General Legislative Session - Regular Meeting

Okay, good morning, everyone. Snohomish County Council is called to order for our general legislative session. Today is Wednesday, July 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. We're meeting in the Jackson boardroom and also remotely. I'll read the script for public comment and then our clerks will take roll. We'll take public comment beginning in person and then remotely on Zoom. Click on the hand icon to raise your hand. If you're calling in by phone, press star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak and please start your comment with your name and city of residence. Next is roll call. Chair Dunn.

Here. Vice Chair Lowe.

Present.

Council Member Neering.

Here.

Council Member Mead.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Chair, we have five members present.

Thank you. Next, we've asked Councilmember Neering to please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Thank you. Next is our Tribal Land Acknowledgement, which I'll read. We acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place, the Sakumayhu, the Stilagwabish, the Stahobish, Skykomish, Snoqualmie, and their successors, the Tulalip tribes. Since time immemorial, they have hunted, fished, gathered on, and taken care of these lands and waters. We respect their sovereignty, their right to self-determination, and honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water. We will strive to be honest about our past mistakes and bring about a future that includes their people, stories, and voices to form a more just and equitable society. With this tribal acknowledgement, we open our time together by honoring the ancestors whose feet first knew these lands and whose paddles still know the waters of what we now call Snohomish County. Next is public comment. Did anyone wish to provide public comment today? You can come to the podium. Morning.

Good morning i'm Linda yelly this new homes county assessor i'm here to ask you that you seriously consider the justice fun is a viable option for funding our law and justice system. For several years i've been sharing concerns regarding the need to prioritize and fund core mandated services in snohomish county. Without additional or new revenue sources, the desire and need to fund safety from the general fund continues to deplete the limited resources available to sustain the rest of the core services that keep government working for the citizens. Authorizing dedicated law and justice funding will help alleviate some of the pressure on the general fund overall. Currently, as a separately elected official, I'm being asked to reduce my budget by 3%, which is sizable for an office where 84% of my costs are in salary and benefits. If Council does not take action, I will be asked for a much larger cut to an office that is already understaffed and underfunded based on the Department of Revenue analysis statewide. It is difficult to complete our work on time and in a thorough manner ensuring property owners are only paying their fair share of property taxes. I also encourage Council to obtain and review the information they need to make a timely decision so that the impacts can be known in advance rather than waiting until there's very limited time for planning and implementation. I understand these are very difficult decisions, and I put my trust and confidence in you that they will be made thoughtfully. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comment. Other public comment? Any hands raised online? Yes, we have Marie R. You're unmuted, Marie. You should be able to speak.

Okay, great. Thank you. Hi, my name is Marie Ramirez, and I'm a resident of Snohomish County. I was also a member of the recent Snohomish County Civic Assembly on Artificial Intelligence. The Snohomish County Civic Assembly was made up of 40 assembly members. Only 32 members appeared on the first day. Further member attrition resulted in a total of 29 assembly members who created and voted upon the recommendations presented here today. Civic Genius wrote the final report and provided it to both assembly members and the council. And I am here today to speak of my concern that the final report excluded one very important vote. the vote regarding members perception of the integrity of the assembly process. The outcome of that split vote had been 20 to nine or in percentages, 69% of assembly members had affirmed the integrity of the assembly process. and 31% of assembly members had rejected the integrity of the assembly process. And I just find it to be critically significant that nearly a third of the civic assembly members, including myself, had all perceived a lack of integrity to the civic assembly process and that this was left out of the final report. While there are still many good recommendations to be found in the final report, I believe that the Snohomish County Council and the greater public need to be provided full information about the assembly members' perception of the assembly process as it relates to the final report. This full information should be available to anyone who may be reviewing the final report and or relying upon the final report as a foundational support for any governmental use, any literature reviews, any pilot projects, or any other related endeavors. Finally, the impact of my participation in the Snohomish County Civic Assembly has been a reduced trust in my local government. I now question what role, if any, that my local government had in a process that appeared to be more in line with the concept of manufactured consent. Moreover, my civic assembly experience was not any better than the traditional citizens formats that already exist. And at the reported cost range of $150,000 to $750,000 per civic assembly, it is just too high of a price to pay for a process in which nearly a third of assembly members voted as having lacked integrity of process. So going forward, I would ask that the council consider both the tangible and intangible cost of using the civic assembly process as a tool in our local government and the damage that can occur when an assembly is not able to live up to the collective deliberative process that it has claimed itself to be. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comment. Are there other hands raised? No other hands raised. Okay. Okay. So we will close public comment. And next on the agenda is resolutions. We have Resolution 26-035.

