Red light is on. Thank you very much City Clerk. So welcome everyone. I'm calling
the December 2nd City Council meeting to order. I am attending the meeting remotely tonight
and prepared to chair the meeting. Is there any objection to my chairing the meeting
remotely? And City Clerk will have to help me if there is a hand raised
in the room. There is no objection. Thank you. Hearing no objection,
I'll continue. As a reminder, we continue to have a remote aspect to our meetings.
Both staff and members of the public may be participating in tonight's meeting remotely via
WebEx. Councilmember Hunt is also attending tonight's meeting remotely. Welcome, Councilmember Hunt.
And the first item on our agenda this evening is the Pledge of Allegiance. So
I welcome you all to join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. one
nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Thank you all. The next item of business this evening is audience comments. Members of
the public may address their counsel at this time in person or virtually. Those who
signed up in advance to make comments will be called upon first. And if you
are joining us virtually and would like to make comments, please raise your virtual hand
or send the host a chat message. If you are on the phone, you can
do that by pressing star 3. If you are joined by computer or smartphone, please
look for a hand icon. If you are in the room and did not sign
up, I will ask for other speakers before closing this portion of the meeting. There
is a public hearing tonight on AB 8885, the 2025-26 budget. This is
the final public hearing. Comments on this item should be made during the public hearing
occurring later in this meeting. And city clerk, has anyone signed up to speak for
general audience comments or indicated a desire to speak this evening? Mayor,
no one has signed up. I'm just glancing across the room here and I'm not
seeing anyone indicate a desire to speak at this point. We have one member of
the public with us virtually, but I don't see them indicating a desire either. Okay,
thank you very much. I just want to remind folks that we do have a
public hearing later on. you can always submit written comments to your council at any
time at citycouncil.isakawa.gov. We
are going to move on to the consent calendar. I do not have any comments
on tonight's consent calendar items, but I would like to know if there are any
committee chairs or chair designates who would like to report on any of the consent
calendar items And City Clerk or Council President, if you could indicate raising of
hands or indication by microphone that they would like to speak, please let me know.
I'm not seeing anything on the dais. Thank you. Thank you very much. The
consent calendar was distributed to Council in advance, and if it is authorized, the items
on the consent calendar will be considered together and approved by one motion. The City
did not issue checks last week due to the Thanksgiving Day holiday, so there is
not an accounts payable and payroll report to review or approve tonight. Payables and payroll
for December will be included in the January 7, 2025 City Council meeting agenda. Does
any Council member desire to move any item from the consent calendar and considered under
regular business? Council President, again, if you could give me a cue if there is
someone in the room who would like to do that. Nothing so far. Thank you
very much. Would you care to make a motion? Yes, I move we approve the
consent calendar as presented. Is there a second?
Second. It's been moved and seconded.
Is there any council discussion? None.
Thank you. Hearing that there is none, the motion before the council is to approve
the consent calendar as presented. All those in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye. Opposed?
That passes unanimously. The next item of business is our public hearing this evening, AB
8885, the 2025-26 budget. The business before the Council this
evening is to conduct the public hearing, and I'd like to invite Deputy City Administrator
and Interim Chief Financial Officer, Andrea Snyder, to make the presentation. Welcome, Andrea.
Andrea
Snyder, we have one presentation for you tonight for the budget hearing and for the
final budget discussion and the
purpose of tonight is to conduct that final public hearing on the budget and to
follow up on the deliberations we had last time with adjustments to the proposed budget
specific direction needed tonight as follow-up from our last discussion is whether
council supportive of the following changes to the proposed budget which includes funding of metro
flex for 2025 as well as setting aside 200 000 in 2026
for a potential contract extension with metro flex or a local transit program if metro
flex is not available to us and that $200,000 is a placeholder number. As we
get more specific in understanding what 2026 looks like in potential services, then we can
always make adjustments to that number. And then second item for Council's consideration is
if Council agrees with funding the light rail study, that's $200,000 worth of funding from
the general fund. And that's a reduced amount of funding from what was originally proposed
at $400,000. So as a reminder, we've gone through many
steps to get here to this budget, this draft budget we have. We
had the August forecast, the preliminary budget in September, the proposed budget back in
October, and then hopefully tonight leading to the adopted budget should Council
consent. Also, we've been working on our budget
priorities this whole time. So I just wanted to take a step back and reiterate
what these priorities were with this budget. Preserving sustainability initiatives,
enhancing equity, maintaining investments in transportation, continuing to compensate staff
fairly despite the budget deficit that we've been anticipating, and to cover insurance obligations.
And then a final priority, which is to make sure that we are setting aside
enough in reserves with that 15% ending fund balance in the general fund, despite the
budget deficit that we're facing this over the next biennium. And so we've really been
focusing on these priorities and trying to make sure that they are in the proposed
budget. Back to following up from last time, MetroFlex.
The proposal is to fund MetroFlex in 2025, again, and set aside $200,000 in 2026
for MetroFlex or an alternative local transit program. This is funded out of the street
operating ending fund balance, so it doesn't It doesn't affect any programming directly
or services directly unless we have extreme storm events, extreme snow events that would
otherwise require that ending fund balance. And then we can look at general fund
funding or other funding as it may become available to help provide for those expenses.
And we also are continuing to search for other funding sources for partnerships. We talked
last time about the grant. that we've applied to for MetroFlex. And
so we are going to continue to look for other funding sources and apply for
grants as they become available. And for the light rail study, I'd
like to invite Thomas Valdrez, if you'd like to come up and talk a little
bit more about the light rail study.
Andrea yeah thank you council for having me here tonight yeah again my name is
Thomas Valdrez and I'm senior planner so today the administration is
proposing including 200,000 into the budget for the light rail study this would build on
existing momentum and help us continue preparations in preparation for sound transit
approaching the city with its ski link light rail project so
Kicking off the study in 2025 would be a critical need. Public
engagement currently has a lot of momentum. We've been building engagement efforts over the last
two years between 2023 and 24 with the transit study. We then
brought to council the light rail planning guide, which was approved in March of this
year. Council can expect the light rail visioning and guiding principles in Q1
of next year. So we are just constantly building momentum for this. And it would
be good to continue that momentum. Kicking off this project in 25 would mean that
Issaquah remains on track for those discussions with Sound Transit that we
expect in 2027. Two key things that we need to do between now and 27
are to one, identify the locally preferred alternative for the central isquah station
and then we need to also update our zoning and land use code in order
to ensure that that area is going to be acceptable for development
so having this logical locally preferred alternative backed by a strong comprehensive community engagement
process and supported by zoning and land use code changes that's going to be the
key to maximizing our ability to influence sound transit throughout this process
this is the method that other cities in the area have used so examples include
bellevue redmond and federal way these are all cities that have used this two-step process
in order to make the best of of the options that are available so
really it's about zoning land use and having that preferred location and sort
of in that order implementing transit-oriented development
through zoning is something that we've learned from Bellevue and Redmond so for Redmond they
up zoned around their downtown station encouraging dense mixed-use development
Sound Transit then approached them during their alternatives
study they looked at different alternatives Redmond actually had a locally preferred alternative
it was a elevated station And sound transit was going to do it and at
grade station So where the the station is like on the same level as the
street Redmond as a community was really concerned about some of those safety issues And
so they were actually able to successfully persuade sound transit To elevate the station to
avoid those potential like conflicts. So that's just one example of something that a city
has done Bellevue just sort of moving ahead they required a
minimum percentage of housing within proximity to the station. So this
would discourage some single-use developments like a tech campus, for example.
Retaining this really helped ensure that the area was going to be like a good
transit-oriented development neighborhood. They've also retained permitting authority
to conditionally permit light rail but only if the track alignment was approved by council.
So that's another option that Bellevue was able to do in order to retain some
of the permitting authority that can be used as leverage for sound transit.
Looking at Federal Way, they approached this a different way. They actually developed a transit
overlay zone specific to their downtown, and this effectively excluded many of the options
that sound transit was gonna look at. The reason why this was successful for Federal
Way was that they had really strong redevelopment goals for their downtown and Sound Transit's
alternatives were not gonna reach that. So this was a great way that Federal Way
was able to proactively use zoning and planning frameworks in order to ensure that they
had some ability to control where that station was gonna be located. So that key
takeaway from these options that have been used by other cities, one,
we do have permitting authority it can be a really useful tool to negotiate with
sound transit but it's only successful if we're going to be proactive with it so
we need to plan ahead in order to have that negotiating power secondly
if we adopt something like a transit overlay zone and then we'll have that conditional
permitting opportunity we can then guide where that station and track alignment are
and this would sort of guide our decisions and that would be based on the
locally preferred alternative it would be the main deliverable of this study
some of the risks from not acting now would be reduced leverage to influence and
negotiate with sound transit without that locally preferred alternative sound transit may not have
sound transit may provide options that are really not aligned with what we would like
to see out of the station. So Sound Transit will look at many options and
we're gonna have to choose one of them. But if we don't have one that
is already vetted as being a good option, we may not have any good options
on the table. All the peer cities that we've talked to and we're constantly chatting
with other cities who have learned more and more even since the transit study has
taken place, all the peer cities that we've talked to have all said, this is
a really great idea. We really recommend that ISQA pursue this. because really if we
don't we don't have anything to stand on when we get to 2027
another thing is that there could be a disconnect with existing projects that we have
delaying this study risk poor integration with projects like the i-90 crossing which we've already
started working on so that could just lead to fragmented planning between existing projects and
the light rail study Just to reiterate, this study scope is going to involve
lots of technical analysis. This is something that staff would not be able to do
in-house. It would need to be performed by consultants. But staff would be integral into
continuing that community conversation that we've been having since 2023, continuing the community engagement.
This would all lead to the community's voice being able to shape that preferred alternative
that would be delivered through this project. administration thinks that this is a really smart
investment when you think about the fact that this investment is a once in a
generation investment in the community it's a multi-billion dollar investment in issaquah the
project cost is really just a fraction of the overall benefit and the value that
we're going to be getting out of this and it really does maximize our long-term
return on investment this is also a really cost effective way of getting leverage over
sound transit where we otherwise may not have it Other cities like Bellevue and Redmond
or Linwood, they all invested early in this planning process and that really did lead
to things going in their favor. And this is something that we can emulate as
well. Other just examples, if we don't have a good locally
preferred alternative, this could lead to other costly issues. The station location and alignment,
it's chosen by Sound Transit ultimately. will have, I mean it could result in long
term costs such as potentially underutilized development in the area within central
Issaquah or potentially traffic issues depending on where the station that they choose to put
it is. So these are just some examples of why this would definitely be a
smart investment. And so just in closing, this study is pretty critical.
Productive planning would strengthen our ability to influence sound transit And this is a one-time
investment that would have long-term benefits. Thank you. Thomas, before you sit down, can
you talk more specifically about the technical studies? Because I think the point that's been
discussed by the council is what is the need for the $200,000? Can you maybe
talk a little bit more specific about that? Sure. So the technical studies scope of
work will have an existing and future conditions analysis. So looking at where we're at
now and where growth will be expected, around the time period of light rail.
This is just looking at traffic modeling. It'll look at the land use patterns that
we're expecting. It'll then lead to alternatives development. So there were, I believe there was
five alternatives that the light rail study looked at. These would be vetted in more
detail to make sure that we look at, of all these options that we've seen,
how do these stack up relative to the vision and goals that will be showing
council in Q1 of next year. How do those match up with what our community
is hoping to get out of it? And then through the community engagement, we'll have
ongoing conversations, and we will then end up at that locally preferred alternative.
That alternative will then be given to Sound Transit, and that will be part of
their overall planning process.
Mayor, we've got a question on the dais. Would you like to take that now
or after? So, Council President, let's take the question now. Thank you. Council
Member Martz. I have a couple questions on the material presented. Do you know with
the Redmond-Rays station versus at-grade, is there a cost difference?
Significantly, yeah. And that was one of the great things about doing some planning work.
It was significantly more costly, but sound transit ate that cost because the community wanted
it and it was already vetted and that was a good option for the community.
Thank you. The second question is we've already started working on a 990 cross.
There's a project we're looking at alternatives right now. It's an over under we're not
sure. There was supposed to be a community meeting. It was I think it was
two weeks ago, but then the You know bomb cyclone happens so it is an
ongoing process though. So we have a we have folks working on a study around
the I-90 crossing option right now correct. All right, thank you
Mayor we've got a few other questions. Would you like me to call on them?
Council President I appreciate that. Thank you Councilmember Wright I got a number of
questions about this, but what does the community engagement process look like that we're
talking about doing as part of this study? Yeah so similar to what we've been
doing with the transit study we're hoping to continue developing those relationships that we
have been developing and that would just be everything from working with
you know WSDOT who you know owns right of way working with sound
transit directly we'll see how much they actually show their cards during this but
it's going to be working with government agencies it's going to be community based organizations
there's a whole list of organization organizations that we worked with as part of the
transit studies so we just continue those conversations it's going to be online engagement it's
going to be in person it's going to be meeting people at community events it's
going to be everything under the sun we're really hoping to get lots of community
engagement on this Well, just a couple more questions, if I might.
You mentioned this, but I missed it. I was I was someplace else. But what
are the major deliverables to be produced as part of the study? Yeah, so it's
it's like five or so. So it's looking at existing conditions, looking at future conditions.
It is alternatives development. So looking at five alternatives, it's possible that
As we discussed with the community, an additional hybrid alternative is developed, so it could
be just more than five. It is also, in a lot of ways,
just getting that over the finish line, making sure that we adopt something that's going
to be approved by the community, as well as just that locally preferred
alternative. So about five tasks.
My last question for the moment at least how certain are we that sound transits
going to be doing the alternatives analysis for Issaquah in 2027? This is their
their schedule seems to be a little bit in flux Yeah, at this point we're
still on track for 27 We're in constant communication with sound transit and that's that's
we have what we have to work with that's the number they've quoted us on
Councilmember Hall. A quick one. Thank you. I think you've made the why now case
very compellingly. So thank you. Thank you for the memo to Dr. Dollywell in the
packet. I guess my question is, are we as confident as we can be that
the $200,000 that we budget will get us all this? It seems like this could
be very expensive. Yeah, we feel confident that we can do it for $200,000.
I'll add in my questions.
We when we changed this from a $400,000 study to a $200,000
study. What was removed from that and what shifted to internal and what
are we still proposing to do internally with staff. Yeah so some of the things
that changed are elongating the timeline. We like I mentioned in my
presentation we definitely need to do a land use planning but that will come after.
So the original scope of work for the larger number that improved that also included
the land use planning component which we can extend later. The other thing
that we shifted was staff will be doing the community engagement component rather than
more on the consultant team. So those are sort of the two main changes. So
if staff is doing the community engagement what portions then are being done by a
consulting team that could not be handled in house. Yeah, the consulting team is doing
the technical analysis. So looking at the forecasting, you know, travel demand modeling,
looking at what we're looking at in the future for like what central is quiet
will look like. It's also a lot of the technical analysis of like,
no go or go if if a station is even viable at this option, we
just have level ideas at this point of a couple locations but there could be
some fatal flaws or it could be um that the station itself is
just completely not aligned with what the community wants via the light rail
guiding principles that we'll show you in q1 okay
and council member joe thank you council president um i have a question about
redmond i hope you can shine some light on a little bit Redmond has two
stops and you pointed out that the the first stop before the end of the
line has limited parking more up zoning higher buildings higher densities
and then the last stop has more of a suburban feel let's call it with
more parking structures or what-have-you how did Redmond get to
the point where they were able to to kind of coerce sound transit or coax
sound transit into doing the transit or in development in one location and the parking
in another location if you have any insight there. I do I'm actually really excited
to talk to you guys about this in Q1 but I can talk about it
now. Downtown Redmond is really exciting because they like
you said they have both transit oriented or transit-oriented development but they also benefit from
parking reserves elsewhere so one of the key one of the key strategies that they
looked at was a distributed parking network so because they are under the line you
have folks parking at that Bear Creek Park and Ride just north northeast of
downtown there's also a park and ride within I believe it's a quarter mile walking
distance of that station it's just north of there so there are some parking options
but people just have to use alternative ways to get there. But they exist.
