Thank you all for coming. I'm going to open the City Council Special Meeting this
evening. The purpose of this meeting is to hold a Council Administration Retreat for Council
Strategy and Budget Planning. A couple extra notes about the room. We're meeting in the
Pickering Room this evening. The sound system in this room is a little different than
in Council Chambers, so we have to speak very loudly and clearly. And for those
that are joining us, staff and other members in the audience, sidebar conversations get picked
up as well and make it hard for people to hear on the audio. So
keeping sidebar conversations to a minimum would be great. First step on the agenda is
welcome and introduction. I'm going to turn it over to City Administrator Moon. Thank you.
Thank you. Welcome, everybody. We have... quite a few items on our
agenda tonight. We're going to try to get you up, particularly in the second half
of the meeting, to do a little exercise. We have a break planned as well.
Dinner will be arriving around 5 o'clock. We will have a break to be able
to go back to the back of the room and pick that up.
And I want to take a moment just to introduce a few folks that are
in the room. We have most, not all, our department directors,
Staff at the table include Beth Goldberg, our finance director, Andrea Snyder, our
deputy city administrator, Megan Curtis Murphy, our sustainability coordinator, and
David Fujimano, our sustainability director. And then we have other staff here,
too, that have played a role in developing the CIP, or the CIP,
strategic plan, and are either assisting with this
meeting tonight are going to be playing a role in implementation of the plan and
the budget. And so I wanted to just point out two of those individuals. And
so Suzy Monzel is our new budget analyst. If you want to raise your
hand. Doing phenomenal work for us already. And Gene Paul is the
management analyst in the executive department. And he will be helping later in the meeting.
So with that, I wanted to just review what our goals are for this evening.
Can I just mention that we do have a quorum. We've heard from Council President
Martz that he is going to be late. But we do expect the other two
council members to be here this evening. Correct. Excellent. So I'm going to review just
the outline for tonight, starting with some goals that we have for this
evening. This workshop was intended to be an opportunity for
us to review some of the potential action items that we might pursue
to try to implement the strategic plan. And year one of the strategic plan
starts in January of 2020. And as you know, there were some potential action items
that were included in the plan when it was adopted. Staff has had an opportunity
to review those action items, discuss them further,
talk about potential resources that might be needed. I
just started, Moran. Just started, Mr. Wright. Yeah.
So we've had an opportunity to use more cost
estimation, think about staffing resources, etc. So we'll talk more about that
in a moment. Our goal tonight is to get
your early feedback on potential action items, knowing that we're
having this conversation before we have even kicked off our budget development on the staff
side. So we have not done a ton of work yet to fine tune
estimates of revenue, to have conversations about expenditures
we're anticipating in the operating budget. All of those conversations are yet to
come. You do have a financial workshop that's planned in August.
That is typically the moment in time where we tell you what our assumptions are
that we are utilizing as we are building the preliminary budget of the mayor.
So at this point it's still a little early. And we'll talk more about that
in a later segment of tonight's meeting. So this early feedback will give us
an indication of what you're interested in, what your priorities might
be with regard to action items and then we will have to take that input
and kind of marry it up with what seems to be feasible in the confines
of the budget. We will also couple that information with what we hear from departments
in terms of what's needed on the operating budget for delivery of critical services.
All right. I'm seeing if there's anything else do we want to do?
Because the work that we have undertaken so far to look at the action items
is preliminary because we are at an early phase of budget development,
we still have work to do to refine costs on these, to
think about staffing resources that will be needed. We approach this to some
degree action item by action item, and we have just stopped lately to
step back and looked at it in terms of what does it mean for work
teams or departments that would be engaged and look at those areas of overlap and
to think about how our staff would be deployed. We
also need to explore in some cases alternative ways of approaching the action
items and we'll talk a little bit more about that later too.
That's all I wanted to say on goals and expectations.
One of the assumptions also that we will need to wrestle with is if there
are action items that may need additional staffing resources and what we can supply with
our existing staff, is that feasible this year? We'll try to point out where we
might have one or more of those.
We talked about this when we developed the plan. It's referenced to some degree in
the plan that we have not gone through an exercise to
evaluate our current service delivery, the level of service, quality of service,
cost of service, and that is work that still needs to be done.
Absent having done that, the way in which we might go about funding
potential action items. I think you've got four different ways to do that. One
is do we have new revenue available to us to fund any new
items? Second would be to look at reallocating what was one time in
this year's budget, not needed next year, and therefore we might be able to reallocate
those dollars toward something new, such as a strategic plan action item.
Third is to create capacity within our operating budget. That's the work that we haven't
done a great deal on yet, but that's another opportunity to examine
our ongoing expenses and see if there might be a way to reduce those in
order to then provide funding resources for either something new on the critical
services side or something new out of the strategic plan. And then the fourth would
be to use available fund balances. And I don't just mean general fund
fund balance. We have kind of designated funds as well that may be applicable
to particular action items. For example, there's a few things that we have
highlighted in the CIP or strategic plan that may be aligned with the use of
the school zone safety fund. So that's one example where we have a balance that
would be available to us. So those are the four ways that we might go
about finding some funding to implement. So with that, I
think we can talk about strategic planning cycle and where we're at. Sure.
So I think this chart should look familiar. It's straight out of the strategic plan.
The idea with the strategic planning process is that we're following annual cycle that
marries up with the budgeting cycle and an implementation cycle. Right now,
we're at the kind of dark green phase of this strategy and budget planning workshop.
As Emily mentioned, that we would be then taking that early input, that early direction,
incorporating it into our budget development process. You're going to be hearing a little bit
more about some very early information about financials for this year and next year today,
but really more detail that will be coming from our finance department in August.
And so those two things will help to marry up and shape up the administration's
proposed budget. which will also include that strategic work plan proposal. So that's really
the time at which the deliberations about how those things fit together come together. This
is really kind of, as Emily mentioned, kind of early guidance, if you will. And
then we go into implementation and evaluation. The plan in the future is to
report out to the community, get some feedback, consider whether or not we make adjustments.
in part because we're in that very first or even kind of before the first
year of implementation it's a little bit different with the cycle so we don't have
the benefit of all that information as inputs but we do have a newly adopted
strategic plan. Okay, yeah.
We're next going to go into a section that talks about budgetary
needs and financial forecast. I'm going to first talk about
what we have called the critical or core services side of the equation.
