Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Right. Welcome to the 04/23/2025 meeting of the Redmond Planning Commission. Like to call this meeting to order, and we'll start with a roll call. Commissioner Aparna? Present. Commissioner Coleman?

Present.

Commissioner Copely?

Present.

Commissioner Gagne? Present. Vice chair Woodier?

Present.

And I am chair Weston. Commissioner Van Nyman is excused tonight. I'd like to thank the following staff for being present tonight. Glenn Coyle, Lauren Alpert, Ian Lefkourt, Becky Fry, Kim Dietz, Ojer Cardenas, Ami Quirkoni, and Chris Wyatt. I look for a motion to approve the agenda.

So moved.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Thank you. That's And I look for a motion to approve the meeting minutes from 04/09/2025.

So moved. Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

Alright. That's also approved. At this point, it's time for us to hear public comment and items from the audience.

We have speak three speakers this evening. We'll start with, David M. Just to remind you of three minutes.

Right. And I also just want to mention that RCW 4217A555 prohibits any public comment in support of or opposition to ballot prop ballot propositions, measures, or candidates.

Good evening, commissioners. I'm David Morton, Redmond 98053. In honor of Earth Day, I'd like to talk about the proposed revisions to Redmond's Green Building Incentive Program or GBP and to emphasize its importance for Redmond's future. The current GBP aims to encourage the adoption of green building development techniques through incentives for all types of development within the city. This program applies to both residential and non residential projects, including new construction and redevelopment.

The proposed revisions to the GBP take a significant step further by expanding mandatory green building elements while retaining incentives. These amendments Okay. Mandate green building elements for new multifamily mixed use and commercial developments. Appendix 10 details these mandatory requirements including energy efficiency targets, water conservation strategies, and embodied carbon reduction in building materials. Appendix 10 also outlines the

appliance compliance procedures developers must follow to ensure these green building standards are met. I commend the revised programs focus on energy efficiency and carbon reduction by requiring new buildings to meet energy use intensity targets and comply with the Washington State clean buildings performance standard. Redmond is setting

a course for a more sustainable future. Building electrification and reducing embodied carbon in construction materials are key strategies to lower Redmond's environmental impact. To achieve community wide carbon neutrality by 2050, Redmond can expand its efforts beyond new construction. Retrofitting existing buildings with energy efficient technologies and promoting the use of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power are essential. Also investing in public transportation and creating pedestrian friendly infrastructure can reduce reliance on private vehicles.

Redmond can promote urban forestry to increase carbon sequestration and enhance green spaces within the city. Implementing policies that support a circular economy, reducing waste, and promoting recycling will also contribute to carbon neutrality. In conclusion, these revisions align with Redmond's long term sustainability goals and position Redmond as a leader in environmental stewardship. Achieving carbon neutrality requires a multifaceted approach that encompasses not only green building practices, but also citywide initiatives focused on energy, transportation, and waste reduction. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Oscar H.

Oh, would you like to speak or are you just here?

Okay.

Wonderful. Thank

you for being here.

The next speaker we have is Christopher P.

Alright.

Welcome. Thanks.

Okay. That's it for speakers. Thank you.

Alright. In that case, we are moving on to our study session on the design standards in part three of the 2025 code package for Edmond 02/1950. I'd like to invite, Becky Fry and Kim Dietz.

Good evening, commissioners. So, we're here tonight to seek the Planning Commission motions to approve a recommendation to counsel on the amendment package and to approve the Planning Commission report. So, I'll need a motion or seeking motion approval for both of those items, and they can be combined in one motion. But before we do that, I do want to mention one thing, and let me share my screen real quick. So the Planning Commission had asked to include in the recommendation continued review for iconic landmark buildings to determine if additional code amendments could happen as a part of a future project update.

So that is in your packet. This afternoon, it did occur to me that you might want to add a second recommendation in there based off some previous conversations, and especially led by Commissioner Coleman. And so, the second bullet point in here is one I've added in that reflects those multiple conversations that have happened in the Commission, and I'm just asking if that would be something that you would like to amend to the report and include. And that is a recommendation to develop a process that would monitor the implementation and impacts of the design standards to ensure that the outcomes are achieving what we're aiming for. And it does specifically also mention that the Planning Commission had especially wanted an area of concern, is that relationship to neighboring properties.

So I've added this language in here, as you can see. And I do apologize for it only occurring to me this afternoon. But it did reflect a lot of conversation. I think it came up with three separate conversations. So I did want to ask you if that's something that you feel you'd like to amend. And if that is the case because it was not in the packet, just including your motion, the report as amended this evening.

So let's open that up for discussion really quickly. Maybe starting with commissioner Coleman.

First of all, it doesn't matter how late it was. It's it's written really well. And it's, I think it for for for my perspective, I fit I think it fits really neatly with what we were trying to talk about, which effectively, just as a reminder for folks who may not have been part of the conversation is, as we develop there's a there is a strategy to make sure that we have different types of of development and different types of designs within the city. But as you start to roll those out, sometimes you get some perspectives that you weren't maybe expecting or some degree of adjustment you need to make and being in a to monitor it a little bit and be as clearly as you put here and then just decide if we need to make some adaptations, to me, was the main point. And I think the way that it's written is is perfect. So thank you so much.

Great. Any other commissioners? So, in that case and, also, I just wanna double check. Does anyone have anything else they wanna cover before we move to recommendation? Or anything that came up in the packet? Okay. So in that case, I'm gonna look for a motion to ask staff to recommend to approval to city council of the design standards in part three of the 2025 code package for Redmond 2050 as presented in the second version of the packet that Becky is presenting now, not in the published packet on the website in the meeting materials.

So moved.