Council considers Resolution 26-035, recognizing the Snohomish County Civic Assembly on Artificial Intelligence.

Thank you. Any comments from Council Members? Council Member Neering?

Yeah, thank you. Just wanted to thank all the members of the Civic Assembly. We have several of them here today and look forward to the presentation. I had the opportunity to join one of the meetings and was just really impressed with the work done. Also very impressed with the report that came out and look forward to hearing more about that today and then getting to work on it and appreciate Council Member Meade for working with me on putting this resolution together.

Council Member Meade?

Well, I'll say ditto to most of that. I know we have some of the members of the Assembly here. Thank you for all the work that you did. I was able to attend the final day. So I got to see the final deliberation and the votes. And that process was really interesting to watch. It was inspiring to see that many folks interested in dedicating that much time. I think a lot of people don't know we're going to do a resolution and then we're going to have a panel and we're gonna have a few people here to speak but the amount of hours that was put in the amount of people that dedicated weekends to educate themselves on the topic and then deliberate and then come forward with some really hefty and serious recommendations so i just want to say thank you all for the work that you put in for your volunteering all those hours and i look forward to hearing a little bit more about the report the report itself was great very detailed i'm really excited to hear from you all though too so thank you for being here

Other comments? Is there a motion?

Move to approve resolution 26-035. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded to approve resolution 26-035. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. We didn't have any items on the consent agenda, but next is administrative matters motion 26-264. move approval of motion 26-264 second been properly moved and seconded to approve motion 26-264 any discussion hearing none on favor please say aye aye chair votes aye any opposed hearing none that passes five to zero next we have action on items from committee and under committee the whole we have ordinance 26-030

Council considers ordinance 26-030 imposing an additional sales and use tax of one-tenth of one percent for criminal justice purposes, providing for administration of the tax, providing for implementation and effective date, providing for notification and reporting, and adopting a new chapter 4.140 to Snohomish County Code. The proposed action today is to set time and date for a public hearing. Good morning. Oh, okay.

Sorry. Go ahead, Nicole. Good morning, Council, for the record. Nicole Gourley, Council staff. I provided an update on this item last week. I'm happy to go over a staff report again, summarize it. I'm available for questions. Otherwise, today's request is to set time and date for a public hearing.

Were there questions for staff quickly? Okay, and then we have members. There were a number of questions around timing and the need for timing, so we have a couple of special guests today. I see Executive Summers' hands raised, so I'll go ahead and call on Executive Summers to share any comments or answer some questions around the timing. Go ahead, Executive.

