Legislative Meeting - Regular Meeting

Welcome everyone. It is May 18th, 2026. This is our 900 a.m. strategic planning meeting of the board of county commissioners. Please let the record reflect that in the conference room we have Commissioner Waldruff and Karns and virtually we have Commissioner Brooks. Um I believe we will be joined um in a few hours or about an hour and a half by Commissioner French and Commissioner Jordan is out today. So uh we are going to lead off today with a presentation uh focused on the budget. So I'm going to turn it over to Jeff Morris.

We're going to cover the four bullet points. We're going to take on a different corner this. So we're starting with GAD on liability. Um workers comp workers comp then liability. Liability is the big M. Yeah. Um, so when we get to that point, we will be looking for specific direction on what to put into our budgets because we need that pattern in for.

All right. Well, good morning. Thank you for your time. Um, there's our slides there. So, uh, if we advance to the next slide, we're going to talk about workers comp 505. Um, there's just kind of a a small statement down there below as we go into this that, you know, our continued efforts as a holistically the county does a great job trying to reduce workplace injuries. Um but there's a lot that's not in the county's control uh that are increasing and cause causing um additional expenses. And part of that is just medical and wage inflation, right? We don't have any control over how how costly it is to uh for somebody to go in services. Of course, our wage and how that how does that play into as far as the wage? How does that play into workers comp? Well, if somebody has a time loss claim, right, we start paying that out of the workers's comp until they can go back to work. And so that affects, right, the higher wages, the more that comes out of those funds. Um so if we move down to the next uh slide, you'll see back in um the end of 24. So this would have been um for the the 25 budget. Um this is kind of where we were trending, right? We were starting to trend in a downward. The green blocks that you see there, those are that's that's where we want to be for a one and 20 year event. Right? The bottom the bottom part of that uh to the upper limit, we'd like to be in the middle and that's where the actuary is projecting our losses to be. So if everything started coming in, those would be the reserves that you

would need to have in place. Um and currently um that's estimated between well in 2425 for 26 budget that was estimated at 4.8 million to 9.7 million on the high and you can see the black line um where we were kind of trending for a$.2 million loss. Um, if we move on to the next slide, this is the projection for 27 budget. And remember, we're always two years behind, right? So, this is uh this is the end of 25 projecting 47. Um, again, we're we're starting to tip the wrong way. So, our green blocks, the lower end for that has moved by a little over a million to 5.7 and the upper end to 11.3. Um, and right now, if we continue in the trend that we're moving, we're projected at a $1.3 million loss um if these were to start coming uh to fruition. Um so, again, we don't have control over this. We've got, you know, medical expenses that are creeping up there. It's not cheap anymore. We don't necessarily have increasing numbers in claims. Our claim levels stay pretty flat for the most part. Um, but it is wage increases in just medical expenses that uh if we go to the next slide. So again, this was 25 26 projections. This was uh a year ago projecting kind of where our losses might be historical projected ultimate losses there. This is with a sir if you see at the top of a million dollars retention for law enforcement or

police. So the first million dollars of any claim um uh is all county dollars um and then everybody else falls under that $750,000 detention. And so this was kind of just showing where our historical or projected ultimate losses would be. Um the trend is roughly a 7% annual growth and again most of that is due to growth in the wage and medical inflation because we for the most part have stayed pretty flat over 10 years. you'll see in 23 uh if we go to the next it'll be easier to see if we go to the next slide 23 and 25 you'll see and then also 19 but that was co you'll see those numbers were pretty high in our losses um but in 23 if you remember we had an incident uh with with a public works employee that was struck by a train so that's why you see the increase in 23 and then of course in 25. We had the unfortunate with Sergeant Solace out on I90. Um and so that broke those costs up to 25. Um the unfortunate thing is is with those two losses um it is driving our uh rate up with the insurance uh companies. So we put that out to bid 426. Um we had three three of those come back. um our current uh provider uh it was about a $200,000 um or not a $200,000 raise from 181,000 to 196,000. Um, that was the best we could get with staying with our current and that was moving from $1 million sir to $1.5

million sir for law enforcement and from 750 to 850 for everybody else. Um, when we put that out there, most of the bids came back um either half more expensive or double. One of the bids came back at $400,000 to keep our sir at 1.5 in 50. Um, and that is just a trend or just kind of I guess red flags to show you where the cost for insurance for workers comp uh as far as the excess insurance is starting. Trend is is starting expensive. So, so we did see that 8.2% 2% increase for 26 of our premiums. We are estimating another 8% increase in our premium. So that would drive it up to about 212,000 or 2007 or 27. Uh if we move on to the next slide, um the actuary always puts out, if you remember, they put out three funding options um and how you can affect your uh your fund balance. Um there's option one, two, and three. And just remember, option one typically is we're not really changing anything. We're not adding any money um at all. Um we're just trying to cover the expenses projected for the following year. Um option two, if you notice there, if it's a 10%, it would add about 278,000 and it's attacking that $1.2 $2 million deficit that the the um actuary is projecting in losses. Um so you can kind of see how that would affect that. And of course then option three is a 15%

which would reduce that deficit even further. Any questions on the workers comp so far? It's not as volatile as a liability. Of course, liability will be its own monster. We'll get to in a little bit. Burgers comp tends to stay a little bit more um level, right? We don't have unless we have the unfortunate incidences like the train incident and the Sergeant Solace incident, we we trend pretty flat for the most part. Um but we are seeing medical expenses starting to really go up and of course wages as those go up that really starts to affect the bottom line. Um, the only thing I caution, and I know, you know, we're all here and we're very aware of upcoming budget, is I just don't want to see workers comp start to go slide backwards and get into the liability issue. Um, if we were to go too far with the workers comp issue, the state could come in and take over. We do have reporting requirements to the state and if they don't see solveny there which there are additional funds that are set aside that we have nothing to do with that the auditors maintain. So if the county let's just say were to go uh bankrupt, there are funds there to cover these current um expenditures and those are there by statute and law. Um but if we trend too far backwards um it does open up the door for the state to come in and take over and they monitor basically and make sure that you're actually funding your program correctly before they let go and say that

after the actuary presented was Ashley Tim Dan the three of us and and Dan's team Um, we settled on recommending the 5% increase on this one primarily because we felt we could handle a smaller increase here knowing there's going to be the large increases needed with liability and medical. So, kind of to balance the overall world of increases, that's why we landed on a 5% increase. In the world of actuaries, more would be better. Um, that was where the consensus of our conversation went.

You can advance to the next slide. It just shows basically what that 5% increase would be. Um, it's an estimated, you know, they're estimating 2027 cost to be for the whole program to be about $4.7 million. Um, a 5% would inject just under 50,000. uh moving the total contributions to 4.8 eight and then it just shows the rates there. And just so I guess just clarity on how the rates work, those are based on worker hours, right? So every department is reporting their worker hours and we charge based on that. Um I have to estimate every year what the worker hours will be for our insurance and then that that is audited based off of what LNI what we produce at LNI. Um the insurance looks at that. Um in years past those numbers were inflated which would cause um basically for budget purposes. If you look at it, if you inflate those numbers, it looks like you're going to get a lot more money than you actually do because if you're inflating your projected worker hours and you come under that, you are not bringing as much into the program. Um, I have tightened that up to within a few hundred dollars uh within the audit. Um, before they were $10,000 plus dollars in the positive or overestimating. So we've we've cleaned that up pretty tight. So for the most part, these would be pretty actionable numbers. Again, it's it is all based on worker hours. So if worker hours increase, there's a little bit more that comes to workers comp. If worker hours are down, then that drops that it is somewhat squinted.

So, this is one we are hoping to get some direction on. Um, if you like the 5% or if you would like a

I'm comfortable with you guys moving forward at five. That's what you think is safe and prudent at this point. Commissioner Brooks, any thoughts? Um, I I agree with the 5% at this point, but I think this is these are the things that as we look at the overall budget, we need to be looking at at holistically, not isolating each thing. And I know Jeeoff, you're trying to look at it holistically for us. But I I think this is, you know, you know, part of as we start to make these decisions, we've got to be, you know, understanding how one affects the other. And then my other question is is um is this part of what gets build out then to each department based on their share of of workman's comp?

Yeah, it's it's it's build out through their worker hours reported back. So it's all based off worker hours. So, it's like as we increase this, I just wanted everyone to understand then we're increasing the portion to each department that they're having to pick up as we ask them to try to cut costs. We are adding to their required expenses. Yes. So, I just I just want us as board members to to understand that as as we are moving forward. In this instance, we play the role of the state is what you're saying. Yes. Finally, finally you're in the seat.

I mean, it I'm concerned that we probably need to fund it more, but I'm assuming that there are some other priorities as well. So, to your point, we're gonna have to balance them. So maybe I mean and you guys can come revisit it after you see the liability that one is a very large and just for the record I see we have been joined by commissioner French

liability. So we will uh advance that slide and move on to property and liability. Um and that is one thing to just remember. Property is tied into the liability fund. So they're they're they're two in one um on there. But the nice thing with property property is is a very uh level. It is not volatile. um property to get property insurance in the state of Washington for the most part there's still a lot of competition out there amongst insurance companies so it's uh it doesn't uh doesn't move a whole lot. Um again just a disclaimer there again you know with all the efforts that uh the county does to continue to reduce risk as a whole um we are grappling with the perfect storm and we've kind of talked to that um in different meetings. Um liability and property costs continue to rise. uh jury awards, increasing jury awards and these nuclear verdicts that go out um are driving these costs, making um especially um liability insurance carriers um nervous and so they're seeing those go up. Uh high litigation costs um and then property replacement costs are not cheap. Um, and the only thing I would speak to that is similar to the A Vista Stadium, you know, we're replacing that. The nice thing with that is that is a $25,000 deductible on our end, you know, for a 4. So, so that's nice, but but it is expensive. Uh, moving into the first slide. So, this is what we showed you a year ago for. Go ahead and advance to the next slide. Um this is what we showed you a year ago

for 2025. Um again the green is for the lack of better sense our reserves where the actuary is suggesting we should be for the reserves. So you have the upper bound and lower bound and that's for again a one and 20year event um that could be occurring. Um, and we were trending downwards uh pretty heavy last year. If you remember, we did a 49% increase. And that 49% increase was basically to say we're just covering the cost projected for 206, right? It wasn't adding to the fund balance, wasn't moving. It wasn't trying to get rid of the deficit. It was just trying to hold it still, right? Um if we move to the following for the next slide, this is uh the end of 25. So this is the projection. This is where we landed at the end of 25. Um and you can see there's a huge jump um in that green box or the reserves. And what is driving this as we've talked a lot is the sand claims. sand planes are putting a huge cloud really skewing um the uh the exposure and so right now we're trending at you know roughly a 12.3 million deficit and we are trending downwards but that has to do with the continued exposure primarily to these samples. Uh if we move on to the next slide, again, this just uh looks at future payments or losses. Um for the most part, as you can see, we're we're um pretty pretty level across there. We've

had a couple expenditures in 22 and in 24 as far as paying out some some liability um building losses. But again this is um these are older accidents things that are out there IBNR incurred but not yet reported right so the actuary takes that into effect consideration we move on to the following slide um we actually ended pretty well in 25 right the actuary had us um um uh estimated to have higher losses in 25 we actually trended quite a bit lower almost million less in losses in 25 which is great. Um but if you look at 26 and 27 they are spiking because again of seeing appointments and as you know we we have uh increased those by 100% since 25 and that's why you're seeing these numbers starting to spike. Any questions on those?

If we move. Yes, sir. Dan, can I ask you look back historically? I mean, you you see 16, 17, 18, 19, and then a drop in 20 and 21. You saw an up in 22, but it did drop in 23. What are things that I mean, what what actions can we take as a county that can help us in the out years from here? I mean because I mean historically it does sometimes go down. Um but I mean also I mean they look sort of statewide right and sort of it's not just us but is there anything that we can do that helps bring our costs down at the um you know for the most

other than putting more money in up front. I know. Um, for the most part, uh, a lot of it has to do with the economy and being something we don't have control over. When the economy is doing well, people are doing well, there's a a lot less claims that roll,

right? People aren't looking for reimbursement because of driving costs of just in general, right? Some of these you think about um these are pothole claims and different things that you know to go replace a tire might be a couple hundred bucks and if you're you know economyy's good that's not a big deal but if you're you know having a hard time putting gas in your car you blow out a tire I want the county to pay for it. Um so there is a lot of driving factor to how the economy affects claims right. Um we are starting to also see just in general the dollar amount the value of claims going up. Um you know you can see like you said 21 22 23 um we weren't getting nuclear verdicts except in Thurman we got all a sudden a nuclear verdict right um and that kind of in general started kicking off these nuclear verdicts throughout the state and so just the value of a claim is starting to go through the roof where we could you know potentially uh mediate and get rid of a claim for $100,000 Today that's a $300 to $500,000 expense. So it's uh it's mostly driven by the dollar value of the claim. Uh the nucle the nuclear verdicts that are going out are driving the actuary to say, "Hey, the value of your claims that we're projecting are starting to get real expensive."

Okay. So, it's not necessarily anything the county is doing wrong, right? It's it's just the state needs to step in and help out counties and entities in general by torque reform, those types of things, putting some caps on things, and it's right now it's literally the sky's is the limit. Okay. Commissioner French.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. I just wanted to share that um the um uh tort reform is one of the priorities for LSC for the upcoming year and so we're going to push that a little bit harder. Um this is as Dan indicated this is something that's more statewide. We're seeing um um decisions out of the courts that are um from my standpoint userist and um and just financially bankrupting counties and stuff. So, uh it is going to be a priority for our next legislative session. Thank you.

Thank you. And I know that's the same uh Wasach, you know, they're they're going after that. the risk pool um is also pushing you know for torque reform. So it is something that I guess maybe if the state gets stung enough they'll they'll step in and say we got to do something to assist this. Um so if we move on to the next slide um these are the actual four options the um actuary gave us three um and then in our discussions we asked for a third option which was 35% and again option one you're just funding at the current levels you're not changing anything and it would show that we would contribute an actual deficit into about 4.1 1 million. Um, if we were not to change our current funding strategies. Option two, where you see the zero, that is your we're just funding what the actuary believes your our expenses are going to be for 27 and we're hopefully not adding to the deficit uh or the loss in there. Option three is the one that we all came up with collectively, um, which is a 35% increase that would add roughly a million dollars towards that $12 million deficit that it's showing right now. So, it's not it's not moving the the the pendulum a whole lot, but at least we're not going backwards. Um, and then option four, which is crazy, 113%. But that 113% basically gets us to the Z mark where we are no longer in the basement, but we're just sitting at

zero. So that would be funding um the current um projected deficit of 12.4.

