would put us in alignment with 5290, which is the Senate bill mandates for land use applications. We're also looking at deviations requests that would have gone to the technical committee that it would be reduced from 30 days to five days would be part of the outcome of this implementation. We would look at actually standardizing our most common deviations that we have, and it would currently cut the cost in half of what our resident would pay for a deviation or a developer would pay. It would go from $9,564 to $4,900 for a deviation request. an example a single family permitting is actually already reduced under this program and this would be part of the implementation that we continue to do that we would be going from 80 days for a single family home to under 40 days this would require we currently have adopted standards that are within our regulation that a civil construction drawing is not required prior to a building permit we have heard from our customers and the expectation of getting a building permit out as soon as possible so we've cut that to 40 days which previously was 80 days so as an example If we had a $750,000 construction loan, which would equate to about $125 a day that an individual would pay. So a 30-day reduction would be $3,750 savings. With the example above of cutting two months off the plan, the customer actually saved $7,500 of the overall cost of those payments. These are some of the processes that we're looking at streamlining to align with the Senate Bill 5290. And with a single-stop shop, we would actually be looking at streamlining those processes throughout the organization. I have for you because this next one is very small. If we could pass this down, please.

We know you don't have time to look at this exact moment, but we wanted to give you hard copies that are much larger so you can take a look later.

Currently, this organization structure reflects approximately 112 full-time positions organized around a shared responsibility and common goal. One important principle is maintaining clear ownership while strengthening collaboration. This will be demonstrated through collaboration documentation practices such as charters and SOPs and similar documentation. The department will continue to create, apply standard engineering specifications, maintain operations through the City Engineer, will provide operational feedback that helps improve those standards over time. This will be a continuous feedback loop. Likewise, long-range planning will continue to develop zoning policy and code updates with the new department applies those standards consistently during project review, provides practical feedback based on implementation experience. This creates continuous improvement model where policy engineering standards and project delivery all inform another instead of operating independently. This result is clear accountability, better communication, more consistent outcomes for both internal teams and the community. On the org chart, the yellow portion, which is the capital group, which then to your left is basically all the plan review function citywide, and on to the right of the yellow indication is all of the inspection groups citywide. So it breaks out the two groups with a plan review function and an inspection group. Those groups would solely serve all plan review functions within the city, and the inspection group would support all inspections within the city. This is a very high level at the current budget. I want to be clear that there is a reserve implementation fund of $16 million. That is not the cost associated to this. That is what is currently in the reserves that are dedicated for those permitting services. We would be looking at a roughly $2 to $2.5 million startup cost to start this project moving forward. We would be looking at development fee study, where we would go in and analyze each of the inspection times related to service levels. As we streamline and reduce our service levels, that has an impact on what we charge for permitting fees. So we would look at streamlining those, and the faster we do the permitting fee, the opportunity then transcends down to the permit of a reduced cost. We have a cost recovery of 100% cost recovery. And we would be monitoring that through a future fee study. And lastly, we'd be looking at implementing an enterprise fund. So fees that are generated would then support directly this new department. Implementation January 1st of 2027, development review land use staff, real property management, city engineer, right-of-way management, senior utility engineers, scientists, fire inspection and permitting staff, capital project management staff, capital inspection staff, and engineering standard and specification staff would transition January 1st. There are ongoing contract negotiations in some of those areas, so those are potential for transitions. We are still in negotiations with some of those marketing parties. I would like to say that we've actually identified that 91% of the staff are reporting to the same supervisor or manager within the organization. We have received positive input from most of the managers to date in the new department alignment. And I say most because I have not met with every single one. I still have a few to meet, but the majority of them have been very supportive of this application. We will be meeting with all the affected staff and provide clarity in roles and service level expectations aligned with Senate Bill 5290, which is the prescribed timelines for land use applications. We went to the mayor in July to gain the mayor's approval. We then went and briefed the directors and deputy directors in July. In August, we met with the directors and deputy directors working out of class. So there was a director and a deputy director working out of class related to this project that were appointed. We are having council conversation today We will be looking at September for the internal staff meeting with the new department to start with all of the staff within engaging with them October council will receive the budget In October we will also be creating the new department charter and strategic plan and then we're hopeful for council budget adoption and approval of the new department in November and then we will be modifying the applicable RCW s and and transitioning staff January 1st, 2027. And with that, I am happy to answer any questions you might have.

All right. Well, thank you so much, Director Lynch and Mayor Bernie. And we also, I will recognize, have Director Cochran here for the financial pieces. She's just very popular today. We want to hang out with her all night. And additionally, I want to open it up to the council. I do see a hand. So you're first in line, Council Member Parsi. And I did want to just say before we... go around to questions not attached to the packet materials tonight is of course the matrix study which was delivered to the council in June and council the staff do know that we haven't yet had a chance to discuss that so they're aware that there may be some baseline questions still existing based on the study that we funded in the current biennium in order to find out some of the recommendations that were included in the proposal tonight So with that, I'll go ahead and open it up. And Council Member Parsi has the first question.

Thank you. Starting with a comment before the question, there was a lot of helpful information that you shared tonight with us verbally that wasn't actually in the presentation. In the future, it would be really helpful if the full content of what will be presented would be available in full reading versus just presentation because a lot of detail can be missed.

Could I respond to that really briefly? We had the benefit of meeting with council leadership last week and they asked some really great questions. And so interim director Lynch did all that work to answer some of those questions. And so what we'll do following up with this is create a matrix and all of that information will be in it.

Fantastic. And to get to the questions, would you be able to highlight again how many new positions would be created as a part of this department? And how much would the cost of those new positions would be? And if I understand correctly, those would be funded through the development fund? funds, not part of general funds, or maybe right now part of general funds, but specifically funded through development. Is that correct?

So there are eight new positions within this budget offer, and they're identified in orange on the organizational chart, so those can be clearly identified there. Yes, this would be part of the development services fund that is related to that specification for that reserve dedication. The actual costs, we have put this forward and I'm waiting for actual cost verification that we will be taking to council at a later date.

Thank you.

Council Member Sonny. So just to follow up on that, these eight new positions, they will not be back, like, you know, any of the backlog. These will be a completely brand-new positions, maybe more administrative kind of roles?

So what happened is that when planning branched off and created a new department, we had limited FTEs, so we had to create new FTEs within admin because I couldn't leave the other department with no resources. So I did ask for new admin staff. And then the positions that two of the positions in there is that the department is divided with two deputy directors, one on the plan review side, one on the inspection side. So that is a net new. And then the director position, we'd be asking for a new director position because that does not currently exist in a new department at this time. The other positions are supervisors within the realm of utilities and within our review timelines that we did not have supervisors. We were actually one supervisor to 15 different employees, and we wanted to spread that out so that we could be more efficient at that workforce.

Council Member Forsyth and then Council Member Kritzer. Thank you. Understanding that this is also an alignment to make sure we comply with new state law that goes into effect end of April 27. One thing that we as council members hear a lot is that the city seems to care more about developers and making sure developers are taken care of. but that it isn't necessarily benefiting and impacting the community at large in a good way. So what can we walk away from this conversation understanding and communicating with our constituents that this is a benefit for the everyday resident?

So I would say the everyday resident, we spend a lot more time one-on-one with the individual residents. The developers come in at a larger rate. What we do is we make a point of ensuring that one customer service is at the forefront. Homeowners receive a preferential treatment on a one-hour window for all inspections related to that type of thing. We also are looking at this for a cost recovery plan where we are looking at providing permits at a faster rate for a homeowner that's applying for it. We also do a lot of one-on-one intake. And we give the same customer service expectation and preference to a homeowner walking in. We'll deal with them directly where a developer or contractor can't make an individual homeowner appointment. We are very customer service oriented related to private developers, excuse me, related to the single family homeowner.

And I will also add, the long-term goal is also, though I think a resident might not feel it at the start, but the goal is to reduce the timeline for building as well as the fees that are associated with that. So if someone who's renting an apartment or buying a new home or buying a condominium or whatever it might be, those fees will be reduced there'll be less money there. So we create some level of affordability there too. So it's kind of twofold for community members that maybe aren't in the development industry for sure. But I think those things that Jason brought up and as well as the eventual reduced fees go to creating more affordability for community members as well.

Thank you, Council Member Kritzer.

I'll just follow up on that point with a comment and then we'll ask a quick question here. So yeah, I do think as a council president mentioned at the beginning, I think we missed an opportunity to be able to share out in presentation a little bit more of the matrix study findings so that we could connect what it is. As you actually mentioned at the beginning, Mayor Bernie, this comes out of even our original housing action plan we passed in 2020 where we said We want to be able to get to more affordable housing and what are the different tools that we can use to be able to increase housing affordability and it's making it less expensive to build housing, right? And one of the things that we can control is the development process and the timelines because time expands how much it costs as well as the amount of fees and kind of pieces that go in end up being what goes into people's rent as you kind of said earlier, Mayor Bernie. I think there's an opportunity, if we want to move forward with this, to be able to share that a little bit more with our community. And in more layman's terms, I love, I like a lot of the pieces that are in this why slide. I think we could also have kind of some pieces and some communications to be able to share more about what this looks like in terms of kind of the everyday benefits that we'll see translated and how it connects to our goals. And so in terms of the actual implementation of this one thing that would make it that I would love to see as we contemplate the decision of creating a whole new department and reorganizing our city would be to actually holistically be able to see the department structure with also the other departments that that are now being split up to be able to see kind of what do all the departments look like now? Because it's hard for me to envision, for example, what is left in planning? And what does that department look like? Or what does it look like public works otherwise? And, and to be able to kind of understand what that looks like, as well as I think, I think kind of bringing this together a little bit of like the the business case of How much we intend, bringing together some of the information you have here, but a little more clearly of how much we intend to spend on the transition, how we will recuperate those costs, especially if we plan to recuperate them, but why in the end we think it'll create the savings we hope that it'll create that ultimately will lead to that affordability. I know we have some of that in the matrix study of kind of the theory, but I think specifically of how we implement it here. it would be helpful for us to be able to kind of see that spelled out. So that way we understand what that looks like and then how that'll show up in the budget.

If I might, so yes to, this was step one to show all of you what this due department would look like. And we're currently verifying what the public works and planning will look like outside of this group. So when we have those org charts, finalized and confirmed, we will be sharing those out with the other information that all of you are asking as well. So that's in the works. We just didn't have it completely confirmed. We didn't want to share anything that was inaccurate. But Kelly, do you want to talk a little bit financially about how we will share with them where we're getting the money, how we're using the money for this new department?

Yeah, I have added this as an agenda item on our first night of council deliberations. The other things on the agenda that night are to update you with any changes to the CIP or revenues, but to allow us to look at the financials of this as sort of a service enhancement where you'll be able to see at least the financially what the cost is and we'll talk will provide some information about the funding source. We're anticipating right now that we would utilize approximately 2.5 million of reserves that are currently in the general fund and restricted to development activity. That depends on a lot of things. It depends on how quickly new staff is onboarded, how quickly new fees are established, if we have other vacancies and have savings, if revenues come in really high. A lot of factors, but in the budget process, what we can share with you is our assumptions and really the timeline of what we believe the financial strategy will need to be. It's pretty short period unless the development fee study takes longer than anticipated. We have a goal in not only ensuring that the fees are fair and equitable. But we would also like to do some work to make sure that they are clear and more concise in the number that we have. And that may take us a little while or a couple of phases. But what we'll do is, if we're moving forward, is move the reserves into an enterprise fund, which then requires us to report on the business activity as if it's a business activity. It gives some more transparency into the performance of this line of business and allows us to focus a little bit more on the longer-term forecast for just this umbrella. So it's somewhat simple for us to implement because we are lucky enough to have reserves to pull from and help us cover a gap if we have it.

Thank you. And before we go to follow-up, possibly, and then Council Vice President Leva Kamina had her hand up, I do want to acknowledge, yes, the council leadership met with the team before us to kind of get a preview of what the conversation might be. I appreciate, Director Cochran, that you are teeing things up for the first budget deliberation to be really clear as an enhancement The other thing that council leadership discussed with the team is the need to use tonight's conversation to be really clear on what our questions are, especially as it relates to the business case for a change of this scale. And we believe that there is additional, we are making room is how I'll say it, we are making room for study session time prior to budget deliberations, because this is really significant. If we put this in budget deliberations, this would be our budget deliberation. So The Council Vice President will correct me if I'm wrong on any of that, but that was the conversation that we had. And I do want to acknowledge Council Member Parsi, you were absolutely correct that some of those numbers were really helpful and it will be helpful to see them as well as any others that folks have an interest in to have them in a written format that we can absorb and provide additional feedback on. Okay, Council Member Kritzer, did you have follow up on your original question or can we go to the Vice President?

No, I appreciate it. I'll just note because you were mentioning about the different departments that we'll get to see to also kind of all the affected departments, including fire or finance. So we can also see kind of holistically any ones that are being moved. What are they going to look like afterwards?

Thanks for the question. Council Vice President. Thank you. And just confirming that all that you said was right on target. In the vein of we've got a tight turnaround. We're unbelievably now in the second week of September. And that feels odd saying that. However, here we are. We've got a very tight turnaround to keep us on track for our January 1 implementation of this. So my question is in that light of what are, and to keep us on track, what are some of the decisions or the input that council needs to deliver on to keep us on that track versus what decisions have effectively already been made so that we can make sure that we're also being a great council?

Well, what a great question. And yes, thank you for suggesting we set aside another study session time for this, knowing this is a big thing to discuss, and we want to make sure that there's a lot of clarity and you get all your questions answered. In setting up a new department, you know, council's role is to approve the budget for the new department, and that's through the budget process. The adding new FTEs is a budget decision or is a council decision as well. And then if the department is approved, then there will be a confirmation of the director. will be a council action. Trying to think of what else that I'm missing in here.

Jason, can you think of? To add to that would be any council decision or policy decision that would be subsidy of permits. We have subsidies within water heaters and different permits for residential purposes. If you elected to subsidize certain permits or I proposed a 20% to 30% cut in our timelines, that would put us in alignment. Policy decision could be you want us to do better than that. You want us to cut lower. You want us to reduce residential. Those would be policy decisions that we could definitely look at.

Thank you. I want to check with Council Member Procrea, and I believe we can take down the slideshow unless others need to refer to it. If there are no questions from Council Member Procrea at this time, I'll go ahead and chime in with one of mine. Director Lynch, Council typically, well, I'll say first my overall feedback. I think that the case needs to be really crisp on how much faster are we building housing and how much are we saving and community members saving with new starts, new construction, new homes, additionally remodels and the like in order to implement the housing action plan and the comprehensive plan. You addressed some of those examples tonight, which I really do appreciate, and I look forward to having a chance to review them. One of the questions that I was thinking about over the weekend is that council typically receives recommendations from the technical committee, which has included both public works and the development directors. The study of how we could build more housing faster actually said that we should expand the technical committee. to include the managers and to include more folks in that committee from multiple disciplines. But I believe I heard you say that under this proposal, we actually wouldn't have the technical committee anymore. So I was wondering if we could discuss what is the role of the technical committee in this proposal and why?