Services that our community receives today, the services our community would
expect from the local government. and what we see on that side
of the budget equation. That's going to give
some context for this, but I thought I would mention, if you recall last
year as we did budget development, I said that we had a budget that was
built on about $1.8 million of new revenue.
year-over-year adopted budget, new revenue, and that we
had a variety of operating costs, not new
expenses, but just the incremental year-over-year inflation in those
costs that exceeded that number. So right off the bat, we had opened the doors
on January 1, higher costs in 2019 than we did in
just doing the same things. So not a lot of capacity to add new things
from existing revenue sources. We
utilized some fund balance in 2019 in order to accomplish some of the goals.
So knowing that's the case, Beth will also talk about what we foresee for 2020.
based on what we experienced in 2018 and what we're seeing in 2019. But I
wanted to give you a little sampling of some things that we're already starting to
talk about. Again, we have not kicked off budget developments happening next week. But some
of the things that we're thinking about is whether or not we have any growth
in general fund revenues. Again, that gets back to one of the four ways in
which we want to create some funding capacity for new things.
and we asked our department directors to help us identify if there were
kind of larger order magnitude things that they were thinking about that they may
need to request in their budget proposals the second
bullet there is across the board we know we will have higher costs for
personnel next year, contractual obligations, increases in health care. We have not yet
met with our third-party administrator and health care providers to
really assess what we might see in our insurance cost
increases, but it seems quite possible those will be
double-digit this year. So that's not insignificant. Also on the
existing personnel cost bullet, I would highlight that in addition
to salaries and benefits, we are nearing completion
of our classification and compensation system analysis. And we have
not seen the results yet of the market data study, but I'm anticipating senior
leadership will be reviewing that concurrent with budget development, and we will need to think
about what's necessary to implement that study.
Under the bullets that I have approximated at about $1.1 million, I
wanted to point out that we have legal services both in terms of
historically under budgeting our base budget for city attorney services, plus we
have had some additional court cases that we
have had to staff. Next year we will have all of that plus
labor contract negotiations for bargaining groups. We're anticipating one labor hearing,
potentially arbitration if needed, and
overhauling some of our policies that will require some legal services as well.
So if we have If we have all of those costs, that will certainly be
a cost driver in our budget and we typically try to plan a little bit
ahead for those. Financial
management improvements in services, you know we have contracted with Governmental Finance Officers Association or
GFOA for some consulting services. anticipating that those would need to
continue for us to keep doing the improvement work we want to do in our
finance department, including updating and modernizing those systems.
I'll point out that state passed new minimum wage
law, and we have some implementation costs to attend to there. The high number of
part-time non-regular staff particularly in our Parks and Recreation Department in classifications right
now and compensation bans that are just below that new adopted
state minimum wage. So we will need to adjust and plus take a look at
our pay ranges above that to make sure we don't have compression and
make some changes to our salaries schedule on Parks and Recreation.
The police department staffing analysis, we're anticipating that Chief will
propose that. We've had that on our radar for a couple years at
least now and have not been able to allocate the funding to it. So it's
just another item I'll highlight for you. This is something that, again, like class comp,
you want to do on a somewhat regular basis so that you're making sure that
we're doing best practices, providing the level of service that we want to the
community, and meeting other objectives.
Cybersecurity, I'll point out that I'm anticipating IT will make some proposals for
enhancements in that regard, including maybe a tool or dashboard for real-time
monitoring that would help alert us and provide for a response to any
of cybersecurity attack. I'll point out aerial mapping.
We haven't done that since 2015. Again, it's helpful to do that as our community
grows on a periodic basis so that we reflect current conditions.
And also those updated maps help us to build out infrastructure plans, which
then also become part of the VBASE system. that we
utilize for budgeting. And then lastly, bridge load calculations. You'll
recall that we added some funds into our budget to start to do those on
a regular basis as that requirement became the
city's requirement rather than a different governmental agency. And
so the first half of our city's bridges were assessed for the new bridge load
calculations in 2018. But we need to get to the second half of those as
well in order to meet the requirements that have been established by the state.
So that's just some of the things that we see on the horizon that we're
a larger dollar amount and that had a little bit more time sensitivity that I
expect as the department directors and I meet to discuss the budget. We
will be having conversations about whether or not we need to find a way to
accommodate these in next year's budget. So that's on that side of the ledger. We're
going to also talk about strategic plan items. And as David had said, we're going
to put all of that into the mix. see what we can afford and your
help in prioritizing on the strategic plan side of the equation will help us to
sort through what winds up in the preliminary proposed budget by the mayor.
All right, so next I think we're going to do a little bit of a
financial update. Beth is going to... give you a sense of
where we ended 2018, give you a little bit of data from 2019
since it's still very early, and talk a little bit about how that might inform
us about how to proceed with 2020. Thank you.
Good evening, everyone. I know everyone's looking forward to getting a financial update on a
Friday evening. So much fun. So as
Emily pointed out, we did do this look at 2018, and we've
got a pretty good set of numbers on 2018. The books aren't yet closed, they're
not audited, so they're subject to change, but we have a good sense of where
we ended 18. For 19, it is a little bit more tricky. Yes, this is
June 7th, but because of lags in when we receive data, particularly on the
revenue side, we are doing this based off of three and four months worth of
data, which is not a lot of data upon which to
make definitive assessments of where we are. We can make some preliminary assessments, but nothing
definitive. I thought maybe I would quote Alan Greenspan before I
start. When I last presented to you a couple weeks ago, I guaranteed one thing,
which was the forecasts for the TBD sales tax would be wrong. Pivoting off of
that, Alan Greenspan once said, we really can't forecast all that well. Yet we pretend
we can, but we really can't. With that stage, I will jump in and I
guess I will also qualify it by saying that chances are you don't get a
forecast correct, but what you want to get is, do you have the
tools in place to closely approximate what might be coming? And that's I think
where we're heading with all of this. So with that preface, David, if you could
move to the next slide. provide you an overview of our 2018
year end results, highlighted in that green column over to the right
of the screen. While we did not hit our
revenue targets for 2018, we did finish
relatively strong. Our revenues did exceed our expenditures,
allowing us to add to fund balance. But on the revenue side in particular,
I wanted to point out that the 49, nearly 49.9 million of revenue
that we brought in is both below the 2018 adopted amount,
but also below the 2017 adopted amount. And so
that combined with the fact, the column the farthest to the right is
the revenues that we've adopted for 2019. That includes Bergsma. If
you back Bergsma out, the revenues are $52.8 million.