Good morning. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for this opportunity. I just want to... provide some clarity about why it is necessary to vote on the Justice Fund on August 12th of this year. I want to be crystal clear. If the decision is delayed until October, there will be layoff notices going out to employees of our law and justice agencies. This is really a critical moment for Snohomish County. We've had several years where federal funds helped us bridge gaps and soften the blow of rapid inflation. This year, there's no cushion and our fund balance has been depleted. Snohomish County faces a structural deficit of $56 million in the next biennium. And this is just simply our estimates that we've worked on council with of our revenues versus the costs of continuing our existing programs. That's what's meant by a structural deficit. Our revenues are not able to pay for what we're doing now. We have decisions to make about safety and quality of life in our community and about how we value public services and our law and justice professionals. So we have an opportunity to set our county on a path toward a more sustainable fiscal future. However, council does not take timely action. We will not be able to get our feet firmly on that path. So if the Justice Fund is passed on August 12th, we can begin collection in January. We have a mid-October deadline to notify the state if the Justice Fund passes, and there is a 10-day waiting period between an ordinance passing and when we can notify the state. So if we work back from that deadline, we see that a vote in October puts us in a position where we would not be able to collect in January. So if we miss that deadline, collection begins in April of next year at best, if ever, leaving a gap of multiple months without funding for criminal justice staff and services. A delayed vote, even if it's a yes vote, means the county will have to initiate layoff proceedings for dedicated employees with no guarantee they will be available to continue their service with us when the funding becomes available. So Just this week, constituent, I'm sure you've heard from them also reached out to express frustration. There isn't enough law enforcement presence over the 4th of July weekend. There's no money for additional holiday patrols or enforcement. And without a justice fund, we would have fewer staff and fewer resources for holiday and overtime patrols and our everyday needs in our public safety departments. Decreased public safety is not what anybody's asking for. So Also, the county is legally required to provide core law and justice services, and our local cities and towns rely on us. In the past years, the council passed emergency appropriations near the end of the year to fund services mandated by the state constitution or other state law. Without the justice fund, those emergency appropriations are set to drain what little resources we have with no way of replenishing them. been a financial pinch at this end of the year in past budgets will become an impossibility in future years. The cost of the services continue to go up, and if we do not have this new revenue, we will not be able to afford them. So this is not a new conversation. I know it's not a surprise to anybody, but since last year, my office has been in communication with the council, your staff, leaders in sheriff's office, courts, clerk's office, prosecuting attorney's office, and office of public defense. And we have tried to be radically transparent about our financial challenges. I've already discussed the structural deficit. It's simply revenue, realistic revenue estimates and the cost estimates of our existing programs. Our chief budget officer has also been presenting at boards and commissions. We've really talked to hundreds of people about this with After all the dialogue today, I'm not sure how much the delay from August to October would help the council with your decision making. As I said, the critical part of the budget, which has not been built yet, I do not have a budget to provide to you. We're working on that. But the critical piece of that budget will be the revenue estimates and the expense estimates. The rest is kind of arranging deck chairs on the deck. We've gathered budget information from all the department's offices. We are reviewing all that information. We are going through our process of building that budget. But again, the critical part is really the revenues and expenses. Even with the, should the Justice Fund pass, I'm asking departments to reduce their general fund budget by 3%, totaling $22 million in cuts for the coming biennium, and that's assuming that the Justice Fund does pass. It would be much, much worse if it does not pass. What really... Dave Kuntz, amounts to about a 10% cut across the board for all the entire county budget if that does not pass, so I really urge you to approve the justice fund on August 12 move forward with that boat, thank you.

Thank you Dave. Other did other Members want to speak Jason did you want to address the timing as well.