The technical committee is comprised of the public works director and the planning director. It's to make a decision related to the policies and codes related to development services or development related to utilities. That decision in itself with the two directors and the timeline associated to the technical committee is actually in the recommendation. You'll see that that's part of our problem with the delay that that takes to get through that process and the decision criteria being in multifacet where it's three, possibly four different directors making a decision related to development. The intent is to streamline that process so it's a single individual, not to say that we're not going to take those decisions into consideration. They would be definitely taken into consideration and there would be a collaboration. It would just be on an offline process and not a formal committee. Processes that were required to go to the technical committee could not advance forward until they went to the technical committee for a decision. The caveat behind that is interesting is we don't take things to the tech committee that we don't intend to approve. So it's kind of redundant in its process itself. We usually hash out with a pre-tech committee if there is a decision that cannot be approved. It's vetted out offline and then goes through the formal committee of accepting that. With the merger of the department creating one individual, it kind of meets the intent of what the technical committee was intended to do. It was represented by both of those. It does not mean that the subject matter experts in those departments would not have input or influence on those approvals. It would just take that as an offline process. There's a lot of administration time spent preparing for the technical committee. That would be completely taken away. It wouldn't be needed. Recently, the deviation process to go to tech committee took approximately 30 days. We're anticipating that we could do that review timeline in five days. Roughly, as I said previously, and every permit is different because it's based on the cost of the permit, but roughly on a $750,000 job, that's $125 savings per day that we produce that permit faster for either a homeowner or a developer.

Could you say that one more time a little bit slower actually would be helpful?

Hypothetically, if you came in and you applied for a $750,000 loan from a bank, and that payment would be roughly at 6%, would be $3,750 a month payment. We've equated that down in talking to One Redmond and Master Builders and our developers, that for every day that we save them on a permit, it's $125 a day savings. Because they can go from a construction loan to a fixed locked loan. So one, that puts a homeowner potentially in their home sooner. it puts a developer building in the ground sooner, and then the recipient being a resident of Redmond then obtains that home in a faster manner.

Okay, so for the matrix, I'd like to see that example included, including the 25-day savings and what that translates to. My feedback, actually, to the answer of the question, though, is a point that we did discuss a little bit. So I quoted the matrix study, which said we should expand the technical committee, and your answer was you'll see with the recommendation that we've cut the committee. But I actually have seen that nowhere because it's not included in the slides and I don't have a written proposal. So I'm wondering when you say you'll see that in the recommendation, if there's something I'm missing or if there's some more information coming.

There is more information coming.

Okay.

And I wanted to be clear. The recommendation in the matrix study says to expand that, which actually creates more input, more time delays. That's not what the direction that we're trying to align. What we're saying is that the technical committee, we are not seeing the value added for that in the time that it creates and costs on the overall development sideline. We're trying to streamline our processes by reducing that need for tech committee.

Thank you. That is a helpful bit of context, and I do appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Council Member Forsyth.

Just a follow-up on that comment about seeing something in the matrix. document that is different from what we're looking at. I'm seeing that in the fire section, the document that we keep referring to as the matrix document recommends seven staff, and we're only seeing five and a half on this structure chart. So just kind of along the same lines of trying to marry what we're trying to do here and what we're seeing in the report. Look forward to when we can dig into this report some more and have more conversation around it. But generally speaking, having more information around how we landed where we are would be incredibly helpful in this conversation.

We are, thank you. Yeah, we are working toward pulling all of that together for you for our next meeting that we're going to be having on this. The matrix report is very good for what it does. And then we took that and evaluated it and started to think a little differently about how we're doing things in the city. So though it is a report of recommendations, we didn't take all of the recommendations. We took more staff feedback to figure out what would really work for our city. The other thing, and I am uncertain if in that matrix report, it knew about our Senate bill that was coming through for timelines either. So I think there's also some new information that came to light as we were working through this as well. So that's why I mentioned at the beginning that the matrix report is just one piece of all of the work that we've been doing. Our comprehensive plan is also a big piece of what we're trying to do to make sure that we can meet our targets. and serve our community like we need to.

Thank you. We'll go to Councilmember Pacquia because he has not yet had a question.

Great. Thank you so much for the presentation. And at a macro level, I'm absolutely in favor of more across departmental coordination. I would like to see some more specific numbers to echo my colleague, Council President Stewart. But at a macro level, this is something I absolutely do support. My one concern is that, you know, we're bringing together planning, public works, fire, finance, all these departments, but I do not see any positions in this new department allocated towards TIS. So I kind of have a two-part question, which is I've had conversations with Director Marchand and others about, you know, pilot programs that we've done in collaboration with Microsoft, for instance, to help speed up permitting. We have this unique advantage of having a tech giant right here in our backyard. And I was told during those conversations that they did try and help start up ideas, but we just didn't have the infrastructure in the city to be able to deploy them. So I'm wondering, I guess, what is the status of that? And if there was consideration given to putting one or more members of the TIS staff into this department as well to help foster this cross-departmental coordination.

So we do have a commitment from TIS to support the individual departments as all departments do within the city. Do we have dedicated TIS staff embedded within our department? No, we do not have dedicated staff, but we have staff that are dedicated to the services that we need related to reps, related to intergov, which are supporting our primary tools that support our plan review and inspection modules. We are in constant conversation about upgrades related to AI, and we are also looking currently at a provider right now that is AI.gov that I've met with Director Marchand, and we've had those conversations. The intent behind an AI is a front-loaded process that can process an application in a faster pace, but we still need an individual to look over that review process to make sure that it is a code compliant review process. So we're looking at that at the same time. We're also integrating our new intergov system that will be up and functioning here shortly. We've made a bunch of tweaks to that to ensure that the tools that we're asking everyone to use are benefiting them. We're always open-minded to new data that comes online or new processes. So those conversations are constantly happening with TIS. But no, I do not have an embedded TIS person in my department currently.

Yeah. And I will just add that that's not the structure, the way the city's set up. We have, just like in finance, we have financial analysts that are dedicated to different departments. In TIS, we have TIS analysts, I'm sure they're called something else, that are dedicated to each department. And that's where that sits. So That's why you don't see that in this organizational chart.

Thank you. Council Member Parsi.

Thank you. So first information that I would like to see in future is what are the biggest pain points that currently we have identified as causing the longest delays? So we can have a list of those pain points and have an idea of if we wanted to solve one problem first, what would be that one problem that we could kind of address first? The kind of point that kind of I want to go from here is at work I have been part of the design and orchestration of multiple reorgs and in many times what we have done is we look at what is the first milestone that we can achieve and address by identifying the biggest pain point and rather than kind of taking on a big change at once, we can take a smaller step with a smaller V Team to prove that we can make a dent in towards the longer term direction and then make incremental growth in that department and in that direction after we prove that this is the path that is showing us results. One thing that I would love to get more information as we go further is what other variations of this organization chart did we evaluate and Have we done a step-by-step milestone plan, and if that could be an option for us to consider as well? And then the second part, again, on the same topic of how can we see this differently, I would love to know if we also considered having this as a kind of arm under the planning department rather than a different department of its own, and what would be the upsides and downsides of that? Opportunity if we wanted to look at that differently, could that save us money if we were to do that? What would be the what would be our expectations from that?

Thank you I can respond to her One will get you the current pain points on permitting and we're we're seeing some of the biggest issues We we have talked about that. So we'll get that to you before the next thing and Just as a kind of a bigger, broader picture, this is something I've been working on for the last seven years to improve our permitting process. And the number one thing through all this work that we tried many ways to improve it, the number one thing that was also recommended by the matrix study and by other conversations we had and looking at other cities of our size, because we're a growing city and we have some up some growing up to do, is to having that one decision maker. So the suggestion of keeping it like within the planning department actually negates that idea of having one decision maker. But that is through the analysis we've done has been the largest holdup in a lot of the work has been that. single decision maker overriding all of this. But the rest of the questions we'll be able to answer too. I just wanted to kind of point that out that this is not just a, we didn't take this lightly. We have been doing quite a bit of work to help improve our processes. And through very intentional work, this was the best solution that we came up with for the work that we need to get done and the goals that we need to achieve.

May I ask a follow-up quick on that topic? So if this is still under planning, I can still see it having a unified one leader who owns this org or this charter. I still can't see one unified leader in that direction. opportunity as well. So that doesn't necessarily kind of break down the responsibility, but we'd love to see more.

Thank you, Council Member Parsi. Just because it's quick and I'll add on, when we get the matrix, I don't know who's taking notes, so I'm kind of like looking in the ether, but for the matrix, for the council questions, some version of that question was a question I had, which is the matrix study has a very simple recommendation on a single department, which is different than the full-size page. So if we could understand maybe how we went from the recommendation to there, that would be helpful maybe in telling that story. My apologies, Councilmember Kritzer, you have the next question.

Well, I'll just build on this to say that I think when you come back, one way that might be helpful just hearing my colleagues would be if we might be able to have several policy alternatives side by side with some criteria or pros and cons, you know, to be able to look at the status quo, what the matrix study proposed, what you're proposing kind of side by side. I think it could be helpful for us to be able to look at some of that. as we look at this decision and whether there's anything else that could be another option. One question that I have just as we think about moving to this central decision maker is to understand how we thought about how we ensure accountability and quality in decision making. There's obviously a benefit if you have multiple people that are looking at an application and might be asking different questions you get some benefits from having those different eyes on it you obviously also get a slower timeline so that's I see that as costs and benefits right and how do we weigh that and how do we mitigate those offset the loss of the or how do we make sure that there's say accountability and quality and decision making even with one person looking at it and making sure that, for example, one person could make a lot of different decisions. And how do we have like, what are the checks there that we have? Obviously, we have the structure, they still are reporting up. But I think that would be interesting. Similarly, if we're moving, you know, a bunch of people together to be able to decrease silos, are there any new silos that we would be creating? or other unintended consequences that we explored. I don't I'm not saying that the costs or the benefits wouldn't outweigh the cost. But I think it would be helpful for us as counsel to be able to understand what some of the trade offs are of going from one structure to another because there's always going to be some trade offs there. So that way we can consider those.

Can I just add a little detail? I think that will help a little bit of that, not fully to all your questions, but one of the intentions around creating this new department is to ensure that this department is successful as well as the other departments that have people pulled out of them, that they're successful as well. And so some of the money that has been set aside is to bring in support for change management to help the staff members mobilize and become part of this one department. That's part of why it's not named yet is because I want the people in the department to name the department and not have something assigned to them. I want them to feel like they've come up with the name that works for them that describes that department, but then there'll also be support for those other departments that are impacted by this change as well. So it's not just picking up and moving people and creating new departments. It's really trying to create a change of culture in the city, and ensure that all of those other individual staff members feel taken care of as well so that they can do their best work as well. So there's a lot. It's not just an org chart change. It's actually there's a lot more going into it as well to ensure good processes and making sure people are doing good work.

I'LL GO TO COUNCILMEMBER PROCRIA AND THEN COUNCILMEMBER SONY. AND MAYBE AS WE'RE GOING AROUND FOR THIS NEXT ROUND, PLEASE DO ASK THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU'D LIKE ANSWERED HERE ON THE SPACE, BUT ALSO FEEL FREE TO OFFER UP THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU'D LIKE CONTRIBUTED TO THE MATRIX BECAUSE AS WE KNOW, WE WON'T HAVE ALL OF OUR ANSWERS HERE TONIGHT, BUT SPEAKING THE QUESTIONS INTO THE SPACE IS BENEFICIAL FOR ALL OF US. SO THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER PROCRIA.

YES, THANK YOU. AND THIS IS DEFINITELY A MATRIX ITEM. But one thing that I would like to see is kind of that dichotomy between, I'll say, little D development and big D development, because not every permit is created the same. When I went around knocking on doors last year, there were a lot of folks who said, look, I can't get the city to approve this permit for my sink or this permit for what have you, these smaller permits. And I would like to see, I guess, not necessarily just the bottlenecks for permitting in general, but also permitting that, I don't know exactly what the threshold would be, but yeah, I'll say little d development and big d development, that dichotomy, because I'm not sure that the bottlenecks will be the same for both.

Thank you, much appreciated. Councilmember Soni?

I have read the very quick questions. So January 1 2027 is when we are starting the implementation, when actually we expect that the transition period will be will be completed when the department will just become self sustaining. So that's one. And the second thing is like, you know, how does it impact the small businesses?

So as we talk to master builders and all developers, time is the most important thing to small business and developers, that getting a permit in a timely manner, ensuring that that permit is accurate and consistent, that is one of the key structures that's there. The implementation is a transition period on January 1st of 2027. That's an ongoing training process improvement that will be ongoing continuous. There'll be continuous learning. There'll be continuous training that will go in. This is a development services development review. It is a group collectively that are put together to do all plan review and inspection citywide. It will impact small businesses by streamlining processes that we can make more transparent to them. We have conversations right now about reaching out to small businesses and engaging. Economic Development right now does that, where Economic Development reaches out to small businesses and then they reach out to me directly when they come in for a permit application. I help assist them and guide them through the process myself personally. That is a continued service that we're going to provide to our residents, to small businesses, to anyone that's going to reside in Redmond. We're going to ensure that they have that first line level of service that we're going to provide. But the 2027 is a transition so that we can say we are functional operating under a single leadership. In January 1st, 2027, then the training will be ongoing. All of the continuous training will be to streamline processes and make things continuously faster. And then we will go into a fee study and look at the time associated that we're contributing to the review timeline, which hopefully reduces that time, which intentionally can reduce the fees that our customers and residents pay for permitting.

Yeah, go ahead, Council Member Soni. If I can just have a quick follow-up on that. Suppose a project comes on January 1st, 2027. What difference they will see in that? So the difference that they... Can be put down somewhere, you know, for a visual ease for people to understand.

So currently we're not just putting a pause on development right now. We're continuing to do all permitting process right now. January 1st, 2027. The intent would be is that when they come in, it would be a centralized one stop shop. You get all your permitting, all your questions answered. It would be seamless. So if you were to walk into development services or whatever the new department name would be, you would see that your permit is being. route it through the city without you having to take it to the different departments to do it. We would be doing all that work internally for you. All you would do is come in, talk to a permit intake, you do your private application, and you'd pick up your permit from the same person. You would not have to route your permit or go to different departments to obtain permits. Right now, currently, you have to go to four different departments to obtain a permit. We're saying that it would be a single application. You would submit an application. We would hand you a permit when you're done in one central location.

Thank you.

Council Member Forsyth. Thank you. For the matrix, I'm interested to know what comparable structures are in other cities. If there's another city that has a similar structure to this, if we could see kind of a layout like we do when we see looking at comparable salaries or looking at comparable policies in other cities. If we could see something like that, I think that would help with the conversation as well. And then I'm also really interested in any conversations that have happened or around the longevity of this department. We've been experiencing an expanded period of growth over the last 10, 20 years, probably more. But I still do worry about what happens when we reach a point when there's not a lot of development happening. We're not bringing in those development fees. Would we be looking at laying off staff? This is a really big department. I have those concerns about 10, 15, 20 years down the road.

I can a little bit answer that question. In 2008, there was a great recession. And because this is an enterprise fund, because the money that goes in pays for the people, the city laid people off. And so that would be the same case if development were to slow in the city and we didn't need all these people to do this work. The one thing that would be improved, however, is our process itself would still remain continuously improving to make sure the timeline still remained good in spite of anything else that's going on. So that the economic situation should not impact the improvement in the process itself. But because it's an enterprise fund, the number of people depend on development happening.

Thank you. I had Council Member Noiva Kamina and then Council Member Parsi. Council Vice President, excuse me.

