Public Works Committee - Regular Meeting

All right. I want to welcome everybody to Stomach County Council Public Infrastructure and Conservation Committee for Tuesday, March 17 at ten a. M. We're meeting in the Jackson Boardroom and remotely. Before we, do our roll call, I do want to read our public comment script. We'll take public comment beginning with in person and then remotely. In Zoom, click on the hand icon to raise your hand. If calling by phone, press 9 to raise your hand. When called upon, press 6 to unmute. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak, and please start your comment with your name and city of residence. With that, we'll go ahead and do roll call.

Committee Chair Lo.

Present.

Vice Chair Dunn? Here. Committee member Nearing?

Here.

Committee member Mead?

Here.

Committee member Peterson? Chair, there are four members present.

Great. Thank you. Next on the agenda is public comment. Anybody in person wishing to do public comment, just step up to the podium, and you'll have up to three minutes. Don't all rush at once. All right. Do we have anybody online with their hand raised?

No hands are raised.

Okay. We'll go ahead and close public comment and move into our action items today. First on the agenda is motion 26 dash 26 dash one one three.

Thank you for the record Heidi Bazizo. Motion 26 dash one one three approves a mitigation agreement between the county and the city of Arlington for operations at the North County Recycling and Transfer Station, otherwise known as NCRTS. The County owns and operates the NCRTS, and this agreement allows the City of Arlington to reasonably charge the County to mitigate the impacts to city roads and services. The payments will be made every quarter, beginning 03/31/2026, and are based on ton miles, which is agreed to as 1.8 miles traveling on city streets, by Snohomish County solid waste transfer trailers. This agreement expires on December 30 thirty first, excuse me, 2030, and the request today is for council to, move this to March 25 for consideration.

Alright. Any comments or questions from council members? All right. Hearing none, we'll go ahead and move this to March 25 on consent unless there's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent and move to motion 26 dash one one four.

Good morning, counsel. For the record, Debbie Mock, counsel staff. Proposed motion 26 dash one one four would approve and authorize the county executive to execute the agreement and any amendments with Energy Systems Management doing business as TRS Mechanical Incorporated. TRS Mechanical was selected through RFP to provide HVAC and cooling equipment maintenance and repair services for county buildings. The agreement takes effect upon execution through three years from the effective date for a cost not to exceed $500,000. The facilities and fleet department is currently without a contract for these services and has requested expedited processing. The requested action today is for council to move to GLS on March 18 for consideration.

Great. Thanks. Any comments or questions from council members? All right. We'll go ahead and move this to consent on March 18 unless there's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent and go to motion 26 dash one two four.

Proposed motion 26 dash one two four would approve and authorize the county executive to execute an interlocal agreement for information technology services and associated work orders and amendments between Snohomish County and Cross Valley Water District. The county and Cross Valley Cross Valley Water District have had a negotiated agreement for IT services since 2020. This allows the district to use the county's technology infrastructure and expertise. The proposed ILA allows for a continuation of that agreement with a not to exceed amount of $60,000 for the next five years. Today's request is for council to move to GLS on March 25 for consideration.

Alright. Any comments or questions from council members? Hearing none, we'll, move that to consent on March 25 unless there's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent and go to motion 26 dash one two seven.

Proposed motion 26 dash one two seven would approve and authorize the county executive to execute amendment three to the agreement with Judge Technical Services Incorporated. Judge Technical Services provides professional IT staffing as needed during times of peak workload and or support in areas where the Department of Information Technology lacks expertise or resources. The department has a need for continued augmentation services to assist with multiple projects that are underway. This amendment would increase the contract amount by $600,000 and extend the agreement for two additional years. The total amended amount of the agreement is not to exceed, $2,200,000. Today's request is for counsel to move to GLS on March 25 for consideration.

Alright. Any comments or questions from council members? Hearing none, we'll move this to consent on March 25 unless there's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent and go to motion 26 dash one two eight.

Proposed motion 26 dash one two eight would approve and authorize the county executive to execute the state and local cybersecurity grant agreement as well as any amendments. The Department of Information Technology applied for and was awarded grant in the amount of $24,000 from the state and local cybersecurity grant program for one time investments strengthening this county's cybersecurity stance. The grant will fund firewall training for Snohomish County's three network engineering team members to maintain and support the county's firewall infrastructure. The requested action today is for council to move to GLS on March 25 for consideration.

Alright. Any comments or questions from council members? Hearing none, we'll move this to consent on March 25 unless there's objection. Hearing none, we'll move that to consent and move to our two discussion items. First, discussion item is the enterprise resource planning ERP project update. Welcome, Vigo. No worries. We're not in a rush today.