So they they originally had options one, two, and four. Same group I mentioned before. Um Ashley, him Denovan, us and and Dan's team kind of collectively came up. We thought we should do a little bit more than the 28% especially knowing the risk pool. We are the big fish in the risk pool and at some point the other counties might invite us to go out on our own. If that were ever the case, and it's something that is talked about, um, we need to be beefing up our balance. We also thought it'd be good to at least chip away. Um, we know all of our outstanding claims aren't going to come in the same year. The likelihood of that is extremely low, but at least we'd be moving in the right direction. the the 35% level does equate at $5.1 million countywide. About 4 point just over four million of that would be general because of the size of this one that recommending to refer back to the other one. That's why we went smaller off the workers comp thinking this one needed to go bigger. If you advance to the next slide, this just shows you the option three of the 35% um estimated costs and that's you know insurance cost all of that. Um just speaking to our liability insurance and our property insurance last year or for this year um we increased our SIR for property from 25 to 50,000. Um and we saw a decent

reduction in our property um premium which was great. Um but our liability uh overall we saw a 32% increase in our property and liability but property went down but liability is the one that you know is skyrocketing. Um so uh again it this is really being driven by the insurance um and they're they're concerned right especially with these CAM claims out there. Um they are very very concerned. Um yeah I wish I could tell you you know I'm looking forward to the day I get to come in here and say we don't need an increase. We're doing good. our reserves are where they need to be and and we can weather, but um right now it's just going backwards. So,

pour a little salt in the wound. Um you guys all have this form in your packet which shows the liability per department. The way the actuary breaks that out, that's not our work. That's the actuary's work. It will show last year's increase. And if you just to remind you, last year general fund fund balances paid for all of these increase rates. We increased by 49% last year. Um so if you look at any of these departments, roughly a third of that was paid for by fund balance. And um so that also would have to be an unfunded mandate we're passing down to departments this year. they're going to have to add last year's increase to their expenditures and cover it somehow because there's 35% on top of that. So it is it'll have a significant impact on the offices. the board can choose to do what we did last year and fund again from fund balance but um we get in the habit of that where

put bookings on the table that is not uh Commissioner Brooks.

Yeah. So, one of the questions I think Jeff would be helpful for us is as we're looking at these, you know, and trying to figure it out as as we're going to put this on departments is kind of a spreadsheet that's going to show how much we're adding because of liability purposes, how much because of medical, you know, all those things that are going to be then pushed on the departments. Uh, I think just so we understand what the cost each department is going to be. Um, it just be good to have some estimates as we're looking at this, you know, because, you know, we need to do it. And as Commissioner French said, you know, WASAC is definitely looking at tort reform, but my understanding is the state put a billion dollars into their set aside for tort cases instead of passing a bill. So hopefully, yes, we can get a bill passed on to reform from the legislature um as they are seeing the the costs as well. Um, but I think for us to actually understand what what we're now asking our departments to do that it's not just this decision but how it does affect all of them. I think it'd be good for us to see kind of a spreadsheet on that. Um, for us

we'll put that together. What what you have in your packet alludes to that. It's not directly that. So we can we can create that spread sheet as you suggested with all three um so you see exactly what the increase would be in the upcoming budget. So if you advance the slide these two both this one and the next one these are directly from the actuary. Um what uh Jeff was alluding to is a little further down in the packet which kind of cleans this up. It takes the actuary numbers which they're you know they they look at um office space. Do you have vehicles? How many claims you've had? I mean that's that's what the actuary these are looking at. The one thing I can tell you on this this sheet and the next one, if you look at column 11, column 11 is basically projecting what each department would be adding to hammer away at um reducing that deficit. Um that's what column 11 is um referring to. So uh column nine is here's what the cost is associated for projected for 27 for all the departments. Column 11 is here's what they're adding to try and reduce that current that current 122.2 million deficit. So, it's what they're they're throwing in there and we can always provide the actuary to to anybody who wants to see it. I know these are a little hard to read, but I wanted to take them directly from the actuary.

Yeah. The the the final column though, column 12, the the allocated program costs. I mean, that's so I assume that there's several factors that go into that number of employees. I mean, is there like actual kind of danger of the position? You drive your cars. Like the commissioners, we you all drive cars. I mean, see that that's what I was put. It's like $211,000 for the commissioner's office. It's like, have we ever had a claim? Had a couple. I've never filed one, but this is just I mean, this is

filed against me that I'm aware of. It's like that just seems like a huge number. It's also office space. It's your footprint that the commissioners are using in building because again the you have to realize this is also property, right? This number is tied into what property insurance. Yeah. You know, is so it's it's just the overall property and liability if you can remember the two. But liability is the one that's driving this a lot harder than liability or property is. So,

okay. Um, but it does take all of that into consideration. So, and even some of the departments last year that split, you know, and they're kind of their two own entities or like taking on solid waste, right? That's a new increase because that used to be contracted out. So, we could, you know, uh, move our liability cost off to them, right? Our exposure was covered by them. But when we take that on, we take on all of that additional um liability. So it it does drive these numbers up. Um as the county grows, you know, we buy more property, we build more buildings. Um it it just drives these these numbers. Um the last slide that I that I have is just um if you want to advance, it's the funding options five-year history. So go ahead and advance again. And this is just a recap of what the county has decided as far as what the actuaries um options were. Option two and option three. I didn't put one on there because one is usually not a good thing because you're just adding to the uh deficit, but these are the percent um increases over the years. So you can see that um option two that's a zero dollar to the fund balance. Option three usually increases the fund balance. So you're attacking that and we're adding to it. And then that last column is what the what the county actually implemented based on the recommendations from the actuary. So you can see we're we're we're a little light in some gears where the actuary was saying, "Hey, we've got kind of an issue here. You want to attack this?

Any questions on that? I believe the sheet that Jeff was talking about is two more slides away, but that uh that concludes what I have to tell you. Unfortunately, so to put together the um the spreadsheet that Commissioner Brooks recommended, he wants to stick with the five and 35 or something different or in addition to that. Yeah. I mean, it's

that's where we should when I look at it just a quick once over for each department. A lot of them it's doubling from 2025. Yeah, it's it'll be significant. So for instance, like juvenile detention, it's almost double 300,000 additional dollars that we have to identify. And we could also put the current 12% um medical to round out the picture overall.

But yeah, I agree with Commissioner Brooks to have you need to lay it out and explain each area to each of the departments. Yeah. So, and so I see that. So you have some sort of calculation for each department based on that higher level of risk. Some of them some of them are much more than others depending on the the risk involved. That's right. Okay. So that's all based on a formula. Like scraps is a lot higher than a normal department. Correct. Which makes sense. Yes. Had a bad bite few years ago. We had a couple. There's just more risk involved in the work. Great.

And it does. Yeah. takes that in there. Then, like I said, that column 11 tries to show, you know, based on their exposure, the work that they're doing for the county, what that exposure is, what that increase would would be to attack the the deficit proportionate to their their actual exposure to. So, we'll bring back the spreadsheet um to the next meeting.

And again, this is this is just feedback from the commissioners. It's placeholders into the budget. You don't adopt budget until beginning of December. These are levers that you can pull. It's just having having something in right now for the uh baseline assumptions are helpful. Then we can evaluate how that rolls up into the overall budget as the departments are starting to inform on their submissions. Well, I think we think it's a good idea at least progressing forward being at the five and 35 at at this point as we move forward and hopefully those hold if we have to adjust as process continues. But I think for now you can put those in as placeholders. for all the good news. Dan,

start a fun day. I am looking forward to the day to walk in here and say we're good. We're good. We are too. And then Mr. show if you'd allow short miscellaneous have auditor bel to the budget if it costs money. The answer is no. She might save us money on Okay, Vicki, welcome. might make a lot of people unhappy. But uh yeah,

we are having trouble with some employees reconciling their interest cards and their travel books to the point we have hundreds of transactions more than a year old. We can't even we trying to close out books per our policy under I believe the auditor's authority. We are allowed to remove cards. Cards are a privilege, not a right. Um, in my opinion, you can still do whatever you want to do. Just put on your personal card and get reimbursed. You'll probably care more. So, you'll get the receipts and get reimbursed. And if you don't, no skin off our nose. The county doesn't have to pay for it. Um, there's your little bit of money savings made. And so, I that's the nuts and bolts.

Sure. Um, so yeah, this this came up because I was assisting someone with their travel and as we were doing research, um, we found that there were some old charges that had been cleared. So, in talking with purchasing because purchasing actually manages the travel cards and cards, we ran some Heather ran some stats. We still have six outstanding transactions from 2024. 51 from 2025 and for the first quarter of this year, there's 332 transactions that still have not been reconciled.

So, are these ones that people made on a county card and just have not submitted the receipt? Correct. you know, haven't are are some of these where maybe they've been submitted but it's been kicked back for more information or or are these just they have they swiped the card and didn't even started. Okay. Some of them may been aware of you know 24 it's not going to they probably don't have the receipt anymore. Nothing's going to come of that. But we need but we need to finish the process. Yeah. So how to how to get Yeah. Yeah. And we would have to work with each each one of these individuals. Okay.

Um but yeah, and and it's not like people don't know. Courtney sends out reports every month saying here's the here's the um transactions that have not been reconciled. So they haven't even been pulled in for the department to start working on them. And what that means is we have expenditures that haven't been recorded against their budget. we have, you know, any of this is from grants, then the grant hasn't been built for it. So, you know, what started out as just a a small issue has brought like there's a much bigger problem and it's countywide. It's not one individual. It's it's very wide. So, we're finding that this is an item that needs to be dealt with. But what it does mean is people's travel cards and potentially their business cards will be cancelled if they don't follow the rules.

So the authority is already there. Okay. How would they call you guys to complain? We want to know. Yeah. It's already the travel policy already has the Senate and the Bard policy already has the Senate. So the authority's already been delegated from the board. Can can you remind us? Is it one instance you lose your card? Is it a warning and then you lose your card? Is it happen a second time? What do you think? The discretion of purchasing director. Okay. Is how it's written. All right.

Um but what we're talking about is is picking um a couple of dates to say if you're more than three months out, then we're going to cancel your card. Okay. And then we're going to pick a go forward date probably either the end of Jan or the middle of July to say if you don't have these cleaned up, anything that's March 30th or older, then your card goes. There has to be consequences to people not performing their responsibilities, but this is what it is. Having either a P card or or a county travel card is a responsibility.

Oh yeah. And each of these people know that they this is an instance that involves them, right? They know they have a late that something that's out there that hasn't been reconcile. We're not going to have people that say they shut off my card. I had no idea I had an outstanding purchase. Like they work to communicate that. Yes, we'll do communication, but they they did make the purchase. Yes. So, at some point Yeah. And some of the travelers have someone else who does their expense report for them. for the traveler may not know true okay that their expenditures have not been recorded. So in all fairness to the traveler they may not know okay

but that's where the person who's doing the expense report for the traveler also needs to communicate back to the traveler. So again you take on the role you take on responsibility and and again it's not one person this is this is across the county where we have issues. Uh, Commissioner Brooks.

Yeah. So, a couple questions I have on that is like, are some of them just frequent flyers that we know and we need to target? And and I'm I'm okay with, you know, trying to get this handled. Um, but the other question I have. Uh so two questions that and then um when we do conferences and that kind of thing I know we have to put in so far in you know like a long ways in advance and we're not getting reimbursed until we actually complete the travel. Um so how how does that work? I mean are you is that part of what you're seeing? I guess that's what I just want to make sure we're not penalizing people that are trying to get their conferences on the early bird special and then we're going to, you know, hold them up.

You can submit more than one expense report per trip. So, if you buy your airfare three months in advance, you go ahead and submit an expense report with that airfare. And then if you've had to book your hotel room and they required a deposit, again, you can put that on an expense report and submit the expense report. So you're not limited to one expense report per trip. You have to do the spend authorization, which is the approval to do the trip. And then if you need to do three or four expense reports to finish that trip, then you can do that. We do prefer to try to consolidate it as much as possible. Um, but I say that more than one expenses

and the scenario you put forward, Commissioner Brooks, isn't the primary culprit here.

Um because we do look at that sort of thing and understand if somebody's waiting to the end. Um, yeah, we like the example I know Courtney's been working with, it's a trip that was taken in April of 25 and she has probably asked 10 times for the data until I went and had a stern conversation. We couldn't even get the name of the channel. You know, it's it's departments just not caring because it doesn't impact their budget. If it never gets filled against their budget, I actually have more money to spend.

Yeah. No, I I get that. So, I mean, I'm I'm in favor of trying to do something to make sure people are putting it in on time. I just know that, you know, travel for conferences and different things can kind of be a a pain. So just just wanted to make sure of that and then like I said just seeing is it certain business managers in departments that are not putting stuff through is it I would say the 8020 rule holds true. Yes. 20% of the people cause 80% of the problems

because I'm happy to as well go talk to them with you, Jeff, because sometimes it helps to have a commissioner finally just say, "Okay, if this is what you're going to do, then I'm going to reserve so much of your budget and it's going to be reserved until you pay it or turn in all the receipts." I don't know. That could be another option. the quiver in the So, is there no way to require or resolve I I Why aren't we resolving this at the end of each year? Because it just requires because you have to give us the receipts. Okay. Once we come for your office and purse, how do we get them?