Second.

Any discussion or final edits? No. Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Aye. Alright. Thank you. That is approved.

Okay. Thank you so much. And for next steps, we are preparing to assemble all of the entire package one, two, and three. Those will go to city council study sessions in May. We are on track. Thank you very much for completing this in April. We are on track for council adoption in June, which

was our

target. So, this concludes the Redmond two thousand fifty motions and action for planning commissions.

Thank you

very much for using years of work.

Thank you.

I can add just a little bit of editorial on that. I know that this is code and it's incredibly detailed and complex, but I think it really brings together so many points and opinions and options that have been surfaced in so many years of research. And it really, I think it speaks to the efforts of the planning staff because this is phenomenal work. But it also, I just want to thank everyone in the community who's participated in workshops, sent opinions in, answered questionnaires, because all of that bubbled into this. And it really shows how much feedback there was in this process.

I know the meetings have been a little bit quiet, but it really shows how much work was front loaded, that we're not all arguing about it at the end. So I just I wanna say thank you to the staff and then also to the community.

Thank you. Along those lines, I do want to also share at council yesterday, we provided them an update. One of the things we shared with them is that we have recently provided updates to a lot of our major stakeholders, the tribal participants. One of the other agencies that we've notified that we're nearing completion is the state's IDD housing program. And they responded today with kudos and excitement, and also an announcement that they are expecting an additional $50,000,000 in funds for the program.

So, they're very much excited about the IDD expansion that we are working on in 2025 code package. So, that's just another additional information showing how broadly this has been just a lot of people's efforts of coming into this package. Staff concurs this has been a very community driven collaborative process.

For many years. Thank you. Alright. So moving on. The next step is our briefing.

Commissioner Obasan, I also just wanna, commissioner Benaiman has joined online. I just

Oh, great. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I wasn't clear that she was going to be here tonight. So if we can update the minutes to include her, that'd be great. Next up is our briefing on the fire functional plan. We're going to start actually with Glenn Coyle, who is going to come and just give us a reminder on functional plans and the Planning Commission's role in this. We had a training on this earlier in the year, but just, with Glenn for a few moments for a repeat. Thanks, Glenn.

Hi, everybody. Just a reminder, Glenn Coyle, senior planner in the long range planning team. I'm kind of the point person in our team related to capital facilities planning. So just wanted to give a quick reminder on, what functional plans are and the commission's role on that before Amin jumps into the fire functional plan. As the chair Weston noted, we provided a fuller presentation on this at the February meeting.

So I encourage commissioners in the community to refer back to the PowerPoint for that. But I just want to share quickly just two slides that provide some context of functional plans you will see later this year. So bear with me for one moment here. Alright. And I hope everyone can see this.

Alright. So just as a reminder yeah. Thank you. Just as a reminder, functional plans are essentially our facility infrastructure strategic plans. We call them functional plans in Redmond, and they're adopted as part of the comprehensive plan, in part, used to fulfill capital facility requirements for comprehensive plans, and that's outlined in our capital facilities element.

And here's kind of where they fit. This graphic kinda shows where they fit in the city's hierarchy of plans and into operations. So the comprehensive plan is the high level vision of the city with the policies, and our functional strategic plans are more the the detailed road map of how that will be implemented. And that in turn goes to our actual city programs, our operations, our capital projects. Not all functional and strategic plans, though, are adopted into the comprehensive plan.

We have because they just do not have, like, a capital facilities component or aren't used to meet those state comprehensive plan requirements for capital facilities. So and now what examples of that would be, say, our environmental sustainability action plan or a ADA plan, which still have things, you know, that are implemented as part of other projects and stuff, but aren't part of our capital facilities, planning. So just a reminder, the planning commission's role, as amendments or, amendments to the capital facilities element is to ensure that the plans are consistent with the city's comprehensive plan goals and policy. So that's generally what the review of these plans are. And, it's noted the fire functional plan is coming up.

We'll also have capital facilities plan, a storm water plan later this year, and beginning next year, update to the transportation master plan. So with that said, I will, turn it back over to chair Weston, and thank you.

Great. Thank you. Any quick questions on that? Nope. Okay. We're good. Thank you, Glenn. Next up, I would like to introduce Ami Corcone, our deputy chief for Redmond Fire.

Thank you very much. Let get the presentation started so y'all can follow along with me. Thank you very much for the opportunity to, to meet with you all tonight. I am Ami Quirconi. I'm a deputy fire chief. My support services and administration is the responsibilities that I have as opposed to my DC of operations and, of course, our fire chief. So tonight is just a briefing and introduction to the fire functional plan. So it's not expecting any comments or recommendations. If you have any feedback, we'll take them at the end and stuff like that. But it's just to give you a preview when we come back this summer.

So what I wanted to try to do was while the plan is still in development, we've already kind of bubbled up to the surface some key issues that we already know that we're going to address in this fire functional plan. And we'd like to be able to give some context on what kinda guide some of our decision making processes as we address our capital facility needs and hopes that when we do return this summer later on with the full plan, you'll have at least a little bit maybe some of the operational impact or operational understanding that will help out with that conversation. So, why we're here today, we just covered that. It is to give you an early look, show you some areas that we've and themes that we've already kind of teased out, build that awareness with you all. And then again, while it's not a final viewing, we are open to anything that might just kind of come up right away that you think that we should, be looking at as we develop it.

So before we get into some of those details, give you an overview here, of what the Redmond Fire Department actually looks like because this context helps quite a bit in explaining our priorities. The Redmond Fire operates out of seven stations. Four of those are actually within the city of Redmond, and three serve King County fire district thirty four. We respond to over 13,000 calls per year, and that number keeps growing as the city grows, obviously, particularly in the more vertical neighborhoods like the Overlake in the downtown area. All of our firefighters are a dual role, meaning they're trained to provide both fire suppression and emergency medical services.