Morning, counsel. Jason Cummings, Snows County Prosecuting Attorney. First, I want to thank the counsel for the opportunity to come before you this morning. This is an important issue. For the first time in my nearly 28 years at the county, the law and justice partners have been meeting on a regular basis, particularly as we look at the financial realities that we are facing. And that means that the presiding judges of the Superior Court, the District Court, the Sheriff, the Clerk, and myself have been meeting regularly along with staff. our greatest concern is on the timing. And we have programs that are in place that if the funding is not there, these programs will need to be eliminated. And we are not like a speedboat on Lake Stevens. We are more like an aircraft carrier in the sound, meaning we have to have a bit of a runway to be able to wrap up certain programs, pull people out of certain court programs, and put them back into the traditional system, for lack of a better term. that can't happen overnight and cannot happen quickly. We need that ramping to know. I do not want to foretell or I cannot foretell what the outcome is going to be as the vote on this, but as the Executive Summers just pointed out, the structural deficit is real. It's there. If we don't know until late in the year whether or not it's going to pass and these programs could continue, that's great, but if they're not going to continue, that puts a greater burden on our community, on individuals that are within our system that are utilizing services and could put us at great risk of our inability to provide the public safety that the citizens require. In addition, as we've been meeting, we want to offer up to the council and love to come before the council, one of your law and justice or committee of the whole meetings and put together a presentation to talk about the law and justice system, to guide you through some scenarios of how the public use the law and justice system. In particular, we talk a lot about the criminal justice system, but that is not all that the law and justice system entails. In fact, I think it's only 10 to 15 percent of the courts, particularly at the Superior Court, caseload is criminal justice. The remaining, we have protection orders, we have the family law matters, we have the guardianships. We have so much other stuff that our citizens are requiring and expecting of us that goes beyond what we generally think of as our law and justice system. I think it's critical for us to be able to do a better job of informing the council and informing the public of those services because it'll be critical. And so we'd offer, and it'll take a little bit of time for us to put together an effective presentation. So I don't want to do it next week, but within the next four to six weeks, we'd love the opportunity to come back for the council as a body to discuss with you all the work that we do so it can better inform the council as it moves forward in the budget process. With that, I will acknowledge that we have members of our group here. We have presiding judge from Superior Court, Judge Lang Bennett.

Did you want to say anything? No, okay.

Okay. We also have Heidi Percy, our clerk. We have... Judge Howard's back there as well, as well as representatives from the Sheriff's Office. You know, this is an important issue, and the timing is critical for us to know as we have to plan. As Executive Summers pointed out, there are obviously the labor consequences that trigger, and that is significant. But it's these programs that we have in place that if we're going to have to wind them down or wrap them up, we need as much runway as possible. And so we would urge you to act – yeah, well – we would like to have known last week, knowing that's not reality, sooner is better for us than later because of the need to work on these programs. So with that, I'm willing to ask or answer any questions that you have, but I just want to make it very clear the importance of the timing for us.

Questions from council? So there had been questions about setting time and date for August 12th. Are there still questions? There's also members from the sheriff's office as well. Are we prepared to move forward then and set time and date? Okay. Is there a motion?

Move to set time and date for ordinance 26-030 for Wednesday, August 12th at the hour of 1030 a.m. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded to set time and date for a public hearing for ordinance 26-030. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes 5-0. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for attending, Executive. Next is Motion 26-263.

Council considers Motion 26-263, approving an increase in the number of employees authorized in the 2025-2026 biennial budget in Grant Fund 130 for the District Court.

Thank you. Good morning, Council Members. For the record, Jim Martin, Council Staff. Approval of this motion allows district court to continue to employ 2.0 project FTEs, including a 1.0 therapeutic court case manager, 0.5 legal process assistant 2, and 0.5 mental health program coordinator through June 30th, 2027. These current project positions expire June 30th, 2026, but district court has received a letter of reward for continuing grant funds to support these positions. Requested action is to move to council for consideration.

Great. Questions from council? Is there a motion?

I move approval of motion 26-263. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded to approve motion 26-263. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes 5-0. That concludes our action items. Next, we have other business and we have the Civic Assembly final report. So, I don't think we have a staff introduction, but if Jillian wanted to come up and if you can just state your your name and city of residence when you provide comment yep you can sit at the table yeah and you just push the button at the bottom of the mic and when it's green that's on my name is alexandria i'm a citizen of snohomish

My name is Hillary Morales. I am a citizen of Snohomish County in the unincorporated Snohomish County area of Clearview.

My name is Daniel Lucier, and I'm a lifelong member of Marysville.

I'm Jillian Youngblood. I'm the executive director of Civic Genius, which is a program of the National Civic League, and I'm visiting from Redmond in King County.

Thank you so much for being here today and for letting us speak. Would anyone like a copy of the final report?

No?

Okay, fantastic. Yeah, you can provide it with our clerks at the end, but we did get it online.

Yeah, we have the digital copies right now.

Okay, perfect.