I just I'm surprised that Anyway, maybe I'm not surprised, but still. Yeah, don't don't be surprised. Yeah, because we can't do it. Jeff can't do it. Tess can't do it. I can't do it. Courtney can't do it. Right. Traveler has to fulfill their responsibilities. They have to get the receipt. They have to provide the receipt. They have to or their worker has to file an expense report. We cannot do that. That's why we're here is because and you get reminders the system back to you to say you have this expense that you need to

file. So there's no reason that you didn't you forgot about it. Although I'm wondering if it's in a previous year does it keep sending you you need to file this dispensary still. Yep. It stays out there is don't forget you have this item. But like I mean said if it doesn't hit their butt people don't Yeah. What's the necessarily the initiative or care? So I guess the the stick the stick would be is to remove the card and then you have to pay it get reimbursed with your own card. Okay, Commissioner Brooks.

Yeah, that's kind of I guess one of my questions is in Vicki, you know, in the in the past we had people that were trying to really push um PE cards and travel cards and all of that. And so do I mean do we want I mean I know we've tried to pull back on some of the PE cards. Do we want to pull back on travel as well? I mean because you know like for for myself I don't have a problem putting on my personal card and then you know seeking reimbursement but there's people some people don't like that but some people you know they wanted to or I thought in the past we were told we needed to have the county travel card because they didn't want us using our personal cards. So so I guess I'm just trying to clarify as we move forward with this like what what do we really want that to be? I think that's a discussion that the board along with department heads and the elected officials need to have. Um, one of the theories for using the travel card and then this is previous administrations ago was to get a rebate and that was a big push for the procurement cards, the travel cards was to get a rebate back to the county. not sure that that's much of a dollar amount anymore. So, one of the main reasons for having done this may be gone. The other issue for having travel cards, not necessarily for every single is that there are employees out there who don't have enough money to be able to fund the trip in advance. Um, and although it is a little bit of a pain, you could have one travel card in a department that could be used for things like airfare and that person um who has the card can then assign it assign the expense to the

traveler. So there is there is a process that we can do in this system to to move the details where they need to go. So, we could start reducing the number of travel cards out there, which would probably make the people who are are administering the travel cards happy to reduce just the volume that's out there on travel cards. But I think it's a discussion that needs to be had with the board and with the department heads so that that everybody in management understands the the impact and the consequences and also how these travel cards should

it varies by department. Some departments have a person they put in for their cards. It's just that's their culture. I know. No, but but I think with workday I mean I think understanding the whole the new system and how this works it is kind of what I mean I think it is worthy of a a bigger discussion to say what do we really want this to do because I know I'm you know confused on how how it really works with workday. I'm sure Brendan knows better than I, but you know, having obviously been in a chief deputy auditor, understand from what it used to be in peopleoft that, you know, was not not always easy as people are trying to put in some of the expenses when you're stacking them and paying up front and all that. So I think um having a bigger discussion with like you're seeing Vicki with the department heads and elected officials to figure out what what do we think the most efficient system today is and start doing that whether it's and and yes I know some people can't you know they don't have a credit card to put or a limit you know enough um ability to use it that way and so we need to provide that but I think yeah having a whole discussion on this would probably be a thing to figure out what's going to be the best way moving forward with workday and how things are processing. Now,

we do have a queue up for tomorrow for the elected official department head meeting um pending your guys's feedback today which seems to be move forward. We will have a first conversation. Are these primarily travel or is it someone went to some downtown used a card for parking downtown and you know it's a couple bucks or for parking or is it hundreds for airline tickets and thousands when you tack on airfare hotel multiple time I mean what are they small dollar amount things big dollar amount or a mixture of everything

mixture of everything so we're sitting at about aundred 3031,000.

Yeah. As of Friday, it's March 30th or older. Scott, if memory serves me, about a year ago or so, we we practically canceled a bunch of travel cards. We gave the department's directions no longer um automatically issue a travel card for every employee that comes in because many and most of them will not travel. So we greatly reduce travel cards. I think we did something similar with purchasing cards and so we've already made that adjustment, right?

Yeah, I think so. As far as the timeline goes, I think it's completely reasonable that at most you 90 days, you have 90 days to submit and reconcile your your travel card. And if you don't, it'll be automatically suspended and subject to cancellation. So, if our policy right now says that the discretion, I would recommend having it be definitive in there. It says this is the policy. You don't have 90 days. And if we have to take a next step as to if you still don't submit it, perhaps that's a payroll reconciling issue that we have to look at. So that will be a both issue. I understand that's why perhaps

but I don't think keeping it open-ended is serving anyone any any benefits here having it be very definitive. Yeah, we we've had that discussion about recovery from employee E. We've never found a way to make it happen or or you don't get to travel and you don't travel. And quite honestly, I mean, whether you put it on your own card or not, no, you don't travel. The county will not pay for you to travel in the future. How about that? And honestly with the way the budget is right now there travel comfort training has to be

which was supposed to be a main focus this year um travel was supposed to be greatly reduced and everything I'm hearing is I don't think that's happening. I think some people are traveling more at 20 in 26 they did 25. So another issue maybe we'll get there later today. We'll get to that issue. That's great on today's agenda. Okay. Well, I I support you in that. I think that's a great idea of cancelling cards. If people aren't going to follow the rules and they're not going to do what is in the agreement when they get the card, then I think we ought to take their cards away.

We will go forth and do so. I mean, and that that's me. I mean, anybody I don't know if anybody else disagrees, but that's where I'm at. I guess it's it's a liability, financial liability, and and it's got it's causing extra work for employees to constantly remind people and I just think that I think it's very reasonable to yes

to have a time frame of like three to four months to re to, you know, initiate your uh reimburse for the either the reimbursement or the I guess we're talking about one of the expense paperwork very reasonable. I I think Amber hit it there with reasonable and I think any reasonable person will see it this way that this is not controversial. I don't think if you can't if you're going to use the card, you got to turn in a receipt. You got to get it reconciled, get it taken care of. I mean, that shouldn't be a problem. So,

well, we appreciate the support. Hopefully, we can in the next few months give this more. Yeah.

All right, we'll go quickly through budget amendments. Try to do this speed round. Ron should have this in the packet. Um, several of these budget amendments are related to 2025 books. Closing things out as the um auditor's office has worked through financial statement. Correct. Uh these will go for preliminary public hearing next week and final public hearing June 9th. Um so I'll be back to brief on June 9th at your TPM consent agenda. So starting in the general fund um we had additional sales tax revenue in 2025 to the tune of 1 something million dollars. Um that was utilized for various agencies that ran short on um payroll in most cases. uh economic development and outside agencies. There were accounting adjustments, timing of accounting um with acrruals switching into workday last year that caused um some unintended budget consequences. So um this is just right sizing those budgets. Um the next two are related to different share of DUF fees. Um the first is a DEA DOF fee. They purchased a vehicle. Um the second is the K9 dupy balance purchased two additional canines. Um next page we have some additional revenue that came in for parks department to support centennial trail maintenance in the year 2025. Um item number five up there is animal control. That looks like a scary number. It is simply an accounting entry that needed to happen when we refunded um and refinanced our bonds that support the animal control facility. There was also a very similar entry that you'll see in the other funds for um I believe solid waste um detention services needed fund balance to the tuno $440,000

to support the settlement of the union contract that impacted 2025's books. Um items 7 through 10 are all present day. Um so we are appropriating fund balance for internal services to support workday support contracts. Um we are appropriating fund balance for the law and justice department to support the essential facility sighting process. Appropriating fund balance in non-EP departmental for the small arms turn lane. Um that is to get purchasing to start the project and we hope it will come in costing less. We're also going to see what the cost estimates and timing are um and um hopefully get that project done this year. If not, we'll push it to the beginning of next year. Um and the last item there for non-EP departmental is $690,000 of fund balance to support unanticipated legal bills. Um going into the other funds, we have again 2025 uh accounting or budget adjustments for most of these. Um, this was hotel motel additional revenue or excuse me, fund balance um to support plants ferry improvements um that had already been um contemplated by the board. Just cleaning up the accounting there. Um next page on number 12 housing trust fund $920,000 of fund balance. um a project was um expensed in 2025. We'd anticipated in 26, but it was able to be um expensed earlier. So, we just had to adjust that for fund 123. Um the medical insurance fund, we had to dig into our fund balance to the tune of just over $5 million to support higher

than budgeted claims. um the TPA fund, we had um additional revenue that came in um higher than we'd budgeted and planned. Um and that money just goes straight out to pay for Visit Spokane and Spokane Sports. Um number 15, debt service fund. We needed to appropriate revenue um a transfer in to pay for um some debt uh from hotel motel tax. um the county capital improvement funds. That was the bond issue we did in December um to pay for campus infrastructure improvement expenses. Um item 17, solid waste. That is the um counterpart to the scraps again related to the bond issue we did in December. Um $2.8 million to support just accounting entries. Um item 18, we had um some additional revenue from 911 tax. Um we needed to appropriate to deal with some um prepaid expenses in that budget. Item number 19, the dental insurance fund needed $5,000 in fund balance to pay for um I believe it was payroll acrals. And then item 20, the last page there, Ron. Um, purchase order roll forwards for various funds and departments going from 2025 to 2026. Um, most of these are small. We have the internal services which is related to primarily to our liability that we'd set aside last year um for this year's planned increase out of the general fund um to pay for all those departments. and then non-EP departmental. That looks like a very large scary amount. It is a

continuation of all of the ARP contracts that we moved to the G general fund. Um that is multiple multiple millions as well as $2.1 million for the county's ongoing contributions to the A Vista Stadium remodel. Um we'd originally set aside 8 million and we've just kind of been spending down over the last few years. Um and expect to spend the rest of that this year. Any questions? Oh, Commissioner Brooks.

Yeah, a couple questions I have. So, one of them's on the workday. I thought we were doing like it was just over 200,000. So, just remind me because I thought part of that was coming from uh savings that we had in some of the areas, but I don't know, I could be off on that. So, I just wanted to ask about that. And then the other other one was the 5 million. What was that one? The 5 million is for the medical insurance fund.

Okay. So So that's again just I mean did we I apologize if we talked about it and I just don't remember. But um so so we're already 5 million over from last year and that's why we're anticipating even more this year.

Yeah, this year I think the five million was um we didn't have enough expense expense budget appropriated um when we started the year um and claims came in higher. I would say that um I think Tim Dunovvent has been helping us review that fund um and I know he was kind of actively working it for um how much revenue was a contribution to that fund. But this is very much a function of the expense appropriation and authority that we had within the fund was not sufficient to pay all of the bills that needed to come out of that fund last year.

Okay. And so as we look at how does that affect us as we look at this year then because I mean obviously I didn't I didn't recollect that we were five million under in the expense you know in in funding our medical. I thought we had enough fund balance in our medical but um that's why I'm just trying to make the connection there because we purposely put more money into our this is medical fund balance funds. that's created more expenditure authority with them.

And so we'll bring a picture I hear I hear how you're trying to reconcile it, Commissioner Brooks. We'll bring a picture of the last few years of contributions to the fund um as well as what the adopted authority was and then if we've made any um adjustments for claims at the end of the year um and try to draw kind of a couple year picture for you as well as what we're forecasting for the next few years. Okay, thank you. Appreciate that.

Um, and then on the workday question, we um do anticipate that we'll have other funds uh to cover one of those contracts, but um it likely is going to be a transfer in. And so we still need the expenditure authority within the internal services um budget to make that expense to pay that contract out. Um, so it's more a function of where we have budget living um to clean things up for us, but um that's where we're at. Okay. Thank you.

What did I just uh get clarity on? So it's it's a total of just over two million that that were funding to these different departments, right? at the top first and page one. Yes. Yep. Uh and you said about a million of that was it was the 2025 overage of sales tax. Um that whole 2.1 million was additional sales tax revenue that we received last year. Okay. It's a little over a million. It was a little over two million. 2 million. Okay. I'm sorry. Yeah. I spoke about my apologies. And I was like, where did the other million? I figured we I figured we were funding the missing million from fund benefit. Okay. It is all covered in that. Okay, great.

So, basically, you're taking the total amount of sales tax that was over what we budgeted to cover, putting it to all these categories in the general fund and then the other funds are all coming from their own sources. Yeah. And that is uh so for instance like the dental insurance, it's coming from that fund, correct? and you're just moving it to pay for those additional expenses. Okay. Creating additional spend authority within the fund. The fund already had the money it's all paved there. Yeah. That's the same with the five million medical fund

that Commissioner Brooks was mentioning. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Is there enough expense? All right. Any other questions on that before I move the next sheet? We're good.

So, the next one we're going to look at is the Spokane County General Fund is passing them out. Um, right now to pay period 9. You'll see a little nine in the top right hand corner. Just to remind you, we are moving this chart to by pay period. So, we no longer have two pay periods a month. We have pay periods every two weeks. Um, this is a rollup of the form that we showed all departments how to use. Commissioner Cuni hosted a meeting for departments. We held it in the DOCC chambers across the way. Very well attended meeting. We've had positive feedback. Um, not positive on our budget situation, but positive on how to grab the data, see it, see the data as presented to the board from the budget department. Fairly self-explanatory. Those in red are in a deficit year to date. There are some some there's reasoning behind you know facilities they just had a retirement they're not backfilling so they they budgeted in a way that they would be in the red right now but it will work out in the year so not all of them are as dire as they look and then one thing we we also ran percentage of budget on some of them um with detention services is a fairly big number. It's half of a percent of their budget that they're over compared to DEM, which is a smaller number, but it's almost 15% of the budget. So, don't always just look at the raw number. A comparative analysis to the first column, which is the full budget is

another way to look at it. Our question for you as a board is what do you want us to do with this data? There's obviously some departments that stick out here. Do you want to have midyear conversations? Do you want us to invite in some of the departments that are um over in a significant way that we can't see where they're going to self resolve? Um, I think we have to bring them in. I don't think we can push this off and look at it in September or something when we're threequarters through. I mean, I think we need to jump on it as early as possible.

I mean, by the year, yeah, I I don't think we can just have the conversation with those of us around this table. I think we need to bring in the folks from this department, at least ask them what's happening. I mean, I mean, there could be a thing where they have a lot of expenses at the beginning of the year, second half of the year, those expenses trail off and they're going to come in under budget. But if they're not, if they're going to continue this accelerated expense expense, I think we need to get them in here as quick as possible and figure out why and see if we can slow it down. And this is salaries and benefits only, so it's not the entirety of their

Oh, yes, it is. Yeah. So, I mean, are they expecting retirements? Are they expecting folks moving or is this just what they're going to do to the end? So, I think we need to That would be what I would suggest is bring them in and find out why. Perhaps our suggestion too is one of those questions.