And about 80% of our calls we go on are actually emergency or a medical call versus actual fires. We're also a transporting advanced lifesaving agency through Medic One, which means that when we show up, sometimes we're stabilizing and transporting patients to hospitals and providing advanced lifesaving care like cardiac support or trauma care and things like that. You'll also see a little bit later how all of those functions of what we do actually influence design standards and address health and safety needs. But just kind of wanted to give you an overview of that part of our department. Now what fire stations actually do, some of this might be intuitive.

You understand. You see red trucks. You see fire stations. You kinda know that. But sometimes when we're talking about facilities planning, it feels good to kinda ground us back to understanding. Bless you. When we talk about fire stations, we need to move away from the thinking that they're just another city building. They're not an office space, as you may realize. They are emergency response hubs. We have crews that deploy from there. They return there after they've gone on a call. They restage, get themselves set back up, and they get ready to wait for the next call to come in for their service. The other thing is is that these are twenty four hour living facilities. The Redmond schedule is a forty eightninety six, which means our crews work forty eight hours straight. And then they're four days off, and then they come back.

Some agencies do day shifts and night shifts twelve hours on. That crew gets to go home. They tag in with the night shift and go back. But these crews come in and will actually live in this. So these are basically a, like, a very intense residential facility. What we also use our fire stations for, because we don't have a centralized logistics facility, is that they've started to become storage facilities. So if you go into the fire stations, you'll notice our apparatus bays actually have extra equipment and supplies laying on the ground or up in mezzanines and things like that because as the city has grown, we need more resources available to us in the near term to be able to address it. So that's one of the themes. And fire stations actually also act as training facilities. Back in the day, there was some time spent making fire stations look like residential properties.

And, unfortunately, the exterior materials on those buildings didn't hold up to the fact that firefighters routinely practice throwing ladders, which is exactly how it sounds. It is practicing getting a ladder up to a multistory so that they can actually climb up a ladder to practice doing that. Throw a ladder against your own home a few times. You can realize your gutters will probably start to fall off and things like that. And so that's some of the mindset we have to keep when we're talking about the design and and the maintenance and the building of new fire stations.

They are always drilling out there for that. Fire stations are also just amazing garages to some most expensive excellent equipment. So they have engines, ladders, a aide cars, specialized equipment like a hazmat vehicle, technical rescue vehicle, vehicles for wild land. As you all recall from California, we sent engines and crew down there to support California during that. But we've also got mobile integrated health. So we've got some administrative functions that go along with it that kind of share some of those resources. And so they do have a little bit of an office space to them. But the bottom line is the fire station is the first layer of community protection and first response. And so they're operational at all hours in all conditions. And if they don't work, we can't work.

So Another fine note that I actually want to zoom in on this is that, fire stations are actually considered facility. So again, unlike a lot of city facilities, these are defined by the international building code as a risk four category structure. And what that means, essential facilities are buildings that are critical to life and safety and public welfare during and after emergencies. And this category includes hospitals, emergency shelters, fire and police stations, and other structures that are necessary to maintain public safety in disaster conditions. So the code doesn't just recommend, it requires that these buildings be designed and built to withstand higher loads and more extreme events than an ordinary structure.

That includes earthquakes, windstorms, power outages, and other disruptions. So these facilities can't just be safe for daily use, which is important. They actually have to be disaster resilient. And that means hardened structures, structural redundancy, also redundancies and emergency power, and internal systems that allow them to remain fully functional when other parts of the city may not be. And, again, since our crews live in these buildings while they're on duty, and, again, this isn't like working in an office, Firefighters have to sleep in dorms. They shower after returning from calls when they've been exposed to toxins or hazardous materials. Excuse me. They prepare their meals in the same place. They decontaminate their gear. They recover from trauma.

And they stage for the next call to go back out again. So when we talk about aging HVAC systems and failing electrical systems, or being out of compliance with current seismic codes, these aren't just a maintenance issue. They can be also occupational safety hazards. And since these buildings are supposed to be the backbone of emergency response, they become public safety hazards as well. Because if a fire station can't operate, not to be hyperbolic, we can't deploy a crew.

If power fails or the building floods and the app bays don't open for some reason, our response time is impacted and of course our coverage gaps widen. And so that's usually those kinds of things can happen unfortunately exactly when the community actually needs us to show up at that time. So that's why our facility strategy has to go beyond some functional areas of it. It must focus on resilience, health, and continuity of operations. Because again, these buildings aren't just critical infrastructure.

They're life support systems for a community in crisis. Now a lot of people don't think about buildings in terms of health. I know maybe some of you since you are on a planning commission, maybe you remember days of sick building syndromes and some of the design issues and standards. I actually come from the building community, so I remember some of those things about, you know, redesigning for health. But buildings actually have a critical role in the health of firefighters themselves.

When we talk about that, the nature of their work, I'm sure again, as you know, you've either seen the movies or you've seen it in action on your street, it's physically and emotionally demanding. Firefighters face exposure to carcinogens, high stress medical calls that sometimes involve scenes of violence, fatal traffic collisions, interrupted sleep cycles from having the alarm go off several times during the night, and extreme heat and exertion. Over time, these factors contribute to higher rates of cancer, cardiac events, PTSD, and musculoskeletal injuries than most other occupations. That's why a modern fire station design isn't just about aesthetics or having the hearty siding on the outside of it or anything like that. It's also about risk reduction and supporting the longevity of the workforce.