Thank you. Thanks for the patience. For the record, Viggo Ford, Department of Information Technology director. I don't own anything green at all in my closet. So this is what this is what you get today, a little bit of green on the slide. So forgive me for that if you're Irish. Thank you for taking the time to to get an update from us today. There's been a lot going on, on this project in the last many years. And I'm going to take you back through the time machine a little bit because this has been such an ongoing project and I think it's good for you to maybe get a refresher of what we have done and why and so on. So we'll do a real quick review of that.

Obviously, want to talk about the project. We want to talk about how things are going. A very key part of this is the methods and ways that we engage with the departments to make sure that all of the needs for the business are heard. So we'll dive into that a little bit, and then we'll take any kind of questions that you may have. So let me get rid of that. Oh, you can. I see more on my screen than you see. I'll go back to the time machine a little bit. You might recall about almost three years ago now, we came up here and had a conversation around what is an ERP, why do we need it. And we started out with some basic principles.

I did want to run through those because they have been critical for us as we've gone through this project. We operate under in IT, we operate under a cloud first, not cloud only, but cloud first approach. Knowing this is a generational investment. That was a really important part to make sure that we invested in a cloud solution. We also wanted an entire platform.

We did not want to go buy one HR solution from one place and a finance solution from another place. We wanted one platform that is fully what's called compostable, if you will, in the IT language that is a true platform. We also wanted to really listen to people who have done this before us. How did it go? I think you all know there are some not successful stories out there, even in our local area.

And then we also want to bring in external partners to help us do the work, Sometimes because we don't have the skills, sometimes because we don't have the right or the adequate resources and so on. And then same thing with an external systems integrator. This is the most complex IT project any organization can ever do. So having a professional organization that helps us get this implemented is critical. And then last but not least, ensuring that we really focus on change management.

So we've weighed ourselves a little bit on this in the project team three years later. And we have pretty much met all of these requirements in terms of how we report this project. I'm not going to go through all of this, but I want to focus you in on the right side of the slide here, which is really around the end goal for what we're doing here. This is a system that will help our employees first and foremost. Now there's much more to it than that.

You can talk about information security and data security, interoperability, again, because it's a platform, all of these geeky things that we care about in IT. But really this is about employee productivity. It's about optimizing and ensuring that we can take better advantage of a modern cloud based system so that our County employees and our residents as well when they interact with us have a better experience, a more modern experience as well. And I touched on this a little bit, but the improvement of data management and reporting along with that reducing security risks as well. Security and risk management go hand in hand.

And we currently do live with a fair amount of risk in our technical environment simply because of how fragmented our systems are. So this will help us address that risk factor as well. This is again a slide I won't talk about a lot, but this is something we have used to talk about the complexity of the County. We may not be large organization wise compared to many organizations, but we're highly complex. The number of collective bargaining units that we have, the number of offices and departments, large seasonal staff.

There's a very large complexity in job codes and pay codes and so on, many benefits plans and on and on and on. We also have a significant number of applications and a lot of systems that have to be integrated into the new system because it will not be able to replace everything that we have. So in short, really this is a highly complex environment and that has also meant that we have taken a really long time to ensure that we found the right systems integrator and that we've also worked really hard on the contract that really reflects the complexity of the work that we're about to start. So really quick summary of where we are today. We are on track.

We're on schedule and on budget. Granted, not all of the funds have been approved. We'll get to that a little bit later. We have also reached final agreement with IBM, which is going to be the systems integrator. The contract is in final legal review as we speak.

And we expect that you will see the package at your desk hopefully by the end of this month. And our goal is to kick off what we call Phase zero in the April. The actual implementation work itself, the more heavy design work and the very heavy engagement with the partners and so on, will start over the summer and continue on for, frankly, two to three years after that. So this is a long journey. So again, little bit of a summary of what we have been working on.

In 2024, we selected Oracle as the ERP platform. They are a world class provider, as you probably know. They have been an incredibly strong partner for us so far. And I'm very happy with the relationship we have fostered with Oracle. We formed a steering committee that's a representation of all of the project leads plus a number of other people that I'll touch on in a sec.

We've done baseline business analysis and have done literally hundreds of engagements with departments already as a project team. So we are really way down the path of talking about this project on the business side. Again, we selected IBM. We formed what we call the ERP project office, which is the functioning body that helps us implement and do the project work here. And again, we've touched a lot of departments and individuals and that is a really key part of this is that we ensure that a strong employee engagement and strong leadership engagement as well.

And we have formed a training strategy to make sure that we can get trained early, that employees get a chance to see what this new system is going to look like and so on and so forth. So we have, I think, about 40 licenses of what's called Oracle University already that we are consuming and letting people go in there and look at the UI, look at the workflows and so on and so forth, just to kind of get ahead of on the training plan a little bit. This is a very, very high level schedule. You can see starting in Q1, Q2 of this year what we call phase zero. This is sort of foundational things, the accounting system on the back end, looking at our data foundation to make sure that we can get ready from a foundational perspective when we get going.