I agree. Um, could I just ask a quick question about since you mentioned uh DEM, I remember that we were going to check in this year because there was some loss of grants and we were concerned about the costs, you know, and we were there was one federal grant did arrive. Okay. So, it would be good to check in and see because I, you know, there was some challenges with meeting their budget and I believe there was an effort to see if other jurisdictions would uh contribute more and I know effort's underway,

right? So it' be good to get an update on that.

So we'll will in schedule another thing Jason tracks for our office is the trajectory of these. We actually have another one that shows if things start to pay cycle six. So you can see whether they're trending back towards a zero or if the gap is wide on each pay period. Just another thing and useful analysis when you're looking looking at the data. so we can um start scheduling a few of those coming in. Another thing we brought up just by way of throwing it out there last time we met, but we wanted to just ask a bit more definitively, does the board want to consider a hiring freeze? And if there's a hiring freeze, is it across the board? Is it for departments just that are in red? While they're in red, maybe red, they can do it. Um but with labor being you know anywhere from twothirds to three quarters as high as 90% in some small departments it is when you get into bigger numbers it is the mechanism um and then of course this would be over VOCC departments there would be hoops to jump through to implement one that's separately elected. the way we opponented our budget last December. But do we want to mandate a slowing down of

got some Scott? or they um you've got information from uh Matt's team that kind of forms on some different choices you can make whether it's hiring phases, budget amendments because those have some ties to it. Um there's also the reminder to all of the electives of their personal responsibility when it comes to staying within their budget. So you can take a number of different roles. I might suggest that you you start first with the most direct one and and that's just reminding them all the electeds that they have a personal financial obligation to stay within their budget. Um that way you don't go through a number of iterations of hiring freezes and and uh uh and and budget amendments and whatnot. We certainly are your team can manage the non-elected very clear direction to them. you will not go above your budget. So, uh we're we are talking with each of them to say, "Hey, is this trend going to change and if not you might you're going to have to do adjustments. It's not a choice. You have to do adjustments with with um you have a empty position. You have to keep it open for a for maybe a couple weeks or a month or so. So, we have some of those conversations going on, but that's just some other things to to consider uh especially when it comes to the other electives which um the levers of polar more challenging.

I agree with sending the the letter to all the different elected official just explaining.

I agree. We're in a 25 We're in a projected $25 million deficit where the board is actively working with the budget office on all options um to make sure we remain solvent as a county and uh so we're reminding you that you need to stay within your budget and if you're having challenges, you need to come and work with the budget. If you need some assistance, you know, we're here for you. But I think it Yeah, we can't I'm I'm concerned about the sheriff's office. I mean, it's trending in a very very high potentially. I mean, it could be $3 million over budget by the end of the year. That's we just can't we can't sustain that. So, they need to figure out how to rein that in. And if that's their own hiring freeze, then that's their own hiring freeze. Um, so I I just think we need to send that letter. And then I I guess my only hesitation on a hiring freeze is that sometimes there's unintended consequences. Like last year, I think we did one and then uh I remember hearing from Tori that she was right in the middle of hiring some essential positions in in the juvenile justice center. So, I just don't want to like I want to figure out how to do that, but allow for some of those essential positions to be that we do need to fill for, you know, safety. So, u getting ahead of it now. Yeah, I think it's of course, but but we're going to have to allow for some flexibility. Obviously, detention services, we've got to fill positions there.

Um, so anyway, those are my thoughts. We'll schedule the departments to come in where we we identify a un unsustainable uh trend line to have them come in and discuss with the board what that uh why that trend line's occurring and what adjustments they're making to stage budget. hopefully all these trainings and if they need more training on using workday to manage, you know, and anticipate I know we have staff that'll help folks figure that out.

Yep. And and that's the uh one of the meetings that Commissioner Brooks uh led a couple weeks ago to provide these reports and show the departments exactly where to get them. So there's no no question about what what book of records are being used. It's this whatever the commissioners are saying is what they should department should be using. I think it's important that we educate all of our department heads and elect officials of the obligations that they have when it comes to the budget appropriations and their responsibility to remain within those appropriations. Um, so we'll work on getting the letter signs around. We'll work on scheduling with the CCC passes passing out the calendar. Commissioners Brooks and French have an email from Jason with the calendar. It's the same calendar we passed out here two weeks ago. Just wanted to see if we ready to move up from draft to finalize these dates or if commissioners found any um conflicts we need to work with. Of course, it's a living document. We can make changes as we go, but is it in a solid state to at least publish it as a final draft at this point? the the changes from previous year will be we're going to be asking for revenue estimates separate from the rest of the budget to give a more focus on revenue adjustments. Um I have the same roundts. One of them is an evening round table.

Reminder budget is the Tuesday before Labor Day this year. Um, usually it's the day after Labor Day, but the way the calendar falls, um, as kickoff budget before Labor Day, then it's a bit late on the backside. Fundal adoption is December 7th. Again, those are RCW requirements and the way the calendar falls. The only thing I see is that I don't know if Commissioner Brooks is going to go to the Niko National Association of Counties annual meeting, but it might conflict with the 20th of July. I might I'll probably be I could probably zoom in if I go, but just

but I think we could probably zoom in if we're there. Well, that's just a briefing on it too, right? Yeah, I think there could be flexibility in July. Everything else play that date as much as possible. Y, but everything else looks good. So, you got the public round tables on here. Okay. The Commissioner Brooks.

Yeah. I'm gonna have to take a look at it with my schedule. As we know, I've got some transitioning that's going to be happening in my for for me. So, um, let me take a look at it. Uh, and I will let you know I'll have Brenda, you know, kind of inform you guys tonight as to which ones, um, I may be zooming into. Perfect. Thank you.

Once we hear back from everybody later this week, it's in their inbox. So, we'll follow up with Commissioner Jordan and see who's not present. And then the last sheet. Oh, sorry. Got ahead of myself. Yep.

Pass these down. Jason will help speak to this one. Also, this is a sheet and you emailed this to commissioners French and the it's titled 2027 budget preparation commissioner Brooks and French and and what Jason sent you. The goal of this is to kind of make it real. Um the first column is the 2026 budget. Um and we are going against the 26 budget which is why at the top you see the gap is 28 million a bigger gap than we've talked before because we're going from the 26 budget. We're not going from the 27 forecast which includes the additional sales tax revenue and it also includes

your timeline.

It also includes the additional million at the 35% liability level which you made an assumption on. But if we if you look at the 26 level and you go over to the third column, each department has different paid employees of course. So it gives you the average employee cost by department because not all employees are equal when it comes to pay. And then it will show you the fourth column over impacted FTE. If you were to do a flat budget similar to what we did from 25 to this year and it was balanced only with FTEES, that fourth column would show you the number of FTEEs that would need to be reduced by department by that department's average to balance the budget. And if you add up column four at the bottom, you're going to write 192 is what that column adds up to. Some departments would be able to do some M. A lot of our M is related to it such as workday. We can't cut workday by 20%. We either have workday or we don't have workday. And as a lot of our it is, we also have multi-year contracts. Um and then our biggest M countywide by far detention services is the medical contract which is um mandated and the food, you know, feeding 800 um inmates three meals a day is not cheap. And so, um, yes, you could reduce the number of FTEES, but we just wanted to

show the magnitude of what we're dealing with, the vacant FTE column furthest to the left. Take that one with a grain of salt. Um, we're still doing some final cleanup, but it's it's pretty close. Jason and Tess are meeting with Sarah in HR later today, hoping to do some final some final clean up there. That one's going to be awfully close, but it's not necessarily 100%. Some things to speak to on this, Jason? not intended to be.

You have an a you have an asterric there some missing missing data on here. When can we expect that to come through? We're'll be doing some FTE clean up today and we're working with the sheriff's office to like I said align that figures. So between between the move from peopleoft to workday and a department as large as the sheriff's office where promotions, transfers, title changes happen. the complete reconciliation has been challenging. A lot of time has already been put into it today. All right. Thank you.

Is there any other data points variations that you could think of right now? ways to present the data that you would like for this point. I know as we go further your ideas will come to mind. Comment go for I was just on these. Can you put totals at the bottom?

I was just going to reinforce what Jeff mentioned earlier. These assume that to achieve the $28 million reduction, it all comes through salary benefits and headcount. There will be some departments that can do some M. There will be some departments that can't. So, this is without getting into a very sophisticated us guessing which departments can actually reduce their their uh M. I just wanted to highlight to the extent that they can that means that their impacted FTEES would be less. And we're also not assuming would be a few million dollars of sales tax money here. So that would allow you to buy back kind of on the order of the the matrix we went through last year, the red, yellow, green. You'll be able to apply two to3 million of additional revenue where you want to prioritize it based on this would minimize that by 20 25 bodies. Great. Then um next I believe we have ever hitting on ARP. Well, we just um one of when we come back in two weeks, this is just starting to frame the target budget conversation here. When we come back in two weeks, we discussed for the calendar trying to have a letter out to the uh all the departments by the first I think the first week in June. Correct. First week in June would be our IB call. So our our uh idea would then be to have the board be establishing those target budgets by the first our that Monday that we meet in uh June the first Monday. We'll have documentation to help you kind of go go through and look at that stuff as well.

They are um Rebecca G is working the schedule with each of the five of you for a budget coming to do a in your office working session too. Yeah. Between now and then. um just to get some more info from that. Sounds good.

That is ARP. So we currently have about 3.5 million left in ARP that remains unspent. Um the largest portion of that is Comcast. Um they notified us recently they should that we should be expecting a bill any day. We've been hearing that for months. So hopefully that's going to come to fruition soon. Um the rest of it's pretty small potatoes. Um the health district's getting ready to reseal the roof. I would expect that to be done by the end of the summer. Campfire's got a little bit remaining in ARP. The remainder of their money is in general fund. Uh we have some laptops to be purchased um by it. City of Bway Heights just has a $90 uh amount there that the rest of their contracts and general fund and then the sheriff has 378,000 for realtime crime center which we expect to be spent down likely by the end of June. Worst case would be the end of September. So that's everything left in actual ARP. We go to the next slide. Remaining in our general fund contracts, we have about 6.5 million. Uh of those contracts, um as a reminder, these uh all these projects were submitted in 2022. they were awarded either in late 22 or early 2023. We do have about 3 million of this 6.5 is internal public works um cleanup that we still need to do. So we have about 3.5 that's everybody else

and we have four agencies that are requesting um project changes. As you recall, when we made the shift to move contracts out of ARP to general fund, the general idea was that we were going to hold them to their original ARP timelines, their original ARP projects, but it would give us flexibility to move within their original ARP buckets, which would not have been allowed if we left them in ARP. So, if we move to the next slide, the first request is from Campfire. um they have completed their weatherization project, but they would like to move funds to repave the road that comes into the camp and retile the pool. Um they have about $55,000 remaining. Um if we choose to deny this request or any of these requests, these funds do fall back to the general fund. Uh Feast Collective is the next one. Um they originally had $50,000 set aside to do capital improvements um to a kitchen in a facility that they were going to uh lease. A lot of situation came up with that facility. Turned out they didn't have the facility wasn't up to code with its buying and so they ended up not getting into that facility and so this bucket has just been sitting there. um they would like to move this to salaries and benefits to continue operating but they don't intend on doing any further capital. Anovia um currently is probably the second highest sitting. Um we did just receive a request for reimbursement. So they're right sitting right about 1

point just shy of 1.9 million. Um their average bill is about 131,000. it does take a pretty significant time amount of time to get through their bill. So, we just reimbured December of 2025. Um they're requesting an extension to be able to run their project through 2028. And then last is Town of Fairfield. Um, we had previously uh you had given them the go ahead to uh purchase a piece of equipment that they were going to use to do their sewer project. Um, sounds like they have purchased that. They just haven't uh requested reimbursement yet, but they would like to shift the remaining funds to a water sewer project that they did in 24 that they did not have enough um CDBG funds through Georgia's team to cover.

So the project is done. But the project is done. So is feedback on whether we approve these? We need we don't we need to know whether the board approves these and we'll let the groups know. Um Commissioner Brooks.

Um I think as everyone knows I've been okay with some of these. Some of them when they've totally shifted to something completely different I've had more issues um with. So, um I think that's what I need to make sure I'm clear on which ones are shifting like Beast looks like they're shifting away from what they were originally planned for. Is that correct?

Beast actually had some salaries and benefits in their original award. This would just move more more money to salaries and benefits. We typically capped everybody at no more than 15%. this would exceed them way beyond 15%. Okay. I'm not I'm not comfortable with that one.

Yeah. Um what I don't want to do is get into like a you know, as everyone knows, Anobi was one of my projects. Um they're still doing what they're saying they were going to do. They're just extending it, which I think is a better idea because of otherwise they were just going to have to spend to spend it. Um, and so I actually didn't want them just to spend to spend it. I wanted them to be intentional in how they spent it. Um, and what we're seeing with this safe and healthy task force is they talk about our investments in the community and youth. This is one of those ways that we keep kids out of our system is by continuing to um, invest in Launch Northwest. And it's not a continuation of investment. It's just fulfilling our investment obligation in my mind. So, um, in town of Fairfield, obviously to Fairfield's in my district, um, I think that they're using it again for purposes that met all those needs and were, um, if there serve projects done, but, they're wanting to use the extra just like we did in uh, I think we did that for Rockford as well, where we let them use the additional funds for a similar type project. Um, I'm okay with that. The Fairfield project, the original project just came in way under budget is why there's extra funds there.

Yeah, but they're wanting to use those additional funds for another type of water sewer project. Correct. I think it's actually continuing the same project a few a few blocks further. Is that wrong? This one's a project. Yeah, sounds like infrastructure. Okay. How are they currently paying for it? I mean, if they're trying to just shift these dollars to a different project without these funds, they just wouldn't do the project. I thought you said the project was done. So, this project is done. So, I'm They've spent the money. Oh, I did not want No, it sounds like my understanding was that

spent the money. They just Oh, because it's different. They they want to co they want to shift this to cover a different project that unrelated. Fairfield has gone through a couple of uh clerks and so I think that with the shift the bills just haven't been submitted. Um I think that they expected that this would be allowed um just because the current clerk wasn't aware that they actually hadn't identified projects that this was already supposed to go towards. I think they proceeded with the interpretation that this would be allowed

with the small towns. Um, there some of them have a part-time staff person. It's it's very different than working with even a midsize Cheney Deer Park. Um, you know, we often talk to I think the mayor of Waverly or LA from our kitchen table and that's kind of 100 people. It's just it's very different than the organization processes we have in in bigger jurisdictions. Commissioner French, right? And and sure. Oh, sorry. Good. Oh, Commissioner French.