Thank you. On a macro level, I love the concept of this. I'm seeing overlap of some of the things that we saw actually in our Committee of the Whole meeting earlier with ReadyAR on the questionnaire and where some of the frustration with staff lies. In the Matrix report, we see this again where some of the frustration lies. not being able to get a clear answer at a single point. So there's things I'm very excited about this. For the matrix, I would love to see in the matrix report, it was said that the recommendation, the org chart looked very different than this. So echoing what was earlier said, how did we go from that to what we have here? Do we have any alternatives? Were there alternatives that were considered at that point? Also for the matrix is a question on the new positions that are being added. Are we looking for those to be internal moves when possible? Are we looking for those to be brand new, not only to the position, but also to the enterprise? And it's tied in adjacent, and that is, you know, we're hearing a lot of, so the two-parter, one is much faster permitting, having conversations with master builders and developers at large from planning commission through now, understanding the true pain that goes through in working with some of our processes that are antiquated and just no longer effective. So looking forward to that being done and seeing the benefit that is going to come to the development community, which we need in order to grow. And on that I'm excited about not only the results that we've been able to already achieve despite this with the issues that we currently have and what we've been able to do on our goals and hitting our housing numbers. We're one of the only cities to be able to do it. So we're very proud about that. And then looking forward to what more can we do then once we have something that works in place. So seeing the benefits for the development community and taking a look at when we talk about the savings, Who specifically is saving, are we? And just being very clear and transparent about, is that savings for the city? Is that savings for the development community? Is that savings for homeowners? Where does that savings come into play? And this is the part that I said was kind of adjacent, is then also making sure that because our community is two-thirds renters right now, not losing sight of that. So again, as a renter, I'm looking at, okay, and how does this benefit me and the renter community? Understanding at a very high level, of course, more housing means more inventory. Market rules say that then that should, with an asterisk, should bring down housing costs. But really taking a look at how does this benefit the community as a whole?

Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Percy? All set. I have one more question. I'm seeing no other hands. I'll go ahead and offer it. And all to say, we've obviously populated a really big matrix. But I think that that helps us understand what the things are to focus on for next time. And I appreciate that a couple of my colleagues offered variations on let's evaluate the alternatives to prove to ourselves that this really is the best. Because if we can be on that same page with you and we've identified a solution that's going to help us build more housing faster and more affordably, that's exactly where we wanted to be headed. So we want to be as excited. But we just have a little bit more work to do to get there. My last question for tonight is that the matrix study that evaluated the current state and some initial recommendations, 75 recommendations, It really highlighted that no solution will be complete unless we've got really thorough communication. Some of the things that that included were the updates to all the internal documentation, the training, a huge commitment to onboarding, not just creation of new documents, but, but delivering on it, um, as time goes on, but also how to guides for our customers, because it is going to change for them. And, you know, um, even if ultimately we found the perfect way for our customers to interact with us, there's going to be a change. And so therefore that will be hard. So one of the questions I had is, um, in the two point something million dollars that's set aside for, for change management, does that include the communications work to develop these assets or is that a cost that will be coming later? That one's off.

So part of those costs obviously with training is an internal policy that we take appropriate training measures on updates that we do with our codes that are adopted approximately every three years. So we're going to go through entire training. The intent behind a lot of the recommendations within the matrix were built into our work plan. We looked at those recommendations because we helped inform some of those recommendations. Do we agree with every recommendation in the matrix? No, we don't. I mean, to be honest, we do not on that situation, but we've gone through and looked at a lot of the recommendations that are there about training, SOPs, everything like that. That's an ongoing process that we're going to continue to do, and we do regularly anyway. What we're talking about is going a little bit more in depth of having an entire feedback loop. So from a concept of a creation of an engineering standard all the way to the reviewer who is actually reviewing it to the inspector in the field who is actually inspecting it, and then the maintenance and operations center, which is aligned in our work work will then be giving a feedback loop of what worked well. What didn't under a single department we can go back to the engineers and say this is not working out in the field. It's too. It's cost preventative to do it. The material is cost preventative. Or what is the life of the material that will you using? So those are part of the things that will build into the training that we will be doing. And this is ongoing training that is put in place specifically to train all staff. It is not a dedicated allocation of funding source. We're going to use that as part of our streamline of part of our work plan.

Thank you, Director Lynch. I appreciate that answer. It's not exactly the question I was asking. I was asking about the actual communication assets. So for instance, if I imagine there'll be some amount of materials that need to be created to communicate how things work now to the customers. Do we imagine that your teams internally will be creating these? You'll be able to rely on the communications team or may you need to hire additional consultant services to help with the development of those?

So thank you for that question. COMS has been in contact with us. There's communication that will be done. There will be a new website that is created for the department that will be putting out information and updates related to that. So we will be building an entire from the ground up website related to the new process procedures, SOPs for customers to be able to reach out of how exactly to do that. I think it's imperative to understand that although we streamline processes, we still have to collaborate with our customers submitting applications and set that expectation of a good application to come in and ensure that they're clear about what we expect as the review intake person because we're going to build that working relationship.

That's completely fair. And so my initial question was the cost of doing all that, building out the webpage, is that included in the $2.5 million needed for implementation or are we expecting some additional costs later on?

I would have to defer to finance on that. I would say we probably will incur some additional costs related to that. But right now, within the department and finance, they're supporting us directly, which is under their direction. We're keeping it in-house. We're keeping it in-house.

Okay, thank you. Well, that thoroughly exhausted my question. Thanks for your patience, everyone. Any other comments tonight before we close this item and look forward to the next steps, which again, receiving some additional materials and having a touch in study session prior to budget deliberations knowing that of course this is a big piece of of the budget council vice president um quick housekeeping question uh four questions for council to um to send for the matrix for our next touch on this uh who would you like those directed to

I would love for them to be directed to Jason Lynch, the mayor, Melissa Files, and Lisa Maher, the four of us. That'd be great.

Wonderful. Thank you. Okay, great. With that, thank you so much, Jason. And we will see you again in a few minutes, Director Cochran. Thank you, Mayor Birney. Much appreciated. The second item on our agenda tonight is preparation for the 2027 legislative session. We have here tonight Amy Tsai, our chief policy advisor, who will be introducing our lobbyist as well, who we're so excited to have back again for this session. So Amy, whenever you're ready, I will pass it off to you. Thank you for being here.

All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good evening, council members. For the record, Amy Tsai, Chief Policy Advisor.

I'm Brianna Murray. I'm your state lobbyist with Gordon Thomas Honeywell Government Relations. I'm also joined by my colleague, Kyle Schroeder. He's listening in online.

I'd also like to begin the presentation by giving a thank you to Lisa Maher and Uni U for their help in preparing the presentation and the materials that we're going to see tonight. Of course, everything is always a team effort with all the city staff, but just special thanks to them as well. So today, we are here primarily to take your feedback on the first draft of the state legislative agenda. We're gonna begin with a brief overview of the city legislative program. Brianna will talk about what to expect for the upcoming session. And then we're going to share in providing the state draft for your consideration. So we will be pretty high level brief with the goal of getting to your feedback. And, Council President, we'll be looking to you for leadership as we take any edits or suggestions for the general temperature check of your members of which edits to move forward for October.

Sounds great. Thank you.

The state legislative agenda communicates the city's top priorities and funding requests to the legislature. And it does this by telling a story about Redmond and why the issues need support. So I think of it in part as a marketing tool to achieve your objectives. And so that's important when you look at the framing and how it's structured. It's for maximizing the effect in those conversations. And it also provides, importantly, the policy guidance for the bills and how we engage with the legislature in a way that lets us stay nimble to the issues that are coming up. Because for any given bill, of course, the devil is in the details. Whoa, as my, just jump past all the slides. I'm sure that'd be great for everyone to work through it quickly. So for the session, I want to give a big shout out to you as well, that it is a collaborative effort. And last session, you were all so amazing. You're always fantastic, but the communication was really great. And that's really important for us because as Brianna's doing the good work on the Hill, it's really important to stay in tune with all of you where you are, who you're talking to and where your priorities are. And so we have our lobbyist who's leading those strategy and interactions. The departments in the meantime are real time working through those bills and providing subject matter expertise. And then you are participating, as you well know, in the advocacy, often sharing in testimony or other areas and conversations. And then the mayor, of course, is engaging with you on opportunities of how best to present the city positions. In terms of timeline, we are now at the first hearing on September 8th. We will be coming back to you on October 13th with a new revised draft that reflects your feedback from today and hopefully heading towards adoption in early November or December because that will position us to be ready to go for the state session.

This next slide is to provide you a little bit of context as you start thinking about your legislative agenda. One of my recommendations to you all and all my clients is to develop a legislative agenda that meets with or aligns with the current political climate and budget realities. So this next slide is outlining exactly that. The legislature operates on a two-year cycle. The 2027 legislative session will be the first year of that two-year cycle and will last 105 days and is considered a long legislative session. The second year of the biennium is a short legislative session for comparison. Based on August primary results and generally reading the political tea leaves, we anticipate that Democrats will continue to hold the majority in both the House and the Senate. It is possible that Democrats could gain a supermajority in the House in particular. Even though the political makeup is the same in that Democrats currently hold the majority in both chambers, we are expecting over a dozen new legislators in Olympia just due to retirements and new people running. That's assuming that no incumbent loses their seat. You still have 12 new legislators. Also, every two years the legislature goes through what's called a reorganization process where they evaluate their committee structures, oftentimes make changes to committee structures, appoint committee chairs, and make committee assignments. They also go through and reelect leadership and leadership modifications and changes. So while the political climate may be very similar, it also may function very different because of the individuals that are holding those seats. We're beginning to hear about some major themes that the legislature will be grappling with this upcoming session. First and foremost is that the legislature is going to be facing some really constrained budgets. The operating and transportation budgets in particular are likely to be facing significant shortfalls. We don't know the extent of those shortfalls just yet. We'll have another economic revenue forecast at the end of September on the 25th. And then by October 1st, the collective bargaining agreements that the state does with their unions will be completed. Once those two factors fall into line, we'll have a better sense of what the shortfall will be. However, earlier this year in May, the Office of Financial Management sent a notice out to all state agencies highlighting that they're anticipating a budget shortfall and encouraging state agencies to look at reductions, particularly within the operating and transportation budgets. The state's third budget, the capital budget, is the most stable of the three budgets. That budget is funded with bonds that a percentage of the operating budget are dedicated to paying off. And because it's funded with bonds, it's often developed in a bipartisan fashion. We're anticipating that capital budget will continue to be stable and that that is also the biggest opportunity for you all to advocate for the Redmond community to receive funds some funding. Another major theme aside from constrained budgets is ongoing tax policy discussions. You'll likely recall from our work last legislative session that the legislature made some fairly significant changes to the state's tax code by enacting a millionaire's tax or income tax on income exceeding $1 million. Part of the ongoing tax policy conversations if that proposal is upheld in November's ballot, is that there were several different sales and use tax exemptions included within that bill on over-the-counter medications, diapers, and hygiene products. And those sales and use tax exemptions had a direct negative impact on city budgets. The legislature this upcoming session will grapple with whether or not to offset those funding impacts by making a distribution of revenue from the millionaire's tax to cities. We're also expecting there to be a fairly robust discussion over state B&O tax and whether that should be transitioned to a corporate income tax or a margins tax. for a city that has a business tax, you all have a head tax, there's a nexus there and potential impact. So there's also some potential impacts there. And then the final major theme is a real focus on affordability. Just there's a heightened awareness of the challenges of whether it's housing, utilities, insurance, just overall affordability for living in Washington State. I'd also note, sort of in line with affordability, there's a developing jobs package that is looking at no-cost investments, not investments, but no-cost policy changes that would help create jobs throughout the state. There's not a lot of detail known on that. It's just started emerging as a concept. So those are some of the themes that we're expecting this upcoming legislative session. I want to transition into talking about your legislative agenda and these are my recommendations to you all on how to structure the legislative agenda in order to make it most successful based on my years of experience in advocating for cities. The challenge with advocating for our issues is that within the legislature, there are hundreds of bills that get introduced that have some sort of nexus to city government directly, or broadly to the community. And we have to balance the breadth of those hundreds of issues to remain responsive with the fact that in order to be effective at proactively moving issues forward, we have to remain focused. So the way that we've done that structurally is by dividing the legislative agenda into a few different components. So the first page is the top priority items. These are proactive items that but for Redmond raising these issues, the legislature is not likely to discuss them or consider them. Then the second issue is sort of another tier of regional issues where the city is engaged with the Association of Washington Cities or other regional partners joining together, trying to advance forward policy as part of a coalition. And then the third page is really trying to capture those many, many different issues that we may be called on to respond to or join an even larger coalition to express an added voice of support or opposition. And so through those three different pages and those three different structures, we try and both capture the focus and the ability to respond to many different issues. Even within those three pages, my recommendation is that you keep those items as city focused as you can. And that is the most effective use of your all's voice and political capital. What I mean by that is that as a council member representing the city where the city has expertise on staff, where we're able to offer very technical and constructive feedback. We're more often seen as an impactful and influential stakeholder in the process as opposed to something that is not part of city government, not part of city business where we're just weighing in as with an opinion and really not a lot of other expertise or staff knowledge backing it up. So keeping it on those areas where the city is directly in charge of governing.

All right, so thank you for that outline of our structure. I'm now gonna talk about the first page of the top ask where we're actively seeking outcomes. So first, I'll go through each of these briefly in turn and Brianna will have some comments. I will note on this page, fortuitously, there is a misnumbering because we would actually like to discuss with you a fourth multifamily tax exemption clarification option. So we will add that to our discussion right now. as a fourth item. So first on our agenda is a request for funding for the Maintenance and Operations Center. You're familiar with this one because it had a preview last year because we've been trying to socialize the legislature.

Yeah, thank you, Amy. And we've done that socialization and really tried to get a lot of visibility for this project to hopefully secure a larger than usual dollar amount for the project. The average appropriation out of the capital budget is usually between $800,000 and $1 million. So requesting $3 million is a very bold request. My recommendation is that we make this bold request and we keep it at this higher dollar amount. But I also want to note that as we get more information about the overall status of the capital budget with the revenue forecast and some of the other factors I mentioned earlier, we'll need to be nimble on what dollar amount we actually fill out the form and submit. So this is, the $3 million is our ideal, and as we move forward in the advocacy to advance this forward, we're going to aim to request as much as feasibly possible within the budget realities we're operating within.

as those become known. And the only thing I'll add as a technical correction on this slide, you know, of course there is operations at this center during emergencies, not literally emergency operations per se as part of the design at this stage. So the second thing on our list is the Overlake Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Project. You have seen this multiple years as well because we were successful in getting that $8 million award as part of the Climate Commitment Act. And so this is a request to keep that money coming.

Yes, I think within the constrained transportation budget that I noted earlier, all existing appropriations are going to be scrutinized and we want to make sure that this one does not fall off the list just as it's nearing completion.

And then third, we have, and we've done this before, where we ask the state to fully fund those grant sources where we are actively applying for grants. And this year we do have an application in for Parago Park. And so the request would be, can you please state fund these grant sources so that as we get ranked and become eligible that there is money there, if you win a grant, to receive it.

And I would just note that this is a grant program funded in the capital budget.

And then the fourth item that I alluded to earlier, the multifamily tax exemption, this is a proposal that we are exploring that we would like to check with you on whether we can bring some language back to you for consideration at the October meeting.