Also doing a lot of demos and conversations with departments on demonstrating how the systems work and what they can expect things things will look like when we are in Oracle. When we get to July, we expect that we'll kick off a zero and that's when the clock really starts running. We're expecting about a twelve month window for finance. We will stagger the HCM, which is for human capital management and payroll modules, about a quarter. And then there are some, again, foundational data analysis and intelligence work, if you will, that sits on top of the platform that will be part of the journey the whole way.

There are additional modules. Won't get into that today. We're having very active engagements and conversations around grants management, for example, that is a very large need. That comes later. We have to get all of the basic systems implemented before we can get into these additional systems.

Excuse me. I will get my voice back. So the engagement model I talked about really is pretty broad and all encompassing. We have everything from leadership forums that we have conducted on a quarterly basis. The last one was just about ten days ago.

We have communities of practice that we're forming for subject matter experts. We have sent out meeting invites to office hours, so any employee in the county can call in and just talk about or ask questions about this project. We'll be doing town halls led by sponsors and involving our two partners, Oracle and IBM in those town halls as well. We will have community forums to make sure that people have a place to socialize and talk about what's going on. And of course, strong set of project resources as well that come along with the project.

The EPO or the project office, and you can see here names are actually called out in case you ever wonder about your particular favorite part of the ERP system and you want to get details around that, can reach out, ask questions. Nice if you come to me first. We can help get you to the right person if you want to do that, but we want to have a very transparent and open model here so that you really can go to anybody that you're that you want to talk to about this. Really, the whole idea of this structure is to ensure that we have strong cross functional engagement and teamwork, that we really are focused and we leverage the expertise in the areas where we know that that expertise is needed. And then along with that, of course, the people side of this, which is really the large opportunity to transform how we work and the methods that we use at the county.

Again, I'm not going to talk to this, but this goes one step further and shows a little bit about the cadence of the different engagement methods that we have with county employees and leaders. Quarterly leadership forums, town halls a couple times a year. That's very large meetings for anybody that wants to be there. And then a lot of other ongoing activities as well. And again, the names are on the prior slide if you want to go talk to any individual about how that work is going in their area.

So last slide before we stop and take some questions here. So things I want you to take away from this conversation. These projects are only successful if every level of the organization is not only engaged, but also supportive. It's a hard project. It will take a long time.

So that full interaction with every level of the county is going to be critical. The other part of it too and we're actively talking to all the departments, there will be times where we will need to reach out and engage with department subject matter experts. Think about testing, for example. So when design is over, there will be testing periods and we need employees to help make sure that the system works as intended and designed. We will obviously also engage on the design side to make sure that we hear the needs that the business has.

The second bullet here approval and protection of project funding and resources and again another critical part of this. So when you see the IBM contract, obviously, we're here to answer any questions about that, but ensuring that you're familiarize yourself with that, including the funding package that comes with that. There is a small revenue part, if you will, or bond that comes with it. It's not very large. You can get into details on that if you're interested.

But that really helps take the pressure off of the IT rates over the next couple of budget cycles. And the other part of it too is the project resources that we have requested to be part of it are critical for success. And that has how that's how the statement of work has been designed. We have a responsibility to show up with those resources so that IBM can actually deliver on the work that we have hired them to do. I've talked about the project discipline and this is something we take very serious.

We've had Red Cloud Consulting in the house for a couple of years that have helped us design and organize structure that will run as overall project managers. And again, they have demonstrated capabilities that are superior to anything we have in the county that helps us actually confidently deliver on this project. And then one of the things I'd like to talk to you about in the future is what I generally refer to as a financial roadmap. Over time, we will start to turn off systems, which will then allow us to save money on licensing for those systems. So part of what we want to do is give you some insight into that over the next year.

So you have some idea of where we're actually bringing money back to the county as well. So with that, I will stop and see what questions I can answer.

Alright. Council member Dunn?

Yeah. Appreciate the update. I also appreciate the kind of regular updates through the teams. I don't know if those are the community forums, but, the kind of management level updates. So that's been helpful. Do you know so are you going to be tracking not just the retiring systems, but are you tracking, like, before and after? For me, I think, like, the redundancy and some of the staff time savings Yes. Especially for the reporting and, some of those efforts. So are you tracking, like, before and after so that we can get a better understanding of savings?

Yes. So the excuse me again. The operational excellence team is here to help us document where we are today. The level of precision on that might vary a little bit depending on what part of the business you're talking about because it is, again, very complex. So we're highly focused on looking forward, not looking back. But we do obviously want to understand what that savings opportunity looks like as well.