Also, like you said, the Marymoor Station just south has a pretty
significant parking reserve. So folks that live in the area could easily park in those
three alternatives. Or if they're capable, they could walk or bike or use
other means. So they're benefiting from a distributed parking system.
Thank you very much for that. I appreciate that information.
And Councilmember Hunt. Thank you, Council President Walsh. I
have a couple of questions. The first one is momentum was
mentioned tonight and it was also mentioned in the study session. Do we have a
sense of if this cost of this study, if we are going to need
additional external studies and additional work after this.
Also, this is the second study. There was the light rail planning guide, and then
there is now this study. And so my question is really, between now and 2041
or 2044, do we anticipate that there will be additional studies
like this needed? Yeah, I think that, so there is a,
There's a list of actions within that light rail planning guide. There are several key
deliverables that we'll need to do in the short term between now and 27. It's
possible that depending on what council's priorities are in 27 or beyond,
that could be another project looking at the land use component that I've talked about.
That's also something that could potentially be done in house, but it depends on like
priorities at that point. Other things we'll need to do include
just looking at connections from the station area
to other neighborhoods. And that's something that can be done as part of that active
transportation project if we continue to do that in the future. So
there are many projects that we will need to do to plan for light rail,
but a lot of them are things that we will be doing already. that we
are planning to do already. OK. Of
those things that you mentioned, would those be in-house or would those be additional external?
Do you have a sense of that? I don't at this time. OK.
My second question was, do you know with the Redmond determination that the
elevated station would be would be preferred. Do you know how the timing of that
work related to the construction of the station? Was it two years in advance,
five years in advance? Yeah, I believe that was during the environmental phase, which would
have been before construction. I don't know the timing specifically, but that would have been
done after alternatives were developed, and they're looking at environmental
impacts to the community.
So for that case study, don't have a sense of how far in advance that
alternative was identified relative to the construction date, though. If I were to guess, I
would say about five years. But I don't have a specific number. But it was
a couple of years, yeah. OK. Thank you. And then my last
question is, there was in your remarks, there was some discussion about
zoning and some cities making overlay. Would
consideration of housing density or how we
encourage certain kinds of businesses, walkability, other more expansive
zoning and questions around those sorts of
considerations be part of the study, or is it really much more technical feasibility about
the light rail study itself? And I'm also thinking of
schools or other amenities in the vicinity of light rail. How expansive
would the zoning discussion be? Yeah, I think
I'm not sure how specific I want to get in here, but central ISQA has
And there's like zoning for central isquah. So this would be on top of what's
already existing. So this could be additional Requirements like for example parking is a
you know major topic It could be that within the area that is considered highly
Walkable because it's a short distance from that light rail station Maybe it means we
want to reduce parking requirements there or maybe it means Like for Bellevue's example, maybe
within that area We want to have it more related to
mixed use. So maybe we want more housing than it would normally be within central
Issaquah. So it's just like you could have more or less of what already exists
within central Issaquah, depending on the goals that we want for that transit area.
OK, thank you for that. Just one quick follow up. So would you
anticipate that those sorts of recommendations would come out of this? this technical study those
recommendations would not come out of this study that would be something that we would
want to look at potentially in 27 when we look at the land use and
zoning thank you
and if I could just really ask a follow-up so I think one of the
themes here is things build on each other and so going back to councilmember Hunt's
question we need to know Approximately where the location would be in the dynamics of
that before we could then go in and look at some of the larger zoning
Right, so we can't look at larger zoning questions until we know what a preferred
alternative might be for station So there's a little chicken and egg here, but at
the same time You have to build on what the decisions are so as the
community decides as the community gets information then we're able to layer on more and
I think This man may or members the council one of the reasons we feel
strongly about moving forward with this is because of that layering and we don't want
to get behind and we've seen really good examples of our neighbor community standing up
and saying this is what we want for our community absent that some transit will
give us what they want and so we want to take the good examples of
our neighbor communities follow that playbook but understand there is a tearing to this and
by staying in this here that we won't fall behind we fall behind and please
correct me if I'm misstating anything we fall behind sound transit fills in the blanks
and I think we've have good and I think the Redmond example is perfect when
Redmond said no we don't want this they had the technical information they had done
the studies and they were able to go to sound transit and say here's why
and so if we run into anything like that we don't know better to have
it up front now than you know five years from now and hear from the
community saying no we don't like what sound transit saying and The city's only response
being, well, sorry, it's too late. So that's why this is so important.
And I'm seeing no other questions at this time. Thank you. Let's continue.
So for timing and next steps, you've seen this calendar
before of our budget calendar. Here we are, December 2nd. We're asking for final budget
adoption with any changes Council wishes to make this evening. And then
following adoption, we'll be able to produce the final budget book also for publication.
So again, direction that we're looking for tonight, fund MetroFlex in 2025 and 2026,
or set aside $200,000 in 2026 to be able to fund MetroFlex or similar program.
and also to fund the light rail study at $200,000 from the general fund. Before
we ask for deliberations on the budget itself, we'd like to start off with the
final public hearing on the budget.
Thank you, Andrea. Council President, I'm assuming we are good to open the public hearing?
Yes. Thank you very much. So I open the public hearing at 7.39
p.m. and if you're joining us virtually and would like to make comments, please raise
your virtual hand or send the host a chat message. If you're on the phone,
please press star three. And if you have joined by computer or smartphone, look for
a hand icon. If you're in the room and did not sign up, I will
ask for other speakers before closing this portion of the meeting. City Clerk, has anyone
signed up to speak or indicated a desire to speak during this public hearing? scanning
the room anyone wanting to make comments on the hearing okay we do have someone
in the room mayor uh corby kasler that is great
corby come on up thank you thank you madam mayor thank you council members
first of all i want to congratulate the city on a yeoman's effort on dealing
with this horrible storm i i found it to be very prideful to see how
fast we moved, how caring we were in the movement, and the communications were stellar.
So thank you for that. It is another example getting back to the budget of
how the city and DIA can work very closely together. DIA can be an adjunct
to what the city does. We worked with a number of our downtown businesses on
trying to help them with spoilage, giving them resources when they didn't know where to
turn. We had one business that was totally decimated, trying to find him resources and
what he can do from there. So it's just an example of how we can
work together. We appreciate the budget that you have given us. And I just, there
was one clarification wanted to make and that Main Street works directly with dia it's
not a city program so we're not a designee what we are is somebody who
has gone through a very stringent vetting process so that we met all the criteria
to become a Main Street program so we are indeed a available for the
tax credit incentive program that is something that we are able to do and we've
done for decades so I just wanted to thank you again I know that was
a preface that the funding would come if we did indeed meet those criteria and
we do so thank you again thank you for your partnership and just really appreciate
what you did for the storm I'm very proud of everything that we did thank
you thank you Corby City Clerk is there anyone else in the room or
online that has signed up to make or indicated a desire to make a comment
at this time? No one else in the room. Oh. Okay. We have Chris
Richley in the room here who would like to make comments. Thank you. Thank you
Mayor. Good evening City Council. My name is Chris Richley. Issaquah resident 2616 20th Avenue
Northeast up in the Highlands. first like to thank the administrator for getting the administration
for getting their budget together it's been a long process city council for their constant
questions and thinking about the benefits of the community first and foremost working at a
financial institution i deal with budgets every day with members so one big thing
is to look at the benefits between the benefits of the needs and the wants
of our community i have to do that with my members you have to do
that are your members or the community so when you think about needs and wants
of the budget, a lot of things have come up. Metroflex, is that a need
or a want? What's the benefits? What's in it for the benefit of the members,
which are communities? So when you think about the presentation we just had with light
rail, the benefit I heard was we need to continue to stay on track with
the light rail. We need to continue to stay ahead of the game, but at
the same time, I did not hear a benefit presented in a sense to spending
the money from administrator. i would suggest is asking more questions
around what's the benefit of the community what i'd recommend is what's the benefit of
metroflex we've seen the benefit of that we were presented the benefit of that 200
000 is not a it's not a number that i see personally
as a benefit to spend the money at this time without the need of the
community i see the community wants it we're here the community wants it but what's
the benefit of the community keeping it What's the benefit of the study? The study
shows that it continues to go, but if we don't have that, we don't see
a benefit. So I would strongly suggest council continues to ask questions around what's the
benefit, what's in it for the community with that study and the 200,000. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. City clerk, is there anyone else in the room or online that
has indicated a desire to speak? Yes, we have another hand raised.
Can you hear me now? Awesome, hey guys, my name is Mateo. I work at
Kimley Horn, a civil engineering consulting firm. I know we are not Sound Transit and
I do not work on the light rail extension to Issaquah, but our firm currently
works on the light rail extension all the way to Everett, from Linwood to Everett.
We're in charge of that and I wanted to advocate that it is highly important
to do all the necessary brain damage and research that you need to do to
understand what it takes. I know I'm not in charge of the funds or the
money, but several of my coworkers, senior leadership, fellow partners of mine, have invested in
these communities that are along that whole stretch from Wimma to Everett. it's highly important
that you invest in what your community wants because it is just so important to
understand what's needed. And there is so, like, in doing the alternative research, if you
don't know, like, if zoning needs to change, as the planner was saying, or if
there are just so many different things that you don't really think about when it
comes to all the different aspects of development in this, like, a huge public transit
project like that with the need for mixed-use development, the needs for the public to
get to and from parking, you name it, I just wanted to advocate that is
important to keep in mind. the needs of the public. I grew up in Saquois
for most of my life. I've seen it go from my, this guy's name is
Rick, he had a coffee shop on Front Street that I used to go to
all the time as a kid. And as it's just gone bigger and bigger and
bigger, it's just important to keep everything in mind as you're developing and continuing to
invest in the city. So thank you. Thanks for your
comment. City Clerk, anyone else in the room or online that would like to make
a comment on the budget this evening? We have no remaining members of the public
in the room and one with us online who isn't indicating a desire to speak.
Thank you so much, City Clerk, and thank you to those that contributed to the
conversation tonight about the importance of our relationship with our downtown
association and with thoughts on spending for planning for sound transit. Thank
you all for contributing this evening. We appreciate it very much. If the Council has
no objection, I would like to close the public hearing. So City Council
and City Council President, if you could help me, does anyone have an objection to
closing the public hearing right now? I'm not seeing any, Mayor. Thank you, Council President.
So hearing none, I will close the public hearing at 7.46
p.m. And let's move on to Council questions. And Council President, if you could manage
the diets for me, that'd be much appreciated. So
looking to see if council has any questions so far I am not seeing any
I think they all came up during the middle of the presentation
Thank you very excuse me one late bloomer here with councilmember ray there we go.
It's a proximity problem I'm in kind of thinking
about the study and the major deliverable from it merely being an
alternative identification alternatives analysis have we thought yet about
what the criteria we would apply would be and if we haven't thought about the
criteria have we thought about how we would define the criteria down the road
because I'm thinking that if what we're doing is an alternatives analysis understanding the criteria
we're going to apply is is probably the engine that turns the whole process
Yeah, that's a great point. I did fail to mention that there would be that
development. So the process that we're currently
doing is developing a vision and guiding principles, which are pretty squishy. Council
will see that in Q1. That squishy set of vision and guiding principles will then
be used. And there will be a physical template of translating
our aspirations based off of a guiding principle into a numerical sort of ranking
system or whatever the community would like to see out of that. So this project
will include creating some sort of criteria that can be then used as a benchmark
to see how those alternatives stack up. Awesome. And one last question.
Oh, it's gone. How far are we along on the consultant procurement
process? Has that started yet, and when do you expect to have a consultant on
board if we move forward? Yeah, if we move forward, we've
not put this out as a RFP, but that's something we would begin working on
in Q1. So consultant Q2, Q3?
I think, yeah, Q2 or Q3 is when we would kick off.
Thank you, Councilmember Ray. Council President, anyone else with questions? I'm going
to just pause and hold for a second. No, there's no holding
Councilmember Hall's mic down, but no, everything's good here. Thank you very much.
We are now going to move to regular business where Council is requested to adopt
the 2025-2026 budget. So under regular business, Council will be considering AB 8885, 2025-2026
budget. The request before Council is to adopt this ordinance. And do
we have a motion, Council President? Yes, I move to adopt ordinance number 3083.
Adopting the 2025 2026 budget setting forth the estimated revenues and appropriations
for each separate fund and Estimated impact on ending fund balances for all such funds
combined of the city for the fiscal years commencing January 1 2025
and January 1 2026 and establishing an effective date
Second Second Council president was that you That was me second.
That is great. Thank you very much. So it has been moved and seconded. Let's
move to council discussion and again council president if you could indicate who
has shown that they have a desire to speak to this. I'd appreciate that. Yes
I will actually start here mayor because I'm going to offer an amendment.
Let's see. I move to amend exhibit A of the ordinance.
Summary of revenues expenditures and fund balance to remove the proposed funding for the light
rail study one hundred thousand dollars in 2025 and One hundred thousand dollars
in 2026 from the general fund Thank you is there a second?
I'll second and council president again if you could indicate the second I'd appreciate that.
Yes, councilmember Ray Seconded
Thank you, Council President. Thank you, Council Member Wray. Let's start off
by having the mover speak to the motion. Council President and then Council Member Wray.
Thank you. I offer this amendment because I just don't feel that the
administration has convinced Council of the necessity of this funding at this time.
I do it out of respect for the majority of council members who expressed opposition
at the previous meeting and so I wanted to make sure that this comes to
light that we have a valid conversation about it I
appreciate bringing in Thomas Veldres and the information at this point
unfortunately I as a council member on the dais the night of the budget don't
feel like I have the ability to really delve into what that $200,000
is and make an accurate decision on that, whether or not this is the
right time for it, whether or not we're going to achieve the things that we
want out of that budget. And so what I would like to do at this
point is remove that from the budget, I'm not proposing to
reallocate it to anything, so that money would stay in the general fund. And if
the administration wants to come back and have a full conversation with
counsel about what the needs are, when the requirement is, you know,
you've heard a lot of questions tonight, I think that would be a valid
conversation point. this point the last time the light rail
planning study came to council or i guess we
adopted the planning guide but before that it was december of 2023 so the
argument that we need to keep going with momentum um
i have a hard time with that because it's been so spaced out and then
if The question that council member Ray had just now was when are you looking
to hire that consultant if that's not planning to happen until Q2 or Q3
I just really think that Because this came so late to
council without a full understanding of what that is that We
at this point just need to take a step back and rather than be pushed
into the idea of putting $200,000 into a budget when there are
so many remaining questions on here. I would rather
ask the administration to come back and if that's something that we want to do,
great. But at this point, I'm not sold. I don't think that
necessarily have a need for this other than what can be done internally
to have a community conversation and start that before
coming in and asking for $200,000 worth of consultants.