Yeah, I think you all might remember a bill that passed in the 2025 legislative session, House Bill 1491, regarding transit-oriented development. The bill included a package of land use changes that cities are going to have to implement in 2029. Alongside those land use changes, which largely were increased density mandates, There is a requirement that cities also offer a 20-year multifamily tax exemption within those transit oriented development areas. That 20-year MFTE, multifamily tax exemption, has affordability requirements outlined in the statute. It's either 10% at 60%, 10% of the units at 60% of the area median income or 20% of the units at 80% of the area median income. There's an assumption that because it is MFTE that a city has the authority to go below those amounts and require deeper affordability. However, the statute doesn't actually say that. And so it would be requesting legislation to clarify that the intent is that a city can go to deeper levels of affordability. I will note that it's likely that to go to deeper levels of affordability, the city may need to demonstrate through market analyses or otherwise that a project can still be viable within the community. So it's not the tool isn't used as a way of stalling growth. But I'm based on conversations with the department confident that Redmond has done a lot of that due diligence already. This is a new concept that we just started discussing in the last few weeks. And I will note that I have meetings scheduled with legislators who were very involved in the passage of House Bill 1491 to assess the receptivity to this concept.

So Council President, at this time, we'd be seeking to get your general assessment of whether we should continue this exploration to bring you back something in October.

I appreciate that, Amy. It may be worth having a conversation about the entire budget and then be able to get you the answer to that question. Thank you.

Sounds good. So regional priorities, Brianna.

So as I mentioned, the regional priorities are items that we're working on in alignment with other jurisdictions. I will note Council President Stewart serves on the Association of Washington City's Legislative Priorities Committee and the mayor serves on the Association of Washington City's Board of Directors. The AWC as well as Sound Cities Association and other organizations are key collaborators on many of these topics, including the first item, which is city budget stability, which has risen to be a top priority within the association of Washington cities as they're developing their legislative priorities as well. This item is really calling on the state to be cognizant of the city tax code as it's making its own state tax code changes. And to first and foremost offset the negative impacts in the sales and use tax exemptions that were included in the millionaire's tax. But then also pursue longer term tax code changes at the local level to help ensure that the local tax code is moving in a more progressive direction. fashion and a more stable fashion. Over the last four years or two legislative biennium, the city tax code has gotten increasingly more regressive as the legislature has chosen to approve more sales tax authority rather than any other type of local option. So this is calling on that. There's also some individual policies that would be beneficial. For example, the city currently has the authority to have a tourism promotion area with an increased per room fee. That authority to have that per room fee is set to sunset in 2027 if the legislature does not extend that authority. So we'd be expressing support for that alongside some of your hospitality partners. And also on this section is really looking at how to decrease city liability through reform. This is a challenge that both the state and local government are facing where they're experiencing a lot of lawsuits being filed against and increasing settlements that are driving up costs. So that's the first item on city budget stability. The next item is on livable, affordable neighborhoods. This is an item that the city has had on its legislative agenda now for several years and that the legislature has expressed a great deal of interest in and we're continuing ongoing efforts We are anticipating ongoing dialogue. Redmond has a robust inclusionary zoning policy, one of the few in the state. We are expecting the legislature to have a discussion on whether or not inclusionary zoning as Redmond has it structured, should be allowed to continue in the state. There's a bill that passed in Oregon that said inclusionary zoning is not allowed unless it is fully funded. We're expecting some iteration of that bill to make its way to the Washington State Legislature, and if drafted identical to the Oregon proposal, would conflict with Ural's current program. Also, under livable and affordable neighborhoods being cognizant to local economic development and supporting policies that help increase the local workforce and business community. There's also a note on here about really trying to make improvements to local permitting systems, but to do so in a way that is helpful, not just more mandates that the city would be challenged to meet. Finally, there's a mention of here on the need for legislation to clarify that cities are planning for housing at all income levels and that there's not a duty for cities to fund or construct housing at all income levels. There are a series of growth management hearings board decisions that have come out over the last six months that are conflicting in nature and cause some concern as to whether there's a state statute that's a planning mandate or a mandate to fund housing at all income levels. Because cities do not have adequate revenue streams for housing, the mandate to fund housing at all income levels would be very problematic. The third item is under transportation and infrastructure. This is really looking at supporting state actions to help increase the amount of funding available for preservation and maintenance. This is both a conversation at the state and local level, and we're expecting the legislature to talk about what's called a highway use fee, which is a fee that is imposed on vehicle registrations based on the miles per gallon or fuel efficiency that that vehicle gets according to the manufacturer. If a proposal along those lines were to move forward, the city's role in that conversation would be to remind members of the legislature that cities need funding too, and to share any revenue that is generated with the local level. The next item is on clean water investments. This is support for additional funding for clean water, but also highlighting that several of the regional utility systems are on the verge of unaffordability with both inflationary pressures and regulatory pressures. This is an area of the legislative agenda where there's really strong synergy with the legislature's emerging theme around affordability. and really wanting to look at the regulatory pressures that are resulting in utility rate increases. And then finally, a portion on safe, effective use of emerging technologies. You all as a community are a leader in a lot of technology, and this is really calling on us to pay very close attention to proposals around autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, and other technology and efficiency tools that we're likely to see come forward.

So turning to the support issues on the third page, these are generally city lines of business. And you should be familiar with these. These are commonly coming back every year in various similar forms. So we have housing that really highlights that you have the Housing and Human Services Action Plan and other areas of guidance that you have opined on. We also have environmental sustainability because of your strong focus on both housing and the environment. And that includes our environmental sustainability action plan, the guidance you provide in that document. One of the areas here that has been getting a lot of attention, grid stabilization and the clean energy needs for the city. So that may come up this session in the form of battery storage and other such issues. And you've always been strong supporters of salmon. And also we have highlighted already the importance of the Climate Commitment Act, especially to our projects in the Overlake area. For planning and infrastructure, similar to the regional issues, you have the local roads needs, road safety, the parks and trails, and so forth. Also transportation and your commitment to multimodal clean transportation options. General government, we always reiterate that you're very interested in progressive revenue sources, as Brianna highlighted, and a key issue that's coming up in a lot of the conversations regionally right now is that financial sustainability, the sustainability of city budgets, preserve state support for city revenue coming in. And community vitality, you have always been very strong on your commitment to the community and wanting to reflect that in terms of human services, workforce, childcare, all these areas that intersect with the day-to-day lives of your residents, including small business and economic development. And public safety, safe neighborhoods, of course, and public defense has come back every year as the state has been, courts have been looking at indigent defense caseload standards. So that continues to be a funding issue of concern to cities. And you've always been expressing an interest in alternative crisis response in ways to meet people where they're at and find responsible ways to address their safety needs across the facet of their various ways of meeting them where they're at. So that is a very quick overview of your general policy areas. You're familiar with them because they are your policy areas. So at this point, we're open to questions and comments.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Amy and Brianna. Mayor Bernie, any comments before we go to questions? No? Okay. Well, thank you so much. And with that, we'll open it up to council questions, feedback, and discussion. And obviously, we do have a question and a proposal out there that we'll, by the end of the conversation, answer about the fourth proposal. So Council Member Parsi, why don't you kick us off?

Thank you. So generally 95% of everything looks great. So thank you so much for your work on this. There is one item that I previously prior to my time on the council I did some research on and I hearing the miles traveled policy and our support for it gave me a little bit of concern because when I reviewed that policy I remember I was concerned about miles traveled for a vehicle causing privacy concerns for tracking miles traveled for vehicle. Another concern that I had was heavier vehicles cause more erosion on roads rather than smaller vehicles. So charging all kind of per miles traveled would be inequitable from that sense. And a third concern that I remember from a year ago is many lower income individuals travel from further away from their jobs. And this would be, and I think council member Forsyth pointed out that it's very important for us to be equitable in how we deal we shouldn't do regressive taxes. And this, in my opinion, would be very much a regressive tax. So even though there could be benefit to the city, I do want to make sure that the council is aware of the potential concerns with this. So we know what we're signing up for if we do decide to support this. So there might be other concerns, but these are the ones that I remember top of my head. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Soni.

For me, it's more for a clarification. I know we are asking for like $3 million as a bold ask, but because maintenance and operations is a multi-year project, so will there be a possibility for us to ask down the line additional money or is this just going to be done?

That is a great question. So the legislature operates in a two-year cycle. This is the main funding opportunity that we will see in the next two years. We can ask for multiple rounds of funding. If we don't get the full amount in the second year, the amounts that are going to be feasible to request are going to be much smaller. And then it's hard to predict what the budget reality is going to be in 2029-31.

Great question. Council Member Forsyth, and then the Council Vice President. Thank you.

And I echo the thanks for this because it's really thorough. I feel like we've been growing this over the last several years and it's really tight. It's really succinct. So I only have a few small comments. One being that in our storytelling about affordable neighborhoods, livability and housing, we don't call out that we are two-thirds renters. So I think that's a really important distinction to share with the legislature that generally thinks of Redmond as being single-family homes. So maybe the mayor is making comments, so maybe I missed it in there, but I think we should really prioritize and highlight that we are... we have a lot of renters in our community. I think that tells a different part of the story that the legislature may not be used to seeing from Redmond. Additionally, I think adding, I know there's already a bill being discussed around junk fees. So I would wanna see our support for that at the state level. We've been working on that in our subcommittee And I know that bill is already being batted around for next session. So I just want to make sure that we throw our weight behind that as well. And then down in the emerging technologies section, I feel like we need a bit more urgency around those policies because they're developing faster than we are keeping up. So maybe adding protections and protect and prioritize and then some other way to emphasize how we really see this as an area that needs swift policy action. Thank you.

Thank you, much appreciated, and yes, I believe there was a sidebar just on the exact statistic of the number of renters in Redmond, but point well taken. Thank you. The Council Vice President.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Parsi, for bringing up the highway per use tax, and that has some unintentional consequences. I was recently driving across the state, and it was very stark how... Older vehicles, especially when it comes to lower income, older vehicles, not as having to drive much farther away, as well as right here in our own. So thank you for bringing that up. Also, for the record, I want to echo Council Member Forsyth's comment about AI, making sure that we're telling our story of whatever the percentage of renters that we are. when we get that dialed in. And also wanted to thank Brianna, both you and Amy, for your work on this, because in a climate where we understand the situation with the state's budget, but because of your expertise, you understand how we're still able to leverage our asks and how we can do it in a way that is going to both respect the current situation while also accessing the funds that are still available. So thank you for all of your work on this.

Thank you. Council President, can I offer some clarification on the road usage charge? Please do. Thank you. So I want to make it clear that there are two different proposals that have been circulating. There's a road usage charge that the Transportation Commission has been piloting for the last few years that has a few different ways in which an individual can participate in order to track the number of the number of miles their vehicle has traveled and then to pay a fee based on that amount. That has been a voluntary program that individuals have opted into participating in and if they've participated they have gotten a rebate for what they would have paid in fuel tax. So it's been optional and had this trade-off. The road usage charge proposals to make that program more statewide and recent legislative sessions have not garnered the necessary legislative support in order to advance forward for several of the reasons that Council Member Parsi that you outlined. The more recent proposal that started to come forward either last legislative session or the legislative session prior is called a highway use fee. And I think it's either Virginia or Vermont. I'm sorry, I can't keep my state names correct. I was already enacted a very similar fee. And it is... more palatable to certain lawmakers because it doesn't present the same challenges that the road usage charge presents. It's not aiming to track the number of miles that a vehicle or a driver travels. But it changes the registration fee that a vehicle owner pays based on the miles per gallon that that individual gets. The more fuel efficient the vehicle, the larger the fee will be because presumably less fuel tax is being paid. and then would have been paid historically. And then vehicles that have the latest iteration of the proposal I saw a few months ago was that if a vehicle had 25 miles per gallon or less, they would be fully exempt from the fee because presumably that car is paying ample amount in fuel tax as they're filling up their vehicle. So I just wanted to clarify that there are those two different proposals that are being considered and that the highway use fee seems to have more momentum behind it going into this next legislative session.

Thank you so much, Brianna. The next question was for council member Kritzer.

Thank you. Appreciate the work on this. And it's, it's interesting to see how this agenda has also evolved during my time on council. Looking at the current agenda, I remember multiple years where different pieces that are now in here came on and different discussions that we've had. So it's also nice to see kind of how we maintain as a through thread and previous work that we've done and continuing to kind of consistently come back with certain messages of things we want to build on where we've had wins, but it's like a long term effort. I think it's helpful to have some consistent messages that we're continuing to deliver. So I appreciate what's as much as we have some new things in here, also some things coming back as well. In terms of the proposal for around inclusionary zoning, I think something that may be just more of a tool that we want, it may not be included in this particular packet, but that could be very useful for our legislators would be some of the data around how important inclusionary zoning has been. We have a nice bullet point here, but I think the actual numbers of like how many units of housing it's created and how much housing we continue to create that, because I do think part of the argument that we see against inclusionary zoning is that it stops development, but that has not been true in Redmond. We've had it for decades, for over three decades. And it's helped us to create more affordable housing than any of our neighboring cities. And so I think being able to create kind of help our legislators to be able to tell that story should that come up will be very important as that goes forward. And then I think the only thing that I would add in here, which goes is all the way on the third page is, well, it started from the first page last year. Last year, our first priority was about funding and policies to support our most vulnerable community members and neighbors. And this year, you see it in the community vitality section. In that first bullet that we had last year, we specifically called out our immigrant refugee and asylum seekers within our community and both policy and funding support for them. I think with the change in this particular agenda, that got lost. Otherwise, I see most of the other pieces, including talking about supporting benefits such as SNAP and Medicaid eligibility, or as we addressing some of the impacts of those changes. So I appreciate seeing that in there. But I'd say maybe we could add in, at the very least, a note. I think one of the things this agenda does really well is kind of tell the story about Redmond And I think given our very large immigrant community, just reminding legislators about that and the importance of the state's role to be able to support our immigrant community is really key.

Thank you. We're still going around on round one. I will go ahead and chime in here quickly. Thanks so much. Like others have said, I love how this builds on year after year. And I really do appreciate the prior discussion regarding the now proposed highway use when I get it right, the highway use fee. The huff, oh boy, that we have just been discussing, because I just wanted to comment that this is actually an example where, and the conversation kind of preceding it, is an example of how we actually use the agenda matters too. So I love that our agenda states our values so clearly. Some of these values are interrelated, sometimes unintentionally in conflict with one another. I don't think that's where we landed on the health necessarily, but in the prior conversation, I think it's important to say if our agenda as adopted doesn't immediately make it clear where Redmond's position is, then Redmond would not weigh in That is a practice that we have honed over the past few years, and I really appreciate that that works well for us. I want to echo my support for the state's continued work on renter stability and protections, including I have also heard that the junk fee bill may be in play. And if that's so, it's much better solved at the state level than it would be for each individual city to piece that together. I have a question for you, Amy, before I can answer your question about the fourth priority. So we've done this before where our front page has a priority related to a WWRP project. Those projects are competitively ranked prior to the start of session. So if our project were to rank poorly, low on the list and was likely not to be funded, would we keep it on the list or would we replace it with something else?

That's a good question, Brianna. I don't know if you have thoughts on the viability of that.