Okay. And then one other question for me. So, also, what type of input did you get from outside the county family? So we do a lot of contracting. There's a lot of interactions with, like, finance for contracts and grants and pass through grants? Or did you get input on from outside the county on some of these efforts?

So you're talking about agencies that work with the county, if you will? Okay. Yes. Yes. We have not engaged directly with those agencies other than they have been they get all of the invites to the community forums and so on. So they I think I've seen some outside agencies show up at a couple of our leadership forums. So yes, they're aware, but there hasn't been a lot of active engagement. We most of those things and I may be oversimplifying, but it's about finance engagements. So I really have that frogging my throat today, apologize. But the finance team, obviously, is here to ensure that those design elements are covered.

Thank you.

All right. Any other comments or questions from council members? Thank you, Viggo, for your presentation. And as you know, we regularly meet on this all the time. And so I'm glad you could brief the rest of council on

it. We're So here to answer any questions. Don't wait for us to come up here if you're curious about something. We were obviously here to make sure that this got successful.

Great. Thanks so much.

Thanks so much. Appreciate the time.

All right. Next discussion item is we have the Transportation Benefit District presentation to council and, Kelly Snyder. I'm guessing team.

Stand by for just a minute.

We're not in a hurry. Just know the IT people just left, though, so if we have any problems. Oh, there you are.

We're just testing to see if I'm muted. Good. Great. Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Kelly Snyder. I'm the public works director for here at Snohomish County in my sixth year here at the council or at the county. So I have a short presentation, and normally, I am joined by Deputy Director and County Engineer Doug McCormick, who I am sure is watching online. He is, at home and, doing a little recovery right now. So, I have a couple of staff behind me in case you ask me really hard questions that I may not remember the answer to, because there are a few details that they oftentimes know that I do not. So, in case you we have backup, just in case.

So today, I'm here to talk about the Transportation Benefit District. And thank you for digging in this with me. This is a little bit complicated. It's only one of a whole myriad of things that has how we've arrived at this place. Let me go to the second slide.

So, when I think about county roads, I think about the calls the public advocate get. I think about the calls that you all get. I think about the calls to our roads hotline. I think about what is the foundation of our community. And the road and the roads and the lights and the bridges are getting people to where they need to go, whether that's their jobs, whether it's kids going to school on the school bus, whether it's the resources that are coming out of East County to help build the housing, the businesses that we need in this community, whether it's the ramps that are needed for ADA to get people to a bus stop or to their local school, whether it's the schools that need the flashing lights to make sure that children are getting to school safely, whether it is the speed bumps and humps that we have in varying communities to slow down traffic, whether it's the roundabouts that are necessary to provide the increased safety that we are needing in our communities, Whether it's the fire districts or fire the all of the apparatus that needs to go from point A to point B to make sure that they can, tend to either some sort of fire or medical emergency.

These roads are so essential for every piece of our community. And when I think about that, I think about the hundreds of staff that we have that plow, that pave, that preserve, that fill the potholes, that do the design, I want to say right of way acquisition, that really do the hardcore engineering, that do the bridge inspections. These are the team members that every day come to the office or are out in the field or sometimes working remotely that really make this system that we have to be delivering on these 1,600 miles of roads and the two ten bridges, 13 of which are currently under a weight restriction. It is also the many jurisdictions that we assist with paving. It's also the 12 jurisdictions that we assist with their traffic light system, because it's not just ours that we maintain that are over 200 of those intersections.

When the power goes out, our staff are there. They're working with the PUD. They're making sure we respond during any of those storm circumstances. I think about in December when we had the floods, we literally ran out of signs. That's how many roads that we were closing.

And thankfully, Lynn would let us borrow a few, that we needed. It's the staff who are up in the middle of the night at 2AM responding to a sheriff's call, making sure that we can close a roads road so that they can investigate either injury or fatality that's happened on the roadway due to speeding, reckless driving, distracted driving. When I think about the roads, it's more than just the FTEs. It's all the people that we affect every single day. And I wanted to we'll dive into numbers here in a second, but for me, it's about that.

And I think about that at every moment of our day. Let's go to the next slide. When I think about the property tax, I think about all the parts of the property tax that get paid to other parts, either of the county or the state. And when I look at the barely four percent that we get in road levy and many thanks to the council for voting on the 1% every single year there is no capacity, banked capacity, for the road levy. I get asked that often.

There is no bank capacity because you have made that investment and making sure that, that is able to be invested back into the road levy. But 1% does not keep up with the increases in inflation that I don't have control over. I don't have control over 39% of inflation for construction. If you ask any other jurisdiction, they are also wrestling with this racking their brains, how are we going to make how are we going to deliver all the projects? How are we going to keep the staff?