Seeing the 2018 year end results for 2018, seeing how they were
below the budgeted levels for 2018 and below 2017 it does
give us some cause for concern about how realistic it is going to be for
us to hit that $52.8 million mark. But we also have a
history of under expenditures. And just again as a marker that 61.2
million includes the amount we paid for Bergsma. If you back that out, it was
a one time thing. Expenditures are at 53 million. I
am going to go into more detail in the subsequent slides but I want to
tee that up as the overview. We did add nearly $70
million to fund balance and our fund balance Even with
the expenditures for Bergsma remain healthy at 27% of expenditures, you
will recall that our target fund balance is 15 to 20% of expenditures. So our
fund balance does remain healthy, and we do remain optimistic that
we are going to receive some grants that are going to allow us to replenish
the amount of fund balance we used for the Bergsma property. So if you could
switch to the next slide. So I wanted to go into more detail about
revenues for 2018. And I
want to first point you to 2017, because this helps set the context for 2019.
What you will see is that we have been on a trajectory in 2017
And into 2018 where the big four revenues in particular,
sales tax, property tax, utility tax, and B&O tax, remain strong. So there was no
reason to believe in mid, like this time last year in 2018
and then into the fall as we were building the 2019 budget that revenues weren't
going to remain strong. That is one reason I don't want to spend a lot
of time on 2017 but you will see particularly with the sales tax that we
were seeing tremendous strength in that revenue line. I
am going to pause there and maybe not pause there but I will come back
to that in a minute. Again, I want to point out on this slide that
because revenues in 2018 came in
slightly lower than 2017 and because the 2019 budget is
assuming we bring in 52.8 million of revenue outside of Berksma,
again, that might be an area of concern. But again, it is early so we
need to be monitoring this. David, if you could move to the next slide. So
I wanted to spend some time on what I'm calling the big four revenues, property
tax property tax, sales tax, business and occupation tax and utility tax.
Together these revenues make up nearly 70% of our general fund revenue. So
what happens here is a good indication of what may be going on with the
health of the overall fund. Overall for these revenues we pretty much hit the target.
We slightly exceeded it by about $100,000. So the forecast held up
for these big four revenues. And there was growth of 1.8
million, almost 2 million relative to the 2017 actual levels.
Sales tax was the big driver for these results.
We brought in 15.2 million, I'm sorry, 16.3 million in 2018
actual revenues. which is about $1 million greater than what was assumed in the budget
and $1.5 greater than what we collected in 2017. So
that's the big driver for why we hit the mark. In terms of property tax,
we were Ever so slightly under budget, our 2018 results
were ever so slightly below budget, essentially on target, and slightly above the 2017
actual numbers. You will all recall that property tax is a fairly
restricted revenue source. It's only allowed to grow 1% plus new construction relative to what
we had collected in the previous year. So the growth on this tends to be
relatively subdued. Business and occupation tax,
we collected slightly more than what was budgeted, again ever so slightly, and
about a $300,000 increase over what was collected in 2017.
Again, that is probably reflective of strength in the local economy. Utility tax.
We missed the mark on that. It came in slightly under budget. And I'm going
to talk about this a little bit later in the presentation. But as we're looking
to where we're going to be in 2019 and where we're going to be in
2020, one element of this is definitely the economy and the health of the economy.
And that's influencing these numbers. But one of the things that we're starting to
unpack as we're analyzing these results and looking at 2019 is that
it looks like there are some structural flaws in how some of our
revenues have been forecasted. So it looks like when we were forecasting growth,
we were doing it on a bottom line basis. With utility taxes, we looked at
what we collected last year, what was budgeted, applied a percentage increase to that
bottom line number. What that is masking is the details within the
utility tax line. For example, one of the places where we are applying the
utility tax is to telephones. one of the biggest
contributors to utility tax. Telephones, landlines in particular,
are a dying breed, a relic from a different era. There has been
consistent weakness in telephone related utility tax collections. But if
you are applying the forecast to a bottom line number, you are missing that nuance.
It is magnifying and you can see that in these numbers here. of how the
bottom line is growing but the actual revenues are slipping. So that's
some fine tuning that we plan on starting to integrate into our
forecasting techniques moving forward. And hopefully it means that we've got some more
precise data to provide to all of you. So David, if you can go to
the next slide. I also wanted to talk about some of the other revenues.
Departmental revenues, particularly DSD and parks came in $1.7
million under budget for 2018. We have been engaging in
productive discussions with both departments. It appears that
There was not a lot of communication in the past between the finance department and
the line departments about revenue and expenditure assumptions. There
wasn't a lot of coordination of those assumptions.
This is an important reminder that we need to have a more open dialogue
with our line department so that they understand what we're assuming in the budget and
they can offer their expertise to us to say, yeah, that's realistic. No,
that's not realistic. So that is something we intend to, well, we've already started doing
it, but to make that a regular part of our business as we continue to
look at 2019 and then prepare the 2020 budget. The other
taxes category came in slightly below budget and also below 2017
actuals. This is another example of where looking at individual revenue line
items while a lot of work is really important. One of the things that we
discovered is buried in the other taxes line item is a tax that I actually
didn't even know existed which is a gambling tax on
arcade games that you would play like Pac-Man and
it's a state authorized tax we collect a very small amount but built into our
budget forecast in 2018 assumed we were going to collect 18 to $18,000 worth of
revenue off of arcade video games which don't really exist anymore
and then the 2019 budget inflated that from $18,000 to $20,000.
In 2018, we collected $382. We need to go back and
we need to back that out. We need to unbury these numbers because they are
starting to compound. What I will also say is that when our revenues were
growing at a tremendous rate, it was masking these things.
As we are starting to see the economy slow, revenue growth slow,
it is forcing us to start to look at these things and makes it that
much more important that we right size a line, not
assume taxes from the arcades that I don't want to judge other people's age, but
were available when I was in high school. Anyway, that is another example of what
I would call some structural issues with how we are forecasting revenues and that we
need to start to unravel and then integrate into our processes.