And with the second? Seconder would love to talk. Great.
a couple of thoughts I'm expressing all budget requests in terms of FTE right now
since we're we're eliminating FTE and so we're talking about doing this study at the
cost of about 1.3 FTE and that seems like a lot right now so
that's my lens right now the question I am asking myself is not
should we do the study but should we do we need to have do we
have to do this study now I'm not convinced that we do and as council
president just mentioned and as we heard one of the things that we took out
of the body of work for our consultant was the community engagement and so we
can do the community engagement aspects of this project without incurring the cost so
I say we can do that now and better prepare ourselves for down the road
I'm also not convinced I'm open to being convinced but I'm not
convinced of the timing of what we're doing now is analogous to the
timing of what Redmond Bellevue and federal way did because there hasn't been enough time
in ST in sound transit for that to have occurred because we're still 14 to
16 years away from go live so I also heard kind of snuck in between
sentences that that the changes that Redmond implemented didn't come out during the
alternatives analysis but came out during the the environmental study which was years later so
there's just enough and be ambiguity and uncertainty for me right now to say look
let's get a better handle on what we're doing in a very difficult budget year
and say let's let's do what we can do let's save this money
and if it becomes apparent that we need to do this then then we can
allocate the funds at that time. But right now I'm thinking there are probably better
uses for that $200,000 in the general fund. And then going down
the line, I see Council Member Hall followed by Deputy Council President DeMichel and
Council Member Joe. Thank you very much. Well, first, thank you to the motion maker.
Like you said, I think a lot of us were kind of in this camp.
I My hesitation around funding the $200,000
light rail study last time was primarily around thinking that that funding could be used
on a more immediate community transportation need like Metroflex. Now that the administration has been
able to secure additional funding for something similar to Metroflex, if not
Metroflex, going into 2026, I think it makes sense to me to keep the ball
rolling on the light rail study. to maintain our influence in
the process, which to me seems like a direct community benefit, especially when the administration
continues to place such high value and importance on the timing of this, even with
its reduced scope, is compelling to me, number one. But I also think Thomas's presentation,
the four-page memo that we received from Director Wallywell was also very informative and helpful.
So I think in this, I am convinced that moving forward. This is
better than not moving forward with this especially since we have the funding secured for
Metro flex or something similar to that So I don't think I'll be supporting this
motion right now, but again, thank you because you're right most of us were in
this camp Deputy council presenting Michelle Thank
you so You know, this is this is a massive
project truly massive bigger than anything we've taken on and
I've been trying to think of a similar project that I worked on I as
many of you know I worked at Metro for 17 years did a lot of
work with sound transit during that time also did a lot of work with the
roads division of the transportation department and the biggest project I think I worked on
was the novelty Hill Road project which was a 20-year project And
I was there for 17 years. So obviously I wasn't there for the whole 20
years But I have worked on a project that took multiple time
over multiple years over multiple leadership over multiple councils
and Everything that Thomas talked about tonight I think is is right on and that's
the reason I don't have any questions It's everything that's been described is very consistent
with my experience working on a long-term project like the novelty hill road project
I worked in the community relations group in the transportation department and we
called it an iterative process in other words you've got research that's
informing what you go out and ask the public and then you've got public responses
that informs the research that you do next and so as
as city administrator Bob Kowitz said studies build on studies build on studies build on
studies and each one of those studies you are going deeper you're learning more each
time you go out to the public you're going deeper and you're learning more and
the other thing to think about when you're talking about a long-range project is over
that 20 years the community grows and changes and
new demographics come in And so again, the community dialogue that you
create is not a one and done kind of deal. It is over and over
and over again, giving the community opportunities to talk to
engineers and the leadership of these major organizations. So that was what my
job was, was creating those opportunities to let the public talk directly to the engineers
There's just been sort of this idea that sound transit or Metro or whatever these
large government organizations are Sort of behemoth that
don't listen to anybody But really when you get down to it when you have
a community meaning you have real people who happen to be engineers who come out
and talk to the community Get the community feedback and go back to their offices
and figure out how to put that into an actual plan I've seen it happen
over and over and over again. And as a person who dealt with that over
and over, I will tell you that engineers listened to the community and they listened
to community, to city councils and school districts and whoever is the group
that's being affected by a large project. So I feel like
we really have to think very carefully we made a commitment to this
project and I think we have to stay the course. The question I think was
a very excellent question was what is the benefit for this community if we do
this study? It's hard to see over a 20 year project what a single
study will do but it just is part of that long term commitment and
process that builds and builds and builds till you get to the point you make
some actual decisions about where everything's going to go and our community has told us
over and over and over again that they want to reduce the use of
single occupancy vehicles and move toward a transit oriented
a system that will get us out of these long backups and traffic jams that
we have now and will only get worse over the next 20 years This is
the benefit that this project will do for us. And our community has backed it
over and over. Every study we do, transportation is one of the top issues that
people are asking us to solve. We're not gonna solve it tomorrow.
It's gonna take 10, five, 10, 20 years to do it. So
I will not be supporting the amendment. Want to thank the
great presentation and all the information that was brought forward tonight I think that
my feeling is we have just got to stay the course on this project. Thank
you Okay, and now we've got councilmember Joe followed by councilmember
Martz. Thank you Politics and advocacy is is
akin to geology in my mind. It's basically force
constant force against a rock to make change and this
budget when we think about two hundred thousand dollars is that constant force
against the rock that we call sound transit and in order to make changes we
need to consistently put our money behind what we're saying and
put our money behind our mouth so to speak and sound transit looks at these
budgets look and they see what cities have done what they're planning on doing
and they see if the city is putting the money behind what they're trying to
tell it tell them in terms of what the community wants this two hundred thousand
dollars is is a little bit of a small amount but it's an important amount
keep that constant pressure up against sound transit on this project
serve on the Puget Sound Regional Council Council's transit oriented development
committee through my day job and I recently
cycled off but during the year and a half that I was on that committee
I saw things that worked and things that didn't work in the communities both going
south the federal way and then primarily going north is to homeless County which were
touched upon by Mateo's comments tonight The cities that kept up that
constant dialogue conversation had the money in their budgets had better outcomes
the the City that didn't do anything Didn't
allocate money to their budget is Mercer Island and they got that Somewhat ugly
up to station right in the middle by 90 and sound transit said that's your
station and And as much as Mercer Island didn't want that as their station, that's
the station they got because they didn't do the community planning in advance. Infrastructure is
very difficult. I may not be alive in 2043 when Sound Transit eventually gets here.
All right. I know Zach will still be here, but I may not be here.
But the decisions we make today and the decisions we make in the next budget
and the next budget after that all support moving toward the direction of getting the
project that we want for our citizens when we hear their feedback and their concerns
and their their desires for this project it's a iterative processes as councilmember
as deputy council president Michelle said and you know I think that we need
to continue to keep that force on the rock keep pushing against it and that's
how we get the change we want to see in our community the benefits are
we do that we don't get the question five years before construction
why are our options limited why didn't we think about this why did we you
know put it in an odd place we would have had that conversation all the
way through that process so we get the project that we ultimately want in our
community wants so I'm not going to be supportive of the amendment this evening thank
you Okay, Councilmember Martz, followed by Councilmember Hunt.
Thanks. So I was also one of those council members who at the last meeting
had a whole bunch of questions. I was driving my clog in the windmill of
progress. I love historical analogies. But I really got the answers this evening that
I was looking for. It isn't necessarily that I consider some transit a behemoth. I
just think that developers have a well, well understood for
if they have an option that costs seven cents and they have another option that
costs nine cents to go the option of class seven son so but what I
heard tonight was the answers on how we put some guide rails up
and some of the things that we can do to help make sure once we
have a sense from our community what we we need here because I agree with
that I mean everybody on the dice is saying that this is super critical to
the future of our city even though some of us I'm with you I'm with
you councilmember Joe I don't necessarily expect to be here when they when they get
it built maybe I'll be off sailing let's let's just say that I'll be off
sailing but but I I see the guide rails
and that's what I got out of the presentation this evening so I asked the
administration for that last time that's what I got And so I'm now comfortable moving
forward and so will not be supporting the amendment. Thank you. And council member
Hunt. Thank you, council president.
I am very concerned about the study in the context of
momentum. One of the things that we have worked through in this budget is
We have had to make some really difficult decisions in terms of reducing funding for
our human services organizations across town, our partners. We've had to make
layoffs for folks that were doing really good work for the city, but it was
a difficult budget year. And I am concerned about spending $200,000
on external consultants for something that is essentially 20 years out
on its current timeline. I did check the light rail
website and unless they close their current funding gap, we are
scheduled to get service in 2044. So that is 20 years from
now in 2024. And I think that puts us in a very different in terms
of what we would need to do to maintain momentum between now and that
later construction date to put pressure on sound transit during that time. I also looked
at the light rail guide that was provided
to council in the community in 2023 last year. And that
guide talks about considerations for participation in the sound transit process. And it
specifically says that with one station in Issaquah, the need for supplemental city staff will
probably be less than one full-time equivalent FTE employee, and the time demands may ebb
and flow depending on the phase. I think that having more of a
position that allows us to have that ebb and flow depending on one sound transit
is able to speak with us over the next decades. I think that that would
be preferable. I'm also concerned that we removed a
housing and parking study from this budget due to the budget constraints and other considerations.
I think that if this study were to include
more zoning considerations, how do we get the housing density that we need for walkability
in this area? How do we future proof this study so that it has
benefits to our current community, regardless of whether Sound Transit is able
to speed up this timeline or not? That would be my preference. I think we
know that we want to have amenities in this area. We know, for example, that
it would be wonderful to have a school on the valley floor and walkability and
more businesses in this area. And so how could we make sure that we're using
this study to to get us to a place that is beneficial to our current
community. And it sounds like that is something that we intend to do, but that's
not the purpose of this study. So, you know, with an expanded scope or with
a more sort of long-term process that I see as more sustainable over the next
couple of decades, I would be supportive, but I'm not supportive of this $200,000
study, so I will be supporting the amendment this evening. Council President,
if you could look around the room and see, I think every person has gotten
to speak to the item one time. Is there anybody wishing to speak a second
time? I am not seeing at this point anyone else.
Thank you. City Administrator. Yes, thank you, Council President, Mr. Mayor, members of the Council.
I just wanted to correct the last time this item was before the Council, the
Council on March 18th. adopted the light rail planning guide a motion made by councilmember
ray seconded by council president walsh so this study is consistent with the
light rail planning guide it would be helpful we can read you know what was
described of this study in the light rail planning guide that was approved by the
council in march but i think there was a comment that was been in december
of 23 but it actually was on march 18th 24 when the council approved the
light rail planning Thank you, City Administrator, for that clarification. I'm
going to go back to Council President and ask if there is any indication that
Council members would like to have a second comment or if ready for me to
call the vote. Actually, Mayor, I think we may be having some technical difficulties
with our television feed. Madam Mayor, if we could just take a couple minute
recess to correct the TV feed. Yeah, if we can take a three to five
minute recess. Let's
Mayor, do you see the graphic? The Sequoia City Council meeting resumed shortly.
Just see the generic. Right, right, but you see it. I do see it. Great.
And it's not blinking. It's not blinking. It's not blinking. No. How many fingers is
the Council President Walsh holding up? I can only see you right now, Wally. Okay,
well, she's holding it. There we go. Ten. I'm guessing. Totally guessing.
But yes, the room is not blinking. So I think for all those folks that
are watching this from home, it's much better. Council President, we look like we're waiting
for a couple people to resume their seats. Yes, exactly what I was going to
say. Just give us a moment.
Okay, Mayor, it looks like we have full attendance again. Wonderful. Thank you
very much. I think where we left off was I was asking Council President if
there is anyone who would like to make a second comment. We did get a
clarification from the city administrator. So I'll just check one more time. Is there anyone
else who would like to make a comment before I call for a vote on
the amendment that was presented by Council President Walsh?
Thank you very much. So the amendment is summaries of revenues and
expenditures and fund balance to remove the oh sorry amend exhibit a of the ordinance
summary of revenues expenditures and fund balance to remove the proposed funding for the light
rail study a hundred thousand dollars in 2025 and a hundred thousand dollars in 2026
from the general fund and if we could do a hand and voice that would
helpful. All those in favor say aye. Aye.
We have two in favor. All those opposed. Three. Who am I missing? Who's the
third? I see Council Member Wray, Council President Walsh. Council Member Hunt. Oh, there you
go. Okay, great. Three in favor. All those opposed say nay. Raise your hands, please.
Nay. Okay, the amendment fails, 4-3, and we're going to move back to the main
motion. Is there any additional discussion before I call for a vote on the
main motion? We've got councilmember Hall.
Sure, thank you. Just first and foremost, wanted to clarify an
earlier comment that I heard. This budget, if I'm, I believe I'm right, does not
reflect any reductions to funding for human service organizations it's it's primarily if I
remember right organizations other community nonprofit organizations that are called out specifically um so I
just did want to say that for the record and then to answer before I
get into some general comments let me pull up the direction needed slide
I do, I want to thank the administration for funding next year of Metro Flex
and then setting aside this additional $200,000 for Metro Flex or some Metro effects like
program very responsive to the conversations on the dais up here and of the community.
So thank you very much for hearing that. And like I said, based on my
comments earlier on the previous motion support moving forward with funding this $200,000 light rail
study. Thank you again for the work that's gone into sharing information with us about
that uh general comments um i just want to share a big thank you to
staff i am really in awe of the level of professionalism and stewardship
of our finance staff in particular but also our leaders in our departments who had
to make very tough decisions about their own departments and programs i want to acknowledge
that how technically challenging it must have been to find the right combination new
revenues and cost savings to get to where we are given the financial environment that
we find ourselves in but also how emotionally challenging it must have been as some
of those cost saving measures were people with names or programs and projects with value
in our community so just wanted to recognize that no one wants to be here
but even with these challenges i think that the priorities reflected in the budget a
focus on public safety sustainability on equity on transportation on fair
staff compensation on our insurance obligations meet the moment
that we find ourselves in and I'll also add to that maintaining our 15% general
fund ending fund balance is very prudent recognizing that there may be future needs or
opportunities in the coming years so I guess the last thing I want to say
is I hope everyone worked on the budget and everyone in the staff is able
to take a breath and have holiday season to rest
I'm very in this moment inflicted but proud of the
institution of the city of Issaquah thank you again for all your hard work and
I'll be supporting the budget this evening deputy council president
dee-michelle so councilmember Huntson Eric councilmember Hall sorry got my
H is mixed up there said it very well but I did want to thank
the administration i think it is amazing that we ended up here after all of
these months with only two issues on the table and really only one that we
were having any uh dispute over when you think of where we started six
or seven months ago this has just been an amazing process and kudos to everybody
that has been involved and as councilmember hall said many many many hard hard
decisions but everything carried out with a high level of professionalism and so
I share the thank yous that he said earlier to everyone that's been
involved this is really the culmination of a fantastic process and I commend
everybody that's been involved thank you and I'll go
ahead and add in my comments as well echoing much of what I've heard
Let it not ever be said that the City of Issaquah staff, leadership, and
council are not willing to make hard decisions and hard choices.