How are we going to maintain our equipment? Those are all essential pieces for us, and that's what this 4% does. And how do we are we efficient? We get that question all the time. And Doug and I talk with our colleagues around, and they're always asking, How are you so darn efficient?

And I want to say that it's a shout out to our outstanding staff. It's also because we look very strategically about what we purchase, how we maintain our resources, how we can leverage other things to make sure that we have the funds available, how we do that over time. It's not just a decision today. It was a decision from two years ago and four years ago and six years ago and far beyond my time here. But also looking towards the future.

How are we going to leverage all those? And we actually have more lane miles you've heard me say this before more lane miles than King County. We have more intersections than King County. And if you compare the makeup of the urban and the rural in King County, we have far more urban area, and that is far more expensive for us, and that is growing exponentially. I think about the stormwater facilities that come with each development that go in.

We are required to maintain those facilities according to state law. And we will continue to do those because it is a requirement for us. Go to the next slide. So we take those dollars, and we leverage them, because that's a smart thing to do. We take the nickels and dimes, and we apply.

We have some of the most incredibly creative staff who look for grants at every step of the way. Those are grants that oftentimes come for free, although we'll take those too. They oftentimes come with some sort of matching requirement, whether it's 10% or 20%. And so we must take the road levy and then use that as a leverage point. We're sort of at the point now, unfortunately, that we are unable to seek additional grant funds.

So the three to one essentially goes to way goes away. We don't have enough of the one to get the three. We are also looking at, can we even keep the three? And we'll talk about that more in a couple of slides. Let's go ahead and to the next slide.

So we have been very diligent about looking over the last several years about how we are being good stewards, being efficient, leveraging everything we can. I like to refer to our teams as very MacGyver like. Whether it's the old MacGyver of the '80s or the more current MacGyver, the same is true. We have tried to pull out every every tool we can to make sure that we are MacGyver, making wise choices and wise decisions. The gas tax is declining.

Nothing I can do about that. Even with increased taxes on gas, it's still declining for us. The inflation at 39% is extraordinary, again, something that's outside of our control. And the regulatory requirements that we must continue to meet, I referred to the stormwater detention facilities. We also have striping requirements, but not for everywhere.

We get that question of like, why can't you stripe my section of road? First of all, it's not required. We only do the things that we're required to do because we don't have enough funds to do the things that we would or nice to haves. We must have our asset management. We must be able to keep our roads, to a certain pavement condition index. That number is 70. Right now, we're at about 80. Some roads are a little bit less. Some are a little bit more, but on average, 80. My concern is if that we do not have the resources, we are going to start seeing those conditions to deteriorate further than they are now.

We used to be a little higher than an 80 because we're trying to balance as best we can, balancing responses, to weather events, responses to being able to build new things, responses to provide safety throughout our communities. So it's never an easy decision. I talk about four dimensional spreadsheets. That's how the brains of the folks behind me work all the time is, if we do this, what three things are the impact or what 10 things are the impact? I don't come to you today because we haven't been thoughtful about all those impacts, but rather we've made some very difficult choices and we're sort of at the end of being able to do that.

Let's move to the next slide, please. So when I look at a 6,000,000 to $9,000,000 shortfall for public works by the end of this year, I think about, what other actions might have to take place if a transportation benefit district is not enacted and revenue starting to be collected. The last two years, we had to borrow in the fall to make payroll before the tax receipts for property tax came in, which isn't the most terrible thing. It's a tool that we utilize. But for the first time ever, we are likely having to borrow in the spring.

We have to pay ourselves back just fine, but at some point very soon, there will be no money to borrow. That means we have to cut somewhere between 6,000,000 and $9,000,000, or we have increased revenue. One of those two things. So where do we make up that shortfall of 6,000,000 to $9,000,000? Yes, we're looking at cutting 14 projects, but it's not just about the 14 projects.

If you look at the fiscal sustainability committee, they made a series of recommendations. And in those recommendations, they had an FTE of equivalent. Dollars 6,000,000 is an equivalent to F34 FTEs. I cannot cut out of road maintenance any further. We need to be able to have respond to weather events, we need to continue paving, and we need to continue to fill up potholes.

Those are just pure safety within our communities. But what I can cut are the staff who are designing, planning for these 14 projects. $66,500,000 are the projects that we have grants. So when we've cut for the last number of years, we have saved, wisely so, all of the projects that had grant funds. Why would we ever turn back money that's free to us, or nearly free, that require very little road levy?

And so we are now at that point. Here's the other thing that will likely happen. If we cut those projects, and there's a list of them there, and you can ask me questions about why those versus other ones, and I'll tell you. What happens to the continued growth that happens in these areas? It will cause traffic congestion to increase, And in transportation engineering speak, that means we would have to put the roads in arrears.