Proper airflow and ventilation to remove diesel exhaust and airborne contaminants is an example of that. We have to think about clear separations in our buildings between clean zones and dirty zones so that we limit cross contamination from an apparatus bay or toxic chemicals that have been brought in from the living spaces and where people sleep and eat. Quiet and private bunk rooms for better rest and sleep recovery. Sleep hygiene is a huge thing in terms of being able to lower the risk from heart disease that firefighters suffer from. And then, of course, our workforce is very different than it was fifty years ago when some of our fire stations were built.

So we need showers and restrooms that are actually designed for all genders and all body types. So these updates actually not only protect the health, but they also send a message that everyone belongs in our modern version of the fire department. And that's important as we continue to recruit and retain more diverse generation of firefighters in our service. And in fact, Reidman is very proud of having a higher than the national average of women firefighters. So it's very good. But if you go to Station 11, there's only like two bathrooms for the women, and so not so good. So these design standards will actually be a part of our functional plan. We'll be able to outline some of the things that should be critical as we move forward. So just again a preview for that. So the summary of the current conditions.

I don't know if any of you outside of the Planning Commission also listened in on council meetings. Last night's study session talked a lot about the TEAM, which is an old firehouse. So you may have heard some of the stuff from the facilities condition assessment that was done. But right now as it stands, four of our seven stations are over 40 years old. Most have outdated building systems. That's their electrical, their HVAC, and their plumbing. None of them are built for full electrification to convert to an EV fleet. And some of you may have seen the news. We are the first fire station in the country to or in Washington to have an EV vehicle. But the electrical capacity at all the stations is going to be challenging to get that everywhere.

So that's going to limit our ability unless we make some significant changes to be able to modernize and meet those sustainability goals. Just as importantly, many of these facilities no longer meet the standards for the essential facility design or the modern workforce that we're dealing with right now. And so when the city conducted a facility's condition assessment, that's what this chart shows here, and that was led by Meng, and you'll see probably a lot more of that as you go through functional plans and kind of watch everything else. They used a scoring method called the weighted average condition score, or the WACC score. And each subsystem in a building from the roofing and HVAC to the structure and safety systems is scored from a one to five.

One being an excellent, usually a very new building, and five being it's failed. And it's a critical system or building that's no longer functioning. Last night as parks director Lorraine Hamilton was talking about the teen center, which again by the way is a former firehouse, She noted that all the facilities that are scoring between three and four are in the fair to poor condition. And that's the range where replacement or substantial rehabilitation is typically needed. When you look at this list, you'll realize these are all the buildings that are above a three out of that condition assessment.

And all five of them are technically fire stations, even though the other one has now been repurposed into a teen center. And so what we also notice is that they are not as old as the teen center, but that because those buildings are used so heavily and so hard and under extreme conditions that it's very easy to age these buildings probably a little bit faster than what you would want or hope to be able to get out of them. And so it's the intensive use. Some of it's the outdated design. The buildings were never, really designed in some cases to support 20 fourseven operations.

They were designed for whatever budget that they had at that time. And they definitely weren't designed for the diversity of the workforce that we have today. And so the takeaway is is that we have some objective data that we'll be including in our fire functional plan that will help reinforce, the need to be able to, to be able to, you know, include these in capital projects moving forward. So high level, what we already know and what the functional plan will communicate is that, again, even though it's in progress, priorities have jumped up. Station eleven, which is also the place for our headquarters, It's not just aging, it is failing.

It's even more concerning is that it sits in a flood plain and in a mapped liquefaction zone. So we think about essential facilities. It's not in an optimum location to be able to withstand some of those disasters. And that's a big deal, deal, excuse me. When we also talk about essential facilities, and again these being the last locations that you want to have fail, not the first. So again, it's not a facilities issue that it's an old building, it's also we're getting into that risk of continuity of operations into the city as well as the community during disaster. Then we have Station 12. It's also aging, also in poor condition, but it has another challenge. And that is it's located in Bellevue. So it's not actually a Redmond station.

It's our station, but out of jurisdiction. So it's also a smaller station, and it happens to be in Overlake. And so it actually lacks the ability on that site to even expand it to add in the additional apparatus that we would need to be able to serve what we know in the comp plan to be a very definitive neighborhood that's experiencing growth. So that's an issue. Over at Station 11 we have an annex.

It honestly had a worse nickname that I won't put into the public record, but we all know what it was. But we called it the annex to make it sound nicer. But now it actually houses our mobile integrated health and our community care teams. Those are the folks that go out and provide wraparound services to the community to help reduce an influx of 911 calls by being able to connect people with services they actually need, whether that's housing services, social services, mental health services, and things like that. That building's in poor shape.

And so, it's they're in a building that, again, was never designed for that, but because of capacity, that's where we've been able to house them for the meantime. But we'll also identify in our capital plan that we also need to, work on capital equipment structure replacement plans. That's not been something that the fire department has done an excellent job. We got behind, with our apparatus, and so we've done a lot of purchasing of new apparatus this past year, which has been huge because we actually started to have failures of some of the fire trucks, and we were even borrowing some from other jurisdictions because when they'd go out of service. So buildings aren't the only thing that we're trying to to clean up and and improve on.

As I mentioned earlier, our fire stations have become little mini storage shelters as well. And so one of the things that we know right away is we're lacking centralized logistics. One of the things when you think of impact of growth is that when you go vertical, you need more hose. And so when you think you're fighting just, you know, single story buildings everywhere and suddenly everything's going up and you need more hose, well, you'd have to have that hose available. It's not always on the truck.

It's gotta be nearby. And so that's just one of the examples of how impact changes, how much we have to have to keep on hand. And so we're also looking to create that logistics hub, open to renting a space instead of building something. But then again, our functional plan will be able to identify that. So levels of service, that's one of the parts functional plan that we need to be able to address.