We just wanted to be prepared. Assembly members were selected by a lottery of broadly representative cross-section of Snohomish County population across age, gender, race, ethnicity, and geography. Members were not chosen for their expertise on A.I., We were invited as residents and brought our lived experience to every session. There is a full demographic breakdown on page seven of the final report if you are curious. We are concerned because citizens who underwent a considerable amount of study on the topic, learning from multiple panels of experts including civic, vendor, academic, and political leaders. Our goal through spirited discussion and dialogue was to generate recommendations to you, the Snohomish County Council, on appropriate AI usage. The group wanted to maintain a human in the loop framework from the very beginning on any and all AI implementation. We aim to have a just, fair, and equitable government that inspires trust and confidence within the community and fosters an environment of transparency, inclusiveness, civic responsibility, and economic vitality for all. By the numbers, we are presenting 35 recommendations with strong consensus, 20 or more with broad support, which resulted in eight themes. 100% of the headline recommendations reached an 80% consensus. This was done over three weekends of deliberation and a cumulative hours of 1,160. Our guiding values that we brought with us throughout this process were human experience, self-determination, transparency, accountability, precaution, equity, and stewardship.

The recommendations that were brought before you are honestly incredible. The work that was done by this group is something that cannot be discounted, largely because AI is something that we are all learning as it goes. This is largely addressing generative AI, which I would like to address, which is something that is very new into this process. AI is not. However, when we were talking about this, we continually kept circling around this concept of how do we continue to use a tool that is, as we are governing it, changing? And how do we make sure the governance that is coming before you is something that is adaptive and thoughtful? I like to say that when we were as a group, we all kind of felt like the founding fathers. You don't know what you're going for because it hasn't ever been done. And so I know that there was some trepidation from members of the group, but more importantly, I would like to highlight the amount of excitement that went into this. It is noted there are 35 recommendations that reached a strong consensus of 80% or higher. 80% in a group with such varied thoughts, I think is something we really have to highlight. The 20 or more that reached broad support, which is between 50 and 79%, is also incredible. That means a large majority of the body felt it was very important, and I don't want those thoughts to be discounted as well. You're also going to see in here some minority reports. These were ones that might not have received full consensus or Unfortunately enough, we weren't able to address them in the time that we would have liked to. If we could have given up more weekends, I honestly think we would have, just because there were so many beautiful points that came forth, especially regarding things such as the environment. But it is important to note that we only had so much time as a group to be able to go through these. What we did come down to is a large group of recommendations. One was the importance of public need and burden, which was please use AI only when it serves the public. The next was human oversight, the importance of keeping people responsible and making sure that people are still reachable. So at no point should AI overtake the actual role of a human within this process. Also, transparency. We know that right now it is hard to trust our government, but it is also even harder to trust it when we don't know what's being used as a tool. So please, we would like to be told as residents how AI is being used and why it's being used. Also, data protection and fairness. Please protect our residents' data and help prevent bias. The unfortunate issues we do see with generative AI is if it's fed bad data, you get bad data out. So we want to make sure that thoughtful use of data is going in and also that our citizens have the right to have privacy. That is one of the beauties of Snohomish County is that we are still a semi-rural county in many areas, especially where I live and in Marysville. And some people really appreciate having that kind of privacy. We talked about vendor controls, the need to keep vendors under public control, and making sure that thoughtful contract management goes into this. I work in AI and technology as my main job, and so this was a very important aspect I think that most people tend to forget is when you sign a contract. Make sure you know where that data goes. Community and human empowerment, which was to give residents and staff the power to oversee AI. There are some important parts on there of making sure people are well trained. We've seen in a lot of instances companies quickly adopting these tools only to find hundreds of thousands of dollars wasted on poor prompts or inability to use the tool properly. Last thing you want to do is give somebody who's just got themselves a yard a $5,000 steel chainsaw and tell them to go at it. You're going to see damage done before you see any good. And then, of course, the environmentalism and community impact, which I think are very critically important. As you look through these, we have reasons why every single one of these matters associated with them, as well as the numbers and the reasons behind them. And you're going to see reasons for dissent as well. And I think that's incredibly important for us to note because not everything was an equal consensus, but this was thoughtful. This was debated. This was probably the most civic discussion I've ever seen, the most civil discussion I've ever seen in all my time in politics and in debate amongst people with so many different ideas. And the fact that we were able to come to these, I urge you, to look at these recommendations with great thoughtful need and process. And then as always, if you don't know, do some research because there's some great resources within these packets as well for furthering your information on any of these tools. So that is what we have on there for the recommendations. It's a large part of the packet, but boy, does it keep me excited.