Then last on this slide, I just want to point out that miscellaneous revenues were
about $730,000 above budget, about a million below 2017
actuals, although with the chart of accounts things probably got a little bit mixed up
in the miscellaneous category. So I wouldn't put too much there except again, these are
what we're going to go line by line through all of these revenues. I will
say though that because of some of these structural issues in addition to what appears
to be a slowing economy, and notice I'm not saying a contracting economy, I'm saying
a slowing economy. It does suggest that we need to
closely monitor what's going on with 2019. which is a good segue to the next
slide. I did want to provide a preview of what we are
seeing year-to-date for 2019 with the Big Four revenues. You will
recall this makes up about 70% of our general fund revenues. And
year-to-date we are seeing weakness in two of these
revenue lines in particular. Sales tax is the one that is
potentially the most concerning. I mentioned when I presented the
Transportation Benefit District Revenue Forecast to the Council a couple weeks ago that we were
seeing three consecutive months of declines in our sales tax collections relative to
We only have three months worth of data through March on the sales tax.
It looks like that footnote fell off there. Sales tax is three months worth of
data. The other revenues are four months worth of data. Collectively for that three
month period sales tax revenue is down 4.5%
relative to the same three months in 2018. This is
an area of concern, but I want to point out when the budget was built
for 2019, we were seeing tremendous growth in this revenue line. 2017
actuals were $14 million. I believe the budgeted amount was $11 million.
There was no reason not to expect that this would grow.
We exceeded the mark for 2018 and then the 2019 adopted numbers
are ever so slightly above what we collected in 2018.
Again, no reason initially to be concerned, but if the rate of growth is slowing,
that might be an area of ongoing weakness. And then the utility tax is another
one that didn't hit the mark in 2018 and appears to
also be slipping in 2019. And again, this one is more related to the
precision with which we are doing the forecasts. And we'll be going in and looking
at the individual utility tax line items and getting more
precise with our forecasts. This
picture does, this potential weakness in these big four revenues
do give us some cause for concern about how we're going to do in 2019,
but again, it's very early. So, not ready to sound the alarm bells, but
it is a reminder that we need to be closely monitoring these results for 2019
and integrating this information into our 2020
forecast. As Emily pointed out,
there are financial needs, desires of this city like most cities that
tend to exceed the amount of revenues that we have available. One of the things
that we are in the early stages of talking about is what revenue
opportunities might we have to meet current needs and plus new
needs. So we are starting to also look at utility tax of those areas
where we're not currently charging utility tax about whether that's something we want to consider
to meet the city's needs. Last, before wrapping up, I want to give a
brief snapshot of where we are with expenditures. This one at this stage is
far trickier to forecast where we are going to end the year with
four months worth of data. We just closed May, but there wasn't time to integrate
that. We are expecting some under expenditure
in 2019, but the extent of which is beyond what we're able to predict or
responsibly predict right now. In terms of 2018, expenditures did
come in under the adopted budget by about $3.2 million,
but we're about $2.3 million above the actual expenditures in 2017.
As I mentioned earlier, excluding Bergsma, the expenditures that we have
assumed for 2019 are 53 million. So, certainly
higher than how we ended 2018. In terms of specific expenditures
that we've been looking at, and this again
goes back to the need for
more discussion between finance and the departments. Two areas in particular, planning
and development and parks. Both of those came
in under budget in terms of their expenditures, offsetting
to some degree some weakness and also those departmental revenues.
We need to spend more time with those departments in particular, but frankly all departments,
again, so they're clear on what we're assuming and we could leverage their
expertise about what we should be assuming on both the revenue side and the expenditure
side as we are building our budget for 2020. So those discussions will be
continuing as we go through the year and prepare for next year. And then
last, I just wanted to highlight next steps, many of which you've heard me talk
about throughout my comments. We're going to continue to monitor revenue, expenditure, and
economic trends to help inform a forecast for 2020. We
are going to be doing these deep dives into revenue and expenditure lines to make
sure that we understand what is in there where things are
obsolete such as generous revenue amounts from
Pac-Man game playing. We will be backing those out and then we will be
collaborating with departments far more closely than in the past as we develop revenue and
expenditure assumptions for the 2020 budget. As Emily mentioned, we will be presenting a 2020
financial forecast to the Council on August 12th, and by that point we will have
several more months' worth of data and we'll be able to speak with more certainty
at that point. So Beth, maybe I'll also interject that early on in the
year when we began hearing
different pieces of news nationally, regionally, locally about
potential changes in the economy. We took some steps to
mitigate some costs. For example, we
held back on filling some positions for a while.
did not allocate some one-time expenditures until further into the year,
until we had a bit more data, and we still have
not authorized all of our fleet purchases for the year. The transfer
has been made, and this highlights another opportunity that we have going
forward, albeit possibly for one-time revenue, and that's where
underway with and will be I think throughout a portion of next year
examining our funds, looking at the assumptions going
into how to forecast those funds both on the revenue and
expenditure side, but also looking back historically to make sure that we have a good
sense of where the fund balance came from and if need
be, if some of those balances need to be reallocated back to the origination fund,
then we go ahead and take that step. There's not a minimum requirement of fund
balance in those particular funds. There's not a already
decided purpose for the use of those fund balances
as laid out in your financial management policy. we need to have subsequent conversations about
what do we want those fund balances to be reserve levels, targets, or do we
want to send some of those funds back to their original funds. In this case,
for example, with the fleet fund, some of those funds might be able to be
reverted back to the general fund. So we have a lot of work still to
do, as you know, to get some clarity on not only our
financial picture, But we have a lot of work to do to develop both a
near-term and a long-term financial sustainability plan. But we're
committed to that work. I think we have now put in place and are still
putting in place for hiring at this very moment. A fantastic team that will be
able to carry out that work. And as you saw, we're still forecasting that
we're going to need some additional help with that. It's a lot of work for
our team to take on at the same time as they are doing payroll,
processing accounts payable, accounts receivable, et cetera. So we appreciate your
ongoing support as we continue to take on those efforts. Can we take a little
break for questions too? Sure. Because it's a lot of information. We don't have to,
but if you have some questions on what you've heard already. Yeah, Mary Lou, maybe
one more piece just before. do that, if I might. As we look to 2020
and as we continue every day to gain more information that helps provide
context for the 2020 budget and helps us to understand the
guidelines that we may give department directors for shaping up their 2020 budget proposals,
one of the things that we are thinking about is what sort of budget should
they build. And in some years we have said there might be a little money
to do some things, give us some proposals. In other years we have said you
should not consider doing some new things. We're going to take an approach that
asks them to sort of prepare budgets along a few different paths. I
expect, for example, they will give us a budget that starts by being fairly conservative
This is one type of budget we will ask them to build for us. And
also identifies a sequestering or phasing in plan. So if there
are one-time items that we could consider if the revenue performance looks good,
we could then authorize those expenditures later in the year. So
that's another tool that we have for 2020 budget development.