And so where are we at right now? The one that's defined in the Redmond 2050 plan is that our level of service is a travel time of six minutes or less for 90% of our emergency calls, fire and medical calls. And that's a great standard, and it's essential. Because we know that for cardiac arrest, trauma, and working fires, every second matters. But the six minute mark only reflects a piece of the puzzle.

It's actually the travel time. What it doesn't reflect is total response time. Which includes everything from getting the call and having it processed by NORCOM to the crew turning out, getting their gear on, getting in the vehicle, getting to the scene, getting to the patient, or getting water on the fire. So what we're seeing now is that even with our travel times look okay, we can meet the six minutes, our total response time is in fact getting longer. That's especially true in the vertical buildings where elevators, stairwells, and staging zones all slow access to the scene.

And in high density areas where traffic and floor access extend that window even further, this is telling us that the growth impact has already hit the fire service. So while we're talking about planning to 2050, we're actually needing to do some retroactive work to get caught up with that. So, maintaining our level of service isn't just about distance, it's about how well our infrastructure adapts to growing to a more complex city. And the fire functional plan is evaluating where our level of service is starting to fall short, which stations may be needed to be expanded to add more apparatus and crew capacity to them, where new stations would need to be placed if needed. And we have identified that it would be of a benefit to add one more station to the downtown area so that we can improve that service.

And so again, our functional plan isn't just looking at the current conditions of the buildings as they are, but we also need to look at the operational reach and response capability and ensure that they're actually in the right location to be able to endure through that 2050 horizon. So the alignment with the Redmond 2050 and connecting it back to our fire functional plan. Again as I've said, this isn't about fixing aging buildings or replacing old equipment. It's going to be about aligning with core values also that Redmond has defined for its future. It means our fire functional plan will demonstrate how we support equity by ensuring our facilities are designed for today's workforce, inclusive, accessible, and reflective of the people we employ now, not the workforce we had decades ago.

It'll support resilience by ensuring that fire stations are essential facilities can remain operational through all kinds of disruptions. That includes things like backup power, structural hardening, and safe environments for crews who are out there protecting others. And it will show that we can demonstrate through our facilities supporting sustainability through long term investments in energy efficiency, electrification readiness, and smart design that will hold up over time. But I also want to be clear that this isn't just about showing alignment with the comp plan. This represents a meaningful step for fire, stepping into a leadership role within the city's broader planning and capital investment process that we really haven't had a seat at the table.

I don't think anybody can remember when that actually ever happened. So historically, fire hasn't been a central player in shaping these conversations, but this plan reflects the department's commitment to being an active partner with the planning department, planning commission, and council, not just in response, but in helping shape our own infrastructure and strategy that supports the long term community resilience. So, yes, we hope our plan will help us protect lives, but we also hope that it builds the kind of city that Redmond wants to be, that all of us wanna be a part of, and that we're not just maintaining that infrastructure, but we're as we're also, as a fire department, helping carry all those values forward. So what it's gonna do is it's going to when we bring this back, and the next slide after this one has the timeline. You all have seen it.

Right? It was in the agenda materials. But it's gonna define what those long term capital needs are, not just for stations, but also for our capital equipment and other infrastructure. It's gonna prioritize which stations will need to be renovated or replaced. Kinda got a little bit of a hint of whether that's coming down the line.

We're gonna lay out a plan for resilient systems. We're gonna make these recommendations of what else needs to be done to the facilities, even the existing ones, to get them to that level of essential, standards. And we're gonna have our capital equipment planning methodology for things like our compressors and other large pieces of equipment that are actually critical to our operations. And, also, we're going to be identifying the impact fee eligible projects because the thing coming in right after our capital facilities plan is an update to our impact fees, which haven't been updated. So not having an adopted functional plan has actually prohibited us from being able to collect and redo the impact fees, and those are way behind the transportation and the parks impact fees.

So not to be crass, but there's been a lot of money left on the table. We missed a huge window of a lot of development activity, our our impact fees were not updated to reflect that, and that's unfortunate. But our functional plan will identify what our attachment is to those particular projects and what's eligible. So that timeline, as you can see right now, we're finalizing all the plan elements by the end of this May. Actually, we'll be routing the plan through for interdepartment review.

So that's with our our planning partners. It's with our parks team, everybody else to be able to comment on it, make sure the fire department, we did our part. And then we'll be returning back on July 9, and that'll be for us to come and do our study session with you. And then after that, we've already mapped out figuring that we'll return back then for that public hearing with you all and then receive your recommendations in August. That would then allow us to give us time to be able to incorporate anything that the commission asks us to do and update, and then we'll be routing it in through the council process to get to their study session and hopefully be adopted by city council on November 3.

Shortly thereafter, the capital facilities plan, we will be landing our plane first. That plane will be coming in right after us. So we're trying to get ourselves sequenced with all the other activity that's going on at the city at the same time. And so if there's any feedback tonight, we are open to any questions that you actually have, but, that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. Commissioners, any comments or questions? Commissioner Aparna?

Thank you for that. I I think it's it's a little alarming that we are behind on a few things, but I'm hoping that we can play catch up. And I'm sure everybody's aware of the safety implications. So I think when we do the functional plan, think it'd be nice to have a little more communication about a little bit of a little bit of bell ringing needed to make sure that people understand the need for budget and the fees for this. My concerns right now are about the vertical building issues associated.

And part of that, there are like two minor comments. One is, I think in Overlake, we have some policies in the comp plan which allow for storage for emergencies and things like that. Would you be tapping into that in the functional plan or would that be like something which is an appendix? Should somebody should a developer actually have that kind of storage in place?