And we did so with the leadership and with the process,
as has been mentioned, of really looking at what our needs
are and what our wants are and what our community values are and what our
revenue could support. And rather than pushing ahead of that and
pushing past our 15% fund balance
emergency fund, we kept within our limits. And we said,
no, we've got to do what is right. We're not going to sit here and
do all of the things that the community wants us to do because we just
don't have the money for that. And so I appreciate the staff and the
administration's leadership on keeping us with that. I also
appreciate the community's engagement on this, and particularly hearing from
the community about Metro Flex and how important of a program that was. That was
really essential in our conversation about it. I'd also like to mention that I
have written a council President's letter for the budget, which
highlights some of these main issues, the reasons for
the deficit, the conversations, the things that we did for
ongoing revenue increases to promote our long-term financials. sustainability
the conversations that we had about policy direction and then looking ahead for the next
year so as has been our practice we've kind of documented what our process was
like what the issues were and all of those pieces so that will go together
with this budget and so again as an ending point as much as it is
always to make decisions about real people's
lives and their service to the city. I think
we have to be proud of doing the things that needed to be done rather
than pushing them off. And so I think that's a moment of appreciation. And then
I do see Councilmember Hunt and I'm not seeing anyone else on the dais.
muted uh council member hunt thank you um firstly i wanted
to thank council member hall um i i did mistakenly uh say human
services grants um when i i meant uh
you know grants to our non-profit organizations that were reduced um so thank you for
that correction it was something i had actually asked in a previous meeting um so
um I, you know, this was a difficult budget
and we had to make a lot of difficult decisions. I am supportive of
this. I am supportive of this final budget of maintaining the fund
balance within our fiscal responsibility to be good stewards of the public's money. I think
that was important. And I think that we have really good policy discussions about what
does it mean to have a budget where we are really focusing on sustainability and
on equity and on safety and on making sure that we are really putting
the community's priorities first. This budget really required us to do that and to
really focus in on those values. I am grateful for the money that has been
put back into the budget for Metroflex. It is It is possible that it is
not enough to continue funding the service and so my ask would be that if
there is a opportunity for continuing the Metro Flex program at the current rate, which
is more than what's budgeted for 2026 that that be brought forward to the Council
early so that we can have the policy discussion and that we can allocate accordingly.
It is something that I think we do need to continue funding. It's one of
the things that we heard loudly from the community, from folks that use the service
and from folks that know other community members that really have benefited
from it. On the light rail study, I voiced my concerns. My ask
on that would be that we, in going forward, have the
RFP and the options for that study brought to council, I think it is
important that the study be done in such a way that there are concrete benefits
to the current community, the community five years from now, not only looking out to
the potential light rail, but rather making sure that the community is benefiting from that
planning and from that engagement now. And I think there is ways to do
that. I think including some of the housing and zoning and other long range planning
aspects trying to make sure that we're meeting community goals not just for the
light row placement but also for that part of Issaquah in central Issaquah I think
that could be done and I think that would benefit the current community which I
think is really important when we're talking about something that is so far out that
you know we're looking 20 years ahead again
I appreciate all of the information that was provided I especially appreciate the changes that
were made Metro Flex I look forward to continuing working with the community on finding
creative solutions like Metro Flex program and I'll be supportive of
this budget and mayor I will note I am not seeing any
other comments on the dais I appreciate council president so I'm going to go
back to the main motion thanks to all the council members who weighed in It
has been moved and seconded to adopt ordinance number 3083.
Adopting the 2025-2026 budget, setting for the estimated revenues and
appropriations for each separate fund and the estimated impact on ending fund balances for all
such funds combined of the city for the fiscal years commencing January 1st, 2025 and
January 1st, 2026 and establishing an effective date. All those in favour
signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed?
That carries unanimously. 7 and no. And before we move to the next item, I
do appreciate the very kind comments that some council members made about the
budget process and the administration team, I want to make sure to thank our interim
chief financial officer, Andrea Snyder. She has been an amazing leadership, amazing
person in leadership during this budget process, and it has been an extremely difficult budget
process. I also want to thank our budget team, Susie Mansell, Nathan, and Lisa,
and Jillian, who has also been supporting them. This was such a challenging year, and
I'm very proud the work that they did to be able to bring this budget
to the Council and to be able to respond to the Council's requests. So
thanks to that team. Fabulous job, Andrea. Thank you very much. The next item of
business this evening is EB 8950, a waiver of permit fees for low-income residents and
building permit fee deferral for emergencies. The business before Council this evening is to approve
the resolution. I'D LIKE TO INVITE PLANNING MANAGERS STEPHEN PEDUA TO THE PRODIUM.
WELCOME, STEPHEN. THANK YOU, MAYOR PAULY. GOOD EVENING, CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS. I DO NOT HAVE
A PRESENTATION FOR THIS ITEM, BUT I BRIEFLY WANT TO JUST UPDATE CITY COUNCIL ON
WHAT THIS ITEM IS. AS PART OF THE CITY'S RESPONSE TO THE RECENT WINDSTORM EMERGENCY,
COMMUNITY PLANNING DEVELOPMENT STAFF HAVE BEEN TRYING TO LOOK AT OPTIONS TO MAKE a little
bit easier for residents as a recovery from the recent emergency so this
resolution is proposing to allow staff to waive fees for low-income residents that were
impacted by the storm and it also is allowing flexibility for staff to defer fees
for building permits as a way to help residents with recovery
the administration intends to return to city council in early 2025 for an
ordinance to incorporate a lot of these provisions into the city code so that staff
have a lot of this flexibility for any future emergency that concludes my briefing i'm
available for any questions thank you steven yes
city administrator thank you um in chatting with this was a last minute item
um as we spent last week uh assessing uh damage It became
quickly evident that we wanted to move forward with some sort of relief. We briefed
council leadership last Wednesday thinking that this would not make the
agenda packet. It ultimately did make the agenda packet. We were talking about a special
meeting to deal with this. So we put together what we thought was a good
best practice, really two buckets, one for low-income residents, the other for
all residents to have a deferral. The deferral is something that other communities do, and
as Stephen mentioned, we'll come back to you early next year with an amendment to
allow us for all emergencies to do something like this. The low income piece was
something new and different. We didn't have a lot of places to look for that.
And so in the documents before you, the criteria is set at 50% of very
median income. And I heard from many of you today that you thought that that
perhaps was not a doable number for a whole variety of reasons. And so we
went back and talking to the city attorney Rachel Turpin's online, and she can
help with this as needed. we look to see how far we could go
because I think all of the members of the council I spoke to thought 50
was too low go as high as you reasonably can we'd like to
put forward an amendment this evening that go to 80 percent Rachel is on
and we can get into the details of what the Washington State Constitution says and
the ability to kind of sort through that know it's our thinking the administration's thinking
that 80% is probably the limit anything beyond that probably goes into
a little bit more uncharted territory so we'd like to make that change this evening
based on your comments Rachel do you want to add anything to that
thank you city administrator yes so we just don't
as a little background, I think that Steven's ready to talk about this too. The
reason that 50% was chosen was to be consistent with other fee waiver
programs that the city has in place. That's the number that's used for instance
in the discounts and waivers for utility billing for
city utilities. I believe that it's also what we use in our recent public records
policy. So the city already has a sort of established practice
that 50% AMI is low income. The issue with going a
whole lot above that is that there's a constitutional prohibition on gifting of public funds.
And it has an exception for, and please excuse this language, it comes straight from
the constitution, which is quite outdated, but it has an exception for the poor and
infirm. So This becomes a question of what can we justify as
essentially poverty level or poor, terrible choice of works in the
constitution. I do think that if the council has strong feelings about going above 50%,
that you could probably justify up to 80, given what we do for
affordable housing. There's at least a track record. There's some precedent there for 80%.
AMI being considered low income for those purposes. But I don't think you'd want to
go above that or you're starting to skirt the limits of what's acceptable under the
Constitution. Happy to answer any
questions. Great. Council President, are you seeing any indication of any questions?
Yes. OK. Councilmember Hall. Thank you. This in not assuming
individuals would take advantage of a system like this, I guess I'm wondering how we
measure impacted by the recent windstorm. Is that
something we just trust within a particular time frame? We make an assumption as a
city that this is caused by a windstorm. We're looking for any documentation that shows
that damage was caused during the windstorm. Some sort of official documentation done by the
property owner. Correct. our intention is to make this as straightforward as possible um
you know as has been mentioned um we will have to identify uh income issues
and so we will come up with our own uh process to make it as
straightforward as possible and one of the challenges whenever there's an income-based exemption or discount
uh there's usually quite extensive requirements and uh you know that's why many jurisdictions will
If you get an ORCA card with a discount or if you're on a utility
discount, if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for us. We're not
going to have that with 80%. So we will just be diligent but not
overly diligent to determine the eligibility here. The same thing with the damage. Given these
circumstances, I doubt that we'll have individuals come with damage from something else. It should
be trees on top of your house. Then likely it happened. Thank you
Councilmember Martz Do we have an idea even a ballpark
order of magnitude on what this would like will likely cost like is it $10
is it a hundred thousand dollars is a hundred million dollars sort of a order
of magnitude You know in our Estimations and I don't
know if director dolly wall has numbers with her as far as the number of
that we've seen with any substantial damage the numbers are pretty small I think the
red tag numbers was two there's some yellow tags
Dale Dale's got the numbers six six six yellow tags so
you know that's ten ish Again, the spirit of this is just to
have a tool in the toolbox and if one person is eligible for it That's
going to make one residence life a little bit easier The referrals We might see
all of these folks take advantage of that because you know all of a sudden
they're facing a Contractor bill other things and if we're the ones that say okay,
we'll give you easy monthly payments. They might take us up So we're not anticipating
that this is a major dollar piece, but really is being offered to the council
as just to provide one more level of relief to our residents should anyone qualify
for it. Okay. I was asking because I was in Eden Prairie, Minnesota in the
summer of 2001, and something like 50% of the houses needed new roofs. It was
an amazing hailstorm that we all lived through. So I just wanted to make sure
we weren't, you know, you've given me an idea that the number of potential impacted
people is you know and it's going to be a question for the council when
we come back to you in a few months to put this in the code
permanently because there could be that kind of event of an earthquake that you know
levels all sorts of things and that that could be much different financial impact so
some of this is community value Some of its financial and it's just gonna be
a measure as far as making this permanent But we feel for the windstorm of
November 20th 21st Thank you very much
Councilmember a What are the plans
if any for Publicizing this should we move forward with it or is this going
to be something where we will just make it available when somebody is looking to
come in and a permit have you thought through the the outreach part of this
it'll be primarily dependent on the residents need and so as as the
applications come in we'll be talking with residents in terms of what tools are available
to us I'm not
seeing any other questions Thank You council president if there are no
other questions and someone would like to make a motion I would suggest, oh,
there we go. Look at that pop up, that you might want to make one
that is modified compared to what was in the original packet. So is somebody prepared
to make a motion? I will take care of that with great thanks to clerk
Tisha Gieser. Our clerk is amazing. would move to approve resolution number 2024-28
providing for a low income fee waiver and fee deferral for certain building permit fees
necessitated by an emergency or natural disaster with an amendment to
change the area median income requirement in section one to be at or below 80%
of the median family income second you very
much is there any council discussion and council president if you could indicate who would
like to speak to it that would be great um i will start out as
maker of the motion just to say i appreciate much like everything with this um
storm emergency response was just the quick nature of coming back on this
and um appreciate as we move into the it
response or recovery portion that cpd the community planning and development has
stepped up and is now seeing our community through the emergency and i see council
member martz thank you um i sort of wanted plus one
what you just said actually um i think that this is a great idea
and uh i think there i don't know exactly why but there has just been
a And I want to back up a step. I loved having Mayor
Freisinger as mayor, and I loved having Mayor Butler as mayor, but this
administration's response to this particular emergency has been much more comprehensive and
transparent. Maybe it's because we're a bigger organization and you have the
ability to do some of the and crossing of T's in response to things when
we were a smaller city. Maybe that was just harder to do. But this ordinance
in front of us feels very much of a piece with that transparency and thoughtfulness
about how to respond to emergencies. And as has been mentioned, the E word, the
earthquake word, right? We live in an area that has earthquakes and God forbid volcanoes
and other challenges. And so to, this precedent of thinking about
these issues and coming at it for some thoughtfulness ahead of time versus trying to
respond to the next one ad hoc is a great effort and much appreciated. Thank
you. I am not seeing
any other comments on the dais. Thank you very much, Council President.
It has been moved and seconded to approve Resolution 2024-28, providing for a low-income
fee waiver and fee deferral for certain building permit fees necessitated by an emergency or
natural disaster, with an amendment to change the area median income requirement in Section 1
to be at or below 80 percent of the median family income. All those in
favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Thank you. Those opposed?
carries unanimously 7-0. Stephen, thank you. Fantastic work.
Again, I think what Councilmember Mart said is really a credit to the staff that
they are really out there in front thinking about how they can be helpful. And
so that is great. Thank you very much. The next item of business this evening
is AB 8796, the comprehensive plan periodic update. The request before Council this evening is
to adopt the ordinance. The item was last before Council at the November 18th Committee
of the Whole meeting. And I'm sure Stephen is still standing up there, but I
can't really tell for sure. But I'm handing it over to Planning Manager Stephen Padua.
Stephen. Thank you, Mayor Pauline. That's correct. I am still up here. This is the
last step. the periodic updates comprehensive plan it's
the culmination of about two years of work made by the long-range team and community
planning development working with multiple staff from all the city departments to work through all
the different elements in the comprehensive plan and facilitating discussions with all the
respective boards and commissions to go through the policy work and incorporating the direction and
feedback from our council committees And so I want to thank our staff for all
the hard work that went into this update. We believe that is a very strong
foundation of policies to guide a lot of the policy work and a lot of
the implementation for city planning for the next 20 years. So thank you for City
Council for the opportunity to present this. The administration proposes adoption of the conference plan
as presented tonight. you steven um council president
if you could work the room for questions i think we have come to the
end of a very long process and i'm not seeing any questions on the dais
that is great thank you very much put my script back up here um is
someone prepared to make a motion yes i move to adopt ordinance number 3084
Adopting the 2024 periodic update of the Issaquah Comprehensive Plan pursuant to the Washington
State Growth Management Act chapter 36.70 a RCW
regarding King County tax parcel number 20 24 0 6 9 0 1 5
amending the land use designation map of the Comprehensive Plan adopting an amendment to the
zoning map providing for severability and establishing an effective date.
Second. It has been moved and seconded. Is there any council discussion?
Again, Council President, if you could let me know if there's anyone with their microphone
up or indicating a desire to speak. Okay, we'll start with Council Member Joe.
Thank you, Council President. As many of you know, I have a job where I
have to review comprehensive plans. in snohomish county and the good
comprehensive plans are ones that have numerous studies over numerous years that have
built a foundation over time and have found the community direction
they know what the community is thinking they have a strategic plan on different issues
whether it's housing or human services along the way the cities that really struggle are
ones that have not invested and done those studies over time scramble to get them
done they're haphazard they're not based on the law they're not based on the
way that these strategic plans should work and they get tripped up and they
have problems and they really struggle to put a comprehensive plan together we are in
the first category here in Issaquah because we invest in strategic plans on
climate human services emergency management water systems sewer systems of these different
elements along the years between 2017 and 2024 have been done and it
makes the comprehensive plan process much more
deep and insightful but it also makes it easier on staff and council to say
these are the things that we've done in the past these are the the direction
these are the directions that we've heard from our community this is the information that
we have and it's easier for us to together a comprehensive plan so it's a
long-winded way of saying thank you to the administration thank you to staff for doing
the hard work of putting these plans together and making sure there's transparency to our
community and transparency to the council each step of the way it makes the comprehensive
plan process much smoother and I think that is reflected in this
comprehensive plan that we're seeing so Stephen thank you so much for all the work
you've done thank you to the planning development Department for all the work that
has been done on this. It's been fantastic And I'll be supporting the motion. Thank
you Councilmember Hull Yeah, lots of lots of
landing the plane tonight in this meeting so just to reiterate some of my comments
from the last meeting and once again excellent work outstanding work by staff The level
of staff work has been really impressive and you know, we've really been able to
see that in our committees and how you've aligned with the functional plans and the
different requirements by many different jurisdictions, reworking literally
entire chapters, seeing almost no difference in terms of structure between before and after. So
like even just the level of detail and the work going into that, the different
comprehensive, hey, look at that, comprehensive plan matrices that you've put together
and the red line document, the many red line documents that you've done. with boards
and commissions the touches that we've had over several years at council committee before it
even came to full council this new and more accessible online platform is also very
exciting so I'm very eager to see how that works up like I said last
month this work really does have significant meeting not just the people who live here
today but certainly all who choose to live here work and play here in future
years so again Huge thank you to staff and everyone who participated in very happy
vote yesterday I'll just throw in my
comments echoing much of what I've heard there But I really want to focus on
the Commission's you know the Planning Policy Commission 24 meetings on this
various parts of the comprehensive plan also went to the Arts Commission the Environmental Board
transportation and fire Advisory Committee the Economic Vitality Commission and the Equity Board
so this didn't come to us just as a repeat of the
previous comprehensive plan with adjustments from staff and state regulations it really came
through a community process of understanding what was being
presented in all of the nitty-gritty detail and So I just want to take the
time to thank the board and Commission members who really sat there and did the
hard work so that things came to council at a place where we could really
see the difference between that previous plan and this one and that how
that is how it demonstrates the Nature of our community now and into the future
and not just the last time the comprehensive plan was adopted So just wanted to
add in that kudos there as well in appreciation
And I am not seeing any other comments at this time
Thank You council president, so I'll just reread the motion it has been moved and
seconded to adopt ordinance number 3084
adopting the 2024 periodic update of the Issacole Comprehensive Plan pursuant to the Washington State
Growth Management Act, Chapter 36.70A of the RCW
regarding King County Tax Parcel Number 20-24-06-9015,
amending the land use designation map of the Comprehensive Plan, adopting an amendment to the
zoning map, and providing for severability and establishing an effective date. All those in favor
signify by saying aye. Thank you those opposed.