It depends on how poorly. Because there's this dynamic that happens where it's like, oh, well, there are these four communities that are the four projects below the line and each one of the legislators from those four communities would really like to see those projects funded. So let's ask the legislature to increase the overall amount of funding beyond what the governor chose to propose so that those projects receive funding. Like that's the kind of dynamic that happens. Now, if we're like 25 below, it's really hard to pull together a strategy to try and get that deep into the funding list. But that is one of the reasons we keep it on. The other thing is we won't know how we fare until after the governor releases his proposed budget in mid-December.

Mid-December. Okay, great. That answers that question. Wonderful. And obviously it is also important to be supporting with our neighbors in these state grant programs and the like, but it's helpful to hear the explanation. Okay. So for my part, the answer to proposal number four is a resounding yes. I don't know if anyone saw the Seattle Times today, but we have here in Redmond two of the neighborhoods in the entire Puget Sound region that received the most immigration and therefore also we know that correlates to the growth over Lake and downtown Redmond, which are TODs experiencing that and highlighted in the newspaper today. it's really important that Redmond is, and I agree with council member Kritzer, it's important to be able to tell our story. The font's getting a little small year after year on the ledge agenda. So I don't expect the ledge agenda to do all the heavy lifting, but the accompanying communication assets and certainly our skills as council members to be able to tell that story when we're speaking with our delegation is really important. And I think that we should have ready to go the impact that this would make and anybody who needs to come and visit Overlake and see all of the growth that is happening to accommodate that and and know that in our comprehensive plan we wanted to go lower with all of our we did we went lower with all of our inclusionary zoning in order to do our part so we're doing our part and we should tell that story really well so I believe adding this to the front page of our agenda achieves that. Council Member Forsyth.

I'll just add on to that in this part of the conversation. I know that level is probably set because most cities aren't doing what we're doing. But showing that we, that was the level we were at like five, six years ago. We've gone deeper. It's still working. I think that is a really important story to tell and appreciate the flag on that.

Council Member Kutzer.

I'd also support at least having you come back with the information so that we can look at how that would fit on the agenda. I do think, especially as a city that's also used MFT as a tool, I think if Redmond's not telling the story and talking about it, then there's an important voice missing at the table. So I think we have a responsibility to be able to kind of share from the experience, especially because as we discussed when we were discussing MFTE recently, there are also some misunderstandings about MFTE sometimes or different applications. And for example, in Redmond, our application, when you use MFTE, those units stay affordable throughout their entire lifespan. And so I think being able to talk about that model and how you might use that tool would be helpful. I'm also going to comment that I would support keeping the WWRP category on there. I think also because regardless of how we rank, being able to support that program, I think we have a project on that list. hopefully as long as we're not at the very bottom, which I guess I could see us deprioritizing there. But in general, if that program maintains a certain level of funding, we've come back to that program again and again, and it's been a really important source. So we may not get it this time, but it's kind of similar to the way we think about ARCH. We don't always get the housing built in our area, but it ultimately benefits us if that is well-funded. And So I think, and I don't know if we want to call it out. I know that I believe that kind of all the groups that I think the city joins in as well advocating on this will be advocating for $150 million as the target for that. And I believe our CO is also requesting in their request budget.

Thank you for that. Council Member Soni. This is regarding the size on the agenda for the permitting. It's like the builders and developers are also complaining about some of the state regulations based on the environmental and utilities requirements that's actually delaying the permits. We as Redmond are investing so much time and money to expedite all the permitting process, but if it is getting delayed because of that, maybe highlighting like, you know, I don't know what specific state rules that that has to be looked, but something that we can if we can highlight, like, you know, that would be very helpful for us to expedite that process, because in return, this is going to help with our permit expeditions. So some of these things, I think, because we are investing a lot of time and money in this.

Thank you. Other comments or questions? Feedback on this draft?

Okay, did you have one more, Councilmember Parsi? One small thing. I was wondering if we can add the, in the technology section, add a surveillance component to it as well as privacy.

So I want to make sure we can get an answer from the council to your question. Let me make sure I understand it. We are on the bottom of page two, the safe, effective use of emerging technologies. Redmond supports legislation that protects data privacy and aligns with safety, vehicle miles traveled reduction and equity goals. Is that the sentence you're interested in having surveillance added?

Yes, so for example, protecting data privacy and preventing surveillance and the rest. What does the council think?

Can I ask just, I mean, is there a specific legislative proposal? I'm just wanting a little bit more detail so that as different bills are coming forward, I would know what to identify.

Sure. For example, let's take the vehicle miles travel reduction, as we discussed here. But I understand that the components might have changed. But that would be an example of a policy or a bill that could have surveillance implications. Even the component that you said might have changed, that there is a rebate program that people can get maybe some tax incentive for opting into, that to me still means that if you need additional money, you give up your privacy to get additional money and that kind of creates a really bad dynamic again in my mind. So that's a component that I think where surveillance is really important. And, you know, we heard plenty from the community about the importance of privacy, what data the government collects, how the government uses the data. That was something that we heard loud and clear from our community in Redmond. And I do think that if this is our opportunity to service this, it would be worthwhile to just add one more word about surveillance too.

Just to check with Brianna quickly, does that kind of clarify the intent of the request? And then we'll go to the council after Amy's comment.

Just another clarification question. Can you also talk a little bit about how you distinguish that from data privacy? Because I guess in my mind, if you're guarding it on privacy, what is the component?

That's a great question. Let me give you an example. Data privacy could mean that if I go to my healthcare, my healthcare data is, say, protected and private from my employer. Another example of it is, for example, my private information being shared publicly online. That's not necessarily surveillance as in how government handles the data, This is about kind of one person sharing data or one instance of data. When I think about surveillance, I think about government collecting data on individual residents at large. So I think we can reference to kind of commonly defined way of surveillance. I don't have to define that tonight. If you want, I can kind of provide additional examples. But when I think about surveillance, that is the same as concerns that our residents reached out to us with when we looked at safe lock cameras. So that would be an example of something that I want to make sure that we prevent at the state level as well if that's something that council is interested in.

Okay, great. Thank you. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. I would also add surveillance pricing. I know that's a conversation that has come up in the legislature as well. But again, with the emerging technologies, we're hearing more and more about the use of potential surveillance pricing in grocery stores. Because you can afford more, you get charged more. We need regulations around this as well.

Council Member Procrea.

Thanks. Yeah, in general, just a couple of things. So when it when it comes to that, I would just say, maybe we can say, instead of just statewide standards on technological advancements, we can add standards and regulation. But I'm more than happy to also add the specifics, ie surveillance pricing, for instance. My question was about funding I believe this is probably covered in the city budget stability, but I just wanted to ask Amy and Brianna. For instance, I guess, what is the breakdown in lobbying between city and county government when it comes to an item that is brought up like the double-digit percentage increases year over year on solid waste disposal? Right. I mean, I feel like this is kind of covered in here, like the city expenses are increasing faster than city tax code revenue. But is this the county's problem to lobby or is this ours? And is there a collaborative way that we could work together to lobby for this?

So I think one of the ways I can answer this question is that there are some mandates from the state around nutrients into the Puget Sound, and that's part of why the county needs to increase its sewer rates to pay for all of the capital that they need to do to meet those mandates from the state. And so the answer to that question is yes, cities and the county are working together to work with the state to find a better solution to that than the solution they currently have at the state level. So that does indeed would impact our rates at a local level. It's not really, I wouldn't say it's a legislative agenda ask because It has more to do with the governor's office than the legislature. So we do work together. We do work on big things like that, but I don't think it really fits in this legislative agenda unless Amy has different thoughts because she's working on this work too.

I think on both the wastewater and solid waste front, you are seeing those large percentage increases year over year, large because of capital. And I think both departments of the county level are actively working, as the mayor noted, on capital funding options, state, federal. And so I think we're all as regional partners collectively supportive of it. But I think the mayor's right in the sense of are we actively the face of it? Not the city, but we are definitely supportive as client customers of the regional wastewater and solid waste systems.

And finally, I don't need to add on to the great comments that already have been made, but for additional context. For the council, tomorrow morning, as Brianna mentioned, we will be at the Association of Washington Cities working on the legislative priorities. Tomorrow evening, Council Member Procrea and I will be at the Sound Cities Association because the Public Issues Committee will have its first reading of the Sound Cities Association legislative agenda. And on our county legislative agenda for the Sound Cities Association, absolutely a priority is addressing the affordability of utilities and balancing it with the needs of the improvements that are needed to protect the sound and human health as well. So all related. Thank you so much for your comments, Council Member Prakriti. I hope that more than answers the question you had. We have a question still on the floor regarding the fourth proposal from Amy and Brianna, as well as the surveillance question from Council Member Parsi. Would anyone like to add additional comments on those?

Council Vice President. Can we have a refresher of the fourth proposal that's on the table?

It was the 20-year MFTE clarification for transit-oriented development. Thank you.

Council Member Parsi? Would it be possible for us to have more written input on that? I have a hard time, similar to Council Vice President. It's getting a little late in the day, and I'm having a hard time. Would it be possible to get this in writing, please?

think our goal would be to have it reflected in the next draft that come back comes back to you in october sure then that would be great i'm seeing lots of head nods around the table that uh that that is a welcome exercise so if we could have that back on october 13th that'd be wonderful uh council member kritzer yes i'm supportive of that um i was just going to make

Just support, I was going to just email it, but I'll just say if we wanted to close it on the surveillance, I was thinking if we wanted to kind of holistically address a couple things that came up and also take in Council Member Procrea's idea, we could in the first sentence have it say standards and regulations on technological advancements like autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, surveillance capability, because that could kind of cover like doing, studying a bunch of different things related to surveillance. And then that can cover, because I think the use of this would also be, let's say a bill comes up on one of these topics, or maybe it's multiple, then the city kind of has that in there and can advocate on it.

Seeing lots of head nods around the table. Council Member Kritzer, if you and Council Member Parsi wouldn't mind like working together to firm up a suggestion and sending it over to the staff, I think that'd be very helpful. Okay, great. And this is a great opportunity to say by way of we're beginning to wrap up this conversation also, that if you've not yet worked with Amy Tsai on a regional board or committee, you will know that each and every syllable that is produced in many of those regional boards and committees has gone through a careful filter with Amy. So if you have copy edits, now is a great time. Please send it over because no doubt Amy will be going over everything with a fine tooth comb as well. With that, we will come back on October 13th for additional conversation. Amy, we typically then also follow that with a kickoff to the legislative session and some other things. Is there anything you'd like to say about the preview of anything else about the preview of how we get this process started?

I think I'll keep it short because I know you have another item. If I may, Council President, there's a few things that you all raised collectively that we might work with you on the status of drafting the two-thirds renter, the actual percentage highlighted somewhere. Also, the prioritization and swift action on technological advancements and also adding immigrant refugee asylum seeking, bringing that back in. in the community vitality section. And I believe those were the ones that I heard.

Thank you so much, Amy. She took amazing notes. Did anyone hear anything in the list provided by Amy that they would not like to support in a future draft, including the state potentially addressing the renter fee situation? Okay, great. Well, we look forward to the next draft. And thank you so much, Brianna. Drive safely. And thank you so much for being with us. With that, we will take a brief recess before beginning our conversation on the Capital Improvement Program. We will be in recess until 9.15. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Bye. Thank you.

Thank you. We are now back in session, and I will pass the gavel to our budget chair, Councilmember Kritzer, to introduce the next item, which is our 2027-2032 Capital Improvement Program Plan Review.

Thank you so much, Council President Stewart. So this is the first of meetings that I will have the opportunity to chair this fall or sections of meetings that I'll have the opportunity to chair. And while this isn't the beginning of our budget process, it is our first kind of look at one piece of the budget that we will be working on approving this fall. So as a reminder, as we kind of enter into this, one of the things that council passed in advance of the budget process was a set of ground rules and how we'll go through some of the work. And I'll try to make sure that we're guiding our conversations to be able to focus on having the most impactful discussions to get to answering council member questions that are needed as well as making any changes that are needed in order to get to a budget passage. in November. One reminder of a ground rule that I'll start to implement tonight as well is as we go through these discussions, as council members have proposals or questions, if a question is going to take a very large amount of staff time to answer, then I will take a set of thumbs on whether there's a majority support to be able to get the information requested. Small amounts of information that staff can just get and put into a matrix, they'll be able to do that. So you'll be seeing kind of this process starting up. Similarly, if there's any kind of major proposals in order to spend more time investigating those proposals, we'll also be using thumbs up to see if there's a majority support to be able to spend more time on that. And that's just more a time management tool that we've all committed to. So I just wanted to remind everyone of that as we begin this. Tonight, we're going to have, I'll turn it over in a moment to our finance director, Kelly Cochran, to talk us through this initial piece on the CIP. I think the goals of tonight is really for us to be able to get a good overview of the core projects that we're looking at funding as part of This six-year budget that we work on passing through the CIP, even though we'll be looking at especially the biennial pieces in the upcoming two years. So both familiarizing ourselves as well as capturing council member questions to be followed up on. The staff will be taking notes and will be making a matrix of questions that council members come up with. So just wanted to note that we may not be able to get into some deep dive discussions on every item because if you notice the slide deck is fairly large. So in order to do that, we'll be gathering questions and then we'll have opportunities later in the process to come back and deep dive and have more of those focused discussions in addition to getting you answers to your questions in the interim. And we'll follow up at the end of this just with reminders of what the next steps are. With that, I will turn it over to our Finance Director, Kelly Cochran. Go ahead.

Thank you very much, Council Member Kritzer. As was stated, our goal for this evening is to provide you with a preview of the projects, be able to capture your questions, concerns, comments, and provide you with follow-up that allows you to get to a point where you can make a decision on at least the capital portion of the budget. There is staff with me this evening to help present this information to you. We have Blake Ruiz and Kyle Smith from the Finance Department. They will be providing you the forecast for the general government. That will be Blake. and Kyle will be handling the utilities. To provide you with an overview of the capital projects for each of the functional areas, we have Director Hamilton and Interim Director Sarafee Allen and Interim Director Chris Stanger. We will be covering the CIP portfolio in two sections. One, the general government side will discuss facilities, parks, transportation, and the new addition of the funding of the art program within that portfolio, and then we'll move on to the utilities. One of the things that I just want to make sure is clear is that for the general government side of the portfolio, we had a conversation back in April where we discussed the funding strategy for some of our critical or more important projects. We are not yet to that point on the utilities. There was a lot of funding that council approved in this current budget cycle to allow them to capture the data and information that they need to Develop a robust and thorough plan and we are walking hand in hand with them right now We have a placeholder in this six-year CIP in 2029 for a potential debt issuance There is a lot that can happen between now and then But we wanted to identify we have a gap out there. We're looking to close it, but when we get to the point where there are policy decisions or guidance needed utilities along with finance staff will be back to have those conversations in the next biennium so just to give you an update on where we are for the whole capital portfolio I want to start first with how we're performing for 25 and 26. All of the revenue sources that we would expect to see on target are on target. There are three revenue sources, grants, other agencies, and impact fees that we expect will be under-collected by the end of the biennium. Both grants and other agencies is due to timing of projects. So projects we had expected to get to a certain point and be supported by grants, they have not yet moved along. And the other agency deficit is because we have some payment projects that haven't yet moved forward from the TBD and some of our CFD projects are also a little delayed, and so those come in as transfers from other agencies. On the impact fee side, we are slightly behind because we had expected to have fire impact fees approved at the beginning of this year, and we don't yet. It's not causing an impact to any of our current projects, but wanted to kind of give you an update of where we are. I wanted to, when talking about the overall forecast for 27 through 32, talk about just the overall portfolio. It is a portfolio that is economically sensitive to development activity. And we work very hard to ensure that we are budgeting very conservatively. So we don't adjust our forecast to recent levels of collections because that level of activity is so unpredictable. So when both Kyle and Blake are going through their forecasts, you may see some numbers that look relatively flat, and that's by design. We want to make sure that we don't build up a resilience, reliance. on one-time revenues and then have a shortfall. We would much rather put ourselves in a position of overperforming when it comes to our forecast. We also have a lot of restricted revenues. So while it may look like we have plenty of money to fund certain things that might be needed, the right mix of money is just not currently available. Or we would maybe need to change some things in order to make things available. So I wanted to make it really just clear that our philosophy is to really be conservative, protect ourselves from reliance on the peaks, prepare ourselves for the valleys. We also have over the last few bienniums developed a contingency practice that is more in alignment with the council direction from a few years ago in response to what was CIP proviso, I believe is what it was called. And we have since built up contingencies not only in our projects, so each project has a budgeted contingency, but we also now are holding contingency within each fund. So we have built in some protection against risk of costs, overruns, or revenue under collection, but also flexibility to respond to opportunities if needed. I am going to go ahead and move it over to Blake to cover the general fund portion of this forecast, and then we will move on to the project portion.