Council, I'm going to read the conclusion found on page 39. We have, as a group of directly affected constituents, worked exhaustively to examine and consider the realistic feasibility and scope of these recommendations without compromising the essential values we've collectively agreed upon. It is vital that legislation crafted in response be done so in the same spirit stated above. Going forward, When considering the implementation of tools or vendor partnerships that fundamentally change government processes, systems, lines of communication, or delivery of public services, any decision-making authority must prioritize the following three. One, the rights, agency, and diverse needs and values of the people in our communities. especially marginally disadvantaged groups. Two, careful planning, which incorporates affected constituents and relevant experts in meaningful, impactful ways. Three, transparent and easily accessible communication with the public surrounding and... Three, transparent and easily accessible... communication with the public surrounding any proposed changes, including ongoing implementation details and results, effects of these changes. We were tasked with crafting guidelines surrounding tools with largely unknown scope and possibility. If our well-being, insight, opinions, and preferences are indeed valued, constituent input must not end here. The Assembly was able to meet, discuss, and examine this new and emerging topic across diverse voices representative of the residents of Snohomish County. This gave us the benefit of being able to see the topic from many points of view and come to what we consider a well-rounded and satisfying conclusion. Our unique viewpoints and experiences allow decision makers to see problems and solutions that might otherwise be overlooked, allowing time and opportunity for course correction, better and more useful government, and higher public satisfaction and trust. We expect the Council to leverage this framework as guide rails in the evaluation of any potential system implementation And if not implemented, give the public a reason for refusal. Thank you for providing us the opportunity to be involved in this process. Our assembly met for three weekends, sacrificing our time and energy and putting great effort into educating ourselves and each other on this matter. We hope you recognize the investment of our labor as proof that this topic matters and deserves due consideration. Thank you, counsel.

I just wanted to add to that and thank, first of all, the assembly members and a few others are here to support their colleagues right now for their incredible work. I think you've heard about the amount of energy and time that went into this process. You heard 40 hours of deliberation, which is correct, but I can tell you that I was getting emails in between the sessions with videos and articles and academic studies and new thoughts. The assembly members were not just working during those weekends. They were working the entire, however, I guess two and a half months that this process went on. We also, you heard about the diversity of opinions, the ideological diversity in the room. which was quite significant. We had participants who said there should be no generative AI at all. No one should use it, including governments. And we had tech workers from some of the major tech companies here in the Puget Sound region. And they all reached a place of 80% agreement on a lot of these recommendations, which is quite extraordinary. And I think really highlights what can happen when you create a space and all of the supports that people need to really be able to deliberate on a difficult topic. As Hillary said, this is all new and emerging. We're all learning as we go. And the level of civility and thoughtfulness and curiosity among all of the council members really keeps me going. And I am so proud that Washington State, Snohomish County, is able to be really one of the first civic assemblies in the country. There have only been a handful of these in the U.S. And it's pretty special that Snohomish County is the host of one of the very first ones. I'm part of the National Civic League, so I've sent the final report to a number of experts who are interested in AI governance, in helping governments improve the way that they do their work and deliver public service, academics who are interested in the ethics of all of the emerging technology that we've been thinking about. And they've been really supportive and really impressed by the quality of the recommendations. just again want to um i almost said condemn commend um the assembly members for their incredible work and i know that the entire body is very happy to answer any questions you have thank you so much questions from council members