And arrears means that a developer who comes in with an application can no longer buy their way out or pay mitigation enough to build the next development. So eight roads in arrears, likely within the next ten years. These are primarily in the Southwest UGA. This is where the growth under growth management and our comprehensive plan for this county is intended to have a significant amount of growth. These roads are essential for our communities to continue to provide affordable housing, to provide any sort of housing, to support businesses within our communities.

It concerns me that these actions on this slide would likely put our transportation program back ten to twenty years. If we shut these projects down, we would have to go and reapply once funding was available. For the grants, we'd have to reapply for grants, we'd have to reapply for permits, we would have to hire the staff back. If not these staff, what other staff are available within our community? These are not fun choices for any of us.

No one wants us to be here. Let's go to the next slide, please. So let's talk about timeline. It is no small task to reduce FTE by 34. It is no small task to reduce the amount of projects that we have open, and we'd be very diligent about saving as many as we possibly can.

But again, if you won't have the staff as many there, how do you design them? How do you implement them? So in our estimation, we need a final decision, about $6,000,000 by June 1. It will take us six months. If the answer is no, it will take us six months to shut down the projects and lay off the staff.

If their answer is yes to the TBD, then we retain the staff, we retain those 14 projects and the grants that go with them. It takes DOL, Department of Licensing, to implement the transportation benefit district six months. It's the same block of time. That's what this slide talks about. So June 1 is sort of the hard deadline that we need an answer one way or the other. Let's move to the next slide. Here's the why. I guess I already said that. It takes us that six months to do one or all of those things together. Let's go to the next slide.

What have we done internally? We've pushed out $100,000,000 of capital. That's just last year. The several years before that, we've pushed out more capital. And I am now concerned about what this does for our GMA compliance. We have cut $10,000,000 in operations expenses. I won't go through the whole litany of things that you see on this slide, but I'll point out the four that are starred. Those are also recommendations that are presented in the Fiscal Sustainability Task Force that was prepared and put together by the executive last fall. This task force made a series of recommendations, and that would apply both to the general fund as well as to public works. We, in fact, have done all of these things over the last several years.

We could see this coming. We knew that it was something we needed to do. We've done them already. We've reduced service levels. Reducing service levels means a whole sort of thing, and I'm not putting all of that on a slide, but it does increase the risk that we have to this county, and that is also deeply concerning.

Not only do we not have 74 staff here in public works today, and I'm talking about the roads fund funded staff, we also made the choice to not hire 60 seasonals for road maintenance this year. We did not take that lightly. We sat down with the union and said, here are choices. We've cut overtime for those staff already. Those 60 FTE are folks that we need to make sure that we're doing the proper cleaning of ditches so we do not have more flooding. It's people who are doing flagging so that we can do the maintenance. So we are going to be doing less of all of those things this summer. Service levels will drop. And you're likely and you get calls now. You're likely going to get calls.

You're probably going to get more calls. And then you're going to send them to us and I'll say, okay, we'll add it to the list. But it may not happen right of way. We have to keep assessing the risks for each of those circumstances. Let's move to the next slide.

Here is the cut that we've been continuing to make over the last several years. This is the $100,000,000 that I was referring to. Let's move to the next slide. Here are the projects that we have, been cutting or deferring or reducing. You're not necessarily need to see all the minor details. We have provided and will give you an updated version of each of these for each of your districts and a map if you are so inclined. I've talked about the operations and maintenance. We gotta keep up those signs. You know, with the big windstorm we had and the flood, it's a one two punch. When we get a lot of rain and then we get the the winds, those top signs pop down.

So we got to run through in the middle of the night. We have sign workers on call 247, and they go out and put those signs up. And we get the, combination of, trees coming down on the power lines. We close the road. The PUD comes out. They address the power lines, and then we are able to do the cleanup on the road with all the debris, and then we open the road again. Go ahead and move on to the next slide. You've heard me talk about the Fiscal Sustainability Task Force. You had members of the task force here last week. You heard from them about what they felt was, of concern and how they proposed recommendations.

We have the TBD is only one of those recommendations. That yields $6,000,000, a year. It's about $05,000,000 a month. It will start six months, if that is the direction, we are given, six months after, the action is taken and we can get submission to DOL. It is not just that.

It is also about a levy, a levy lid lift for the Roads Fund. And that is something that takes some time, somewhere between nine and twelve months to have a successful levy. You need to develop community support. And unlike school districts who have foundations, same with hospital districts who have foundations, you have fire districts who run levies who also have very active and engaged unions, They have those support systems already in place. We do not.

We have not ever been out for a levy, lead lift for roads. So that will take some time to assemble those folks. It's very important, that that starts in urgency right of way. Let's move to the next slide. I've highlighted this a couple of times, but it's reduction of staff, canceling 14 projects, which equals $66,500,000 and turning back grants.