That also carries seven and no thanks very much again to all of the council
president said all the boards commissions and the council committee work and the staff work
that went into this 10 year update so appreciative. If I can
interrupt we've got a request on the dais maybe for a five minute break. Let's
take a five minute break. Thanks, Council President. Thanks.
So, that's what I'm going to do.
I'm
here.
Mayor, we're ready whenever you are. Thank you very much,
City Clerk. So just, we are coming back from a short break. We are looking
at AB 8911, the Citywide Strategic Plan five year update. action before
council is to approve the resolution and this item was lost before council at the
November 18th committee of the whole meeting I'd like to invite assistant to the city
administrator Dale Markey crimp to the podium welcome Dale thank you madam mayor members of
the city council members of the public including a task force member here tonight
my name is Dale Markey crimp I'm the assistant to the city administrator and I'm
here tonight to present you with the administration's final proposed updates on the R issaquah
strategic plan. The purpose of tonight's meeting is to prevent is to present you with
the final proposed updates to the strategic plan, including some
minor changes from our last meeting based on council feedback for adoption. As a reminder,
this update pertains only to the plans goal area, goal statements, objectives and recommended actions.
In some cases, this necessitated small changes to other parts of the goal area, but
the update largely focused on the objectives aligned actions and success measures
once more for posterity sake provide a little bit of background the original artists across
strategic plan which was the first strategic plan for our city was adopted in 2019
following an 18-month process grounded in community engagement and input that process led to a
plan with six goal areas which are seen here and represented in our goal area
wheel one to five objectives in each goal area potential aligned actions to each
of those objectives and two to four success measures per goal area even
without knowing just how much our world would change following the adoption in 2019 there
was always a plan to formally review and update the strategic plan in five years
time as a final refresher the following process was
followed during this update task force was selected by the mayor in January 2024
this task force consisted of 11 regular members three alternates including three members of the
City Council and members of the Issaquah Equity Board Environmental
Board Economic Vitality Commission and Transportation Advisory Board the task force
met six times between late February and late June of 2024 working together and with
city staff subject matter experts and to support the revision of the plan's objectives
aligned actions and success measures the task force then presented their recommendations
to city council in july 2024 and following that presentation city staff reviewed these
recommendations and further applied the strategic plans prioritization criteria as well as
council feedback to refine these recommendations into a near final draft
this near final draft was then presented at a special meeting of the city's boards
and commissions attended by members of 10 boards and commissions over 40 of our board
members and commissioners in mid-september following that engagement
staff again revised the document to include that feedback and shared that
again near final draft with the issaquah community through the issaquah insider on the city's
website and through direct outreach organizations community partners and
individuals that was made available to the to the community throughout October until early November
given the feedback obtained during that time again city staff made another final revision
before coming to the council committee of the whole on November 18th with a final
draft I've shown you this slide before and I think it's worth
sticking on one more time like the original plan and as this process indicates
this update was grounded in community member input and feedback that ensures that our strategic
plan continues to reflect the sentiment and values of Issaquah's greatest asset our community members
there are four main themes represented in this update that I think are worth commenting
on one additional time the first overarching trend in this update
is emergency preparedness and resilience and public safety emerging from the
pandemic and validated by our recent wind event
emergency preparedness response and recovery are paramount
it's something that was a much smaller focus in the original plan and takes up
a much more prominent space across the goal areas in this plans update
the city's resilience both in its infrastructure and and in its social connection is also
essential and plays a key role in the update you see across multiple goal areas
in this update. And last but certainly not least, while the city council astutely added
a public safety objective in 2021, this update sees a build out
of that objective to include aligned actions. The second trend in changes
you'll see are around continued investment in climate action. the 2021
adoption of the Issaquah Climate Action Plan the city has made significant progress and now
the focus is on how to ensure climate action is not simply the work of
one small team but integrated into the work of all of our teams across the
city the third trend in this update is housing affordability and livability
whether it's affordable housing or housing affordability the ability to work live and
recreate here in issaquah remains a concern and is an even greater focus
in this particular update and last but certainly not least operationalizing equity
well equity has always been one of the guiding principles of the plan the original
plan lacked clarity on exactly how equity would be pursued this
update provides concrete recommendations in its actions for how the city city can take next
steps on this commitment mentioned in previous presentations the original
plan had six goal areas and 16 objectives this final recommended update
retains these six goal areas and proposes 22 objectives including new objectives in the five
goal areas listed here additionally as was shared at the
previous presentation this update proposes aligning success measures to objectives rather than goal
areas to better track progress and ongoing actions that may not have an end date
within a single or even two years so that both the administration staff and
City Council can track progress towards those goals over time these
measures are a combination of the original plans measures the measures from the city's performance
management plan and a handful of measures for which departments already have data that they
are gathering presented its final draft
proposal to the City Council as mentioned on November 18th the City Council requested consideration
of the following changes ahead of the final proposed update a revision to the new
environmental stewardship objective focus on applying a sustainability lens on planning and project management
further specificity on how the City Council will work to address the epidemic of loneliness
and excuse me, the city will work to address the epidemic of loneliness through human
services, arts and public spaces. The addition of success measures with the new
infrastructure objective, the revision of success measures within growth and development, revised
language in the growth and development background, and some narrative around the lessons learned and
therefore the updates made to this plan. response to that feedback the
administration made the following revisions ahead of this final document the
administration revised the language on environmental stewardship objective to make it more understandable and clear
specifically outlining the intention for each department and
workgroup to have a process for assessing not only the climate impact of projects and
programs that they're running but understanding the best way to mitigate those impacts and enhance
climate benefits This will be done through establishing a plan and project review process and
training project managers on how to follow this process. The administration added actions within
two economic and social vitality objectives related to the epidemic of loneliness, building community and
nurturing connection, including recently added language, which I'll pull up momentarily, around
developing, implementing, and participating in partnerships and initiatives to reduce loneliness and social isolation.
administration added success measures in growth and development and within the new infrastructure objective
and The mayor penned a letter explaining lessons learned and how they informed this update
The administration did not make changes to the background language in the growth and development
The recommendation tonight is to approve the resolution adopting amendments to the citywide strategic plan
as part of the five-year plan update Following this meeting The administration
will prepare for implementation and work plan tracking beginning in Q1 2025.
And in January, we'll bring together our leadership to begin the implementation of this new
strategic plan. So again, this is the recommendation for tonight. I'll
pause here for questions. Thank you, Dale. Council President,
if you could indicate whether or not there are folks in the room or whether
or not Council Member Hunt. any
questions uh
council member hall can you remind um me
what the concern that we had with the background and growth and development was and
what the rationale was for the administration and not changing i'm just drawing a blank
on that yep absolutely so the the issue that was brought up and i'll pull
up the language for everyone to see um was a conflicting or
attention between the language in the background and the language of one of our new
objectives so let me just take a moment to pull up both
this is gonna be small at first and I promise to zoom in
highlighted on the screen a second sentence in the opportunity section excuse me I misspoke
not background but opportunity this sentence was brought up specifically in conflict with the
revision to one of the below objectives so that the sentence reads in the face
of this growth is quite has chosen to direct development to the valley floor to
protect existing neighborhoods in our forested hillsides and plan for growth around the future light
rail station it was noted that this sentence might feel as though it is in
or in conflict with some of the way the objectives are worded
below, namely a focus on thinking about infill and thinking about
missing middle housing. I'd also invite, when discussion
comes up, either council member to speak to that as well. Sorry,
and you had said, thank you, by the way, and you had said the administration
decided not to make any changes there. Can you walk us through that? It was
just determined that a change wasn't needed. That it didn't feel as though it was
in. Didn't really see the tension. Didn't really feel that it was that intention.
Council President, is there anyone else that would like to ask a question at this
point in time? I am not seeing any.
Thank you so much.
someone care to make a motion yes let me bring that
would you like to make the motion on some of my remarks thank you I'd
like to approve resolution number 2024 dash 29
adopting amendments to the citywide strategic plan as part of the five-year plan update second
Thank you both. It has been moved and seconded. Is there any council discussion? Sure.
I'll just say that having been on council for a while, done a number
of these, and this was a very, as we have discussed numerous
times in this room, it was a very thoughtful process involving
leadership beyond council and in the community, with with dale's amazing
ability to herd cats and so i'm excited about this today
and i will note uh with councilmember martz
that he was one of those cats so he is not saying that against anyone
else he you know that whole thing when when you point your finger you point
three back at yourself for sure for sure Looking through I see a
deputy council president de Michelle and then councilmember Hall Thank you
So the cats comment is sort of throw me off here so so I because
I was going to mention that or to command the Ad hoc committee that worked
on this I thought they did an excellent job and especially I think I mentioned
this when the first draft was presented that I really appreciated the emphasis on Bringing
the arts in which I don't believe had been so emphasized earlier
And the equity piece as well And I wanted to particularly
think Chris rich Chrisley Chris richly who's been here At almost all of our
meetings following the process for his group and I really appreciate your representation that you've
given to that group and And so I think this is a really good
platform for us to move forward as a city And I just think that there
was an immense amount of work tonight feels like the culmination of so many things
and what a great amount of work has been done here and Is setting us
up for so much success into the future? So thanks to that group in that
group of cats. I guess so. Thanks So, Member Hall?
I'm allergic to cats, so no cat metaphors here. You
know how thrilled we are with the product and the process, so I won't say
much more about that since we've had an opportunity to say it so many times.
A couple things come to mind. The updates that were made with
regard to some of what we spoke about with her loneliness and isolation and community
building. Excellent updates. I think it reflects the need very well.
There was one in particular that I was I feel bad wordsmithing stuff this late
too, but there was one in particular that I thought maybe a few words could
be removed and I I think that there might be some potential alternative language So
I just wanted to ask for that. There is a small change. It's actually on
a different one, but I will share it with you. Okay, so rather than
retracting words from the one that included around the use of City owned and public
spaces We wanted to propose adding Some language to the other
action. So there was a there's an action Within the the more human services I
would say heavy objective and so we'd like to propose adding the following words so
currently reads I believe develop and implement initiatives to reduce loneliness we'd like to have
that to have more of a partnership orientation so looking at other partners in the
community that we could work with on this part on developing those initiatives and also
participating in initiatives that are driven by some of our community partners and so we're
proposing this slight update to language to take more of a partnership approach to that
that meets my needs so thank you for looking at that I appreciate it just
for kind of context for council there was one in particular that said kind of
focused on city-owned properties and I wanted to make sure we weren't limiting ourselves to
supporting community partners when they're doing community building work so this definitely gets that
kind of that so thank you again yeah there's not really much more to say
again yeah thrilled with what we've got. Everyone that I've talked to who's on the
board, including someone I know very well, always says, Dale was amazing
this, Dale was amazing that. Like, come on, we get it. So, just kidding. We
so appreciate everything you've done. We appreciate all the other staff who also come in
with the ownership of the functional plans who were able to walk everyone through all
of it. So this is very much a thanks staff, an appreciation for staff and
community members who participate night. so again thank you and i'll be voting yes
and i'll just throw my comments in on all of that as one of the
cats at that meeting who was herded by dale um i think i've said it
before i never felt so mentally exhausted after a meeting as i did
coming out of those meetings because We were just used at such
a fast pace in order to come up with all of the needed
requirements. And so having all of those community members just working together and
Dale kind of pulling it out of us and pushing us in different directions was
just quite amazing to see. testament
to our community and the staff leadership on all of that that we were able
to produce this as a result of those six meetings and many many other
conversations so my appreciation as well and I am
not seeing any other comments on the dais Thank You council president and thank
you for those comments Again, tough one on everything that was said about Dale and
her team that supported her. That's fantastic. So if there is no further discussion,
the motion before council is to approve resolution number 2024-29-29,
adopting amendments to the citywide strategic plan as part of the five-year plan update. All
those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed?
carries unanimously seven to no. So the next two agenda items will be presented jointly
AB 8924, the 2025 council calendar and AB 8925 council
vacancy process and timeline. The request before council is to approve the
resolution on the calendar and to comment and approve on the council vacancy
process and timeline. So I'd like to have deputy city clerk, Chris Grabowski come up
to the podium.
Mayor Pawley, council members, good evening. It's very weird to be on this side of
the dais, I have to admit. So I'm before you tonight to present the proposed
2025 city council calendar. City Clerk Gieser will follow with the
presentation on the vacancy process and timeline. Tonight we're seeking
direction from you on the 2025 calendar and if you have any recommended changes to
the council calendar that's being brought forward this evening. On the council vacancy side of
things, Tisha will be asking for any changes to the application, any changes
to input on the vacancy timeline, and any additional
requested outreach. On my portion of the event tonight,
by way of background, Council approved Resolution 2024-07,
which adopted a cultural and religious holiday calendar and established a policy of avoiding
scheduling city meetings on religious and cultural holidays of utmost significance.
IMC 2.06.020 states that the regular meetings of the city council
will be held as set forth by annual resolution so this will be the third
year that the council has adopted an annual meeting calendar to establish council meeting dates
in 2022 the council adopted the 2023 calendar and then in 2024
just after the new year council adopted the 2024 calendar
So a little bit of the background that we go through in the clerk's office
to develop the council calendar. So in prep in preparation for creating the 2025 council
calendar, we looked at the cultural and religious calendar and determined where there were conflicts
with council and committee meetings. We rescheduled the council and committee meetings to
the next Monday or Tuesday of the month where practical, where the next Monday or
Tuesday had a conflict the meeting may have been moved out further
or in rare cases to a Wednesday but for the most part we
tried to avoid scheduling anything on a day other than Monday or
Tuesday changes were also made to the calendar to minimize meetings
that fell during the school school districts midwinter break and spring break
April and February
so this slide shows that November of the 2025 calendar did have
some significant impacts which resulted in PDC having to be moved
to the first week of December to avoid encroaching on the Thanksgiving week it may
be difficult to you can see that that the City Council regular meetings are shaded
in gray on this slide and Committee of the Whole is shaded sort of a
purple color services safety and parks is on the 18th
of November of this coming year and mobility and infrastructure is on the
24th but to avoid encroaching into that Thanksgiving week with travel plans we moved the
Development and Environment Committee meeting for November into the month of December
and then the council has winter break in 2025 so
currently there are no I'm going to go back a slide sorry
I did want to point out that there is a regular City Council meeting scheduled
on Monday November 3rd which is prior to the general election day there is also
a City Council meeting scheduled for Monday August
4th which is before the primary so those Council can
decide whether or not they want to keep those days or or direct staff to
make changes to those dates
So typically the council has three City Council retreats scheduled throughout
the year on Saturdays There are none scheduled at this time, however, and this is
due mainly to the council vacancy that is looming. The administration will propose three dates
to the council or poll the council for their preference on
retreat dates after that vacancy has been filled. IMC 2.06.020
also allows for summer and winter breaks for the council by eliminating the regular meeting
on the third Monday in the months of August or December.