I don't have questions, but maybe just some comments. Okay. That's okay. Thank you. Well, really appreciate all the work that went into this. And thank you, Jillian, for leading this effort and your organization for each and every one of the civic assembly members who dedicated a lot of time into this. And I, like I said earlier, when we were considering the resolution, I'm very impressed with the results. I didn't really know what to expect. You know, I came that first weekend and there were sticky notes all over the walls. And I was thinking, wow, there's a lot going on here, a lot of great activity and didn't know what the final report would look like, to be honest. But I've had the chance to read through it a few times now. And just the detail and the fact that you were able to reach 80 percent plus consensus on, I think, 35 of these items is really remarkable and I think puts us in a good position as a council for next steps and maybe digging into some of these and seeing what we can implement at the county level. And so I'm just so grateful for all the time and energy and thought that went into this. And I in particular wanted to call out, I think something that was mentioned earlier and is also mentioned in the report. But the importance of focusing on the human impact when it comes to AI, which I think is so critical, and I'm glad that that's something that the Assembly really highlighted as well, is when we're deliberating on AI and policy and use and how does it apply to county government as we're serving the community, making sure that the human impact is at the forefront of all those decisions. And so, again, just very grateful that that was prioritized, very grateful for all your work, and would love to connect with you all on next steps as we look to implement some of these recommendations. So thank you.

Other comments, Councilmember Mead?

Thank you, Chair. So I got to visit with the group the exact opposite, polar opposite of when Councilmember Nehring did. I was on the very last day, and I would not have expected after what I saw, the conclusion, the final kind of debate, and then all of the votes, that it would have started in this like, oh, crazy, there's FBI string everywhere and all these sticky notes, because it was very organized. It seemed very thoughtful, and I was really impressed with it. I do have a question for maybe for Jillian, and I guess it could go to everybody. We had a public commenter from the assembly, it sounded like, speaking of one of the votes about the integrity of the process. I'm actually not exactly sure what the question was with the percentages, but I wonder if you could talk a little bit to that. It sounds like you've worked in other civic assemblies prior to this, and is that a common thing with that final conclusion or whatever, if you wanted to speak a little bit to that process?

Yeah, happy to address that. So the commenter, I think, was raising a fair point. We worked with the county council and were in communication with you throughout the assembly. We did not work with the county executive's office. We were not working with the county. I know that there was a desire from the outset that this not incur any kind of cost to the county. So we did raise philanthropic dollars to run this project. And so the county staff was not involved. And I think there were a number of members of the assembly who would have liked to hear directly from the county. I also understand that everything costs money, including the time of people from the county. And because this is a new process, I can understand that folks in the county wanted to kind of see what they were dealing with and see what this was before they committed resources. So that's how we proceeded through the process. I think there was some concern from some of the assembly members about that. We provided as much publicly information available as we could find on contracts that the county had, public statements that county employees, county leadership had made regarding AI. So I think we were able to provide a lot of information that folks from the county would have been able to provide. But I think that that's where some of that concern was coming from. And sorry, I'll also just add, we actually are working with a researcher from the University of Washington who's doing a full evaluation of this process. So you will see everything when it comes out that will be publicly available. We're really committed to learning from everything that we do and improving these processes as we go forward. We'll make that report public and you'll see everything.

And to be clear, you kind of mentioned it there. There was no cost to the county in any of this. There was a number cited, something like $140,000 or $175,000 cost. That's all philanthropic. The county didn't put any dollars into this?

Correct. The county did not put any dollars into this. The full cost of this process was $180,000, which includes a little, it's a little bit higher than it needed to be because we had a videographer who was there to document. So the full cost of the process without that would have been closer to $150,000. There is a process in Canada, in Victoria, that did cost around $750,000, which is quite extraordinary. That also included a technical study that went on for many months This was a very extended process, and that assembly was tackling whether two municipalities should merge. So it was a much bigger question that I think accounts for some of that price tag, but three-quarters of a million dollars is not common for a civic assembly.