Thank you, Colleen. Good evening council members. So I will give you a just kind of general overview of that revenue forecast that Kelly was discussing. So just kind of cover the high levels of what you're seeing here. You're seeing the full six year CIP in front of you and the revenue collections that are within that portfolio. Starting off at the top for business licensing, you're going to see a little bit of a moderate growth there. This is kind of following that the tendencies of what we've noticed with business license collections. It's roughly four to five percent growth every year. And then going into general fund, you'll see that this amount is kind of sporadic throughout the years. This is because that general fund line actually encompasses a few different revenue sources. This is, you may be familiar with the 5% that we have dedicated to CIP. General fund collections, after we take off significant one-time collections and then development revenue, 5% of the revenue is within the general fund for CIP. Also in that line you're going to see the pavement management transfer. That's an annual transfer that we make of 300,000 every year for pavement management projects. And lastly in that line that kind of explains most of the variance in that is there's actually some surplus allocations in there. Surplus is fiscal policy or the best fiscal practice for any kind of one-time dollars that you have is you want to match those with one-time expenses. So it works well with the capital program find these bigger projects that would be, you know, good use of the surplus dollars. Furthermore, it also lets us kind of maintain our reserves with that with the surplus that we're anticipating collecting over the time. And then for our next line there, we in earlier this year, we discussed debt or issuance of debt. This is our latest projection of what we're looking to do, which would be in the 2829 window. We are anticipating for a lot of those bigger projects that you see in the bottom of the slide largely made up by the MOC of 20 million But most of those projects are hitting their their biggest cost in 20 29 That's when we're seeing construction for a lot of these so in order to help with cash flow That's when we're anticipating getting those issuance of debt and And then for impact fees as well, this one actually is a little bit unique in our estimated fund balance. There is a larger fund balance here. A lot of this is our transportation impact fees. That's roughly $30 million of that estimated fund balance. I had to check my notes. But going forward, this is one of those lines that Kelly was discussing with that Our development is, because it's so sporadic and, you know, making sure that we don't kind of jump the gun with increasing our projections on these development, we want to make sure that these are conservative. So that's why that line in particular is pretty static throughout this whole timeframe. And it does include fire impact fees, assuming that gets accepted into this next six-year window. The other agencies line, that's mainly your two biggest lines there are your King County Parks Levy. We're anticipating about $500,000 being used in the CIP. And there's also $7 million that we're anticipating using of the Transportation Benefit District. And those two alone kind of make up a big chunk of that line. And lastly, our REIT line, that also the real estate excise tax, that's the same kind of projection that we were making sure with our development projections we don't want to We want to make sure we keep that kind of conservative, making sure that we don't preemptively react to any kind of spike that we may have seen in recent years. And then for this slide, really what we're trying to show with this is you're looking at specifically for parks, transportation, and general government. This shows you just how those portfolios are budgeted to be spent over the next six years. The dotted line is that cumulative amount that's through this period. I think the real takeaway of this slide is just seeing the magnitude of the costs that we have of these projects in 2029. You see that blue portion in particular jumps up because that's when we have our larger projects like the MOC, Fire Station 11, a few of those projects that are really going to have their higher costs hit in that period. And I'll just talk briefly about this. These are just some financial obligations that we do have in this portfolio. I just wanted to make sure we mention it because these aren't covered in any other sections. This is just our general fund overhead, insurance, IT overhead, things that cost the city in order to have a... THINGS THE CAPITAL PROGRAM NEEDS WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THOSE COSTS ARE COVERED WE ALSO HAVE CITY HALL MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS SOME RESERVES THERE AS WELL AND THEN SOME DEBT SERVICE BUILT IN THIS PORTFOLIO AS WELL. And lastly, this slide is modeled after the slide that we brought to you earlier this year. This is showing all of the strategic projects that we had brought some of the highest priority projects that we wanted to make sure were funded. And we're here to tell you that those projects are funded within this the CIP. Some of the costs were hammered out a little bit more and some increased a little bit. And on those, we indicated how those projects were funded. They do actually have slides that are coming in subsequent slides to kind of talk about each one of those projects. to know about the details of what's within that project and the scope of those. One little kind of visual cue you can see is that gold star on the top is kind of representing the strategic projects for you. So if you see that on one of these project slides that are coming forward, you'll know that's one of those strategic projects. And from that point, we were, unless there were any questions for the forecast, I was going to pass it over to Director Hamilton.

Yeah, just a call for questions. Council Vice President Nueva Camino.

Very quickly, on page eight, there was a call out for the City Hall MNO. It had a significant increase in 2033 and beyond. 2033 is kind of around the corner. So can you give us a heads up of what might be coming down the line?

That the line is, the column is a little bit misleading because it's pulling in more than just three years. I think for 2033 and beyond is going to 2040. So that's why it's showing a larger amount. So it should have been a little bit clearer in that column. So I apologize for that.

Thank you for the clarification.

Of course.

Council President Stewart.

Thank you so much. In the six-year CIP revenue forecast that was shared on slide three, are there any assumptions in this forecast that are based on the council approving any new fees or taxes in the budget?

It includes the assumption that the revenue sources will be adjusted by annual CPI, so business tax. but it does not include any new revenues, no.

So we, earlier in the year, we discussed the pavement management program and how it may have an increase, a recommendation for a change or increase in the transportation benefit district. Is any kind of recommendation such as that reflected in this? It's not. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions? All right, let's move on to the portfolio.

Good evening. I'm Laureen Hamilton, Parks and Recreation Director. The Parks Department also oversees citywide facilities. And so this evening, I'll be sharing a little bit about the facility projects that are coming up in the, sorry, in the CIP. It's a little late. And so overarchingly the city of Redmond's facilities team seeks to design and build projects that ensure our facilities support public operations and services to support the future growth of the community. So we'll talk a little bit about things like new facilities, renovations, safety, accessibility, and you see a little information about the size of our facility system there that we manage. So our strategy really, as we look at our facilities portfolio can be a little bit challenging as we've talked about before, because we're looking both to build new facilities, replace failing facilities and maintain the facilities that we have. to ensure safe and accessible spaces. And so we work alongside our different building occupants such as fire, the public safety staff, the parks and recreation staff here at City Hall to make investments that sustainably maintain high functioning city facilities and to plan for the future. We update our facility's strategic plan on a six-year cycle. As you'll recall, we just adopted a new one under Redmond 2050 just over a year ago. And then we also look to make sure that we're maintaining adequate staffing. So we're looking to strategize for the future and maintain what we have as we move forward. This is a map that shows our facilities. We will go to the next one. This is a really high level overview. I'm not going to go over it line by line, but this reflects the projects that we will be talking about in the next slides. And I will keep it at a relatively high level and be happy to answer any additional questions after I finish all of the projects. So the first bundle of projects, there's three of them, are either new facilities or major renovations. The first one is the Maintenance and Operations Center redevelopment. We've talked about this one with you all and we have a study session with you on the 22nd to discuss a little bit more about where we are on this project. And so this is the redevelopment of the Maintenance and Operations Center on the new site, which was the Heidelberg site. And at this time is at a budget of $250 million. The next project is the Teen Center Replacement Project, which again, we have talked about significantly. You will get another briefing on this project at the Parks and Environmental Sustainability Committee of the Whole at the end of this month. Currently, the budget for this is set at $35 million. As a reminder to council, this number is allowing us to look and dream at what we will have for the teen center. And the question was asked to me last time we talked about this budget, has the time for council to make different decisions around this project passed? The answer is no. That being said, for us to be able to proceed into design and ultimately construction, we do need an approved budget for this project in the CIP. And so this number will allow us to really look at rebuilding the teen center in an appropriate way at this time. The third is the Bellwether City Annex. This is a small space out in Overlake, which will create a mini city hall of sorts. Some of the different services will include business licensing support, some customer service functions. Exactly what that looks like has not been fully determined from a programmatic standpoint. But when this larger development is completed, the space will be handed over to the city for tenant improvements. And so we will need to build that space out. This project includes both the acquisition of the space as well as the tenant improvements into the space. The next two projects are fire station projects. The first is fire station 11. As you'll recall, we are currently going through a feasibility study for fire station 11, either a rebuild or a major renovation. And so right now this is a placeholder for this project so that as that feasibility study wraps up and a recommendation is put forward, we can start to move into design and design. either renovation or rebuild. The next is Fire Station 17, which is an HVAC and bunk room build out. This fire station had portions of it that were not completed when it was built. So this is getting that finished out, which will allow the fire department to more appropriately staff at Fire Station 17. And then the last few are either upgrades or sustainability and ADA. So the facility security upgrades, we are in the process of updating our technology around our systems that access our facilities. This particular line allows us to actually upgrade door hardware, which gets very expensive when you start to look at keys and doors and all of the things. And so this allows our team to make the physical upgrades that we need to make. to keep our facilities secure. Public safety building phase four, this is the replacement of more heat pumps over in the public safety building. We have replaced a lot of them and there are still a lot to replace. This is both a midlife renovation piece, but it also is a sustainability piece. It helps us meet our sustainability goals in such a large building. And last but not least, we have a restroom replacement at Anderson Park, as well as two buckets of money for both parks and facility ADA improvements. This allows us to continue implementing our ADA transition plans for both parks and facilities. So those are all of the facility programs. Before we move on to parks, are there any questions on the facilities?

Council Member Persi?

Thank you. So for the projects that we looked at, our interest on the potential debt proceeds and inflation taken into account into the pricing that we see here. And also on these projects, some of them, there is somewhere between 10 to 20% contingency, but on some of these, there is no contingency. So for example, for something like MOC, if there is another 20% to the kind of end price, that would make me really worried. So I would love to know if a cost like MOC includes those data points or not.

Yes, so sorry, remind me what your first question was? There was two there.

Yeah, a few elements. Interest for the debt proceeds?

Yes, interest and inflation was that first one. Yes, both of those are built into the all cost model. So when we set a price for a project and then finance says, well, we're not gonna be able to fund that for five years, they do use inflation on that. to set that future number, which is also why sometimes when projects finally come to us to begin building and you're like, but why is that number different? And it's because the original price was set eight years ago. We even put inflation on it. But as we all know that the amounts are not always consistent with inflation as we saw with like the senior and community center, for example, those prices jumped a lot. The second piece that you were asking about is contingency. So we are going to go work with our design build team to pull out the contingency. The progressive design build project, how it structures its finances is a little bit different. And so there is more contingency built into this project. but it's held with the design build team in a different way than what you would see with a traditional design build. And so I will work with our public works team as well as with our design builders to kind of pull those numbers out more clearly because the way our project information sheets are set up, they're not set up for a progressive design build project. They're set up for a very linear project. project like we've always done. And since this is our first PDB project, we realized that this particular communication method doesn't quite get to the amount of contingency that we have for that project.

I just want to address the interest question. Interest related to any debt service does not get charged to individual capital projects. It becomes a line item within the overall CIP and was reflected on that slide that Blake was showing that showed kind of overhead and debt.

Thank you, and one note I was able to confer with Director Cochran before this, since we have the slide deck that we're getting tonight, but we also will be getting a more complete packet for each of these projects where we'll have more information on each one of the projects that will come to us. Can you remind us of the timeline of when you estimate?

I believe we can get those to tomorrow.

So the council will get a chance to be able to look at those and dive a little deeper. So this is kind of introducing, but if you end up when you look through, you can also send some additional questions on those items. Did I see your hand? Okay, great. Are there other hands on this one? um i will i will raise one question um can we go on the teen center project i'll just say we don't have to dive deep on this tonight but i would like to have more discussion about the timeline that's projected on this project um i think based on some of the council direction i think we are going to have more time to discuss that project specifically but i just wanted to note for the record that i think having that discussion as well as the discussion that will be coming up of ultimately what we want to build and the scope of that project is very relevant given that we have gotten and we'll get a lot of community feedback on that. But I do think discussing the factors that might influence and where we might shift the budget specifically in some of the budget projections here to ensure that we keep with the council's direction of getting it done fast a manner as possible and prioritizing that speed I think is important. So I just wanted to put that on the record tonight and happy to have us discuss that more. Council Vice President Nueva.

Sorry, can I just share one piece of that? Absolutely, we can have more in depth. I do want to just remind as well that one of the reasons that the timeline is the way that it is is because we do not yet have a design build team on board. So that is really who will help us reasonably set a timeline, the timeline that we currently have set. And the funding that's currently in place is very conservative and extremely broad because we don't have that clarity yet. When the design build team is on, we are currently in procurement for that. And we will have... finalist in the next four to six weeks for that when that is complete and they are under contract we will be able to get a much cleaner timeline similar to the MOC you know our original timeline for completion for that was well out into 2032 and that has pulled up quite a fair amount because when you get the design build team on and you go through validation, you have a much cleaner, clearer understanding of what that will look like. So I would just like to state for the good of the order for this team, as well as for anyone listening online, that this is not a fully vetted timeline. It is extremely high level and it will change. It will change when we have a design build team.

Thank you. Appreciate that. I just wanted to make sure because I think Some people may look at this tonight and be concerned. So I just want to make sure that that's clear out there. And I appreciate that. Also, we may have more information by the time we approve this budget to be able to have that information reflected in here. Council Vice President Nueva Camino. Thank you.

And the question that I was originally had my hand up and was going to email, but then are waiting for more information. Since you had brought up the teen center, it was on the teen center. And Director Hamilton, thank you for speaking to how broad of a, how conservative we're being with this number of 35 million, because many of the public and listening, you know, remember a different number that was put forth, but understanding why this is not saying that the rebuild will cost 35 million, but rather this is what we're budgeting out. We're setting it aside because it is a priority. So by no means for the listening public, is it going to, it is definitively costing $35 million and going from whether the number was $9 million or $15 million up to $35. So thank you for bringing that up. And we'll, of course, as we progress through this, then we'll have a clearer, as you said, a clearer view of what both cost and timeline will look like. So thank you.

Thank you. All right, I'm not seeing other questions, so why don't you continue on?

All right, the next is our parks portfolio. So the parks mission is to create, maintain and enhance sustainable accessible experiences and spaces that foster belonging, promote wellbeing through recreation, parks and trails, arts events, customer service and facilities management.