So we'd be happy to answer any questions. Or are we good to go ahead?
Go ahead. Keep on.
All right. I think we're switching back to talking strategic plan.
And Megan and David are going to talk us through the next part, which was
the staff work thus far on the potential actions. Thank you.
So with that bit of sobering information about Pac-Man and other things,
we wanted to give you a little bit of information about the strategic approach to
taking a look at potential actions in consideration of the 2020 strategic work plan.
And then we're going to spend some time going through each of those potential or
preliminary recommendations. We are kind of at this place where we are converging the latest
information about financial information with the planning process. And so some of this is, as
Emily had said, work in progress that we're going to need to be assimilating and
squaring up some of those pieces. So just know that that's still a piece that
needs to be applied to all of this work, even with some of the content
that we're presenting here today. So in this part of the agenda, until
we now in our dinner break, and if it takes longer we'll decide I think
if we can take a break for dinner. We'll be reviewing the approach to considering
the potential actions. We'll be reviewing those sets of preliminary actions and asking for your
initial thoughts on them. And the intent is to see if there's some general
consensus that an item might be able to kind of proceed forward for further consideration
Or conversely, if an item might be more appropriate, say, you know what, this doesn't
really make sense. Let's remove that from consideration. Or if there's an item that you'd
like to see flagged for further consideration. And after the break, there'll be some time
for further discussion of some of those items. And then we'll be asking you to
help us to prioritize and identify the most critical actions through a multi-voting exercise list.
So that's kind of the lay of the land as we go forward. So this
part of it is really about sharing with you the process. We're thinking of how
do we identify these things and then making sure that you're clear and understanding what
those things are before you kind of go into additional discussion on them.
Please, if you have questions along the way, please feel free to stop me or
Megan. So a little bit about our process. We were taking a look at the
potential actions that are within the strategic plan. That was the basis for our starting
point. There were a number of items that were identified as potential 2020 actions as
well as a number that were potential 2021 actions. And we followed a process where
we had staff develop some proposals around each of those potential actions in order for
us to start beginning to shape those up and consider how they might weigh
relative to other actions. There were a total of 39 actions that we
took a look at preliminary proposals for. They covered all six strategic goal areas.
And as we've said before, it's important to note that these are very preliminary, kind
of initial looks at these things. And as we get some feedback, those will help
us to refine the approach and the budget and the considerations associated with each of
them. We did ask the staff to consider several things in the review of those
proposals. They did include considering a project or program approach, the
timing, what kinds of policy decisions might be anticipated through that project and the results
of that project. Was it a single year implementation or was it a multi-year effort?
And then also some of the anticipated outputs and outcomes associated with them. They also
helped to develop some initial labor and direct cost estimates. And again, in a lot
of cases, there was a range that was provided because it really depends on the
details of implementation. If it's more of a staff-led effort or the scale of the
effort, it could dramatically affect both labor hours as well as costs. And then
the proposals were evaluated. across a variety of aspects. So in the strategic plan, there
are some strategic prioritization criteria which were applied and considered. And those
criteria include level of impact. And you can think of those as being about
substantial progress or were they critical to the achievement of an objective versus
having something that had more limited impact or a more indirect connection to
the objective. objective in the strategic plan. Control over outcome was another
area and we considered things like did the city have control over the budget, the
project management, were we reliant on outside parties or partnerships, was
it more of an influential relationship as opposed to somebody else had more control over
it than we did. Likelihood of success in the expertise and
experience in place, did we have that in place in order to do this work?
Or is this a new venture on the part of the city that we might
not have had prior experience or there might be higher risk? Cost and time and
money was also prioritization criteria identified in the strategic plan. And we felt at this
point in time we didn't have all enough data in order to evaluate something like
a return on investment. But we did capture some information about both labor hours as
well as estimated costs for those projects. And then we also took a look at
timing and opportunity, whether or not there was a narrow window of opportunity for a
particular action, or if an action might be necessary for other actions that were
identified, some sequencing considerations, or whether it was an action that really didn't have
a particular requirements around the timing, meaning it could happen at a point in time.
But we also took a look, we took some of those criteria into consideration. As
I mentioned before, I thought about the timing and dependencies of various actions across the
different proposals. Another important consideration was whether work that
was strategic in nature and was aligned with the strategic plan was already underway in
2019. We found that there were a fair number of potential actions that are related
to the work that the city is currently doing. In some ways, it's a reflection,
I think, of some alignment with the strategic plan, which I think is good,
particularly in the first year of implementation. So that weighed heavily. And then also, as
I mentioned before, consideration of action and impact. Following that review, we broke the
actions into three different tiers, with tier A, B, and C, with A being the
highest priority tier. Just real briefly and generally, we
consider those Tier A proposals are the ones that we might consider for doing first.
They have strong connections to the objectives or the desired outcomes in the strategic plan.
And again, the plan is built on having actions drive objectives, and the objectives are
intended to help us meet those goals. So it's really about how do we move
forward and meet some of those objectives. They might have been important in terms of
timing relative to other actions. So some activities set the
foundation, collect some data, do some analysis, provide for other actions to be more successful
as they go forward. As I mentioned before, we weighted heavily towards some of the
items that were strategic in nature and aligned that were already underway. and again had
action and impact. There were a number of items that also fell into this kind
of Tier B category where if there's funding available we'd like to pursue, they were
perhaps less critical in terms of timing. And then finally Tier C, which were there
were a number of items that were lower in priority or in some cases required
some additional consideration and thought. And actually there's a fair number that fell into that
category as good good potential actions but ones that were reliant on
Tier A actions so was really a timing consideration in those cases.
So preliminarily for discussion and consideration tonight, we've identified 21
different actions that are landed in the Tier A category for consideration. We'll spend most
of our time talking today about those actions, but certainly if City Council has some
questions about other potential actions that were listed in the strategic plan, thoughts about how
to shape those actions or other ideas as well, those are certainly pieces that we'll
want to know and understand. It's important, as I mentioned before, that about 14 of
those actions follow strategically aligned efforts already underway.