That's an excellent question. One of the other areas in the fire department that I oversee is the Office of Emergency Management. So what you're talking about is community resilience and being able to have that included into development. And I think that that's actually, it's a fantastic move forward for vertical cities like ours that are getting to. One of the things that will be included in the functional plan is how we can actually also maybe use fire stations as resilience hubs themselves.

Being able to have portions of a fire station that's accessible, like by community emergency response team, a CERT team, have materials that that CERT team can actually access for their neighborhood and community. It's not something we would actually hand out, but if we actually integrate that because, again, if we're building a hearty building to withstand and, you know, becomes a beacon of safety and, you know, response out there, I think it makes sense to actually partner with that. In terms of working with developers, I mean, that won't be a part of our plan in there, but you're talking you're speaking my love language when it comes to what other things that, you know, there are about making sure the community overall is as resilient as possible. Did that answer your question?

Yes, thank you. And it actually answered my next question which is about resilience because I think as a city we are doing a lot in terms of emission reduction and so on. The climate's still gonna change. So our adaptation and our resilience is key. And what you do is like it's the linchpin in some ways. So I'm really glad that you're thinking in terms of the facilities playing multiple roles to serve the community as hubs. I think that's really cool. And the last one and

Well, actually, let's go around because we always we always all have lots to say. We'll come back. Other commissioners? Commissioner Coleman.

Thank you. Just first, thank you for your service on the fire department. You do an amazing job. See you go up and down our road a lot.

Not So me, I don't drive trucks.

Well, know, on behalf of everybody.

Of the things that always strikes me when we talk about our emergency services is the fact that this is an expensive city to live in. And I don't know actually how many of your I think you said 170, think I got that right, 170 folks live in Redmond. But the fact if they don't, it's to come here to be forty eight hours on the, you know, on the ground and then to have to go home somewhere that's not around where you're working doesn't make it easy. So I I I guess it's a part don't know if you can answer this, but what what is the percentage of firefighters that live in the city of Redmond?

That's a great question. Actually, is something that I know a little bit about. We have and it depends on their we have not quite half that live within the vicinity of Redmond. However, if you look at the demographics of those who do, they're either very new entry level firefighters that haven't bought a home yet. And so, they rent and live locally.

Or there are I'm a Gen X or there are Gen X. So, they lived in the community and moved into the community and joined the Redmond Fire Department twenty, thirty years ago before it was the community that it is today. And from a safety standpoint and operational standpoint, again, we have looked at that to understand like what would be the regional impact if something happened and, you know, 50% of your workforce is actually well out of the Redmond area and you have a transportation issue and things like that. So, not all of them live here, definitely. Some of them do elect to live.

And because of the type of schedule we have, it actually is conducive to that. They can come down from Bellingham because they just need to be here two days and then go back and spend time with their family, you know, and they can afford to live in those, you know, those communities there.

Yeah. It's I mean, it's it's a sort of serious question. We we've we've covered some of these questions when it comes to housing, and I know there's is we have there's certain things we can and cannot do. The reason I bring it up, I actually have a friend who's a firefighter and he doesn't actually, he's not a firefighter. He's a firefighter in California. He lives up here. I won't give his name, but that's what he does. Anyway, so I've had some conversations with him about some of these things that you just touched on. My point or my question that I think we should come back to at some point is how we make sure the experience for the firefighters when there's hopefully a degree of rebuilding is the best it can be when they're on the ground here. We have a growing city with quite a lot of affluence in the city, And we should be reflecting that in the way that we support our emergency services, in my opinion.

So we'll be thinking about that as we walk through what's coming up. So thank you.

Appreciate that. Yeah, they'd appreciate that too. They'll work in anything, but we don't like them to. So yeah, they're a tough crew.

I'm going to jump in with another question. So when you're talking about going vertical, this was a really helpful deck to understand some of the issues and the challenges. But I'm wondering where, like are there comparisons that you can take from other places? So either standards or case studies or, like how are you evaluating what works versus

Well, we're a data rich department. A lot of people probably again, what you know of the fire department is from a TV show or something like that. But you'd be surprised how much data analysis actually goes into it. So we're constantly monitoring calls and responses. And we use dashboards quite a bit. So our numbers are reflected on what we're actually performing out of it. We can break it down to the station and what they're doing, break it down by the calls that we go on. So again, there's a lot. We have a partner in TIS and with them and their team to be able to help us be able to get that information. Now in terms of a standard, you can kind of extrapolate.

You know, there are national standards through the National Fire Protection Association, NFPA, that sets a few standards as guidelines and benchmarks. One of the most aggressive is that, you know, apparently it's impossible, but it's like the golden standard, is actually to be able to get to anywhere within four minutes. And that's actually what our aim should be. So, when we're on a single story community, getting there in six minutes means you can walk in the front door and be at the fire or at the patient. So to accommodate vertical, we actually need to get there faster so that we can then burn up the remaining minutes going up and over.

And it's not just up. Some of these building developments, you come in and you walk a full block down the hallway to get to a patient. And so that's why we're looking forward of like, okay, if we need to shave time off, the time we can shave off would be in the travel time. And then but in order to do that, there's a cost to it. That means you need to have another station downtown in order to be able to get us into it. But there are the standards that help that give us kind of like, again, a golden standard, but we are basing ours actually on the measurements that we're getting out in field and constantly updating and reviewing them. So that's how we know. Does that help?

Yeah, that helps a lot. When you're talking about things like staging materials and hose and all of that, are there other examples in other communities that have done this shift?