We do a lot in parks.

And so really throughout our park plan, when you read it, there is a strong priority from the public to maintain what we have. The pride in our parks is high. And so maintaining both, just making sure that they're well kept as well as safe and expanding is extremely important to the public. Art continues to be a high priority as well. And so our strategy overall is to expand access for all, innovate for the future, build strong communities, and protect the natural environment. Those are the four pillars of the park plan and really how we vet decision-making through the Parks Department, not just for the CIP, but for most of the work, all of the work that we do. And so we really look to... make sure that we're both being proactive and there are reactive things within a system such as a park system. And so making sure that we're planning as much as we can to ensure that the reactive work is as little as possible. This is a map of the projects. Next. This is a long list of our projects. We'll go over some of these tonight. Some of them we won't, but it is really small. So we won't go line by line. The first two are some replacements that we have as well as expansion. So this first one is the Idlewood Park parking lot expansion and frontage improvements. Idlewood is one of our most frequented parks in the warm months and has some of the highest safety issues with pedestrian and vehicular conflicts as well as bicyclists. And so working to increase safety out there while preserving trees and natural environment is a continual challenge we are working towards 60% design we are working towards my deputy says yes we are working towards 60% design and I know that there have been some questions around tree removal and when we have more clarity on that I will share that with city council The next is a park restroom and concession replacement out at Idlewood. They are very old and has been on the CIP for quite some time, so this is coming due. The next is a park playground replacement up at Hartman. As you'll recall, we did get state dollars for that. as well and we are in design for this project. The goal is to not just replace the wood structure but to create an extremely accessible playground up at Hartman and so making sure that the pathways towards the park but also the surfacing at the park are accessible to all and then ensuring that the play structure itself has elements that are inclusive for our entire community. both by age and ability. This is a complete park development at Southeast Redmond. Those of you who were on council and maybe those of you who were on the commission remember the Southeast Redmond master plan process. And so we are putting that into effect. We just finished 30% design and we are still hard at work with this one. There's still a lot of unknowns on the site and different things that are being designed through, but we're excited to see this project be built in the next couple of years. The next handful are, oh, sorry, the East Redmond Corridor Implementation Plan Phase 1. Very long. The East Redmond Corridor was master planned over 20 years ago. It is a very large master plan costing hundreds of millions of dollars in its totality. It has sat on a shelf and we are working really hard to begin to implement pieces of it as we are able. It is a very challenging corridor with a lot of right of ways to pass and go under and around, lots of wetlands to preserve. But we are slowly but surely going to work towards a cohesive system out there. And so this is the first part you will see of this to be able to begin things like design and more safe accessibility for the community out in the East Redmond Corridor. The next handful are just more like system updates and upgrades. So parking lot lighting at Farrell McWhirter is exactly what it sounds like. Parks irrigation flow sensor, this is also for sustainability. This allows our irrigation system to respond to the amount of rainfall that we have and parks staff don't have to manually do it. We have these in some places, we've been slowly phasing them in. So this is our chance to kind of do a system wide update for those sensors. Turf replacements are done every 10 to 15 years, depending on the life of the turf. And so Hartman, five and six, and then I believe we have a grass lawn turf replacement as well. Parago, sorry, Parago Park turf replacements as well. And grass lawn, I knew there was a third one. And grass lawn soccer replacement. This is hardscape replacement. So this is just to help correct things like tree roots on trails and increase safety throughout our parks. we can't control nature all the time. And so we do need to increase safety whenever possible with those hardscapes. And that is it for parks.

Thank you. Council President Stewart.

Thank you. I'd first like to acknowledge the map that was briefly shared, actually. I, one of the things that council discussed early in, in this particular year was our interest in closing the playground desert in our fastest growing neighborhood. We did have conversations with the parks, with the park structure, and we know that the parks plan is due for a refresh next year. And I understand all of that. But I do think it's worth acknowledging once again, That neighborhood called out again today in the Seattle Times, one of the fastest growing neighborhoods, one of the neighborhoods that is welcoming more people from all around the world than anywhere else. And we do not have anywhere for kids to play safely. I regularly see parents pushing strollers around parking lots in the evenings because they're empty. And that is a place to take your kids outside. So we, I just want to acknowledge we as a city have work to do there. There is a project, Director Hamilton, that is listed in the delayed projects information later in the presentation. I'm wondering if you could tell us about the Smith Woods and Urban Center playground design.

Yes, so they're similar to what you have just talked a little bit about. We continue to get feedback on the desire for more playgrounds within our system. Smith Woods is in an area that we don't have much playgrounds. We have heard more desire for playgrounds in the downtown core. Some of the prioritization through this process comes down to having to prioritize between new amenities and replacing failing or aging amenities. And so things like replacing turf often will happen before the building of a new structure because when the turf fails and creates a safety hazard, we have to shut it down. And so they've been deferred because from a prioritization standpoint, we need to move those needles forward. The other thing is that some of these sustainability things that we're pulling forward as well, are saving the city significant dollars. So I believe it was shared with council already, but if not, for example, we did all of the lighting upgrades in city hall. Year over year, each month we're saving 25% or more on our energy bills here at city hall because of those upgrades. And so we're also saving trying to really deal with that tension within this CIP. So it's not that it's not a priority, it's that sometimes in the CIP things kind of bump up against each other to allow for us to move some of those other things forward.

Thank you, so I I guess I I still have questions about what this project is But I'll look forward to reading the project sheet when we get oh, I understand sorry and when it comes to this neighborhood I know we have planning staff Still on the call with us, so I I want to call out that actually that neighborhood has a large site with a development agreement on it that the council's not been updated on in a really long time. So it may make a lot of sense to have maybe end of year, early next year to have an update on the Saratosh site because there is expected to be, I'm going to get the acronym wrong, but the privately produced open hops pops space. Um, and, um, the, the, it would be helpful to understand the updated timeline on the development of that, um, in relationship to this, uh, this portfolio as stated. My final comment for tonight is, um, the council received a letter from the parks and trails commission, um, expressing, you know, their continued support on the East Redmond corridor implementation, uh, I took a look at the implementation plan that we produced last year and I do hope that as we move toward final adoption and the negotiations of this budget that we might find something to to put in in the next two years because it's a little disheartening to not have something to offer the pace of that project as we take on the list of projects for the phase one first five years. I understand that they're scheduled here kind of in that fifth year. But if we could find some way to produce a little bit of a pace of progress, I think that would go a long way in shoring up the trust that the city is committed to completing that project.

So if I may actually share a little bit on the East Redmond corridor. So the number that you're seeing represented in here is the ask for the CIP. Staff have been working really consistently closely with both the Parks, Trails and Recreation Commission as well as with our forest stewards. And they're doing work out in the East Redmond corridor consistently. more than happy to kind of get our staff to write up a report as to what those things have looked like. But it's everything from clearing invasive to helping lay trail to like all of the above. And so I just want to share that the goal of the implementation plan It was to look out for the CIP piece, but it was also to say, when we have volunteers, what can we do? When staff has winter projects, which we have every year, what can we reasonably accomplish to begin moving that needle? And we've seen really good success with that. And I do also believe that PTRC is going to be giving an update on that in their joint commission in October as well. So I just want to share that for the- Sure, that's great.

And thank you, Director Hamilton, for acknowledging that there's a lot more work in the city than would otherwise be represented in this capital budget. I think that the letter that the council received was largely focused on the capital budget. Yes. But absolutely, we do have the joint session coming up. I do just want to express making sure that we are not the council who put it back on the shelf for 20 years.

Agreed. Council Member Sonny.

So, you know, once these projects like Addlewood and Southeast Redmond Neighborhood Parks, once these are done, what would be the projected increase in the parks maintenance and operations budget?

So I don't have those numbers right now because those projects aren't slated to be completed until later, until the next biennium, if not. like the beginning of the next. And so those numbers will be coming into effect for the following biennium. So I don't, we haven't projected those out at this time.

Council Member Percy.

Thank you. I want to share my support also for multiple things that Council President shared as well. I would love to see how Council can support moving, kind of bringing forward the support for East Redmond Corridor, In terms of playgrounds, I also want to see more playgrounds in our fastest growing neighborhoods as well. And I would love to see more diverse playgrounds with different capabilities to offer different experiences to kids. In terms of Idlewood concession, I would love to see data to verify the priority and justification for that. having living very close to Idlewood I don't see kind of visually I don't see the justification just yet so I would love to see the data as the as the project level details come forward to the council I see a lot of lighting projects I do want to acknowledge that lighting I would love the lighting to be motion censored and I would love to have us explore policy to prevent night light pollution, especially in our critical areas and parks. That's something that can have a lot of devastating impact on our birds, on our bats, on our environment and nocturnal animals. So I would really want to make sure that we do that really carefully if we add lights to our parks. And also I've seen so many people just go watch the night stars and it's really important for us to make sure that we think about how our parks are used, not just during the day, but also at nights. Thank you.

Just for clarification, these lighting projects are not new lighting. They're replacement of old lighting, and the new LED lighting is actually far better for light pollution. It's highly reduced and things like that. So I do want to just clarify that this is not putting new lighting in any parks. It is simply replacing it with more efficient, less polluting lights into our parks.

Thank you.

And I guess I would just add on that. If, as we think about budgets, if the, if there is a budget consideration for having more adaptive lighting or other types of lighting considerations, we might consider that as part of the budgeting as well. Any other questions? I will, I will just ask or make a more of a comment on this. And I guess a question that I would have for, for follow-up on kind of building on some of my colleagues' comments. I think one thing that would be helpful for me as we look at this budget as part of the budget process would be on some of the ones that are further out understanding which projects are ones where if we made the decision to prioritize moving that funding forward, we could get it done versus because of timing, it couldn't be done any sooner. I think it seems like there are two different types of projects, one is. might be a staff capacity or might be a timing type of issue like i'll give the examples of like Community garden expansion is one. That i'd be curious because in the relative size of the amount of funding that we're talking about it's relatively small, I imagine it may be more a staff capacity issue or some other things of why that's in the 2029 timeframe. Um, uh, you know, in, in the scope of, of how we think about, about that budget. Um, and then I guess similarly on a few of the things that, um, as some of my colleagues pointed, I think specifically the East Redmond corridor, um, you know, what are some of the, I guess I would be interested to know what are some of the constraints, um, that might be keeping us from budgeting more for it, um, understanding that you are making progress. So, um, just more detail would be helpful. And then to build on the question around the play structures, I did want to call out that we, in our council retreat, one of the top items that had been identified was to be able to have a CIP offer that would fund adding some play equipment in some areas around the city as well as some outdoor exercise equipment. And I understood that that was going to show up in the CIP since I think it was like the number one we all agreed on is something that we had transmitted to the mayor's office um so would love to have that discussion um we don't have to have it tonight but i do think it was an area um that we had discussed um as as an opportunity and i know actually i discussed with you director hamilton when we approved the park plan uh back back in the day about how we could create especially in places like the over like neighborhood more space more kind of without creating entire parks, be able to create some more play equipment or things that kids can climb on or things that that can make things a little more family friendly around our city. Similarly, whether there's anything we might add, because even though we have Anderson Park in kind of our downtown corridor, we hear a lot about the kind of the interest of having some more play equipment. So I'm interested to hear more about that. We don't have to have all the answers tonight, but feel free.

Yeah, I'm happy to bring more information forward and understanding about how things are prioritized and why. I will say when it comes to some of the things that you just mentioned, particularly things like the exercise equipment or smaller features that could be installed throughout, some of those are not going to rise to the level of the CIP, and that's why we're not seeing them here. There are other places that we Fund some of these things for example the outdoor exercise equipment was put through a capital equipment replacement fund because it was removed from Alongside the river we can't put it back because of the river because of the buffer And so the goal is in this next biennium to replace it somewhere into the downtown corridor utilizing dollars from a different funding source because it doesn't hit the level of of the CIP. And so one of the things that we're trying to do in the parks department is be more nimble and creative with the way that we implement some of these asks because they just don't all hit the level of a CIP ask. And so we're able to be more nimble and respond differently when we use different types of funding for us to accomplish those things. That doesn't mean that they're not a priority. It just means that they hit different ones. When it comes to things like community gardens, one of our goals is to understand what the actual goal here is. So community garden expansion has been a high priority, but there is not really been any community conversation about what is the desired state. not just build more community gardens, but what is the desired state? So right now we are planning to build more community gardens at the Southeast Redmond Park. And so that's one of the reasons that that one got pushed further out is because the preliminary design for Southeast Redmond already has community gardens in it. And so in our next park plan iteration, we would like to understand holistically what's the goal here for community gardens and and who else in the community is part of that solution rather than us continuing to take up recreation space within our parks for additional community gardens. Because when we build one thing, it does remove something else from the park. And so working to understand that balance. So there's definitely a lot of pieces at play and I'm happy to help provide some of those things that fall outside of the CIP because I think it is the more robust picture of what we're doing.

Great, thank you. And I will just say, I think your answer you just gave is an example of what I was saying. I don't need you to answer all these things tonight. But I do think it's an example where that context is very helpful. So I assumed, you know, it's not a huge, it wouldn't be a huge lift for us to be able to add $70,000 into our CIP in the near term. There must be a different reason why it's in the farther out term. So I think on some of these other ones of what kind of the reasoning why it would just be helpful for us especially when we get feedback from community on why aren't we doing more on this and what are some of the different issues. I'd also say I think the vision for the playground equipment piece was to be able to have something that was significant enough so that we don't have the barrier when we want to be able to purchase new equipment or to be able to look at this. And maybe it is a CIP project. Happy to see it in another place in the budget, if you can call that out for us. But I would love to return back to that once we see the full budget. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Just wanted to give a quick... Thumbs up for the ADA park equipment for different abilities and another reminder for which I believe director Hamilton you've already been, but if not the Seattle Children's Play Garden and their accessible play for all different abilities.

Alright, well let's keep moving on here.

I do want to note that we're getting a little bit later on time that we started this item. later than we expected, so we may not get through this entire packet tonight, and I anticipated this in discussing with Director Cochran before, so we may schedule some more time to be able to finish the entirety, but let's keep going.

This portion is on the move to bring funding for the public art into the CIP. This will allow the cultural arts team to be able to be more strategic and have a long-term vision for how we want to instill our community with art. The current structure of the financing for public art is relatively unpredictable. We will get infusions from projects and oftentimes those infusions are actually utilized within the project themselves. The senior and community center is a great example the art is an incredible, gorgeous addition to that project. And it really, that 1% really was utilized within the totality of that project. It was a great use of it, but what it doesn't allow then is for the cultural arts team to say, there's an area within our city that does not have art. And how do we build art into that community which is something that our community continues to say that they want to see more of, but we don't see infusions of dollars into that budget that allow for that type of planning. And so this really supports a longer term plan and sustains reserves that provide flexibility and allows us to actually sometimes do even more significant art installations than we would have done previously because we're not just looking at the 1% that's coming out of that project. This would be most notable on things like a trail or another type of art installation like that. Oh, that's the only slide for that one. My apologies. Did I miss anything, Kelly? Director Cochran? Okay, questions.

Go ahead, Council Member Soni.

I just have, you know, for all these art installations, like, you know, one thing that you would love to see is, like, you know, having an equity so that all installations are not just getting installed or, you know, in one area. Like, we would love to see more art installations coming than areas, like, you know, which are in upcoming rather than everything just coming within the downtown. So just to balance that.