And because we're in that first year of implementation, there are a fair number of
those carryover items that are identified. There we did, as we were going through the
process of taking a look at these, we did identify a couple of actions that
actually are making some progress we're anticipating to get through a substantial amount of work
this year. And so we identified a couple of those. One of those was in
regards to looking at mitigation fees, and we expect that The majority of that work
is actually, will be completed by the end of this year. And there was a
second action related to education and outreach to new, to businesses and new
residents. And in that one we anticipate to make significant progress although we do have
some additional work that might carry over in terms of reaching out to residents in
the future years. Here's just a quick
snapshot of the strategic work plan or potential preliminary thoughts on the
strategic work plan. And this is organized by the strategic priority goal areas of mobility,
growth and development, environmental stewardship, social and economic vitality, city leadership and services and
infrastructure. So you'll see that it covers all six of those. And then within the
strategic plan itself, there's 16 different objectives. And those are listed with the
shorthand MO1, Mobility 1, MO2, Mobility 2, et cetera.
And you can see that there are two actions in mobility, five in growth and
development, two in environmental stewardship, six in social and economic vitality, five in city
leadership and services, and one in infrastructure. Of the 52 potential actions
that are in the strategic plan, there's about 21 that are covered there.
And there's some additional information on estimated expenses and labor costs. Any
questions? Council
Member Ray. On the, that one. The estimated labor, is that new hours? Those
existing hours repurposed? Those existing hours being absorbed? What are those? Those are
estimated labor costs for implementation of those actions. They're not presuming that they're all new
hours. That would need to be a part of the next phase of work for
identifying the other work that departments are anticipating doing, critical services,
budget availability based upon overall financial picture. So it's
there's no specificity to that. You can add the gross number though. I think what
Council Member Ray is saying, it's up to 10 positions if you look at the
total hours. Let's break this down a little bit. It depends
on which item you're looking at. We can talk about that on action item by
action item. I'm just trying to figure out how to use the data. Let me
give an example. Mobility one. Our example
is an area of work that we have our transportation planner working on
right now as he's working on the mobility master plan. He has a certain number
of hours already on his job today that are being put toward that effort. The
scope of work next year for this action item changes, but the stuff that he's
doing this year will be completed so he's got that capacity potentially. So that's why
we have to look at it. on a per action item basis. There are a
couple in here, one or more I think, that have some recommendations
or options for potential adds to staff.
That would be found on the high range of the estimated expense and on labor.
There's one, for example, that has to do with environmental stewardship
that has a that ranges to hiring an FTE to help
provide some volunteer coordination. That one in particular is actually in Tier B, so that's
not included here. Thank you. Okay, so I'm just trying to figure out what the
numbers tell me. So if, and if you're saying it's both, can you split it
out subsequently so we can see what is new and what is repurposed? And you
can arrange them, that's fine. I just need to know if we're adding 11 FTE
or if we're, or if those are 11 FTEs that we
think we can cover with existing, or it's 5 and 5 or whatever. I just
need the data to make an informed decision. Understood. I will tell you that there
is not a proposal here to add 11 FTE. Most of this is assumed to
be prioritizing the work of existing employees such that
they would period these action items. What that means is they either are completing the
scope of work that is new and unique for 2019 and 2019, or we are
telling them instead of focusing on this and your base job, we want you
focusing on that. Great. Let me understand that as we go through. Yeah, so we
will try to and that activity of breaking it out is one that we're going
to have to continue to work on because it's going to depend on the proposal
where we land within that range, how we want to accomplish the work. So it's
scalable would be part of my answer and by and large does not reflect an
assumption of new personnel. Great question. That's member Walsh.
So similarly on that, knowing how it breaks down to
available staff by department, you know, because if I'm looking at this and saying, oh
gosh, that's a whole bunch of estimated labor hours in
social and economic vitality is that in the finance department is that in
dsd you know where where does that go in and then each of the departments
is different in the number of hours available yeah yeah and and we've done that
work um to some degree but as i as i said um we have a
whole bunch of work to um really talk through um
which end of the spectrum are we trying to carry out We need that input
from all of you to understand that, to better quantify that. But we have looked,
given what we have on the board right now, and
understanding that many, most of these action items are
cross-departmental. And so there's a lot of work that hasn't been done yet to tease
out how much what's going to be the exact division of labor across
departments. But if you just look at who's the lead department on each
of these, we have broken it out by department against the high-low range, against the
tier A, tier B. If you look at it on just
a number of actions per department level, the two most effective departments are DSD and
sustainability. Each of them have
five action items where they are designated as the lead.
So you're reading that off of something, but you don't. I am. We can share
this with you. I had anticipated it would be a question. The issue is
I don't know how much you can take to the bank. If I tell you
there are five action items that OS is going to do, and then after tonight
you say, none of those are our top priority or it's just indicating who's the
lead and I go back and David says we're the lead but we're a 15%
stakeholder and really we're anticipating most of the work is going to be done by
two other departments. We haven't allocated that to that precision yet.
Administrator and Marine, is it fair to say that the reason there are expenses and
labor here is to sort of just indicate the magnitude of a project? That's correct.
And it's not necessarily a request for new money or a request for new people.
That's right. We're not there yet. But just something to help, because what I wouldn't
want council to worry about tonight is that in prioritizing that they
feel like they are committing new monies and new positions, because it's really just to
help a little scale to what the project is. That's right. Our primary goal is
to give feedback on the scope of work, the thing that you might want us
to focus on. Again, how we carry that out, we have options. We've shown sort
of a range here, but I will tell you, given perhaps some budget constraints, if
you say, these five things we absolutely need to get done, let's find a way
to do it, and we had anticipated bringing extra
consultants on board to help us with that, Instead I may turn back to department
directors and ask for alternative proposals. What can we do in house? What can we
do more cost effectively? How can we get creative about getting all of these
outcomes done or a good chunk of them so that we can still make some
progress on strategic plans? So it is a little flexible at this moment.
Any more questions? Or continue?