But as far as to the cost for taxpayers in Snohomish County, it was zero. Zero. Right. Thank you all for the process. Again, we've been in conversation, at least myself and Council Member Nehring have been in conversation with our IT team and our director, Vigo, is actually here. And we have an awesome team here in Snohomish County, very forward thinking when it comes to AI and implementation and guardrails. And I know some of the they've seen the recommendations. I know some of the things that have been recommended are things that are already in the process. Some of it's already been implemented. And some of it's new ideas that I think deserve some serious thought and consideration. So I hope that this is just kind of the beginning of at least the council's process. You all did a bunch of work on the front end already. I hope this is the beginning of a longer conversation and a more thorough back and forth with both council and you all and the executive side team and our IT team, because I fully intend to continue running with the football that you guys have passed along.

Council Member Nairn.

And just to add on to that, I completely agree. I hope my intention or my hope is that the council will be able to pass something or have a final product that results from this or maybe multiple items. And that could be building off of the work that's been done, building off of the great work that IT has done, but something that is a package that we can consider as a council. Kind of a sidebar on that, one of the things that we did do recently was And the timing just kind of worked out that it was around the same time as as this assembly ended, we received the final report. But we adopted the temporary moratorium on data centers. And I know a couple of these recommendations have to do with data centers. And so as we all work together on developing what permanent Regulations look like when it comes to AI data centers in unincorporated Snohomish County would love to engage with you all. So I don't know if you I don't want to put you on the spot. But if you have any initial thoughts on that would love to hear them, but also offline would love to engage with each of you and other assembly members who might be interested in participating as we develop those develop a proposal for consideration. Thanks.

Other comments comes from Peterson.

Thank you. I think just backing away from the specifics of the subject matter, which I really appreciate the deep dive, but just I think the process in general, I think it's what's great. It shows that democracy ain't pretty, but it is also effective. What's the saying? Democracy is the worst form of government in the world, except for all the others. So I just think that that says a lot, how you're able to come together and have constructive dialogue, and I think that really helps model behavior that we maybe don't often see in certain levels of government. But we do, I think, and others, I will speak, you know, for the Snohomish County Council and I think the state legislature as well is really trying to, is relatively good at modeling that behavior. Maybe not that good. But to think that, you know, 50% plus one is a win, 55% or 60% is considered a landslide. So 80%, that's, you know, very impressive in kind of a, in a situation like this. So I think just being able to showcase that to people that might be a little disenfranchised with governance. And I think that's going to be really helpful for us as elected officials and for other people to really be able to point to the possibility of what democracy has to offer, the possibility of constructive dialogue. So I will take that lesson as well as the specific lessons of AI uh, to heart. So I just, uh, thank you for putting in that kind of work.

Thank you. Other council comments. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you, chair. And I just wanted to thank everybody for all their work. I know it's a lot of weekends and a lot of work behind the scenes and, uh, apologize. I couldn't be there today, but I really do appreciate the effort of everyone involved. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, I'll share my thanks. Thank you for your time, and thank you for bringing this to the county, to the Civic Commons. Your time is valuable. It means a lot that you guys would spend so many weekends working on this, and we will consider the recommendations and think about what can be implemented. Also wanted to also give a shout out to our IT department that has been working in this field, and we do have a number of these in place, but wanted to look forward to continued discussions around these topics. And also really appreciate the minority opinions, because I think it's important to recognize either where you didn't disagree or where there wasn't full consensus. So always good to hear those different ideas, especially around the environment. And I also appreciated the dedication and commitment to DEI within the framework of this and keeping it human centered. So really appreciate the work. And we also had the resolution. So stay and we can take a picture afterwards. So we're almost done with the agenda. Okay, if there's no other comments, then we did not have any additional executive sessions or other topics on the agenda. So we are in recess until our 1030 public hearing. Thank you.