And the council also had a study session on this earlier this year. So I think we can also follow up with any additional questions here. And let's keep going.

All right, good evening Council Members. Chris Stinger, Interim Director for Public Works. Joining me tonight on the Transportation Portfolio Overview is Interim Director Allen as well as Supervisor Patty Criddle. So originally this evening I was going to provide a high-level overview for four portfolios, but I'm thinking we just get to this one. We'll see what happens. So we'll talk about the transportation. But overall, all these portfolios that I'll go over, I'll focus on the overall purpose of each system, the size of the infrastructure. We manage our investment strategies and objectives and how these capital investments affect our long-term operations and maintenance responsibilities. As you notice, there's going to be some projects that have the star in there. So Deputy Interim Director Allen and Supervisor Criddle will touch on those as we get to those. But we'll start off with transportation. So at a high level, our goal is to maintain reliable multimodal transportation systems that support the safe and efficient movement of people and goods. Our transportation CIP includes several types of projects, including pedestrian and bicycle improvements, intersection improvements, circulation and route enhancements, as well as preservation and maintenance of our existing infrastructure. To give you a sense of the scale of the system we manage, the city has approximately 366 lane miles of roadway, 233 miles of sidewalks, 80 and a half miles of bicycle facilities, 21 bridges, and 111 traffic signals. Our transportation investment strategy is focused on several key areas. First, we monitor transportation concurrency as the city grows and work to ensure our investments remain aligned with the city's overall vision. Second, we continue to complete missing pedestrian and bicycle connections, particularly where those connections can improve access and mobility throughout the community. Third, we emphasize preserving or replacing existing infrastructure before conditions deteriorate to the point where more significant and costly intervention is required. Finally, we continue to pursue grant and partnership funding opportunities that can help support delivery of our six-year CIP. So our goals and objectives also include improving access to new light rail stations, prioritizing high comfort and low traffic stress pedestrian and bicycle facilities, and emphasizing preservation of our existing transportation infrastructure. One important consideration with new capital investments is the long-term impact on operations and maintenance. Many of the transportation projects included in the CIP were identified through a combination of the city's transportation master plan and our strategic pavement management plan along other city plans. And then with that, we'll go to the slides. There's the overview of the various projects throughout the city. And I can touch on 95th Street Bridge replacement real quick here. So we're currently awaiting options to review with the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife. You're wondering how they get involved. Well, that's a stream and a creek bed it goes over, so there's a lot of stuff that they'll have to review over there. So we're in the queue for that review, which we anticipate occurring sometime in December 2026 or January 2027. Then depending on that outcome of the review, we may have three potential options to consider that we can go over in an upcoming quarterly CIP presentation. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide.

this is the first one that uh we'll touch on and i'll uh jump in here thank you interim director stanger and good evening city council so As Chris said, we'll just touch on some of the ones that have STARS. So this project you're aware of, but it will be improving safety for all users at the intersection. And then also a part of this will be a roundabout feasibility that will be evaluated. And I've got a number of ones here with STARS, so I'm going to ask to go to the next slide and then take comments at the end, if that works. Next slide. Oops, sorry. Back to the Northeast 40th Street, the shared use path. This project is going to be part of our Bicycle Spine Network. It will improve access to light rail and combines paving and utility work that creates efficiencies to do both at the same time. Next slide. Next slide, yeah, there. Okay, and then for Bell Red here, this project is also part of our Bicycle Spine Network and will reduce intersection delays as an outcome. Touch on this one. Should we have that there? Okay, this project is also, we wanted to highlight the ones that were particularly part of our Bicycle Spine Network. It was updated from a previous scope to include a full bike lane and sidewalk improvements as well. Next slide. So the WLSP multimodal improvements for phase two will also be a part of the bicycle spine network improvement. And we'll go on to the next slide. For our last one, the cycle track. So this is also part of the Bicycle Spine Network. And council may recall, we received a PSRC grant funding for design that's been awarded for 2028. And staff will likely move to initiate this project in 2028 with the alignment from that grant funding. Any questions on the transportation portion before we move on to the next section? I know that was a lot and there's a lot in there.

Thank you so much for the highlights. I do see at least one question. Council Member Percy.

Thank you for Northeast 40th Street shared use path. I wanna acknowledge that majority of that road is commercial and corporate owned and very little of that area has residential kind of front. So I'm curious if there's opportunity or interest to expand this a little bit into, more residential areas as well, or if not, if we can later get additional input on kind of usage studies from data from Strava or other areas so we can have a better understanding of this. I understand that this goes directly to the light rail, and we want to expand access over time, but I do want to acknowledge that currently it's kind of limited in terms of its service to the public.

Thank you for the comment. I'll just share, yes, the goal is to create a whole network, and we're just doing what we can one piece at a time where it has the greatest benefit for the users. So the intention would be to expand what you said for the future.

Thank you. Council Member Procrea?

Yes, I had a question at a point I wanted to bring up about a project that was in the wastewater CIP. I'm not sure if I should do that now or wait if we're going to get to that.

I think that'll be in the next section, yeah. Okay.

Well, I guess for this section, I wanted to ask about the general methodology behind... I know we created a plan, but how was the plan implemented for deciding which... PAVEMENT PROJECTS TO GO WITH IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS.

PART OF THAT COUNCIL MEMBER WAS FROM THE PAVEMENT STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PLAN WHERE IT CAME UP AND THEN PATTY WAS THERE ANY OTHER PLANS THAT WE WENT OFF OF BESIDES THE PAVEMENT STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PLAN?

IT'S MOSTLY GOING OFF OF THE PAVEMENT STRATEGIC PLAN. how we've outlined which projects need pavement repair.

Okay, great. So it was made just purely, purely using that strategic plan.

To speak on the transportation side, I'll let, we have Micah Ross online. And Micah, do you want to go ahead and give a comment on how we determine which sections to improve for the Bicycle Spine Network?

Sure yeah just adding on to that, these are projects that have identified highly on the transportation master plan and working with that is kind of our starting point. I'm also connecting to some of the existing facilities and so just working to continue connections and not kind of piecemealing here and there, so working to get a connected network. Thank you.

And before we go to next questions, which I see a couple hands up, I did want to acknowledge the time. It's 1026 and our meetings are usually slated to go till 1030. The council can choose to extend the meeting. We do have another item that's coming after this as well. So wanted to check in with the council in terms of whether we want to extend our time on this or I acknowledge that we would miss having the Council talk time since I believe we would need to extend in order to then be able to revisit that.

Is that correct, Council President? That's correct. We can actually stay in this item as long as we would like. If there is no motion to extend the meeting, it means that we will not start a new issue, meaning we would not have council talk time. So if we'd like to conclude this conversation and be able to continue the conversation to its conclusion, then we would need no motion to extend the meeting. And if someone really wanted to make sure we got council talk time in at the end, you would need to make a motion now. But I will leave that to the body.

So I'll ask, would anyone like to make a motion to extend the meeting by 15 or 30 minutes just so we have the time to be able to do council talk time as well? Council Vice President?

I'd like to move that we extend the meeting. There's some things that we do need to just make a quick plug for for council talk time. I second.

For how long? Would you like to extend until 11 o'clock? We don't have to go all the way to 11. You can just extend as a maximum, like 15 minutes, please. Okay, there's been a motion to extend the meeting by 15 minutes, we'll say till 1045. And has it? Is there a second?

Yeah, I second.

Great. It's been moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay, passes. So we'll go until 1045, and if we get up to that point, then maybe with another motion, but hopefully not. Council Member Forsyth, go ahead. Oh, Mayor Burnie?

If you don't mind, Council Member, the questions around how do we prioritize, we actually go through an extremely robust process, and we've been very intentional about this in the last seven years or so. where prior to that it was more we got reports, people complained, and really wasn't a very strategic way to go about ensuring that we're taking care of the most needed places in our map. So to all that the staff said, but I just want to reiterate that we have a really robust plan that uses a lot of data to make the decisions that we have put forward here intentionally to make sure that we're taking care of the things that we need to. Many of the staff mentioned a few different parts of that, but I just want to assure the council that these are the items that need to go when they need to go with the funding available.

Thank you. Council Member Forsyth.

Thank you. Just real quickly, just really appreciate the stats at the top around, we have 366 miles of street. Interesting to see that it's only 80.5 for bikes. Would love to see that. 42 more miles as the very floor and that will take us up to a third of our streets having bike lanes. Very excited also to see the call out for being able to use those impact fees for these shared use paths. We did that, so that's very exciting that we opened up that funding. But I'm also going to put a plug in for making sure that any of these projects that we can level up and make that a protected bike lane, that I would love to see that as our top priority for those bike lanes. I was just recently watching a video about King County and East King County, and it mentioned that Redmond is the bicycle capital of the Pacific Northwest, mostly due to our longstanding bike race. which we don't have anymore. So we're not going to have that. Let's have some really safe and amazing protected bike lanes.

Thank you. Council Member Soney.

Yeah, I was looking into some data and I know like, you know, overall together, this is also targeting towards vision zero. But, you know, there are a lot of projects which is like more of a maintenance, like, you know, taking care of some of those things versus trying to just protect, prevent any kind of the collisions or accidents or this thing. Is there a way we can classify that in some number? You know how many are targeted towards the Vision Zero versus the like, you know, maintenance or building new cups or something?

We can look into that and add data.

Council member person.

Sorry, I also wanted to add that as part of the transportation master plan week for. various users, we had a level of stress that's applied to different areas. And so helping to, Council Member Forsyth's point, there are methods and ways that we can try and reduce the amount of stress that someone is experiencing on the road when they're using a bicycle or walking. And that's part of our overall vision for increasing safety on our roads for all users.

Councillor Percy.

Thank you. I just wanted to add for the bike in the justification and data. I think my main point was that I hope that the one there is public benefit equally distributed and also if there is a possibility to have a visual map to say to indicate future planned work or kind of existing connections, that could be really helpful in terms of us being able to visualize how this specific path will connect to the rest of the spine network. But I'm definitely aware that we have our plan spine network for our bikes plan through the transportation master plan. So I appreciate it.

Thank you. Council President Stewart.

Yeah, thank you so much. And I appreciate the conversation. And like has been said, we have, especially in the last few years, we have been very busy building plans with lots of lists in them. So part of our job in this review of the CIP is to confirm that the lists are correct, and they should be. And I really do know that the staff have worked really hard to make sure that our values are represented here, and by our, I mean the city's, because we've asked the city for a lot of feedback in the last few years. So overall, I think we are absolutely in the right path. I think that in the next touch on this, the council could use an update on the 95th Street Bridge replacement Not everyone at the table was here when that project went on pause, and those of us who were need an update on that whole story. So let's make sure we get to that. I also want to reflect back and bring forward, this was another highly ranked item by the council when it comes to things that we discussed earlier in the year as priorities, which is overall our commitment to investing in the deferred maintenance around the city. And you see that reflected all throughout this CIP in many different ways. I'm specifically interested in whether the council would be interested in a bit more information here when it comes to the transportation portfolio, because, well, there's maybe a staff question before the council question, but on July 14th, we saw A few slides about the pavement management study. That study has a few different recommendations for how quickly we could restore our roads in Redmond based on various investment levels. And then there's a policy question around the transportation benefit district yet. So I'm struggling to understand which option has been chosen as reflected in these transportation projects. And I do know that the council kind of gave a general, yes, we want to work on this, but we still have not yet seen the numbers related to the revenue that would be needed and the policy choices that would be made. I'm bringing this forward because the roads and the sidewalks, the bike lanes, Definitely the roads and the potholes. This is the bread and butter of the city. We have miles and miles and miles of these things. And just if we were to audit the emails that the council received in the month of August, for instance, this is something that residents interact with every single day. We depend on these roads to keep our kids safe, get to school, keep us safe. We're getting home tonight and the like. And our neighbors know that we once had something at a certain service level and it reduced over time and it's our job to get it back. So I am interested, maybe there's a couple questions there that we could get back from staff, but I do want to keep the door open to council conversation on strengthening investment and speeding up this restoration. through this CIP.

Thank you so much. Any other questions? All right, not seeing any. I think our next piece is kind of diving into both the forecast and then the portfolio projects on utilities and then on wastewater. So I'm wondering whether we might pause here and then plan to revisit this item. I could put it as an agenda item on FAQ for us to get the presentation update and council members could send in any questions that they have on these items in advance as well. And we can cover any any items that have been pulled out if that works for everyone. Okay, great. And I want to thank all the staff that came prepared to present on it tonight. Can't wait for your presentation at FAC. And as we need more time, we can schedule in as well. I've talked with Director Cochran about the budget process. Can you remind us briefly, Director Cochran, on other next steps regarding CIP? Thank you.

So with, yes, so we are at September 8th, so next week at our regular business meeting I will provide you with a financial update for the second quarter, followed by our financial forecast for the next biennium, the full six years on the 22nd. We will also on that evening cover our business technology investment portfolio, and then we will get the budget delivered to you on October 6th.

Wonderful. And I will also reiterate that after Director Cochran sends out some of the more complete information about each of these projects, If council members have questions and want them to be included as part of a matrix we can look at at the next fact committee, we just ask that you submit your questions by a week from this Friday. So that way it gives you a little time to review, but also it would help us to be able to have the staff look at it and be able to get it into the packet for next month's committee meeting.

That will be September 18th, and I will put a reminder in the email when it goes out tomorrow.

september 18th the the deadline to submit thank you so much um all right well with that um i'll close out this item and i'll hand it back over to council president stewart to close us out thank you very much for your time thanks everyone um and thank you chair kritzer thanks for helping us

kick off our budget process. Since the time was left open, I'll quickly mention a couple things about Thursday's council conversation in Spiritbrook Park. I imagine that's what the council vice president had in mind. Awesome. Want to let the council know, well, first of all, if you're still listening, we will be in Spiritbrook Park at five o'clock on Thursday night. We can't wait to hear from you. We want to hear your feedback, especially if you've been listening to this meeting tonight. We'd love to hear what comes to mind for you. As in the past, we'll do a round of introductions before kind of splitting up and diving into some small group conversations. The wonderful Uni has actually procured for the council a set of temporary benches that are kind of now ours to take to all of these parks. to help facilitate these council conversations that we are moving around all over the city. So the setup is going to be a little easier in the future. We won't be doing rentals from party supply companies, for instance, in order to help facilitate that. So looking forward to having that implemented. We know that not everyone will be able to attend because we booked this one late. But lesson learned, we've already put February 18th on your calendars. So the council conversation in February over at the Redmond Senior and Community Centre. We have about six minutes left. So with that, I'll go ahead and leave it open. Council Member Soni.

Yeah, I just wanted to inform like this. I may not be able to attend because I have a flight that same evening.

Understood. Yeah, safe travels. It's an important trip you have. Other items for council conversation or council talk time? Council Vice President.

Thank you. Just a reminder that the city is going to be hosting a 9-11 remembrance ceremony outside City Hall. on Friday, September 11th at 8.20. And then also, even though it is next week, and we will see each other before then, but we won't be doing a council talk time, is the reminder for the downtown Redmond Art Walk on the 17th. If you have already signed up for your table time, wonderful. If you would like to sign up for an additional table time, there's a couple more slots that still needs to be filled. And for the listening public, our first public hearing regarding the budget is scheduled for September 15th.

Any other items for council talk time? All right, seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a lovely evening.