The to, like, a centralized logistics? Yeah. Actually, so a lot of the so we're a municipal agency. And then around us, we also have RFAs, so regional fire authorities, which are, you know, again, all the cities kind of pull their resources together, and then they have one RFA. A lot of the RFAs have been able to do that and set themselves up with large logistics centers where, you know, we have a captain assigned to that. That's his role for three years is to actually be the logistics officer. But you'd be able to put all the materials there in one location instead of having to drive to that station to get ladders and to that station to get PPE, you know, your masks and face pieces. And that station is where, you know, the other things are done. They have one place they can go. You can distribute out of it.

And then we've also got reserve vehicles. That's the other part that we do is like the we have to have a truck ready to back up if a truck breaks down. There's no like sending it to the shop and just not answering calls. And so, have several reserve vehicles that are actually parked outside. If they can't fit in an apparatus bay because we're storing things in them, then we're parking them outside, which means then they're getting cleaned, they get mildewy. If they haven't been used, it's the Northwest. I mean, we know what cars do outside. And then they're not safe and secure, so then they can get broken into. The equipment can be stolen off of them and things like that. So that's also what logistics does.

It allows us to be able to put vehicles in storage outside and protected. But, yeah, there are definitely examples. It there's It's a little uneven, like Bellevue doesn't have one and they could use one. Like every fire department eventually that's experiencing growth is realizing the need to be able to actually have this whole other building that has nothing to do with the response, but is actually pretty important to our ability to be able to respond.

Yeah. Alright. Alright. Around again. Oh, commissioner Gagne.

First of all, thank you. I'm one of the newer commissioners. And the slide deck tonight in your presentation, I learned so much.

Cool. Thanks. You're welcome.

The curiosity that I had, you made a comment about how a number of the calls people are in crisis. It's different than fire related, and there might be some mental health issues. Or are there Does the fire department team with, or do you have people on staff who

We have people on staff. So our MIH team, our mobile integrated health team, they have so an example of a call is a fall. And that can happen with an aging population where they experience falls. And sometimes those falls are because somebody needs to go in and help them figure out how to get them resources like grab bars and hand bars and how to deal with any other issues that they may have in their home. So, you end up getting a call over and over again for somebody who is falling in their home.

And what NIH does is identifies what the solution would be to be able to help this person be able to age in place and then not have to have as many accidents in their home. Sometimes with MIH, we partner with the planning team, has a community care coordinator, and their focus is on housing and the unhoused. And so sometimes you get calls because somebody is unhoused and they're having a medical condition. So you go and you can triage the medical call and then identify that they could use some additional services. And so we have program coordinators.

And again, they're in they're in fire, but they're actually it's it's a team between us, police, and when they get a a call in that may seem like it's criminal in nature, but turns out that it actually could have some follow-up for mental health services after the fact that work together. So sometimes we are there as a first responder. Our first responders go, hey, we're at a scene, and it looks like actually this person could use some assistance. And then they're able to call in the other team like MIH to come out and either follow-up with them the next day or actually come out to the scene that afternoon. Mobile integrated health.

Yeah. So that is, again, this wraparound care of where it may be medical. It may be a medical condition that's caused by something else that's preventable. And so we try to get ahead of what the to get to the prevention level in order to, again, be able to make people's lives better for them. Yeah, you're welcome.

Vice Chair Woodier.

No, I was just going to say I want to thank you for the depth of detail that you provided today. I think awareness is a very powerful thing for us to all have. And I'll also just add that my mother's alive today because of the Redmond Fire Department. So this really resonates with me. I think to the extent with which the broader community can be aware of the needs, because this is shocking, and this cries out urgency. So I appreciate the time and the explanation that you've provided. So thank you for that.

Thank you. I appreciate your time. I appreciate those comments.

Commissioner Reparna.

So I I had a question. I was looking at the strategic plan and I noted a couple things and we've heard this in other places as well. Is one of the weaknesses and one of the challenges was about the water, the availability of adequate water for firefighting. And given that we're growing, and so I was wondering how how this is being addressed in the functional plan is or is it going to just talk to the water plan? Like, how does that how is that addressed?

Yeah. I believe that's gonna be connected up in the water functional plans. And if you look at like the comp plan and identify all the different elements of the comp plan, everybody knows their impact. One of the things in the city is, you know, the city and the departments do understand, you know, the criticality of the fire and police department. They also know, like, we all we all talk about this, like, you know, they know that they that's one of their main requirements is to provide that to us.

Fire won't have to address that. Our public works partners will actually be able to address that. How we manage it is our fire engines have pumps in them to be able to adapt. So if you have low flow coming in, we can force it in through an engine and be able to pump it at whatever velocity that we need on the other side of it. But it wouldn't be for us to to actually, you know, dictate to the public works team. They already have it covered. Does that is that answering the question?

Sort of.

Because,

like, my thing is if you are increasing capacity Mhmm. There should be a proportional increase in capacity over there to provide you the water as well. Right? The storage capacity wise. So as long as everybody's talking to each other, I think you answer my question. Yep. But it's it's more like it's something that I it might come up in the functional plan because it's seen in the strategic plan that it is identified as a challenge. And we are seeing from the water plan that storage is still a challenge. Mhmm. So now we have identified it from both sides.

Yeah.

So I'm just concerned.

Yeah. And I I don't. You have a right to be concerned. I mean, I'm not saying there's anything eminent. That's not what the comment was. But yes, those are the kinds of things to focus on.

Yeah. So I just wanna make sure that the plans are talking to each other on this Yeah. Potential problem.