Essentially, little to no ACP tip. We definitely have to continue our overlay. That just makes the most fiscal sense, and it puts us back a number of years. Let's go to the next slide. The $20 vehicle license fee that's part of the Transportation Benefit District will preserve the things, the $66,500,000 the staff, as well as the projects, helps us maintain our ability to respond to emergency weather events, and it buys us time to help with a longer term solution like a levy lid lift.

No one solution is available at this point in time, given where we are. Let's go to the next slide. Who else has TBDs? So of the number of cities that we have in this county, all but four. All but four have enacted some sort of TBD, and all but one of those has actually started collecting revenue, whether through car tabs or through sales tax.

I was asked last week by a mayor of a local city, why did you not consider sales tax? And the answer is it actually collects less for us than a TBD with a license fee. It would only collect $4,500,000 The TBD withdrew a license fee collects $6,000,000 So those are the dollars. It's also that this it's not just about the transportation. It's also about the larger fiscal issues that the county is facing.

And I know that the teams have been talking about with you from the exec's office about the public safety and that there are sales tax associated with that something their recommendations around that. So since we have a different kind of lever through the license fee, this seems to be, at this moment in time, the most appropriate. I will say, I'll just highlight that both Briar and Mill Creek recently, proposed those and, the TBD through license fee. Neither had any sort of rise up negative reaction within their communities. They are moving forward implementing them, and we've talked with pretty much everybody's staff at this point in time to see what they've learned through their process.

One county has implemented so far, Jefferson County, which surprised me. And so we've talked to Jefferson County as well, and, they've given us a number of insights about how to make sure that this is the most effective. Let's move to the last slide. I guess I'm done now. I suspect you might have a few questions for me, and I stand ready to answer what I can.

All All right. Any comments or questions from council members? Council Member Meade?

Thank you. I have a handful of questions, but I'll I'll just start with a couple, then we can go back down. First of all, thank you for the presentation. And then thank you for the hours and hours and hours that you've spent with me and had your team available to me just privately to ask even more questions, and building the graphs, and the Excel sheets that you've educated me on, and all this. So I just want to thank you publicly for all of that.

You're welcome.

So the first question I have is on the last slide that we just saw. You said that the sales tax would only raise, you said 4,000,000?

4.5.

But it's a it's so it's a one tenth 1% sales tax.

That's right.

So and the public safety sales tax, which is the same percentage, raises 23,000,000. So why why does it only raise Unincorporated. Unincorporated. Because it doesn't because it excludes the cities. Correct. Did it this way.

That's correct.

Okay.

That's right. Thank you for that math. And for the assist. I don't even have to turn back here. That's amazing.

So, if you if you were to put a number on the total deficit that we're looking at, the structural deficit, I think you might have said it in the first or second slide. It's around $30,000,000 annually that we are looking at trying to fill.

Currently, it's 6,000,000 to $9,000,000 just for operation, maintenance and preservation. So, are trying to plug the hole right now just to maintain. If we want to build back the capital investment, that's something more, and it's around $30,000,000

Okay. So $6,000,000 from a car tab if we just did the 20. And if we were thinking about doing the other $20 later on, another 6,000,000, 12,000,000, that still doesn't come close to covering the 30,000,000. The next step would be the roads levy. The roads levy raises how much?

The roads levy lid lift, and that's a complicated question.

Because we get to choose.

There there are variable factors. You could do a onetime percentage increase in a single year. You could do a onetime or a multiyear levy lid lift. You could you know, there's a certain threshold, and I don't know what that threshold is. Let's say you wanted to do all of it.

Right? Not not in love with a car tab or a second part of a car tab because you can only do 20 the first time for a CAR tab and 20 a second time and 10 for a third time, and you have to wait a block of time between each of those. Maybe you didn't want to do a second one or a third one, and you want to do it all in a levy lid lift. This is why we have extensive spreadsheets with a number of things. But, it could be it just depends on what the council's appetite and the public app his appetite.

Rephrase it. So, is there a cap, though, on how much we could do with the roads levy? Or we could put anything out there and the voters say yes or no?

I I think you could pretty much put anything out there. I think you would have to test to see what the public is willing to engage with.

Okay. My I guess, final question before I turn it to the other council members. You you mentioned that we we saw this coming and that it's been a few years of us kinda ratcheting down spending and trying to kinda keep it afloat. But this is the first time that council's being made aware that it's, like, time to break the emergency glass and pull all the levers. So I'm confused as to why it took this long for the executive the executive's office to come before us and tell us, hey, this is a huge problem, and we're gonna have to deal some do do do something about it.