Let's continue. Okay. So, and we will get into more of the specifics about each
of those actions, but real, or somewhat briefly, I want to just
articulate, if you take a look at those 21 different actions,
there's a few ways to think about them. Certainly they are, as I noted before,
will finish important, kind of strategically aligned work that's already underway. It would
enable subsequent actions to follow on and to take place, make
progress across several different priority areas, which I think is a question for council to
consider as well. And also to some extent reflects some capacity
limitations in terms of phasing that we know, but certainly there's some more work to
be done, certainly some more work as we get some additional financial information. But of
the actions that are out there, These are some of the results that could be
achieved through this strategic plan. A mobility roadmap getting into place and presenting a
case for funding. There's some pieces in here that talk about taking a look at
travel shed data and identifying specific measures for how we would handle
new options in ways the city could consider affordable housing. Helping and implementing
better management tools for growth, looking at protections in neighborhoods, talk about some
progress with financial transparency, aligning environmental management approaches,
providing support to small businesses and startups, new tools for business recruitment,
improving access to physical and behavioral health services, and kind of making
this linkage between capital projects and funding for ongoing maintenance.
There's a piece in here about prioritizing strategic land acquisitions across all of the variety
of different resource needs that the city has, whether those are parks or open space
or critical areas or others. Working with community members to increase the needs
and meet the increasing needs of our more diverse and changing economy.
Taking our next steps, which are currently underway, to consider how we would provide city
hall services for residents and businesses. And then, taking continuity takes those steps to improve
organizational performance. So these are some of the kind of the results of the work
that we would be able to achieve with some of those actions for next year.
As I mentioned before, as we start to go through this part of the evening
we really want to make sure that you have a good understanding of what those
potential actions are and kind of seeking some clarity on those, not getting into the
discussion about the relative priority. We'll do that next. But we'll be looking to hear
from you as we go through each of those groups. Is there a general feeling
that those are okay to proceed and move forward for consideration? Should they be flagged
for additional discussion? or modification, or is it really clear that that's not something we
should be pursuing right now and it ought to be for consideration for 2020. David,
is step two happening with each of them, or are you going through all of
them? I think with our plans we're going to go through each of the different
goal areas and describe the actions in those areas, and then we'll move back around
and ask that question. All
right. And with that, we'll jump into mobility. that's going to help walk through some
of these items. Yes. So I'm going to be looking primarily at the
spreadsheet, or if you want to follow along a little bit, I'll be going through
each of the details of actions that are in Tier 1. The spreadsheet here is
organized similarly by objective, actions, the timing,
the labor, the expenses for 2020, which are operational. Also,
the maintenance if it's a multi-year action, the tier that it's in, and then whether
it's a continuation from 2019. In the packets, there's also action
descriptions as well. So, I'll be talking about each of these, as David mentioned, by
goal area, and then we'll pause after for any clarifications and to see if we'll
go ahead and proceed or move on with them. So, the first one, M01A.
As MOA and MOB included, so provide for the timely and successful adoption of the
mobility master plan. And assemble and analyze data to better understand regional travel behavior
and define pass through traffic and policy objectives. So this is part of the development
of the mobility master plan, which started in 2019 and will continue with final adoption
in 2020. The plan will contain the guiding principles, policies, programs, and
projects that the city will use to achieve its long-term vision. The project itself
will look at the regional travel shed data, which will be analyzed to help inform
approaches for addressing regional traffic. As we talked about, some of the labor here and
cost represents those for 2020. So not the project of the whole pieces that will
already be completed in 2019, but just the ones moving forward.
M01C is develop and execute a long-term funding approach for larger capital projects and
ongoing sustainable management of assets. So this is work that's currently underway in the finance
and public works engineering departments. The action is reviewing capital financing approaches and
several larger transportation projects currently. And efforts in 2020 would include preparation
of a transportation funding ballot measure if this action is pursued. The costs here are
based on some previous ballot measures and also some communication pieces that would be needed
if we're pursuing going forward with the ballot measure. And those
are the mobility ones.
So, conversation then now on your previous question number two, which was
if you could flip on. So we want to answer any questions that you have
about these potential action items. Make sure that it's clear. And
then I think we're going to, we're taking the polls. We're looking for just on
a three-point scale. Are you interested in this one? That's
as David put up, you know, okay to proceed. Continue to think about incorporating this
into the preliminary budget. Or... On the far end of the spectrum, no,
we're not so interested in trying to accommodate that in 2020's budget. And then
in the middle would be, let's set this aside for a little bit more conversation,
perhaps after we have gone through all the rest of the potential action items.
So were there questions? In this category, both of these are ongoing.
They're things that you're already working on, where the city is already working on. And
so I'm trying to understand, in terms of the direction that we're giving, if we
are saying that we're, just hypothetically, if we say we're not interested in
this first one, it's already work that's going on. There's already a person that's employed
that is doing this work for the master mobility plan. So does that mean, though,
that we would actually have this potential $30,000 and then $192,000
over the all years to do something else? Or is it already in the budget
somewhere else and we would just continue along that route but use the other
funding? Because I know that both of these are things the city is doing. Yeah,
yeah. And David and Megan can correct me if I'm wrong. While there is an
allocation in the 2019 budget, both for an FTE that is doing this scope of
work this year, and this is a different an additive next step scope of work
for next year. And we have a budget line item, for example,
for the contract for the professional services group that's assisting us with development of the
mobility master plan. Next year as that contract ends and as
we try to take on potentially this additional scope of work. We either would
think about it as we've got some baseline capacity from one-time allocation that we could
partially reauthorize or, you know, put toward the 2020 scope. So
wouldn't necessarily be new money in that sense. FTE would continue, but it may,
if you said no, it may reshape what that employee is doing
for his work plan next year. Having said that though, the first question that I
would have is why? If the initial reaction was no, this isn't one of our
top priorities for 2020, then we would probably want to dig a little bit deeper
so that we can understand what does that mean for that person's work plan
next year for transportation advisory board. We would want to dive a little bit
deeper to understand your intent and your answer so that
and the work plan accordingly. Yeah, so to be clear, I wasn't answering. I was
asking a question about how to interpret these because I think our direction, as I
understand it, our direction about how if we're interested or not interested, it is
context-dependent because some of these are things the city is already doing and some are
new things. So being interested in a new thing is different than being interested in
something the city is already doing.
So I'm struggling a little bit because these are all in
response to objectives that this council has and the community has worked through
over an admirably thorough process to get to where we are today. And because none
of these are really, I mean there's a couple that are bigger ticket, but they're
not really all, I mean there's nothing that is like, you know, these are all
$100,000 and this other one is $10 million. So there's an old Dilbert
disparaging marketing people that says, we have to give the customer what they want. And
the marketing guy says, what they want is better products for free. And I just
feel like looking at this, this process seems it's going to be like, yep,
this is what we asked for. And we're not down selecting, we're not saying 627,000
to 942,000 is too much.