When it comes to the capital facilities planning, what you're describing is something that's outside of the scope of our plan. You know, we can talk about it in our master planning activities and stuff. But when we get into the fire functional plan, our focus is gonna be on facilities, the capital equipment, and everything else would be outside of that. So it's it's on the radar. It's understood, but it won't actually show up. It's it's place isn't here. Its places actually would be in the water plan out of the public works department.

Thank you. That makes it clearer.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I had one additional question. And you actually alluded to it might not be this plan, actually. When people are doing their building permits, they're getting their fire inspections, building codes in general. Does this plan touch on any of that world?

No, it doesn't. Because again, this is going to be focused on capital facilities, capital equipment, mostly on the facilities side of it. You're talking about any kind of design standard code updates and stuff like that. So fires in that, that's our prevention team that helps navigate the reviews and but not the functional plan.

Okay.

Yeah. Great.

Thank you. Good clarification. Commissioner Coleman.

I had a question just on the balance of the EMT versus FHIR responses you go to. Data seen elsewhere tends to I've seen it be more EMT than FHIR. What is the balance between those things? And the reason I ask it is how can we, you know, with some of the things we end up talking about, help in that regard? Is this something that as you're looking ahead, you're like, you know what, we have more of this than that and here's some of the things we might need because there's a different situations.

They are. So statistically, about 80% of our calls are going to be a medical call and 20% being something that's fire related to it. Now, our crews are trained as EMTs and firefighters because, again, the most of the time they're going on a medical call. So they're they're able to attend to a call. Now, a medical call doesn't mean it's just an aid car.

It means it's a fire engine sometimes too, especially in stations that are cross staffed. And cross staffed means that we've got the two vehicles, but the crew can jump in either one depending on how they're dispatched to a scene. And so what can, from a planning perspective, the impact is is there enough curb space for an engine to show up to a medical medical call versus thinking that you're just going to get aid cars out there? The other challenge that starts to overlay into planning is to understand that when we get cardiac events, we actually end up sending like four or five vehicles out there because you want to have about 13 people on the scene of a cardiac event so that they can all cycle in and perform CPR until you're able to get a paramedic on the scene. That's why Redmond has the highest rate of survivability in cardiac events out of almost the world.

And it's because it is all hands on deck. Sometimes you'll see our crews actually responding to the medical clinics locally because they'll have a cardiac event. They'll call to have our crews be able to go out and support CPR activities and other advanced lifesaving. So, the planning perspective, it's understanding that not all calls are treated equal, but medical's the number one call, and sometimes that's more than one vehicle that has to respond. And again, like we talked about our level of service and our total response time, the faster we can get to the patient, the higher the ability that we have of changing outcomes and saving people's lives by being there faster.

I was going to say we should wrap it here, but let's do one more. So, Commissioner, sorry, Vice Chair Woodier?

Did I answer your question, Commissioner Coleman? Okay, yep.

So, to what degree are you looking at technological solutions to meet some of these needs? And I ask this question is because your comment about the 13 people flashback into three fire trucks and the ambulance for one emergency, which feels like a bit of overkill, particularly given that this is a large community and where there's other events happening. So I guess the question is to what degree are you using technological solutions to manage your fleet of resource, which is the people and

the the trucks and the engines? To to understand how to dispatch them?

To respond. Yeah. Because, you know, when I see a fire truck and three car and three m EMTs, that's great for the person who's having a a a medical event, but there's probably, in a community of this size, other medical events going on.

Yeah. So what happens is, imagine that we do get a call and it's pretty intense. A lot of our dispatching happens through NORCOM. NORCOM has a computer aided dispatch. So they know where every engine aid car and crew is on all the fire stations, not just Redmond.

So what will happen is if you have a large event and we haven't been pressure tested, so the system and that we haven't been able to respond, so I will just say that. And the reason why is because if we had a response that required a couple of engines or, you know, a couple of stations to respond to it, NORCOM then knows that if the next event comes into Redmond, that we're probably pulling a crew from Station 16 into downtown or maybe Bellevue's responding. We do that often too. We'll respond up into Kirkland. Like, we we don't just stay within the the boundary lines of Redmond.

We'll go over into Kirkland and Bellevue and vice versa because there is this air traffic control system. And if you ever want to go to NORCOM, you should definitely do that. But that's one of the best ways of deploying technology to make sure there isn't too much in one and, you know, not enough in another space.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. So we'll see you this summer.

Yep. This summer. Yeah.

Alright. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Alright. Next up is staff and commissioner updates. Turn it over to Lauren.

The only update that I have is a reminder that we are meeting next week for our annual workshop. We're going to have some staff from Parks Department come and speak about their sustainability and resiliency planning and their tree program. And so that's pretty exciting. It sounds like a really interesting program that I think it'll be really interesting to hear. They presented a council this week, so I think we'll be getting some of that information, but it'll be an opportunity to meet with them. We'll also be talking about TOD and some of the impacts that we're seeing already from transit oriented development. So it should be an exciting workshop, and that's a reminder that it's next week. So I will see you all here. I think we're gonna be in Alpha Bravo Room for that meeting. And

if I remember correctly, that is open to the public, but it's not broadcast.

That is my understanding as well.

Great. Mhmm. Okay. So we will see everyone next week. Yep. Any commissioner updates?

Next Wednesday. Mhmm.

At seven.

At a, yeah, at a regularly scheduled time.

Any commissioner updates? I had a lighthearted one. We were on spring break last week and flying back home on an Air France plane for a very long time. And my children went through the entire travel guide for Seattle, and they had an entire paragraph proclaiming what a wonderful region we have for policy, specifically around transportation and environment policies. And I just thought that was nice, and I wanted to share with all of you, because I know you've done so much work on this. So Air France says good job. All right, with that, I look for a motion to adjourn. So moved.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. All right. Then we are adjourned.