So that really kind of wraps up my portion of it at this time. If
there are any questions, we can hear them now or I can turn it over
to the clerk Keeser. We do have some questions on this
area. I'll start with Councilmember Joe, then Councilmember Hall. Good evening. Could you go to
the April, the month of April on your slides? I do not have the month
of April on the slides, but I can answer a question for you. Okay. I'll
direct my colleagues to look to the month of April in 2025. The Iskua School
District Spring Break is April 14th through the 18th, and there currently is a City
Council Committee of the Whole meeting scheduled on that day. In your presentation you indicated
that you're trying to not have a meeting during the spring break was there a
reason to put that on the calendar there or Is it an option for us
to move that to the 28th at our discretion? I also can move that to
the 28th or any other date at their discretion the reason we we avoided Scheduling
committee meetings during during council break or during those school breaks. You'll see that
February during the midwinter break that Monday also coincides with President's Day so there
wouldn't be a City Council meeting on that date anyway we did keep the Committee
of the Whole meeting in April but you're certainly as a body welcome to move
it if you'd like okay there's just two of us that have kids in school
still it will be maybe another year before we have no kids in school unless
we have a appointment to a vacancy that a person has young children in school
so I was just curious thank you very much
madam mayor members of the council you know I don't think there's any objection if
the council this evening would like simply say I would
we'll take that as a friendly
amendment I would greatly appreciate that I made my spring break plans not more than
three days ago Fantastic councilmember Hall
You brought up the council meetings before the primary and general election. That's not something
we would need to If if we were concerned with that as council, that's not
something we would need to change tonight anyways if we didn't want to I mean
It also could we cancel council meetings sometimes because there aren't any there isn't anything
from the planning calendar to pull into the meeting right so that is correct. That's
also something that could be done at mayor's and council's discretion later on it absolutely
is at your discretion I think just and I'll make comments at the end of
the evening one of the one of the reasons the night is as good as
it is is because we will have a 12-month calendar and so if you're thinking
now that you don't want those meeting I think from the administration standpoint would rather
know that in my experience most councils don't want to meet the night before municipal
elections if there are members of the council on the ballot you're busy doing other
stuff and that's just practical reality so you might get to two weeks before
people say oh gosh why do we have a council meeting I've got a new
XYZ we're saying tonight we recognize all those things and if the council would prefer
to direct us to reschedule those meetings in August and November we're happy to do
it and and know that now as we plan the calendar
I mean that's my kind of initial reaction is that it would it seemed to
me to be a best practice to not have council meetings so close to an
election regardless of the election I'm open to that also might be
challenging given already our religious and cultural calendar and understanding where meetings go there so
I guess I just throw that out there is kind of my thought would be
we should try to avoid scheduling those weeks but I'll throw that to council to
see what Okay, and then
I had questions. I just have to find them. I noticed that in January, the
Mayor's State of the City meeting is listed as a special meeting proposed for Thursday,
January 30th. And I'm wondering if there's a reason that we aren't utilizing the open
Monday, the 27th of that week instead. That is an excellent
question. I will defer to City Administrator Bob Coates on that. the the state
of the city is an event that the Chamber of Commerce puts on at a
third-party site we anticipate that a majority of the council attends and so it is
a notice-only meeting okay fantastic hey that's a
good reminder of that um
okay I think that is all four questions so
want to move on to the other topic? So we will let the August and
November dates ride for now? Leave them scheduled?
Do we want to do comments later on
various stuff? I'm not sure how the clerk wanted. If you wanted to do it.
Okay, because we were going to, it's up to the, Madam Mayor, how would you
like to, would you like to deal with the council a vacancy and then come
back and talk about I think because the calendar is fresh in their mind,
maybe we should just do them separately. And I did see that Council Member Hunt
had her hand up as well. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I was
clarifying what you just said, which was asking if you would like comments now. Oh,
okay, great. Well, I guess what we should be doing then is Council Member Hall
did make a suggestion about those two meetings
and wonder if you want to have a conversation on the dais about that and
then we can maybe move to the next presentation any comments about moving those I
think city administrator made a good point that the night before can be a busy
time for those that happen to be in a candidate's chair
I'll just throw out the comment I think there are potentially
seats and the mayor's up so this would be a particularly difficult year
or having a lot of council members out and doing things that being said I
think November is pretty tight so unless there is a recommendation
of either canceling that meeting or moving it to the week before on October 27th
I don't really see how we get around that I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN
HEARING WHAT COUNCIL MEMBERS SAY. I DON'T SEE ANYBODY ELSE ON THE DIOS, SO IF
YOU WANT TO GO TO COUNCIL MEMBER HUNT. SURE. COUNCIL MEMBER HUNT. THANK
YOU. I THINK FROM A POLICY STANDPOINT, AVOIDING THE DAYS IMMEDIATELY BEFORE
THE ELECTION IS A GOOD THING FOR US TO DO. IF IT'S
UNAVOIDABLE, THEN THAT'S A DIFFERENT SITUATION. generally having that as one of our guidelines,
like we've made guidelines previously, I think that's a good guideline to have.
Also, I wanted to comment on the school breaks. When we go to the next
topic and are talking about the vacancy as well, I think it's important, regardless
of the current of the council I think it's important to have accessibility in the
in the calendar and so you know accommodating folks that do have younger kids in
school is is really important and one aspect of that is scheduling so I think
generally it is important as we look at the schedule to make sure that we're
accommodating things like like school schedules in the way that we're doing business
okay and I see council member right wanted to opine on the
primary election because we do take most of the week month of August off it
really does you know that's the only week essentially in August that we have planned
right now so I would be fine with moving that fourth meeting but I would
say move it to the 11th and cut into our our break if we're gonna
do that I think we should not go a month without a without a meeting
and I also well primaries are important generals I think maybe more important I don't
know I mean it's just it's just finite number of
days so an infinite amount of business madam
mayor of members of the council what we would recommend then is you would move
the August meeting to August 11 and then the November meeting to November 10
and then if we need to add another cow as we're going through the budget
process we can do that as we're working on it it's the mid biennium
on everything that we'll be a lesser process at the midpoint of the biennium but
we could then have the regular meeting on November 10 so we'll take that as
an amendment to the resolution and mayor I'll note that I'm seeing
head knob nods on the dais so general support for that idea
that's great thank you for clarifying the administrator City Clerk, would you like to
do the second presentation?
Council
Vacancy. Tisha Gieser, City Clerk. We'll get a motion to approve that calendar at the
end of this section here, and we can take care of both items. So I'm
here to talk to you about the Council Vacancy Process and Timeline of three questions,
really just generally taking feedback on the process and timeline tonight. So on
November 26, King County Elections certified their election, and that included formalizing
the election of Council Member Hunt to serve as a in the State House for
District 5. So we are anticipating, congratulations, we are anticipating a
vacancy in Council Position Number 6 in early January and per the Council's rules,
I come to you and ask for approval of a timeline for the appointment schedule.
And under state law, you have 90 days by which to fill this appointment, otherwise
King County gets that honor. The person who's appointed to fill position
six will serve until the November 2025 election is certified. So that person could
choose to run for that seat, in which case they would need to be elected
in November, and then they'd serve the remainder of the term. Position six's term goes
until December 31st, 2027.
This process involves, has traditionally involved individuals who are interested in being
considered filling out an application that is available on the city's website. We'll talk in
a few minutes about the outreach that we have done and would plan to do
for this vacancy. One of the things I'm hoping for some input on tonight is
the application. The questions are split between this slide and the next slide, but these
are the 10 questions on the 2019 application, a cover letter
or a letter of interest was required to be uploaded, and then an individual could
choose to upload additional letters of support. Each of the 10 questions
allowed for, I think it was 1,000 characters, so around six sentences.
And a reminder, you will be provided in reviewing these applications. So again, we'd like
your input on whether you see some changes to questions or would like some changes
or any other element of the application. Here are questions 6 through 10.
Give you a minute to look through those.
Okay. I'm going to move to the next slide here. You didn't want that feedback
now, did you? I was going to talk through a few more slides and then
like welcome your input and happy to go back to those. So just a
reminder, we haven't gone through this process in a few years. So on the screen
here is the timeline and process for the most recent two vacancies. In
both cases, the seats were open January 1st. And in both cases, there was around
a six week period for people to fill out that online application. Your council rules
then provide that each applicant, well, I'd say first I would confirm that the
applicants met any requirements to be appointed to the seat and then anyone who did
would have the opportunity to present to you. They have up to 10 minutes to
provide a verbal presentation. That's typically occurred at a council
meeting. The city council then has an opportunity to go into executive session to discuss
the qualifications of the applicants. our last two
vacancies we also added an applicant meet and greet which was sort of an informal
opportunity for council and members of the public and staff to meet the appointees
and in both cases that occurred before a meeting it was sort of reception style
for around 90 minutes or so and then you can see here the appointments themselves
took place you know about a month after the vacancy at that final meeting where
the appointments are made most recently in 2019 the council also choose chose to do
some additional Q&A before making their appointment. So given
that, as a starting point for tonight, I did plug in some dates that sort
of match those time frames, but we're getting a little bit of a later start.
So the potential timeline on your screen here is something I'm looking for your input
on tonight. Just a couple things to think about. We certainly want to make sure
there's a big... We want enough time for
people to be able to fill this application out over the holidays. It's not ideal
timing. And so I think having a birth to work with.
The timeline here is seven weeks again looking forward to input just another thing to
keep in mind if we have a lot of applicants We're probably going to need
two meetings to get through those 10-minute verbal presentations And then looking for input
on that meet-and-greet if it's something you would like to continue this year if so
I have a potential date here and then of course the appointment date is important
as well Real quickly, as far as planned outreach, our
communications team is working on a video to highlight this opportunity, largely
using existing footage. They're working on that now. We think we can get that and
start pushing this opportunity as early as next Monday. That is the time we'd need
to have those questions in our online form. And then our communications team would be
looking at using all our usual applications to outreach so our website
is a quote inside our social media and I will say we would plan to
do something a little more direct to our boarding Commission members provide them a little
more direct outreach and empower or encourage their staff liaisons to make them aware
So we already heard some of your recommended changes for the council calendar, and now
I'm looking for input you have on the application, on the timeline, and
any additional outreach you'd like to see over the course of this process.
Thank you, City Clerk. Council President, if you want to manage the room for any
of those three questions that the City Clerk has put up there on the council
vacancy, that'd be much appreciated. Let's start with council questions because I
think that will clarify some things before we get to feedback on any of those
questions Deputy Council President de Michelle Right Tisha you
mentioned that there are you know that they you would be looking at whether or
not they were qualified and When I was on the school
board we unfortunately had than one time when people applied or ran and it
turned out that they weren't even residents of the Issaquah School District you know so
could you kind of go over what would be the qualifications that we would be
looking for and how would that be handled would we be responsible
or are the people who apply responsible for making sure that they're qualified can you
just kind of give us a little bit more about that please I'd be checking
with King County to make sure they were registered voters in the city limits and
I believe they must be 18 years of age if I remember right so I
would I'd have that list so I need a little bit of buffer between when
the applications are due and those presentations happen so I'll be providing them those folks
details and be working on confirming their residency and that they're registered voters
I have a second question if that's okay I know council president myself have been
very interested in having a Sort of council mayor
Place where people could come who might be interested in applying and we have that
conversation with them So have we thought about working that into this schedule at this
point? the mayor has expressed some interest in that as well and we
were hopeful that with the seven week window and applications being due in late january
that would provide an opportunity to do something like that early to mid-january but it
hasn't been you know put on the count it hasn't been scheduled
councilmember hall just a functionality question of the form is the
thousand character a limit form for answers or is that something we can play
in terms of response? That's something you can play with. I mean, my observation is
that there are 10 questions, which is a lot. So it was probably to help
prevent people from filling out pages and pages of content. But you could certainly reduce
the questions, increase the limit. That is totally up to you. We will make sure
that the form, the application is available to view and download before someone starts
filling it out so they can contemplate responses or work on them you know offline
okay thanks Councilman right then council member Martz
oh thanks question about the background and application I was reading through the questions
and I think they're all great but nines doesn't seem to fit nine seems very
specific about a very specific policy area where everything else is a bit generic and
you know why if that's one we want to keep in there then why have
affordable housing not environment not human services not transit not public safety on
and not parks so maybe we can recraft that into you what what
role I mean what's you think is the number one policy question facing the council
at this time or something of that nature but this one just it was it
was probably appropriate at the time it seems may be overtaken by events Do you
have a question, Council Member Merz? I do. I thought you were going to ask
me if that was a question. Yeah, uh-huh. I'm wondering if
what the feedback has been on the meet and greet portion of this.
We don't generally chit-chat. We have a dinner once a year,
but the success or failure of a council member does not generally revolve around their
ability to schmooze a room. So I'm just curious for my fellow council members, because
I'm just looking at this, and obviously, you know, and I'm sure all seven
of us are aware of this, this is not a council that naturally gravitates to,
like, four, three votes, but, you know, we do have the thing where the mayor
can't be a tiebreaker on a financial issue, right? So we are at risk for
two months that if a financial issue came up, we got to a three three
we would be locked up so I'm
wondering if the meet and greet is if people feel it's essential yeah and so
I will speak to that and I think the term meet and greet is used
in two contexts here one as proposed which is a
meeting in the middle after applications are due to to
council members and things like that I will say as a previous applicant
one of the reasons I found that useful was some of the community members who
were applicants did not reach out to individual council members to talk to them
during the application process and so that was their way of feeling like they could
express themselves during the meeting but I hear you on that
concept that I think Deputy Council President de Michelle had expressed was
more of a hey come meet your counsel so that applicants before they
put in their application could ask questions and see if this is something they
wanted to do and also be able to ask questions
About how to put in an application what you would have to do to run
and so I view that as a little different concept and deputy council president
yeah, let's clarify a little bit because I think We've got different pictures
in our mind here. So I was thinking of two different events and the one
was The council mayor talking to potential applicants and then the
meet and greet and I had a different vision of it than you were describing.