Well, no, I want Commissioner Brooks to finish her comments. I don't want to cut her off.

Have to have to figure out how to unmute once I muted. Um I Yeah, I think so. Cheryl was a long term longtime clerk down in Fairfield and yes, she retired about a year and it has not been as consistent since then. And then I know like 40,000 it was still we let them use for a similar type project that continued because as we've saw with George you know CDBG funds are hard to come by for some of these smaller towns and so this was again one of the chances that they had to actually do the project. So, I don't know if we we need to get the just sit down with the clerk and Brennon and I can do that and talk to them to see what's going on in Fairfield. I'm happy to do

but and I notice on the thing it says this would be two project changes. It would be the second project change that we made because the first project change that we made was to allow them to purchase you. Oh, that's right. use that equipment. They moved it to a water project and then this they wanted to use what's remaining to pay for

a second water project that was unrelated to the one that they the other one. Okay. Got it. Got to cut it. Is is there any um challenges that we face with the federal government if these projects keep I know we moved the money to be able to be more flexible, but u is there is there any challenge with the paperwork when we send stuff back into federal government about what what the ARPA funds to if there's like several different changes.

No, because most of these changes are happening now in general fund which is why they Okay. Um when when they were in the AR funds, we had to keep their project pretty much the same, right?

We could make general um changes, but in order to keep fairness um in how they were scored, we had to keep them in their same category. So if there were changes that would have taken them outside their category, they could make those changes. Um ex one example we had of that was the YW.CA. Um they wanted to make a change from a capital investment to uh when they open these storage lockers to putting sprinkler systems.

Maybe it was a very competitive category. They could have scored differently. So we couldn't say yes. These are all general fund as you recall about $50 million of ARP in the end backed first responders and the salaries of people who qualified during the COVID pandemic which freed up some capacity that these general funds are given out. So the board has fairly broad discretion please.

Yeah. I just to some degree I feel like, you know, I want to be flexible, but I also if a project was completed and it was under budget, normally if you get a grant, you don't just get to use the rest of it for another project. So um you know we were again it the dollars were to do a particular project or effort and if that's complete or maybe we modified it because that project no longer was needed and they did another project but at a certain point it's not like we guaranteed a certain amount of money to each entity. We said this is funding for a particular project. We were pretty flexible and allowed for some different projects, but at a certain point it was not a guaranteed it wasn't a guaranteed grant for a dollar amount. So that's my concern that on some of these just because there's money remaining does not mean that we that it's just money that can be spent for any purpose. So

Commissioner French.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. if I share it. So, you know, I for me I just go back to philosophically what was our approach when we originally started to do this and for me it was um you know one-time expenditures to either build capacity or meet an urgent need and uh so a lot of that money did that. Exactly. Um but uh now uh can you can you put that uh uh last slide back up again Ron? Um, for me, I mean, moving moving funds from a capital to payroll, that doesn't that, you know, if if I'm going to subsidize payroll, I'd rather do it for the county and keep a sheriff's deputy on the road than to feed for another, um, you know, uh, organization and stuff. So, uh, and with regard to the campfire, I don't know whether the repaving the road in the pool is a a need or a want. And so I'd want to be able to get more information about that. Um, and same thing with the shift of funds for the new water project. I mean, is that a need or a want and taking advantage of an opportunity? Because keep in mind that every one of these that we fund means that it's going to be more challenging for us to close our budget and stuff. So, just Thank you.

Yeah. The the campfire, my understanding it was for a pool project originally, correct? Originally they were fill in the pool and build a splash pad to camp so they could get kids water activities. There were some issues with I believe cost there. Correct.

So we allowed them to not do the splash pad and rehabilitate the pool. And this was all was still all under ARP because it was still water activities for kids in a youth camp. So it's all variation on a theme. The pool did not cost as much as their their grant. So they we we expanded some like we let them buy a pool of cover. Um so there's some other pool related stuff that was authorized and now we're you know retiling you could say is still part of the tool. The the road is definitely a completely different thing.

I I' I would just throw out I'd be comfortable with the pool retiling, but probably not repaving the road. That to me that doesn't seem like that would be related. The feast uh collective, you know, I'm I'm concerned about shifting so much over to uh salaries and B. I we cap that at 15% for everybody else. that puts us over for them. I don't I don't think that's right. Um, uh, Fairfield, I mean, if it wasn't part of the original plan, if this is just being viewed, like Commissioner French was saying, being viewed as excess money kind of out there and they're just looking at a I mean, if the project is done, but it was unrelated to this, I think just kind of makes me think they see a pot of money out there to help take care of some bills. Um, Anovia, I mean, my my issue with that is I mean, we've allowed them a great deal of flexibility, I believe, since since it originally started. Um, are are they capped at the 15% on salaries?

Yes. And they've I don't think they they are I think Didn't they hire people? Yes, that one was staff. Yeah, there's program stuff, but their admin is kept. the admin is capped. There were exceptions made kind of like government when people it takes people to do what is being accomplished and they were given some flexibility because of the nature of their yeah programs but the admin side was captain.

My my concern about that is they originally I believe asked for $10 million. We gave them five. They knew the deadline was the end of 26. They're asking to go to 28 and they still haven't even been able to spend down the five. They originally asked for 10. So, and they've got I mean, are they I think they got ARP from the city and the valley. Are they in the same situation with them or did they spend their city also gave five? Okay. They required it to be spent say a million a year for five years. It was kind of I don't know if that's the exact dollar amount, but if you didn't spend a million in 22, you lost the delta.

Okay. So, they did spend heavy with the city in the first years to fully utilize those funds. Can't speak to the valley. The valley did give money. I don't know what they're So, I think there is a case, as Commissioner Brooks said a little bit ago, they're probably going to spend it one way or the other. Yeah. If we say no, I would assume they'd fasttrack our spending. That's just an assumption. I don't know. Commissioner Brooks, and then when you're done, Commissioner French.

Yeah. No, that was part of it with Anovia was that yes, they were trying to spend down first city funds, which I was aware of. So, I knew that that was part of part of what was happening. And yes, they've stayed within their contract. They have not. They're just asking for an extension. Um I don't believe we've amended their contract, have we, Beth? No, there's been

So So we're still working under the same original contract um that was approved. Um so yes, and yes, we did 5 million, the city did 5 million, and and again, they were spending the cities down, I think, ahead of ours, and I think the valley only did a million. So, um, but I can, you know, we can have Ben come in. I thought he came in and and talked about the things that they were doing and so I'm happy to have him come back in and and talk about it. Mr. French.

Yeah. So, um, I know that we've got another item on our agenda and I've got a hard stop at 12:00. I'm uh down here in Salt Lake City and I'm meeting with a group of leadership around Todd Development for transit and so um I mean we can beat this thing to death, but have have we beat it enough to where we can move on to the other item on the agenda?

My my takeaway today is I think I've heard three nos for feast because it's a different change and a no to the road for campfire. think the others would be bringing back consensus. If my consensus is wrong, please tell me. I'm okay with that. It seems like that's what at least

Yeah, I would like Commissioner Brooks to have a chance to check with Fairfield, but I I agree with your two points about no to the salary and benefits at um the road because I do think that the pool is still related to the original project. Um, I just I worry about subsidizing salaries and benefits because that wasn't the original intent. And u, yeah, so half of them knocked out.

But yes, Anovia, I mean, I I think they're doing good work. I just want to see that I'm not on the board. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know that they're helping students get college and career ready. So, I'd love to get some updated stats, you know, from this year. So, I I know that Commissioner Brooks and Commissioner Jordan are are more involved on that. Commissioner Brooks, could you request that they come in at a future week, future meeting?

Yes. Yes, I will I will do that that I um have them come in and then um to Commissioner French's comment, I think we've we've hit this enough. I do have to go though, so I will not be on for the rest of this the meeting this morning. So, I'll leave it to the three of you. Okay. With that, we are done unless there are questions. Thank you guys for your hard work.

Well, we know where your offices are and you know where ours are. So, okay. Next up, that will bring us to Scott Chznney uh with an update on our comprehensive plan and the work that has been going on with that huge effort. He will be filtering in here shortly. There we are.

Uh thank you for your time. Uh today we uh this is our one of our periodic briefings. We've got uh a modest agenda to go through four main items. Next slide, please. and we'll hit all of these and take some time for your direction and questions. Uh the first one is going to be quite brief. Uh we're the environmental impact statement. Next, please. If you recall, we've had three approaches to the EIS. uh a no action alternative, the alternative one which is uh almost exclusively a density increase and alternative two which is to look at our historic development patterns which we you know identified here about four and a half dwelling units per acre and then using infill zoning to foster a mix of uses across the barrier. We expect to receive our draft EIS tomorrow. Next slide, please. And that will give us our first look at the findings based on transportation modeling based on uh our target areas that were identified earlier in the year. Uh we will be back with you on June 1st to have the initial discussion of what does that mean for our growth. Uh and then we'll also start to suggest what we would be putting forward for you to consider as a preferred alternative. And there'll be various uh flavors of that for your consideration and guidance. Um we've scheduled four public open houses uh the dates here the last week in May, first week in June. So a couple of those will happen before we see you and a couple afterwards and then we will come back for uh the range of the preferred alternatives in late June.

Uh next slide please. And a reminder of where things stand. Uh this is the target study areas map. Uh the infill areas are predominantly in the hatched areas, notably on the west plains and in the north metro. The green targets are the centers of study areas with that coral shape around them. It's about a half mile radius. Uh and then those are are primary study areas that we'll be looking at tomorrow. The red areas are UG swap requests from specific communities. Airway Heights Medical Lake and you can see a very tiny dot on the north end of Cheni as well. So, uh that's that's where we stand with EIS. Um nothing new, but like I said, we're we're expecting our first results tomorrow. Uh, with that, we will be publishing, excuse me, publishing that draft EIS on Friday for a 30-day comment period that will end in June. Any thoughts or questions about EIS?

Go ahead. We You're going to have some open houses, it looks like. Yes. May 26th, 27th, June 2nd, and 3rd. And so those are open to the public to look at these options and give us feedback. Yes, they will be out in the public at four venues. I believe we've used them all before. Okay. Did you send all that info to the commissioners? We have not because we wanted to make sure we had the EIS in hand before we confirmed those. before you start advertising in case something goes sideways as it has. The EIS has been delayed, you know, several times, a total of about 90 days. And so,

this is the contractor that we've hired to help us with it. Yes. And and uh partially because the initial cut at the transportation modeling was going to be done with SRTC. They didn't have the capacity. We had to shift it back to the contractor. they had to get ready to do that and that just simply caused a 30 60 day delay. So, so waiting on advertising until you get the EIS tomorrow, make sure that if it's in my hands tomorrow, all of our questions are answered before we get it out to the public. Yeah. Okay.

We're scheduled to to put uh pads in the paper um a week before the first ones with all four of them, but at least a week's notice or two weeks notice for this the second two. Uh we'll be working with Sharesa on social media. We'll be using our email blast and our website. So, we'll use every tool we have and we'll send them to you and the commissioners for your own distribution as well. Okay. Thanks. But that's why they're you're holding back a little bit to make sure you get a look at these. Yeah. In case there's any questions or things that need to go back to Exactly. for further study. Okay.

Exactly. So, u next please. Uh our next topic, the critical area ordinance. While not directly a part of the comp plan itself update, uh it is an important part of our work, notably the implementation parts of the comprehensive plan. So, we have been working on this uh update now for uh a couple of years. You can see the kind of the schedule or where it started. It hasn't been done in quite a while. Uh next, please. And we're looking at, you know, kind of the broad basis of of where things stand. Kind of as a reminder from the wax, it's, you know, these five are the highlights of what are called considered critical areas. Please And then just to give you a a little bit of a a summary of a couple highlighted areas. Um, and we did submit the critical the CAO both in a clean and a redline version in your packets. uh if you were so inclined to dig through all 400 pages of it. But as a couple of highlights, wetlands, we're looking at consolidating buffer options, uh making corridor standards, removing some reduction standards. Next, please. habitat conservation areas, uh looking at vegetation removal uh restrictions, stream crossing guidance, riparian buffer width, all of things that have changed in the best available science in the last uh 10 years or more. Next, please. uh buffer updates. You will see these are being a little more rigorous than what had existed in the past and moving in some cases from uh non-fish from a 25- ft buffer to a 100 foot buffer. In

any case, uh all buffer are subject to wetland specialist delineation at the time of a project. And so if a specialist comes in and says 100 foot is not required to maintain this buffer, these have uh some flexibility. but only when a credentialed specialist can write a report to do that. Next, please. And then uh really the the key element for planning is the critical aquifer recharge areas. Uh well known well understood for the Spokane Valley rather prairie aquifer. not as well known or understood for the Grand Ronda aquifer on the west plains and the other parts of that. So, we're updating and we'll see in the kind next simple size. We're we're putting a major update into the car uh system and mapping. Uh the mapping needs to be updated to better reflect the West Plains situation. Next, please. And you can see these next few slides are related to comments we've received in our meetings, notably from the first one, April 9th. Adding definitions, uh getting PAS recognized, updating the car mapping for the excuse me, West Plains. Um looking at making sure we've got uh enforcement rules. We're not necessarily recommending changes of the enforcement, but like here you can see requiring qualified professional evaluations happening. Next, please. And then related to the best available science summary is mapping the new cars with the west planes. uh making those making those changes so that people looking to grow can find appropriate guidance in the comprehensive plan and in the credit ordinance that will help decide where

where you should build and with what conditions and with what uh potential hazards. Next please. This is ask a question about that. So the the the definition for PAS then talking about pollution that's where it should land in our the critical area. It's considered part of a critical area or how does that

No, technically no. Pollution is an entirely temperate thing, right? We're we're mapping it because it fits into the implementation side of how you use the ordinance. So the best available science which is on this next this first map shows uh for example the paleo channels on the west plains that were not mapped before. It shows where PAS contamination is high. So those are they're like appendix materials. Okay.