We've had three budget cycles since you showed a graph of a downward trajectory. And now we're in this position where we're in a corner, and it's like, gotta do car tabs, we gotta do a lead and then we gotta do car tabs again and maybe car tabs again. So why did it take so long?

So I'll give you a fourfold answer. First, there are many county priorities. Roads is one of them. Happens to be my favorite. I I have some solid waste workers here. I do love them too. Thanks. Thanks, guys. But right now, we're talking about the roads. So there are many demands on the county and their budgets.

So you can't front on all fronts at you know, fight on all fronts at the same time. Secondly, I've done several presentations around our fiscal crisis, maybe not to the same level of detail, but it is something I've done every single year. And the last three years, specifically, I've said, look, there there are issues, and they're coming, and we're working on it. We've done our internal work. Now it is more evident, I think, to everyone that the crisis is here, and the escalation goes very quickly.

We talk to every jurisdiction too, and they're like, it's sort of shocking about how quickly the escalation is happening. So I think it's those four factors together, and and here we are having this conversation today.

How many years ago would you have said we started doing layoffs and project delays?

Three years ago, we so I'll be very clear. We're not we have not gotten to 74 with layoffs. We have been strategically doing management of vacancies, which is one of the fiscal task force recommendations, right? We have done that intentionally. COVID got a bit of a jump start on us six years ago, and we had some vacancies. We didn't see the intensity. We were able to handle much of the construction inflation internally. That helped us. We had good bids. But then three years ago, we saw a turn and a change.

And so we said, we're gonna do this vacancy strategic management. So we have been increasing those numbers exponentially, and and the union is aware. I've been in frequent every single it feels like daily right now, but at least monthly. I personally go to the labor management meetings, and we have this conversation. Here's what the vacancies are. Here's how we're hiring. Here's why we need to hold this one open. And now we have notified the executive's office that of those vacancies, we are gonna turn back a chunk of those because of the charge of the overhead associated with them. Because without a stable funding source, there's no way we can continue to hold them or fill them over time. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

So I'm going cut to the chase here because we're out of time for committee meetings. So we are going to take another question or two. But we're going to hold the these three, motions or ordinances here till, our April meeting, I think, twenty first. So we're gonna keep this in so council members can still ask more questions. The public can ask more questions. We'll then set a public hearing after that date. We'll still make the June June 1 timeline. But, obviously, this is a big thing for everybody. We need time to digest this. The public needs time to digest this.

We need time to talk to our constituents and for our constituents to talk to us. So everything today after this, we'll we'll move to the next, to two meetings from now, the twenty first, and then we'll proceed from there. But if there's any pressing questions because this is gonna be back in committee, so we're gonna talk about it again in a month. Is there any pressing questions from the other two? Councilmember Dunn?

I just had one quick one on timeline. So well, on slide 10, the capital projects reduction. Sorry. I don't know if you can bring it up real quick. But it shows the decrease in in those in our CIP program. So the first one was in 2024. That was voted on in 2023. Is that correct? Correct. And that's a separate that's presented to counsel along with the budget, and that's voted on. So we received information when we passed the budget and heard that projection in 2023 and have voted each year on these decreases based on presentations from you

Correct.

On the lack of funding or the need for revenue and that we're essentially tightening our belts.

Correct.

Okay. But we were never asked to take a CARTAB vote or to put a levy on the ballot or to increase any type of revenue.

That is correct. Right.

Councilmember Neri?

Yeah. Just a couple questions. I think they'll be really quick. You had mentioned so the the gap for operations is 6 to 9,000,000. The capital is 30. Does that include the 30 for capital? So it's 30 plus 6 to 9,000,000? Correct. Okay. And you can use the levy, lid lift dollars for operations and capital. Correct? Correct. Not limited to capital. Okay.

That's correct.

And last question real quick. You had mentioned, like, nine to twelve months was your thought on a timeline for a levy lid lift. What do you have a particular election that you're looking at?

So sometime in '27, either February or in the spring.

Got it. Okay. Thank you.

So just for expectations for the next time we talk about this, probably a five minute presentation just to maybe give us updated stuff from today, for the next month. And then the rest of time will probably be questions that council members have. And then hopefully, we'll have the opportunity to move these ordinances depending on what the council decides to do. So thank you for your presentation today. We're right at 10:59. So we're going to adjourn this meeting. And we'll be in recess for about one to two minutes before our planning and community development meeting. So thank you. We are Chair?

Oh, yes. Could could we please clarify care, clarify when you would like those ordinances heard?

They'll be heard they'll be heard in the, is it the twenty first or April 22?

April 21.

Twenty first.

Twenty first. April 21. So we'll carry those three over till the twenty first.

Thank you.

Great. Thanks. Alright. We're in recess for a minute or two.