So maybe it's useful for us to kind of talk about that. And I forget
which process it was, but there was a time when the city council was filling
a vacancy and the community was invited to come and talk to all of
the applicants. So it wasn't just the city council talking to them. forget who was
that might have been you or was it Victoria or oh okay so
that was the vision I had for the quote-unquote meet-and-greet was more of a community
y'all come talk to the finalists and then provide us a little
feedback and that would be part of the deliberations Having
had some community feedback on those folks so a little bit different concept that I
think we're talking about and and also I was thinking of two different discrete events
one was the free application deadline and one is After
well, we've narrowed it down to the last three four or five candidates
Council member Martz it sounds like there are two things that I've heard from you
to be clear I was referring specifically to the proposed February 10th yeah between the
applicant presentations and so what I heard was
maybe one issue with it being a chit chatty you know
all of that and then the second being the extended period of time that we
would be in a particular 3-3 vote is that yeah in the hope that
could we collapse that schedule a little bit if we didn't do but I but
I bet if people think that event is important I'm the only one that thinks
it's a cocktail thing
then good feedback so
thinking through any other questions maybe before we go to
feedback on process okay no let me look through my notes
councilmember hunt yes councilmember hunt thank you thank you both um
i have a question about the intent of the meet and greet if it is
after applications have already been submitted then it is more Is the intent
more for counsel to use that
meet and greet in their consideration of the vacancy and to
see the applicants in that setting? Or is it because there was also the intent
mentioned of having a more casual setting for the applicants to get more information? So
I'm wondering how people are thinking about the intent of this.
throw in a naming structure to clarify between these I think what what has been
presented here maybe call that a meet-and-greet and maybe the free application point
call it a question and answer session or something like that that differentiates between the
two so I think answering the question about what is the intent of the meet-and-greet
would be useful so I I can't
speak to what got the meet and greet started. My recollection is it was something
that was done with the 2018 and 2019 vacancies. It does not appear it was
done in 2016. So there must have been some feedback there. My recollection is that
it was in part to provide a less opportunity to enter for the council to
interact with the applicants and also to include the invite the public to come out
and meet the applicants however I will say and I don't know if you recall
your participation we did not have many members of the public attend and I do
think that could be a challenge again just you know weeknight 530
before a meeting city facility so you know you So that is
one of the questions tonight is does this council think that might be a valuable
opportunity and if so would you like it to look similar to how it did
before or look different.
Tisha do you think you could put oh I think we have the questions up
there just off to the side. Yeah so
it looks like we've got kind of three questions one about the application.
about the timeline and another around outreach so
deputy council president de michelle There we go having
difficulty with that tonight You know I agree with council of Martz that I think
that the timeline I would like to see us fill that vacancy
Earlier rather than later I
think possibly if I had to choose between the two Outreaches or the two meetings
that we're proposing I would think that I would favor the one prior to applications
being The application deadline so that we can talk to potential
candidates and predict potential applicants It's also in some ways
also operate as a way to talk to people who might be getting ready to
run in the general election there will be a general election next year for the
vacancies and I think it's a good practice for us to do that so it
could be to fill the vacancy but also just general questions about how do I
run for City Council and you know what does it take to to run a
campaign so I'll choose that one and then remove that
second meeting the the so-called meet and greet and collapse the schedule so that
we get that person on board much much earlier we've got a lot of important
things coming up next year and I think it it behooves us use another
vocabulary word behooves us to to get that vacancy
field faster and that person on board As soon as possible so
that's why thank you And do you want to make any comments on the changes
to application or the outreach I do agree with councilmember Ray that that one question
does seem out of Place the others I don't have any problems with any of
the other questions, but that would seem so very specific to housing affordability and
So possibly we could do some wordsmithing on that or eliminate it one or the
other. Thank you Councilmember
Hall. Thanks. Yeah, going down the list,
a couple thoughts on the application. I
was going to bring up the question nine as something we should talk about, too.
I think that's a good point because, man, if I were designing a list of
questions from Zach to prospective candidate, it would include transportation and stuff like that, too.
safety funding, that kind of stuff. But we can't ask a question about every issue
in the known universe. So maybe it does make sense to pull that or rework
that somehow. I mean, I guess my overall thinking on this is I'd almost rather
have half the questions with more writing.
And some of the questions could be even combined into one, like the first and
the second one. Another one that I noticed was I think we're
our best to remove the use of the word character now and so question seven
has a quality of life and is equal and its character so maybe we remove
and its character from that question um i guess yeah so i'll just kick that
to council too and see what you all think about i don't know maybe consolidating
questions i don't want to wordsmith a list of questions at 10 p.m i think
easier would appreciate if we don't as well um But so those are my thoughts,
kind of initial thoughts on the application part. The
process, maybe I'm just not feeling strongly one way or another
on the meet and greet. I came in loving the idea and even thinking, oh,
this would be a cool opportunity to even invite former council members. So we have
current applicants and former council members and current council members all talking about what it's
like to be in the seat and getting to know one another. But I think
council member Martz brings up a good point and then the other point there too
is what if someone can't show up to that and then is our You of
art is our view of a particular candidate the bias by the fact that they
weren't there that they were there I don't know how to think about that either
So maybe I'll also just pose that to the rest of the council and I
don't necessarily have a strong feeling one way or the other to include the meet
and greet or not at this time Is that the only any additional requested outreach?
you've got a good outreach plan i think maybe also leaning on any
uh community non-profit that we have strong partnerships with or fund through grants who have
strong communication networks that we can get them to share out the message and stuff
too but um what you have is good those are my thoughts okay councilmember
ray followed by councilmember marx great thanks um
I think my question kind of got to my thinking about the application I can
like that's member Hall's idea of maybe fewer questions and we can consolidate them that
wouldn't be a horrible thing in terms of the timeline I'm a big
fan of moving faster rather than slower and I have an interesting idea
at least I thought was interesting and that is instead of doing the meet-and-greet maybe
what we do is me back this train up a little bit in all the
other vacancies we've had some of the candidates would reach out to the council members
and set up one-on-ones and of course it did buy issue because they had the
initiative you had a chance to talk to him you knew him better they were
definitely a stronger candidate so I'm not sure it's a bad bias but maybe
what we can do this go-round is leverage somebody help to broker those
meet and those individual meetings between the applicants and the council members instead of making
that onus solely on them to do the outreach and that can obviate the need
for actually for the meet and greet so if someone says hey you know or
when they do when you're meeting with the applicant you can say hey would you
like to meet with the council members I can help set something up so just
a thought you guys can chew on that and then I I really like Council
or Deputy President DeMichel's idea of meeting ourselves available prior to the
application window talk about what's involved answer questions I did a couple of sessions or
at least one with mayor Pauly before the last election it was really interesting really
fun I was gonna say something snarky about councilmember Joe but I won't
but anyway I think that's a really great a great great way to go all
we got was you You weren't there but that's that's why it's so
important that we do the outreach. I love you. You know that it's it's the
hours late. But I think that that that would be very valuable to do that
ahead of time. My thoughts. Council member Marks. So.
I think the goal of this process ultimately is to. To
cast a wide net. And then to try to identify folks who have the skills
that will make them I think the more things we can do
before the deadline help lower the bar the barrier to entry and to make it
seem less formidable and less scary I'm all for and I will personally meant to
do as many of those things as we want to do I
and I phrase it that way because I think Councilmember Hall's point about questions you
know I want to see somebody who I hope to see in somebody's written
sample that they have thought about some of the issues that are in front of
us. Housing is extraordinarily difficult. I mean, if somebody has the solution for affordable housing,
we should hire them. The governor should hire them, right? All we can do is
hope to try some things and move some needles. So
I'm all for maybe a smaller number of questions worded in such a way that
we get thoughtful answers out of folks.
And then, and I've said before, once we have the applications in, once
we've interviewed people, I'm not a big fan of the meet and greet, and I
will share why. I am not good in big group settings. I am not a
big room schmoozer. I cannot work a room very well. I have sensory issues where
multiple conversations are difficult for me. And so I love Robert's Rules of Order because
there's only one person ever talking at a time. That's the whole thing. So I
hate those things. And I can do them, but it's like pulling teeth for me.
And I don't think it's affected my ability to be an elected official, although maybe
it affects my ability to campaign. So that's my thoughts on it. So we should
do the things that cast a wide net, and then we should do the things
that help us glean people have the skills to be effective
and I have councilmember hunt
as well you may have Pauli firstly I I did want to
my timeline, I intend to serve on this council until
I am sworn in. So that does reduce some of that time where you would
not at the state legislature. So that would reduce some of that potential time
where there could be a 3-3 tie, as was mentioned earlier. And this is a,
for me, I did check in with the city attorney if it were appropriate for
me to be weighing in on this conversation and she has has told me that
it is so I intend to be as helpful and answer any questions and be
as candid as possible to help this council navigate the upcoming
vacancy and so in that in that spirit I wanted to make sure that that
was that was clear and it's a it's a huge honor to serve on this
council and so I I wanted to make sure to say that my intent is
to serve as long as possible before I begin my next public service.
On the application, I agree with Councilmember Hall when I
was looking through the questions. Some of them are pretty specific, and I think that
you could have a question more about community engagement see how the applicant handles that
question rather than have one about if the community is not in agreement on a
topic and one about how would you engage the community more broadly, giving them some
more space to see how they would take the question, I think would be more
informative as you're evaluating these. And I think it would also give the
applicant more potential sort of space
to take the question the way they want to take it, which I think could
be helpful. I also noticed that one of the questions talks
about regional boards and commissions, and it says, what qualifies you for that service? I
wonder if that one could be reworded, because unlike
some jobs, lived experience and lots of different qualifications you a good
public servant and I wouldn't want somebody to read this and think maybe they need
a specific thing to qualify them to serve on a regional board, for example.
So if that one could be, you know, what experiences would you bring to that
regional service or what professional background, those sorts of things to make it clear that
there's not a specific qualification in that regard that
meets that criteria. I also know that certain people are more sensitive
to the word qualification in an application. And so just to make sure that we're
not dissuading anyone from filling out the application with the wording like that.
On the changes to input on vacancy timeline. So
I was a previous previously appointed to a vacancy that is
how I started on council. I think one thing to make really clear is that
we are it is it is absolutely possible and I think encouraged to reach out
to city council members early to you know talk with all of us about what
it's like to serve on council and that's that's really helpful for the
council and it's also really helpful for the applicant. So I wanted to make sure
that that is always a possibility that can start now or could have, you know,
you could have reached out previously. That's always great. So making those outreach
at any point is good. I don't feel strongly about the meet and greet,
except that I want to make sure the process is accessible.
I completely agree with Councilwoman Martz. We want to have a wide net. We want
to make sure the process is accessible. And so if there are some folks that
are feeling like the meet and greet is something that they would
engage well in that venue and that makes them more likely to apply, then that
could be a consideration. I don't feel strongly because I think the intent is to
be able to apply. the meet and greet is more just to have a different
venue for the council to evaluate. And that leads me to one other thing, which
is the 10 minute presentation, which is something that has been done for many, many
years is a super important part of the process. And to me, I think that
that 10 minute presentation, that really is similar to what we do on council. We
talk to our fellow council members and we describe our position on the issues and
we're coming at a certain policy question from the perspective that we are.
And so I think that 10 minute presentation to me that's really important. I was
glad to see that that continues to be one of the steps in the process.
And then additional requested outreach, I just think cast as wide a net as possible
to use all the mediums we can make sure that we as council members are
accessible to the community and hopefully Hopefully folks will hear
about this, but I think just as wide a net as possible.
Okay, looking through Councilmember Hall, I'm going to wait on a second to go to
Councilmember Joe. Thank you. Just so I'm very clear in my
comments, as the hour is late, I would recommend removing question number nine about
housing affordability. In general, my philosophy is it's not so much answer that I'm getting
from the questions that are listed but how the person thinks through the questions and
express themselves express their point of view that's more important to me so I'm not
going to comment on any of the other questions in particular I would also be
in favor of what council member Mars is talking about in terms of eliminating the
meet-and-greet there are many people in our community that might have sensory issues as council
Mars does but also anxiety in social settings can be an issue in terms of
meeting large crowds and it is part of our job but at the same time
we don't necessarily want to make it a barrier that prevents people from at least
applying and trying to go through the process and I think that we as council
members should be able to get a pretty good bearing and idea the makeup of
a particular candidate by the answers that they give and the presentations that they give
and we don't necessarily need to have Mean greed is is my opinion on on
that one and then I I would recommend that we try to do this as
quickly as possible I acknowledge it and thank Councilmember Hunt for agreeing to
stay on as long as she is doing there are some council
Elected officials that resign right away and and then leave their their elected body and
alerts so thank you for Doing that is as we go forward and those are
my brief comments. I'm looking forward to you Hearing and reading all the applications for
for this position. Thank you Okay looking
around yeah, I think I am the last of the first round of comments so
I will start in with questions. I agree. I think we could streamline the application.
I suggest combining questions one and two about why are you qualified and why do
you want to serve? I think we can eliminate question number seven. It's just really
old language and not something that we promote at this point. I think questions three
and five are really similar. Let me
pull it up. Question three is what do you consider to be a school's biggest
opportunities or issues and what would you do to address them? Number five is if
selected to fill the vacancy, what is one thing you would like to accomplish during
your term of office? I don't see how those are different as a concept.
And then I also think we can eliminate question number nine on housing. I
think there's two questions that try and get at how do you handle community feedback
questions four and ten I think those could be combined as a concept so
there's a lot of just good combinations there I think question number nine
regarding housing a concept of what is important
to counsel at the time but the way that I would want to phrase it
you know one of the things we as a council rely on heavily is our
knowledge of the strategic plan the comprehensive plan of the community survey and so I
would ask a question that says look over these documents and
call out an issue that's important to you and discuss know your
perspective on that and you know what what you would do to improve that in
the community I think that gets at the sense of a lot of what we
do is reading over documents analyzing them and presenting a case on
it and so that as a question allows someone to choose their
important item rather than it just being affordable housing and show us they've done
some of their homework and they want to talk about an issue that's
important to them so those and then I also agree with
councilmember Hunt's point about question number six regarding regional representation and the idea of
being qualified I think that's that's really important so those are my comments on
the questions I think from From my perspective to
get a wide net, one of the things is recognizing some people will be deterred
by either a long application or uncertainty whether or
not they're qualified or ready. And so having that Q&A session
ahead of the application due date really important and I think
mayor we talked about how that could be utilized both for your presentation on how
to run for office which gives an opportunity to present some information but then
also have kind of an informal question-and-answer session with council members to say
you know am I qualified can I reach out to you what you looking
for in a prospective council member and so that gives somebody the
option there i would recommend that maybe we tack on 45 minutes or an hour
ahead of our january 21st meeting for that so that we don't have to extend
the process we're still keeping the january 25th
application due date but this gives somebody an opportunity to ask questions before
applications are due I agree with councilmember Martz that I don't
think the meet-and-greet is necessary to help council make a decision and could deter
applicants so I would say either utilizing that date to make a decision
earlier or recognizing that at least I think in the previous two sessions of applications
we had number of people that applied and so whether or not we
would potentially have to utilize that date to get through other
applications I think would be good and then for outreach I appreciate the
concepts presented there I would really like us to utilize
email and do direct notices any of our community partners that we can think about
things like the essoqal food and clothing bank the chamber our HOA is anyone that
we have a large relationship that can help us amplify this and
making the direct ask to them to make that amplification
encourage their members and their community members to look at this and apply I think
is a great way we're that we do that with the board and Commission
members and so why don't we do it with other areas where we we have
a direct relationship so those are my comments there mayor
are you comfortable if I go around for second round sure I do can I
add a few things yeah council president yeah then let's go second round I'm not
as concerned about the six person council in that just have to
work harder to get a majority. So a 3-3 deadlock just means a no.
And you have to continue to talk on the dais to get to a 4-2
somehow. So it's workable. But I do agree very strongly with the comments
about accelerating, making sure that the timeline is very efficient. And so that as Council
Member Hunt is leaving for her next position, you are really... to know what the
options are for filling that seat. So I think that's great. I do think we
don't have enough clarity on the questions right now and that maybe we might be
able to take advantage of your rescheduled legislative breakfast to present you a
draft of some questions and add some time that you'll be able to take a
look at a new draft because we've heard a lot of interesting suggestions and I
just don't think we'll be able to Smith tonight to get you to a place
where you'll be saying let's go ahead and say move ahead with that process. I
think it the the meet and greet is maybe not as important as including in
the application so that all those applying see that it is a suggested best
practice to reach out to council members. I did hear before that some knew to
do that and some did not. And so I think it's important to make sure
that's in on the application as well as Council President, Dean Michelle's,
you know, let's do a more of an informational session earlier on, schedule that earlier
in the process, because every time we do it, we get people who have attended
just to find out what it means to run and said that they weren't running
in the next cycle, but they appreciated having the information just to think about it.