The CAO can't fix something that's already broken. It can't it's not a reparations ordinance. It's a future looking ordinance to guide new development. But we want uh best available science and the most complete hydro uh geologic information we can get for people to make those decisions. Yeah. No, I think it's a good idea. I just didn't know how it how it uh fit in the the growth plan. You know, it's interesting.

It it's kind of a you if you've got a vin diagram and you got the co on one side and the comp plan on the other. This is this is like right in between. It fits in that because it'll fit into frequently flooded areas or storm water management considerations over here, but it fits into how do you set up lands for building on this site. So that's why we we thought it was important to bring this in

and to be you know sure uh we have learned a great deal of this from Chad Pritchard uh professor at Eastern and from residents and businesses on the West Plains that came to our early sessions and they were uh they were unhappy with the county's progress at documenting this at using this as information where where you should build where you shouldn't build and we you know we are truly grateful for the public involved open on this because it's made a huge difference. Right. This this map is just showing some of that PAS contamination. Generally speaking, the diagonal line is I90. The horizontal one in the middle is Highway 2. So, the airports are both there, Airway Heights. And you can see it's pretty extensive. It it trails, you know, in that drainage channel all the way north to the Spokane River. Next, please. And this is just another sample. The sort of peach area in the middle is kind of two-toned. It's all all the same storm water flooding risk area. Uh these are data that we have, they're in our engineering maps, uh but they're not as fully used in our planning maps. And so again, when we're talking about best available science and pulling information into uh places where it can be seen and used to make a decision,

this is a a key element. In that lower left corner of the screen is the uh uh Medical Lake interchange on I90 and essentially what's called the West Terraces area. That's one that's been subject to an enormous amount of flooding from storm water because through Pritchard's work you the the groundwater percolates through there. The the basin for the aquifer is so high uh that is almost at soil level and so there's no place for water to percolate. There's no place for it to go. Uh we think and and you know that that's a group of very frustrated people out there but we think this kind of information is important people to understand before we do planning and before you start coming in and platting lots that need some consideration.

Thank you. You're using historical data. you're ignoring the fact that the county just invested almost $6 million to address the uh the flooding situation that existed uh you know several years ago but uh now has been addressed. So how does that reflect in here? it it will reflect this is this is a map from like I said from our engineering map survey uh as that system as any system can ameliate some of the drainage considerations that'll come into play in the storm water manual and it'll come into play on these maps they won't they may not be listed as hazard areas anymore for example

any other questions and CAO best of ethical sciences. Okay, next please. Next category is is our rural lands element and in some cases this is not changing very much. Uh and remember this is a little different than the resource lands. The rural lands are are can be used for agriculture but are not specifically protected for agricultural forestry or mining uses. And so what we're doing is we're working to clarify these and again with our fellow county and regional planners through WASAC uh we're looking at some work on uh improving the ability of using lamards for example. Uh there's more than uh two dozen uh lamards in the county. Most are quite small uh you know crossroads with a few homes or a few dozen homes. Some are a little more modest. The growth management act lets them exist but they can't expand. Uh in some cases they can get more dense but you can't expand the the logical outer boundary of them. Now we want to look at at creating these as a chance to to move them into a new uh category. So next please. There are three land use categories in the Spokane County uh code. the rural activity center which is the predominant version and then the limited development areas. There's a residential and a commercial. We're looking at kind of hinting at here the the vast majority of lammers in fact all of them in Spokane County are what's called type one lammers which are are that kind of mixed use something that existed at a crossroads. uh and the rural activity centers we're looking to characterize as villages

something new. Next slide please. And that approach is to say why can't we have and support uh a low density rural lifestyle uh that is allowed to expand and have like we're talking about for our neighborhood zoning could have a new set of small shops or a market or uh employment possibilities so that people wouldn't have to drive into a city from a Lambert that might be you know five miles away but might be 25 miles way. Uh, as I hinted with WASAC, we've got a group of planners working on a Lambert reform bill as part of a legislative initiative for the coming year. So, you can see here we're cur Yes.

So, would the changes that you're that we might be proposing require a policy state policy change around land? They would not at this stage. No, they would not require a change. Okay. The lammer change that we're proposing uh allows them to expand within scale. Not not to become sprawling but to big box store or something more smaller shops. Yeah. Services. Yeah. Yeah. It used to be like a post office or a grain elevator or a church or saloon, you know, to leave them to.

So, what would the state change then allow for uh expansion potentially of boundaries so that they could you could in fact add some limited housing or something? Commissioner French.

Yeah. I just want to keep in mind the fact that, you know, Airway Heights started out as a wide spot in the road. Same thing with Liberty Lake and a lot of our small towns and stuff. So you have to start with some kind of uh convenience opportunities for those in the rural areas otherwise you u increase transportation uh uh demands uh into your urban areas and stuff which uh is counterproductive in terms of trying to reduce the amount of trips and stuff. So, you know, I don't want to, you know, the lamids are a logical uh first step to create additional urban areas, but anyway, thank you.

And that's absolutely accurate. It's a tool that that whose time has come and we've we've briefed part of this earlier, but when we now have a climate and resiliency element as part of the comprehensive plan system, that climate resiliency talks about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. Well, if you have these villages that are a little more self-sufficient than they were before, you are clearly having a positive impact on uh cars coming off the road and attended greenhouse gases. So, we've got some good candidates, some you up along the river, some uh the Four Lakes area uh on the interchange with 904. Uh so, we we believe this is a viable tool for next 20 years of growth. Next, please. The limited development areas uh are there there not as many of these and the most prominent of these is the north me area which exists in urban zoning but has both an LDA residential and an LDA commercial component to it for its comprehensive plan designation. uh we're not changing that nomencl we're not suggesting a change in that nomenclature but the underlying uh the the zoning may change a little bit in the sense that uh some of the neighborhood residential or the neighborhood business zone may now be more appropriate here and you can see the last note on this uh LDAs that already have urban services should be considered for future UG status we've had that discussion with commerce and they are supportive of the northbeat area becoming a place. Uh we're not proposing it in 26 because it's also very complicated and it doesn't need to happen to affect the rest of the plan. Next, please.

And then these last uh two slides on this are the designations that we currently have in our rural areas. We have what's called rural five. We're just changing that to rural residential to reflect that that's what it is. It's a 5 acre or so residential piece. Most prominent part of that is the oldest orchards area on our east corridor, but it exists in a few other areas. Uh in our last in the current zoning and plan, no new 5 acre parcels may be created or permitted. And we're keeping that uh prohibition in this case, but we're we're keeping this as a permanent zoning category. rural traditional uh not changing in any meaningful way. It's still a 10 acre minimum. Uh what we're looking at rural traditional though is uh the last part of this slide that says activity and event centers may be allowed here based on conditions and based on intensity. And so uh and that and that's that's different than saying we're allowing small business because small businesses are generally not allowed unless they are resource-based or serve the resource or serve the the local area. But you could have a wedding venue, you could have a corporate retreat center, you could have something like that in this in areas where it makes sense. And where the where those conditions are is mostly related to if you're on a five or 10 acre parcel, how are you having can you produce and hold an event center uh without unnecessarily annoying your neighbors? How do you protect the rest of the properties who want to live a quiet rural lifestyle and not have uh wedding parties every Saturday for six months at a time?

Commissioner French. Yeah. The other thing that's happening in the state is uh and the latest number that I've seen is u that uh the state of Washington is losing losing two farms per day. Two farms per day because it's just become financially challenging to be able to farm in today's uh environment and stuff. And so providing additional revenue opportunities hopefully will save more farms from having to uh close up. Thank you.

We we are uh acutely aware of that and that's a very important part of our resource plans and uh something we're going to pick up in two slides. Next please. The last of our rural C categories is rural conservation. Uh this is uh as you recall this is again best available science outlining areas of habitat of fragile environmental or ecological uh lands. The study for this has shown now using uh fish and wildlife and DNR they've they've created a new three tier system. uh tier one are are the most important lands to protect and that coincides with our RCV zone very well. Uh tier two is a slightly more expanded version of that with new science saying you should look at these in another detail and tier three uh goes even further. Tier three could add uh hundreds of acres into into rural conservation from rural traditional. We're not sure that's the best approach for Spokane County today, but we will be studying that in the EAS and and going forward. But this is the the conservation. It's a 20 acre minimum and and it is designed to protect uh fragile rural ecosystems.

Can I ask one quick question on that? So is this where you might integrate some of the concern for wildland wooi wildland interface areas or is that a different category? It's it's a different category. It really is everywhere in rural and and edges of cities as well. Um yet another bill from the legislature that we're working on with our WASAC partners is what does that mean for planning? And it's it's something that will so how have we integrated it so far in our update?

Uh it is integrated in the climate and resiliency element specifically the resiliency side where we partnered and worked with our emergency management plan right uh and how that came together. So that's that's where it resides in the book so to speak. It hasn't yet made its way into the land use section. Yeah, I just I know that with the increased wildfire risks, I just was wondering what what are we going to what are we going to do to, you know, mitigate that differently than we did 20 years ago with our plan? Well, I believe you know,

times have changed, the climate's changed, the conditions have changed. So, what are we going to do about that? um specifically nothing today. Is there anything that drives out of the climate change chapter? Yeah. Like zoning or land use or recommendations for our for the actual

there's no right now is it's all goal and policy language on what we should do. Um and some of it, you know, is obvious. It's it's uh planting cover around residential and commercial structures in rural areas. Uh it's looking at where do cities um in the city of the valley on the south side is up in Dishman Hills. How do how does that come into play? Are there you know are there fire breaks that should be actually used physical separations? We don't we're not seeing any specific recommendations coming out yet or specific things would go into a code. But it's also something that the building code people are talking about as much as plan planning on the land use side. Yeah. can have an impact on how a plat could be done. Can you can you really plat out all of these lots without creating a hazard or how do you do it without creating a hazard? The building permit side and the setback side could be if you're building in these areas, you must have a uh standing seam roof, must use non-combustible siding, you must have a separation from plants. So there there are some specific things as you might imagine there's a lot of passion on both sides or multiple sides of this argument. A lot of people who we've are the people we've heard from some in the rural areas like we don't need your help we don't want your help just leave us alone. And there are others insurance companies and others that say this is important because we can prevent some of these losses. So, what will be the what will we be able to what will drive any changes then? You're saying this update won't drive any particular changes to how we do business.

It will in the comp plan sense because we we have to have a resiliency component and so that will overlap with uh our disaster planning and our emergency management planning. I don't know if it'll get into development codes at this stage. I think we're waiting a little bit on to see where the legislature goes in the next round on what does that wildland urban interface look like from a regulatory perspective in the RCW and the WAC and then will we take some guidance from that to put it in our code. So they're actively looking at

potentially some statewide policies. Yes, it's it's there was a one bill that was passed in the last session already moving in that direction. That one we're we're trying to understand and we will incorporate because it's already on the books. Okay. Next, please.

And this is getting uh right at Commissioner French's uh interest and concerns and and all of you. I know we've talked about this since 2023. Uh and then in 24 um the Supreme Court ruled against King County and that had a has an effect of making us all look at how we deal with agrourism in the face of the growth management act. Uh but it's important for Spokane County simply we already have green bluff growers association well known very popular. Uh and so we we we've got a lot of this in place. We have had more than a dozen requests from others who want to come out of the shadows and operate agurism operants legally. And so we know there's huge interest in this going forward. And as Commissioner French noted, uh, next please. This is a is is good for all sorts of reasons. uh it provides, you know, an economic boost to the county, to land owners, to farmers in particular. Uh and it provides that buffering of income against a bad crop year or something, you know, along those lines. And the the important part and the reason we made this distinct from the rural categories is uh if if you want to p participate in agriurism our recommendation to you is you must have the egg first. Uh you can't create something that is related to agurism uh on its own. It has to be part of agriculture in one form or another. that helps uh the argument from the growth management act because uh we're not degrading egg uses or egg lands. Uh we are in fact, you know, commissioner, you know,

at least hinted at if we're providing a secondary source of income, we may be ultimately helping that farm stay alive in challenging times. So all of this is about using uh using this for a agricultural based tourism and like these others this is one that we're yet again working with planners on on maybe a model code for agurism. We are honestly quite a ways ahead of many of the counties that don't have something in place and we're learning from some like King County, Stomage County, Thirstston County that do have some aggurism code in place and we're getting some suggestions from them. So that will that will come along and you can see some of the things we're considering in terms of basic terms. Next please. And then this last one is just you know creating development rigs. Uh you know creating the rules by which this would have to operate. Greenluff growers is a very successful group. Uh I'm sure all of us have been somewhere caught on those roads on harvest festival weekends. Uh stuck for an hour or more. And while that's great uh it brings up some of the obvious constraints. What happens if there's a medical emergency? What happens if there's a fire? Uh those roads are so filled it's almost impossible to get emergency apparatus into the heart of that if something happens. So how this thing is managed and scaled is is really important. Any thoughts or questions about this? Okay. Uh let's move on to our our last topic for today which is housing and the hapt

tool and ha allocation. You can on this opening slide is the very quick background of this uh this was provided by commerce uh for all of the jurisdictions to use. We went through uh we meaning the PTAC the planners group went through uh several iterations of this tool. uh you adopted the methodology for this on January 21st of 25 and attached to that was how those allocations looked at the time which was using population share as the input and then calculating housing unit allocations by jurisdiction and by income band. uh PTAC later uh in had been working but later in the month brought to the steering committee a change in the HAP tool that moved from a population-based allocation to a housing unit based allocation and that the steering committee saw that in late January of 25. that is the tool that the uh communities have been using uh so far uh and they're asking you to uh adopt those specific allocations uh for their guidance. Now, as you probably remember when we've talked about this, there was a lot of concern about HAP tool. Uh the first versions we saw were were locked. We couldn't see the formulas. We couldn't see how anything was calculated. And then when it went from a population-based allocation to a housing based allocation, the numbers changed but not in a proportionate way. Uh the logic would say if if your housing if your share from population was this many housing units and you change to a housing unit, it should be essentially the same adjusted for group quarters and

what commerce called the homeless factor. Uh but it didn't. uh and we've got some diagrams to share as we go on here. Point was there was there was not uniform comfort with HABs. Uh it continued mostly of its own momentum because the PTAC couldn't agree on any other changes or approach that every municipality would use. Next, please. So you've seen this uh diagram or this matrix several times. This is the population estimate forecast based on the OFM data and it shows the you know roughly 100,000 increase from 2023 to 2046 for Spokane County. Uh OFM's projections are conservative. They're generally 1% or less in a year. what we've learned in Spokane County and and by the way this is Commissioner French remembers this very well the concern of Spokane County overreaching its estimate in the 2015 uh era that led to part of the settlement agreement was that uh it had picked a number that was too big and yet in the you know five years after that as we started the plan update in in 21 uh the county had already hit its 10 year target. It had already grown faster than it in this than it was forecast. Uh OFM essentially took that bump and regressed it to the bean. As I said, they brought it back down to well, you can't grow at that 3% rate forever, so we're going to put you back at the, you know, 1% or less rate, which makes it a very conservative number. Nonetheless, you can see in this the share of the

unincorporated county and the incorporated. So inside the UG 30,000 gross inside the cities as a total about 65,000 out of that 100,000. Next please. And by the way that 1% would be in this period about 4,300 people a year. So this is uh reflecting the change to housing share from population share that was done by uh PTAC notably by the city of Spokane creating a persons for housing index for uh each of the jurisdictions and it as as we you know learned that housing persons for housing uh changed somewhat dramatically from different places to different places. So that helped explain why the housing share changed, why the the city of Spokane's numbers um went up because their population per housing number was dropped uh fairly, you know, from 2.5 to 2.1 or 2.2. Uh the counties was left at roughly the same, you know, 2.7 to 2.5 and that dropped that dropped the county's number from about 22,000 units to 17,000 units. And so that was one of the concerns we've had going in. Now, Commerce did approve that housing share allocation and that's why the municipalities been using it ever since. Next, please. This reflects the actual number difference. Yes,

we're using it, too. the housing share. Yes, we've calculated all of our EIS materials with housing share as well. Yes, we have so far. That's correct. Okay. Because you said municipalities, but also well, they're they are further along. We we are just getting our EIS, but the uh the allocations in the study areas were based on the zoning changes in neighborhood residential, neighborhood business. those zoning changes anticipated the densities that could be in the housing share or in the population share. But yes, we we

we we have used it. But this shows the the actual number differences and and I understand it's it's hard to see but one of the things that was most frustrating to the county is that the top line under the first allocation uh the county was assigned uh 3500 population or units in the unincorporated rural areas. So outside of the urban growth areas using the housing share uh somehow that got calculated to almost 6,200 units and one of the questions we had for commerce among others was how is a tool that's supposed to be generating housing within urban growth areas suddenly doubling the share of housing outside of the urban growth area. Uh there was no satisfactory answer to that. What commerce has said and they they have put this in writing to you as well as us is that the county is able to share or to shape that number as it fits the classic patterns of development. Meaning we are our analysis shows that that's 6,200 based on our current rural permitting volumes over time and reducing that by you know four or five% a year just reflecting that some of the rural growth is going to slow and some of it will in fact go inside of an urban growth area. We see the need for of just about 3,000 total rural housing units in the 20 year horizon. And so that number is going to move that 61 95 or 6200 uh down by 3,000 and move the uninccorporated UG up by 3,000 units. Otherwise, the rest of those numbers reflect what uh were allocated from the

housing side versus the population side. And you can see many of them went higher, a couple went lower. Next slide, please. So, can I just Yeah, you asked your followup and then Commissioner French, you're up after. So, what you're you're saying is, and we discussed this at the steering committee and I I read the letters from commerce and everyone seems to support it, is moving of the 6,000 and unincorporated rural, moving 3,000 of that to unincorporated UG. So, that makes that number more like 21,000, right? Okay. That but we would have to take that action as a board to do that. Yes. To make that change. Yes. Okay.

Yeah. That'll be a recommendation coming from us. Uh and uh and depending on how you want to process this, uh it would it would go to or the fastest track on this is we're we're comfortable with the uh the analysis leading to that number. We could have that for the steering committee uh at their June 17th meeting for them to call the public hearing and then make a recommendation to you. So, next please. Hang on, Commissioner French.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. Just wanted to uh expand on this a little bit. The HAP uh process uh goes back 30 years and and uh the challenge with that is that that's before uh the cities of Liberty Lake and Spokane Valley incorporated. And so all that population showed up as unincorporated Spokane County. And that distorts the numbers uh pretty dramatically. And and I agree that uh you know the the population uh number uh needs to be increased and uh for the uh unincorporated or for the unincorporated UG uh boundary. We need to put more of that into the boundary and not outside of the boundary and rural areas and stuff. The other the other thing is that uh you know this the the the analysis uh distorts what's happening with the city of Spokane. City of Spokane has been uh dropping a population uh relative to the rest of the county for the last 25 years of growth and in fact in 2000 they represented about 48% of the county. uh numbers that I got a couple weeks ago show that they are down to 39% 39.19% of the total population which means that people with their dollars are choosing to live somewhere else and not in the city of Spokane and that needs to be reflected otherwise the significant amount of this growth that we're projecting is going to continue to happen in Coupney County. Uh and again at the steering committee and I want to put this on the record. Uh the board of realtors hired an outside consultant to identify what the economic impact of um of lost revenue for Spokane County is to Coupney County and that number was uh $950 million. That's not sustainable. We

just spent two hours going through our budget for next year talking about how our revenues are not keeping pace where their expenses. Well, part of it is because significant part of our workforce is choosing to live in Kney County, coming over here for a better paying job and spending the dollars that should be spent here in Spokane County over in Coney County. And that's just not sustainable. And so, so I'm hoping that when we get down to the final uh adoption of here, we do something that's realistic with what's going on here in Spokane County and not what was going on 30 years ago. Thank you. Can I ask Commissioner French, are you suggesting a an alteration different than the shifting the unincorporated rural number to the unincorporated UG? Do you think additional alterations or changes need to be made?

Well, I'd like to I'd like to see where where the city of Spokane plans to to um um accommodate 22,359 uh housing units. That's just that's unrealistic. I mean, you know, they they can't even keep pace with the capital needs uh for their existing UG. I'll keep in mind, you know, the city when adopted the comp plan in May of 2020, May of 2001, uh anticipated there'd be 20,000 residents going into Law Valley. Here we are 25 years later and they haven't meet that the capital needs of Lat Valley, much less a lot of the other city and stuff. And so, it's just unrealistic. And I I I hope that when we get down to the next level of this thing, we'll get to some realistic numbers. And and the other thing is in the draft EIS, uh they're projecting that 72% of their housing or their density is going to be accommodated with rental property. Rental property. This is just nonsense. When people are leaving Spokane County because they can't afford uh to build a house and they're going to Coupney County, that's just a wrong outcome. And we need to change that. If we don't, we're end up we're going to end up getting the one uh that's going to be the bedroom community to Post Falls. So, yes, there are other numbers that need to be adjusted here.

Is uh Scott, is that are is that information we can get from the city on where they anticipate putting 22,000 units? Um their capital facilities. I assume that's accessible. Um what if they and what if it shows they can't meet that? What what remedies or options are available out there?

Yes. Uh the answer is yes and we saw that in their draft EIS. We submitted comments that suggested that their EIS did not adequately support their numbers and we were looking forward to their preferred alternative being able to do so. their council is voting on their preser preferred alternative tonight and so their documents are out and available and we will know officially what they're going to be acting on tonight. Okay.

If if we are unable to determine through their capital facilities, transportation, usual things that they're that their projections are realistic. We can we can challenge them. uh we have no authority to force them to change. Commerce if if we point if anybody points out a flaw, Congress has an obligation to review that in their 60-day review. Presumably, they would say they would not be in compliance with the Growth Management Act if they're overreaching on their options. And that that would be something that we would simply point out from our perspective saying based on what you've shown us, we can't understand how you can support this. And as we look at these documents from today, uh we'll see we because we've told them this for four years, you know, they they said you you get to pick any number you want because that's your legal uh ability, but you have to show us your work. You have to demonstrate that you can in fact support the numbers you're you're being allocated. Okay.

That's been a a message from the county to all of the cities for the entire process of this comprehensive plan.

Okay. Commissioner French. Well, and I think uh you know uh shifting some of that growth potential to some of the areas that are and have demonstrated the ability to uh accommodate growth I think is a reasonable uh assumption for um for us as we adopt these final numbers and the allocations and stuff. I went through that uh draft environmental impact statement and and it was MAI made as instructed and I don't know who the chef is over at the city but they're clearly cooking the books and uh we just we got to do a better job of this otherwise in 20 years the county is going to be in a very very poor situation. Thank you.

Could I ask just one last back up one? I'm sorry. Um, so the method prime a I love it sounds like a a Star Trek thing. Anyway, that method I'm thinking of the prime derivative. Um, that method said that we were using housing share. Yes. Okay. So, we're following what the board I'm just going back to what we what we adopted. The board did adopt a methodology that said that we're going to use housing chair, but that's just how the HAP tool works. Yes, the HAP tool works with any input you want. Okay.

When the board adopted the HAP a prime methodology, population share was tool of the day. That's the that was the matrix that was attached to the resolution was based on the population allocations. Later that month, the steering committee endorsed the housing place allocations. So when you took action, you took action based on population allocations. So if but my understanding is that commerce had had already said that the housing share was the correct methodology to use. It was their preferred methodology and it's okay. And you know I I I don't want to get into the whole we we we we

we discussed that for about an hour and a half at the last growth management steering committee meeting. Yeah. Um but I just I'm kind of still a bit confused about the timeline of of what all that was going on. But um but the housing share is the recommendation because it it considers like the housing inequality and those issues that need to be addressed in the plan or consider the homeless. It was on the chart up there the 30% versus the 10% building housing for all different income levels as well as accommodating homeless shelters.

Right. But that said, the population allocation version that was originally on the table did the same thing because it still had the PSH housing, the nonPH house housing, the 0 to30, all of that. The outputs still addressed each housing need. It was just a different input. But using the housing share changed that from a pure population percentage into a modified one because it pulled out prison populations. It pulled out dormatory or hospital populations and it added and it looked at household size is what you were saying. What's the household size? Yes. And that varied from 2.7 to 2.1. Not every unit has the same number of people in it.

Correct.

Okay. So, those things were all correct. Okay. But you know what the point I'm I'm just trying to reiterate kind of for the record is the the population allocation that you adopted in January of 25 is perfectly legitimate. Commerce at the time said you can you can use any method you want. You can use our version A, you can use our version B or you can use a method C which is anything you can come up with and agree on. Well, PTAC could not agree on a unified methodology which led back to A and then A became A prime by reflecting that A was allocating more units at lower incomes into the rural areas than it should have and so all those were zeroed out and that became a prime but commerce initially was was fine with the population allocations. the housing ones ended up by default because that's where PTAC ultimately agreed to stay and that's where they are today. So on

so can I who was so PTAC made that decision who directed PTAC to do that and who is PTAC supposed to take direction from the steering committee give them express direction to do that my recollection was the direction came from commerce that commerce strongly preferred the use of housing allocations than population allocations but that came, you know, a year into the process. That came well after we'd gone through the first cycle. Okay. Commissioner French,

you know, I just want to take us back to when we first started this process several years ago and and uh uh we had as a board made the decision that we were going to drive this process much more than allowing the cities to do it or or other entities and stuff. And so what has happened now is that our direction and our leadership has been co-opted by PTAC and PTAC is making decisions that you know uh they have an expectation that we're going to just adopt willy-nilly. And I I I got a great deal of heartburn with what PTAC has done uh with changing the direction here and uh you know playing uh musical instruments with the with the allocation. We know how this county is growing and we know where it needs to grow more and where it it u it it hasn't met the growth projections and stuff. This has got to be an issue of leadership. We can't default to PTAC and and staff that probably the majority of have never developed anything but a headache. I mean, I'm I'm I apologize for being so passionate about this, but you know, I served on the city planning commission when we were adopting the that plan and had every every kind of expectation and none of it came to to fruition. I just don't want to see that happening again. Thank you.

Let me wrap up our thought with the data that you could see on the screen. And there's a couple of key items here. And the biggest one is uh the housing unit growth number you see is 75,000 plus. These are uh these numbers uh on one side is the 2020 census as the other is the 2046 target. That represents uh you know that full 26 year growth period not 20-year growth horizon of the plan. And so one of the things that all of the communities need to do, and I need to check specifically on Commerce's guidance on this, but uh we've been using this 26-year allocation for a lot of our work up to this point. We need to back out what's already happened from 2020 to 2025. Uh that is in the books, so to speak, and say, well, this is our our new growth. So that 75,000 number could drop to 60 or 55,000 in terms of actual new housing unit growth for the 20-year horizon. And if you put that in perspective uh and look at the growth that we had in say the 2015 to 2020 and 20 to 25 periods, the county could easily absorb all of 55,000 units in 10 years instead of 20 years. looking at our historic growth patterns and again this is where the HAP tool falls apart and that's that's probably too strong or the HAP tool is constrained by the very conservative OFM projections and you back that all the way back. We we made the recommendation to start with the OFM median projections because that was the safest defensible thing to do at the time. um the county none of the

cities have demographic experts on their staff. So we had no basis to change that other than to say this is our starting position but it may not be our final position as we start to really balance real growth with the projections as they come out. And so, you know, that's now what we're seeing four years later is the growth is stronger. Now, granted, this last year, it's tapered off a little bit, but it is stronger and, you know, could outgrow this very quickly. In a way, that's still all right because if you're growing faster, you are allowed to readjust your growth patterns, uh, particularly in this first five-year period, but you can adjust them annually if you can just if you can defend them. And that involves sometimes the UG swap version of it rather the creation. But now that we're you know at the maybe not 11th hour but 10th hour some of these the numbers they're defensible on how we got here. They may not reflect today's world as accurately accurately as we'd like. But it's important to remember one fundamental part of of this kind of forecasting. It is an exercise in crystal ball gazing. You know, we we as planners can't tell people where they have to live. We can make land available. We can regulate it. We can zone it. Uh but the market is going to build where the market can sell projects. Uh most important thing that's come out of this HAP tool isn't fighting over the actual number of allocated housing. is is making sure we built in that report and and modify what we started out as target reconciliation that if something isn't working we have a tool sanctioned by GMA to open the open the hood of the car and tinker with the engine in you know one in annual monitoring and in you know multi-year changes.