So those are a couple of comments. And if you want to head around the
room again, Council President, that would be appreciated. so it sounds like there maybe as
an additional concept of do we want to adopt these
questions here and really work on it or do we agree with the mayor's recommendation
to take it at our legislative dinner so starting with councilmember Hall yeah that's
exactly what I was gonna get at was I mean I was gonna suggest that
council leadership just work with the city clerk and gather up with a feedback that
we've given and would it down to five or six questions but if the administration
wants to do that and present us a draft that's also fine you know again
I think it's important you all sign off on it and so since we'll have
an opportunity to do that it looks like week after next it delays this going
out but I don't know that that's horrible I think that you know there's been
too much discussion about the questions it's hours late you want to come back together
next week for a special meeting we can but right now we're gonna have you
two nights the following week so okay but we can and we can also work
with council leadership the mayor city clerk there'll be plenty of folks I think once
you see them again they'll have the spirit of what's been discussed this evening but
it'll be worth your time to spend 10 or 15 minutes just to sign off
as a group okay no that sounds good to me and then the only other
thing I wanted to say was president iron complete mind meld I was hoping we
could have some sort of question around the vision alignment with the vision that we've
set in our strategic planning documents whatever they be and I like the way that
you framed it and like which one is important or to describe one thing from
what anyways you guys will get into it's late thank you I didn't see through
with deputy council president then councilmember Merz just
in the spirit of casting a wide net just a reminder that we adopted a
provision where low-income candidates for the office if they are successful
and get elected can take advantage of some supplements and I would hope that
we do that as part of our outreach and make sure that that is information
is included in our outreach materials that's my remarks
I want to plus one something that I heard after I spoke that I want
to make sure and I don't think it's anything we get rid of but the
10 minute presentation is the heart of the application process right
because we all know that it all comes down to when it's 1030 at night
right and you're still having a charged issue right your ability to pull your thoughts
together coherently and have a civil conversation is
the number one skill that that the seven of us have and that anybody would
need to have so you know that's it that's the I wouldn't want to see
that shortened in any way I really do like the idea of a question that
involves you know reading I think the strategic plan is a great starting point you
asking somebody to be to get familiar with that because one of the dirty secrets
is that many of us when starting on council don't know very much about how
the city actually operates right I came out of PTA world right and I knew
I knew some city council folks but I didn't come off of DC or PPC
right and so and a lot of talented amazing people would be in the
exact same boat right so giving somebody the opportunity to say okay we want you
to go do a little bit of homework and then talk to us about it
I think is a great idea
okay so I haven't heard any problems with
having the administration council leadership clerks work on the questions and then present them at
the or December 18th
meeting so I think that sounds good clerks I would say
is there any if that concept of a Q&A session ahead of the
application due date if we add that on to January 21st and I guess
I'm not sure if I've heard a yes or shaking heads of Okay,
generally seeing support of that concept. Yeah. One, just two quick
comments. One is if we do keep the deadline for submitting applications January 25th,
that's a real tight, it's only a few days after the January 21st. So a
suggestion would be to extend the application deadline or move up the pre-application
meeting, which could also be just, you know, would not need to necessarily occur
in conjunction with a council meeting and then just the second comment is understanding if
we're approving the questions on December 18th their outreach would be rolling out
the week of Christmas so just so for your awareness that is gonna
it's a necessary step I think but we are compressing that a little bit okay
good feedback um would be also
comfortable with a January 13th ahead of the council committee of the
whole doing kind of a Q&A session given that
feedback of it being very the 21st being very close to the 25th so I
guess my question there would be do you need that feedback for us before we
adopt the calendar not really
Not necessarily. I guess, and some of this could probably be developed after this meeting,
but is this something where we're wanting the entire council or a quorum of the
council attending, or is it something where the mayor teams up with a few council
members and it might occur not as a meeting, but maybe at an offsite
location like a cafe? So maybe some input onto-
I have a couple of thoughts on that city clerk last time we did it
we used a room over at the community center but I do think setting it
up in chambers would be fine basically it's consisting of
one PowerPoint presentation that already exists and having two council members join me for
a Q&A session so it wouldn't have to be I like the date of January
13th. I think that's a good choice. It wouldn't have to be a notice meeting.
It would be something that we could probably just do with myself and two council
members. That was what we did last time. Similar, something similar to that last time.
Okay, I'm seeing head nods over here. So that seems good.
There is a, still that question then of do we, feel
comfortable about the idea of waiting until December 18th if that means the initial
community engagement is happening right before the holidays or
do we want to take the feedback that has happened on the dais and have
council leadership and clerks work on it over the next few days and get it
out earlier
for feedback. I've heard Deputy Council President DeMichelle say yes. Councilmember
Hunt. I think that there was a lot
of feedback, but it was largely consistent, and it was along the lines of consolidating
some of the questions and making them more general and then giving the applicant more
words to answer. And so I think I liked the proposal of
that you made of various combinations and so I would be comfortable with you and
Council Deputy President DeMichel as the leadership. Maybe listening back to
our conversation and then making those changes. And I'll even
throw out there if anybody wants to email their comments so that they're more succinct
that is also a opportunity. I
saw you typing up your notes on that yeah yeah no
no no serial meetings you're right you could email the city administrator
okay so generally head nods we're kind of okay with making that happen a little
bit quicker so that we don't get into the holiday period for community engagement okay
Mayor members of the council while we have the city clerk walk through the calendar
she understands that take the general direction that the administration will work with
council leadership to finalize the questions and follow the calendar that the works about to
describe
okay and just to confirm I think the feedback we heard was that the the
meet-and-greet on February 10th could be foregone part of the timeline
okay so getting back to the 2025 council calendar i heard three changes that we
would assume if someone is willing to make a motion to approve the resolution oh
the vacancy calendar okay Okay, so
what I heard is I took some detailed notes on the application questions, largely consolidation
and getting questions that draw out thoughtful responses and aren't pigeonholing people into something
particular. I heard that we'll forego the meet and greet after the verbal
presentations, but we will add a pre-application opportunity on January 13th for
applicants to learn more about applying for the process. like we can keep our application
period open from december 9th through january 25th and i
would like confirmation it sounds like you are comfortable keeping the appointment date on that
final meeting in february but i guess that is a question we could move that
up to february 10th okay i'm hearing that from council member i'm seeing multiple head
nods Can we that's a committee of the whole would we just add in
a regular meeting? We'd add a special council meeting. Okay. Thank you to accomplish that
Right, so madam mayor members of the council if that's clear we'll come back with
a motion on that shortly Madam mayor then we can go back to the
council calendar and present the Suggested motion
if I'm understanding you correctly city administrator it's just the first motion that we're going
to be asking for tonight well let's do the
council calendar first and then we'll okay so is
there a motion and a second to approve resolution number 2024
30 okay adopting a city council calendar for 2025 the changes to adjust the
April committee of the whole and August and November regular meetings to avoid meeting the
day before the primary flash general election somebody care to make that motion
will do so I move to approve resolution number 2024-30 adopting a city council
calendar for 2025 with changes to adjust the April committee of the whole and August
and November regular meetings to avoid meeting the day before the primary slash general
election second great it's been moved and seconded is there any council
questions and council president if you could let me know if there's any questions in
the room not seeing any questions but do
you would you welcome comments oh sure there's no questions is there any
discussion I would just say I very very much appreciate the
concept of having an annual calendar at this point it has worked out very well
and I think I heard recently that you know the school board and others potentially
have a month out pre-arranged and so
this is quite a luxury to have this and while it is a lot of
work at this point in time it very much helps us throughout the year make
sure that we have all of our ducks in a row so I appreciate that
Thank You council president are there any other comments in the room not seeing any
okay has been moved and seconded to approve resolution number 2024-30,
adopting a city council calendar for 2025, which changes to adjust the April committee of
the whole and the August and November regular meetings to avoid meeting the day before
the primary slash general election. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye.
Those opposed? That carries seven and O. There is
another motion that is listed up on the heads it would somebody care to make
that motion and are we believing that the
amended is what we had just discussed okay yeah I would move to approve the
process and timeline for filling the 2025 City Council vacancy of position number six as
amended second it's been moved and seconded is there any
additional council discussion and council president can you let me know if you see any
indication in the room just throw a comment in there very much
appreciate the conversation of counsel I think it shows that we are taking this very
seriously there are very very big shoes to fill with councilmember Hunt moving
on to the state legislature and we will miss her advice and perspective
terribly so we will be looking looking for applicants who are able to
wade through all of those policy conversations
any other discussion not seeing any well thank you
uh it's been moved and seconded to approve the process and timeline for filling the
2025 city council vacancy of position number six as mended all those in favor signify
by saying aye aye opposed carries
unanimously seven and oh as well thank you for that discussion of both of those
issues committee and regional report councilmember Joe
thank you madam mayor Cascade Water Alliance board meeting or December has been cancelled the
Cascade Water Alliance public affairs meeting has been cancelled that's
and then the LTAC meeting we're working on scheduling for the second week in December
we were scheduled to meet the Wednesday after the cyclone hit so we canceled that
meeting so look to the city website for date and time of that meeting there's
a poll out right now with the LTAC committee members that concludes my report thank
you thank you councilmember Joe councilmember Hall just to say that the next board meeting
of the Eastside Fire and Rescue Board of Directors is next Thursday, December 12th
at 4 p.m. at our headquarters on Newport, and that concludes my report. Thank you.
Council Member Hunt. Thank you, Madam Mayor. There will not be a meeting of the
Planning, Development, and Environment Committee in December, and this concludes my report.
Thank you. Council Member Wray. No report this evening. Thank you. Council Member Marks. Thank
you. Sound Cities Association Public Issues Committee will be meeting on Wednesday, December 11th. from
7 till 9 p.m. in a virtual meeting. We will be taking action on electing
a pick chair for 2025 and vice chair. We'll be taking action on regional board
and committee assignments. There'll be discussion, King County long-term waste disposal options,
as well as the 2025 SCA legislative agenda. And
then the Services, Safety and Parks Committee is not meeting in December this
concludes my report. Thank you. Deputy Council President DeMichelle.
Thank you Mayor Pauly. Eastside Human Services Forum Board will meet on December 12th.
Eastside Transportation Partnership will meet on Friday December the 13th.
And the regularly scheduled meeting of Regional Transit Committee on the 18th has been cancelled.
And that ends my report. you counsel President Walsh thank you
the King County Affordable Housing Committee meets this Thursday and we're going to review three
sets of letters as we continue going through the housing elements of the comprehensive plans
so we have comment letters for Renton Clyde Hill and Newcastle then we've got
a second set of letters for those who submitted late so they're ahead of the
deadline but they won't get their feedback in until after the deadline so that's Black
Diamond Lake Forest Park Kent and Duval and then a fun little set for
non submission those cities in King County who have chosen not to submit their housing
elements which includes Mercer Island Normandy Park Pacific Skykomish and Euro Point
i will also note that carnation and snowqualmie are deferring their review until
after the growth management planning council decides on the growth target
reconciliation recommendation so we've got a lot of things coming in at the very end
that we are dealing with and that concludes my report thank you council president for
the mayor's report this evening there is not going to be an executive session at
this meeting And a couple of, a little bit more
information on our windstorm recovery. So Issaquah was hit with one of the worst windstorms
in recent memory, and it will take some time to clean up and restore the
Issaquah community. City staff have been hard at work with debris removal and assessing
damage to public property so that we will be able to take advantage of any
state or federal resources available. Staff is also working with property owners to assess damage
to private property. The county encourages homeowners and businesses to report damages from the storm
by going to the KCEmergency.com website. To the Issaquah community, do not
hesitate to reach out if you need assistance. If the city cannot provide direct assistance,
we can connect individuals and families with community members and businesses to any resources that
are available. Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. there will be another community debris
collection event at Tibbetts Valley Park for Issaquah community members to drop off small-scale vegetative
debris related to the windstorm at no cost. There will be two drop-off locations, one
at Tibbetts Valley Park and another at the parking lot off 12th Avenue,
northwest. For more information on accepted materials and
restrictions, please visit the City's website. In the collection events this past Sunday, the city
collected 400 cubic yards of debris from 220 vehicles. The city
estimates that between city resources and Recology staff, at least 2,500
cubic yards of debris have been collected since the storm. The city is excited to
announce a great resource for expiring or existing businesses in Issaquah. The city is
launching the How to Do Business in Issaquah website in print. The guide provides a
checklist of items to consider when starting your new business with additional details and resources
throughout the booklet. Existing businesses can use the guide to learn more about permitting, employees,
taxes, and sustainability opportunities. Copies will be available at city facilities and the
Greater Issaquah Chamber of Commerce. You can also find the information online at issaquahwa.gov slash
business and click on the Doing Business tab at the top. our partnership with the
Greater Issaclá Chamber of Commerce is just one more way to help businesses start and
grow in Issaclá. And there is still time to see Village Theatre's production of
Legally Blonde. The musical before
the show ends on December 22nd, and I had absolute pleasure of attending the Legally
Blonde on opening night. It was one of the best shows I've seen at Village
Theatre so far. our local theater and take your family and friends to see the
marvelous musical before it's gone and back to our agenda for this evening
we are moving into good of the order does anybody have any items for good
of the order before I go through some calendar dates and again council president if
you can let me know if there's anyone in the room indicating a desire to
speak yes we've got councilmember Joe thank you planner
Steven Padula mentioned the House for the Future of the I-90 Crossing. It's
December 5th, 5 to 7 p.m. at Tibbetts Creek Manor. And if you're interested in
attending, it's a casual drop-by event. And we encourage people that are interested in the
I-90 Crossing to attend. On a more uplifting note, the Holiday
Elected Leaders Party, also called HELP, sponsored by the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce,
is being held at 5 p.m. on December 9th. at the xfinity store in
bellevue square if you're interested in attending as an elected official you can go to
events at bellevuechamber.org to register and let them know that you would like to attend
that concludes my uh go to the order comments thank you thank you anyone else
um mayor i would just ask do your comments include um addressing
the legislative session reschedule Okay,
fantastic. Then nothing else from this side. Great. So this is the
last regular city council meeting of the year. On Tuesday, December 17th, the council will
be having a holiday dinner scheduled at Tuesday, December 17th at Highlands
Bistro, which is formerly called Slaver of India. We'll be meeting at 6.30 p.m. and
you are welcome to bring a guest. Please RSVP to Lindsay Marsh by December 9th.
Wednesday December 18th we have a rescheduled legislative meeting if the close
legislative delegation has come up with Wednesday December 18th from 6 p.m. to 730 p.m.
for a rescheduled legislative meeting and does I want to make sure council president can
go around the room and make sure that this time does work for all of
our council members that'd be a good thing to know tonight yeah I am looking
through and maybe seeing What is the time?
Hang on one second. It's in the evening from 6 to 7.30. Yep, 6 to
7.30. Penny, I've seen some night. Thumbs up.
Yes. Not in the morning. I thought you said the morning, and I was like,
no. I know. We're used to having a breakfast, but no. Yeah.
I have seen a bunch of thumbs up and then city administrator. Then the question
is Would you like food if so, do you want dinner?
You're gonna you're gonna get continental cuisine the night before So what would you like?
So we would feed dinner that we we we can sort this out Yeah, we
can work out with council leadership if we want so we will we'll provide dinner
then as well That's
great. Okay. Moving on. There is no executive session this evening,
and so there being no further business, we're going to adjourn our meeting tonight at
1041. Thank you all. Thank you.