So, uh, our perspective is less on the actual numbers than it is making sure we've got the ability to control for growth. As the, as Commissioner French noted, the city has been less than transparent all along in sharing with us how they intend to support their growth. And we're looking forward to their EIS uh, tonight to get a sense of have they have they documented their ability to do that? uh if if not then uh you know I think we have even though it's going to be late in the process we have the uh probably the obligation to think quickly and on our feet about how this allocation may change.

Um Scott, can I ask the um I mean still with the the the population share versus housing share. Yes. Um, I mean, we went round and round at the steering committee on that and I tried to ask the the representative that was there from commerce tried to ask the the the gal from the city uh planning you it it just kept going back to you know the commerce would like this commerce suggests this commerce re you may use how house it is there anything in writing that we received from commerce that actually said use the housing share because when I tried to say is it a shall or is it a a may use the and and a lot of people like to everybody tap dance around that at at the jury but nobody wanted to come out and say yes you must use housing share and here's where it's in writing. It's just like they just would say well that's how the tool was designed. Well do we have to? Well, we'd like it if you did. You know, must we use that? It's preferred. I mean, that that's what every I mean, nobody would give a straight answer. What?

Why? I think you're Well, you're accurate in recanting the meeting. That's that's that's true. I would go back to the very first introduction of HAT where it was here's the population allocations. Plug the population in. There's your housing allocations. And you can do this A, B, or C method. So it wasn't and and C was you don't have to use HAP but you have to have something that you can defend under GMA. Nobody collectively could agree on what that something was. So there was an AB or if you could come up with C and yeah they reported back we can't come up with a C. So

Lake wanted one thing, Airway Heights wanted another. The city was by itself. So there was no unonymity or no even consensus. That led us back to a and then commerce introduced we would prefer you use a housing share. That's how we designed the tool not the population share we initially directed you to use. So they they I don't say they moved the goalpost. They they said we would prefer you use this share. Well they threw in another potential option. Right. Is that another way of stating that? Yes.

They and so but again it was an option. It wasn't that we were required to and we had already adopted a with population. And so I mean that that's kind of where the where the hangup was at the steering committee. It was all these cities like well no no we use this but again it goes back who told you to use that and they're like well commerce but it's not commerce's role to tell you which one to use right well

or if it is I mean it's like where is that in writing? We would uh we we ignore Congress's guidance u at our peril because they have to review and and sign off on our comprehensive plan that they get a 60-day review before it comes back to you. But uh where they are directive, sure, if they say this is how you must do things, you know, it's here in the RCW, it's here in the WAC, we we go out and we do that. when it is you may do this or you you could use this tool. There's a good reason to use that because it is coming from Congress and Congress evaluate our plan and they accept the tool. If we use the tool, they're going to accept the results. Uh the challenge was changing the tool in the middle of the game and it added uncertainty. It added the confusion because the uh the population per household numbers were in my opinion somewhat arbitrary.

And so they when you've got that variance now individual places are are going up in allocation, going down in allocation. The part of the housing allocation that made sense uh was the group quarters part of it. uh we shouldn't necessarily be hous be forcing airway heights to plan for a population of whatever 1500 people that are currently in a prison because they don't need housing. They they're somewhere else.

Uh but that that alone uh it didn't necessarily justify the distinction from population to housing share by itself. because you could airway heights could have reduced its population by the prison population could have said you know non population and it would have been just fine. So it in in our opinion the population numbers are as valid as they were in January 21 or 25 when you adopted them. The housing numbers have the momentum of everybody using them.

Yeah. But the the last thing I'll add to that is even the housing numbers have to change because of this 26-year gap. Yeah. And so if uh if somebody's numbers went up or down, every every city, every place has to back out the first five years of this and and look at what's going forward. So even the numbers that are out there, the actual numbers, uh probably are not ready for prime time. Commissioner French.

Yeah. So, Mr. Chesn touched on what the what some of the underlying problem is here. You know, when the cities couldn't agree, and that's not a surprise. Um, instead of coming to the board of county commissioners and getting clarity about what we were going to be supporting, they went to PTAC. and PTAC obviously um has its own uh agenda, but it it's not consistent with where the board of county commissioners was or wants to be when it's all said and done and stuff. So, again, I suggest that, you know, it's it's up to the board to u uh identify and solidify these numbers, which ones we're going to use and how we're going to use them. you know, and when you're going back to the city of Spokane and its growth, I want to uh say, you know, that that drop in population relative to everybody else, that was after the city of Spokane initiated three large annexations. The South Regal, the West Plains, North Division. After three large annexations, they still are dropping population relative to the other rest of the county. So, we just need to be more diligent and and forthright and uh you know uh have the board give the direction that we need. Uh so, and then after we're done with this, I think the board needs to have a conversation about do we need to continue the steering committee because it's not it's not a requirement of law. Uh and we might want to uh go to different course, but that's that's for a different day. Thank you. Well, I could I just have one or do you have something?

Oh, no, no. I was just gonna say I think we're we're coming down to the end of the slides if we want to see that and then we should we finish up the slides and then we'll ask up there and we you just put it up for viewing but we don't we don't have to comment on it. Well, that's

Well, I was I was just going to say though, if it sounds like the county, you keep saying PTAC, but we are part of PTAC and the county was planning with housing share for what everybody agreed to for the last year and a half, right? We were at the same time challenging other PTAC to defend the differences and that's that took a year. We we tried commerce finally sent us an unlocked version of HP and we could see what was going on. Um the city worked more closely with commerce than we initially uh understood and they were involved in writing the population for household numbers that we didn't see until very late in the game. So the county was if not actively challenging it. We were we were continually testing. It's like why are why why is this sheet not being consistent with the first round of plan? But yes, we we did uh ultimately go along with that because we're getting late in the game and as as I laid out

it's a crystal ball exercise, right?

We can we can adopt these numbers. We can adopt the population numbers and see how that affects things. But as long as we can monitor and reconcile these after the fact, the county has the tool it really needs. And and knowing that as we look at our own EIS, we will be putting together an analysis that shows here's here's the bookends. Here's what you get by the most uh reasonable infill development using the zoning, using the HAP tool. here's what happens if uh that number goes not just from 17 to 22,000 but if it goes to 25,000 for some reason. How do we accommodate that so that we can share with you the ability to see that in advance and not have to react to that badly, you know, three years from now?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I think we need we're a huge large urban growing county and on the west side it sounds like they've been doing this reconciliation where they they actually look at real data every year if not you know every five years and then they go okay where's the growth happening that we didn't expect or where is it not happening and then we adjust and I just think we have to do that we need to come up with a there is agreement with all the communities here that that is because that's using real time information instead of

you know I understand why we have to use a crystal ball to start but then we need real numbers to be continuously um adjusting so I I hope we can come back with u and actually put together that agreement um I I would say there's at least a building consensus among the planning staff uh that it's time for Spokane County to get into the buildable lands process. And that's something that yes, we want to be talking about first off, we we need to finish our plans under the rules we've got. Yes.

But, you know, as we as we set these up for review, you know, Ren, that really is is the Friday after Labor Day just for everybody's kind of benchmarking progress. This has to be essentially done in its final draft form. From that point on, we can be working with the legislature if we agree to to get a bill sponsored that puts us into the buildable lands program because it is a legislative initiative. We can't just we can do it on our own, but it doesn't carry the same weight. Uh and I I believe that the cities would be supportive of that because it it gives it exactly this review monitor report that that we're putting into the countywide planning policies uh hearing with the steering committee in June. That's the first step in monitoring every year. How are we doing? How are we how are we getting to our doing this? And I I will put one thing back on the table that we said in March or May of 2021. We put together a matrix of growth, 20-year horizon for everybody. And for the cities, we did it by neighborhood. and we put that out there and said here this is the foundational tool that we think we should have uh going into this cop plan update nobody wanted to participate in that and it was astonishing to me that that city planners would look at this tool and go I don't care how these neighborhoods developed over 20 years I don't number means nothing to me here's what we want to do in we can't do any of this until we get further down the road so there's a there's a look at the growth that we could have started with that buildable lands approach we have had a 20-year horizon, how every neighborhood in the city of the valley of the city grow, stayed stable, you know, diminished. To me, that would be an incredibly powerful planning tool. How did how did Emerson Garfield? How what's going on in West Central? You know, the city's plan anticipates the entire eastern third of West Central as high density

residential. It's it's already zoned that way. Well, what's that 20-year horizon show? Did you get there? Did you not get there? So, we we tried to build that tool early on and now we're going back to it because this housing allocation still is somewhat ambiguous. And yes, I'm sorry, I've used up my time, but um so can I ask what do we when we get the city of Spokane's when we find out what their action is tonight? What does that then what does that clear up as far as the picture goes once we know what they do tonight? What will that allow us to then do moving forward? Is that sort of the illumination will be there? Yeah.

Uh we're already programming the June 1st session with you with the board to be focused on EIS urban growth area and the alternatives for growth. Okay. we will have a very detailed very hard look at the city's EIS by then and we'll be able to factor that into our conversation with you. Okay. And so that that will be a parallel path to you know there's the HAP tool itself. This will be based entirely on on evaluating their EIS using the HAP tool as well as as ours. So I would say the June 1 session is going to be a very uh productive time. Okay. And the GMA steering committee meeting was canceled for this Wednesday, right?

Yes, it was. Okay.

And and that would be if if we wanted to uh and this be part of your guidance. If you wanted us to bring the hat tool to the steering committee for a public hearing, we need to do that. We need to notice it next week for the June 17th meeting. And you know it and the the challenge there's something I need to check with commerce too because the part of the countywide planning policies was to make sure we had a methodology for HAP. If commerce is saying they want an adopted allocation by jurisdiction by income band an actual number in each of those. Um there hasn't been a a formal public hearing for that tool for that level of detail. The HAP tool has been talked about in 25 different meetings that are all public. So, it's had plenty of exposure. Uh, but if Congress needs it adopted in a different way than we anticipate, we would have to hold a public hearing for that. And the steering committee would be the place to do it. So, we could we could s we could tee that up for uh the 17th. And you know the alternative is to reflect that you did adopt the methodology with the population-based allocations attached to it in January that held a public hearing before it was adopted on in that sense. So there's one tool that's already out there to go back to that would be disruptive to the communities. uh and you know and that's what you know Airway Heights has has threatened to make the county pay for additional costs to do all that sort of thing. So they they clearly want to, you know, stay the course and and adopt the HAP as a housing tool. But from our, like I said, from our perspective, commerce found them both valid. U

we can work with any of them because we have a chance to monitor and fix them in real time. I think we need some legal advice on steps on that. But it sounds like you need to get with commerce figure out what is actually required.

We need to clarify. There's been so much uh so many meetings where it's been you can do this, you should do this, we prefer this, but you could do this. Um yeah, I can't I can't tell you definitively today. Well, the to the topic of us being able to shift a certain, you know, several thousand units from non UG unincorporated to UG. We have that in writing from commerce. Yes, we do. That is in writing. Okay. Okay. And that and that would be going to the steering committee in June because that that number has never been discussed.

Okay. I mean, ba based on what I'm hearing and what I I mean, when I've talked to other folks and stakeholders, it seems if we're able to do that, the only heartburn seems to be around the large number of housing share that goes to the city of Spokane. And if they can actually hit that number, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, that that that's that seems to be what I'm hearing. you know, all the other cities are pretty close whether it's population versus housing, you know, closer. It just seems our rural versus UG is what's out of whack and several folks think that city's number is too large um based on their historic growth. So, is there a way to reconcile both of those things? I mean, it sounds like commerce has given us the tool to fix our non UG versus UG number. Yes.

What about the city's number? And that's that's I think I guess we'll know more tonight. The tool in the next two weeks to say yes, they can they can document this and and we can stand by it or no, they still haven't documented and we need to challenge it. All right. But at the steering committee meeting, wasn't there a motion motion made to have a to have a hearing on the allocation table? Okay. There was then a hearing on the home ownership,

right? on the pie ownership u the monitor and report both as countywide planning policies and the ha the uh hapt couldn't well none of them could be noticed for May 20th because we'd already passed the deadlines so that's why the May meeting was canceled and everything was pushed to June there will be uh a public hearing at least on the tool numbers for the county because nobody has seen what that number looks like the county was just given the green light by commerce to make the adjustment using a methodology that we can defend. So we would be bringing that to the steering committee. So they they would have a chance to consider the entire HAP tool. Yeah. Or at that time they could they could go back and say you know what the population tool that we looked at in January of 25 is fine and everybody needs to use it. Either way, there's clarity that the cities can't cause or can't accuse the county of delay.

But it, you know, just bear in mind and and all that being said, uh the cities will have some burden to go back and adjust the work that they have done today to reflect those changes. And that will even if they're minor changes, uh it'll require some work. And in the city of Spokane's case, if if the HAP methodology is not adopted, they may have to redo their EIS, which will certainly push them over the deadline for December adoption. Now, you know, that that said, that's uh that's a consequence of can they defend the number they put on the table.

Okay. All right. All right. Well, I think we beat this up today. Thank you, Scott. Okay.

I think that's a good idea. Executive session. Good. All right. Um, are there any miscellaneous items for today? Mr. Vice Chair, uh, Commissioner French, we're going to have a quorum issue. I, as I indicated earlier, I know I had a hard stop at noon. Uh, I've got a group that's touring, uh, projects, and I'm supposed to be part of that group. I'm going to have to take an Uber to catch up to them. So, but I've got to stop. I've got to step off. I can't Understood. I can't miss any more of this uh this this trip. So, you got it. Thank you for zooming in. Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye. I Okay,

well then that will do it for today. It is 12:23 and we are adjourned. See everybody back tomorrow.