So we need to figure out something that's below X number of dollars. So I'm
just not sure. It just seems to me like what we're going to get is
a reaffirmation that these are the objectives that we like and that all of these
things are, some of these are noticeably smaller, but most of all this stuff is
between $100,000 and $200,000. per line item. So they're all, you know, squint and stand
back a little ways. They're all sort of a piece. So I'm not really sure
how we, not really sure what we'll select for in this process unless
there's something that just comes across to somebody who's just not ready for prime time.
Yeah, and that's the sort of feedback that we're looking for. We have clarity that
the objectives are are ones that you are comfortable with, or ones that the community
has vetted. We have listed potential action items throughout. This is the moment in time
where we get feedback from you saying, yeah, that's how we want you to try
to carry out that objective. Or no, that's not what we have in mind. We'd
like you to consider something different. Or this one is really important to me. This
one, I'm lukewarm about. We have not done that sort of work to
from the community action item at will. So we don't have that data. We're asking
you as you understood the feedback that went into the strategic plan and as you
have shaped up your own desires about how to carry it out, are these the
right action items? You want to assist us with helping to
understand decision weights so that as we know what size box to fit them in,
can make choices about where to draw the line. These are the ones the council
felt really solid on, understood, liked, felt were super important to the
achievement of the strategic plan, didn't have any concerns
about scope of work identified in those action items, down to ones where there were
questions, concerns, lack of passion around. We would put those lower on the list.
Before we go to Council Member Walsh, just a process check. So we had two
steps to this. One was to go through and do David's number one and two
exercise, but I also thought at one point in time there was going to be
a going around the room with dots exercise where they could
express their own priorities based on the full list. That's right. Is it the Council's
will for instead of doing that as we questions on clarification, so we just go
through them all first and then go through the exercise to do the ranking instead
of trying to take off the list now? That's fine. We hoped that there would
be first this opportunity to better understand each one, ask questions, and
then secondly, if there's an opportunity to whittle some off the list before we go
to the dot exercise, that was the end. Okay. And there may or may not
be an opportunity. There may or may not. There may or may not. We're just
posing that question. Okay. Council Member Walsh. So it looks like right now we're only
being presented with the items that the administration considers Tier A. Correct.
And I have a little, like that to me seems like we're making
assumptions on that and not getting the feedback maybe from the council on whether or
not a Tier B item. So we're seeking that at this time too. Yeah, you'll
get that. Okay. We'll go all the way through. Okay. But yeah, so to clarify,
we're going to give you some detailed
summary of the Tier A projects. But as we started this off, we said if
there's something else on Tier B that you want to talk about, you need to
raise that at this time. We're not going to be detailing Tier B. Because
what has landed on Tier A, staff has described why. And part of it is
about sequencing or about looking at that big resource picture and what staff is involved
where, all the cross departmental considerations. And so we've landed with what we think
meets the criteria for A, is timely, all of that. But if you have an
interest in something on B, this is when you need to raise that, ask questions.
We can explain why it didn't land on A. Does it make
sense then to do the mobility category and talk about the A, Bs, and Cs?
Or what was the plan? Is the plan to go through all Tier A? Our
plan was just to talk about, yeah, just to talk about Tier A.
Okay. Council Member Wright. Do we have a list of the Bs and Cs?
Yeah. So if you look over at the second last
column, it's got the A, Bs, and Cs, and you have all the Bs and
Cs mostly on the set. Thank you. So to keep moving along,
any clarifications required on the two mobility ones?
Or for now, we're just leaving them as tier A and moving into growth and
development. Any thoughts?
Oh, sorry, Councilmember Rolsch. The only one that I see questioning, I think,
why it is a C and not further up is M02 on the back page.
M02B, establish partnerships with transit agencies for new transit options.
I get a little bit concerned if that gets pushed down the list, that it
gets grouped into the same idea as the Sound Transit. And I
want to make sure that we're... Maybe there's a question why that is coming up.
I think one of the reasons that's the case, we're not meaning to paint the
picture that we're not involved in this work on an ongoing basis, so let's just
acknowledge that first. But I think as we began discussing this
with staff and with the mayor, there was some work yet to be done
still to build out exactly what the deliverable would be here. I shouldn't say the
deliverable, but what the implementation actions would be. So for example, we talked
about do we want to convene another kind of stakeholder
group and talk about how to align next regional
policy advocacy. And one of the things that we
want to have done before we do that, although
we're having those conversations every day, is we want to complete the travel shed analysis.
That's part of kind of phase one on mobility master plans so we can go
back to some of those neighboring jurisdictions and say, this is the problem, this is
what we see, what are you seeing, what's your data. So that's precursor work that
perhaps we need to be doing and then we can shape up what this action
item would really be comprised of. So that's why in this case it landed on
C. Thanks. Council Member Wright. So I have a new topic called D's, which is
I think that there's a lot of really great work that the staff has done
to identify these action items or potential action items and to categorize them and bring
them forward. But at what point does the City Council get to say, you know,
I think that we're missing something here. I think that we need an action item
that looks like Yes. Now. Now. It would have been nice to have known that
yesterday. Comments on mobility?
I'm
clear with these. Okay. Oh, sorry. Maybe Councilman's please. So just a couple
more questions just so I can completely understand. And I do appreciate all the work
that's gone into this to... all of the grouping the way that we have, but
we were talking about ongoing and the, I only see,
I guess if you're like reading through, it's hard for me to determine what is
ongoing right now other than I only see it one
time listed as ongoing on the back. So that's one question that I have.
And another question that I have is just wrapping my brain around, if I'm looking
at C, things that are under C, and it says that they're starting in 2021,
just wondering, I guess, is that predicated on the
fact that we get all of the work ahead of that done? Is there
a possibility that if it lands in C, that it really doesn't start in 2021
based on everything that's above it? So I think I'm hearing two
things. And one is that it's important when we're doing the descriptions, David and Megan,
that we talk about those that are already underway because as we stated, when we're
doing the strategic plan, it's not like we're throwing out everything we've been doing and
saying it wasn't strategic. Some things we're already doing definitely fell in under these items.
And also, that whether it is nested or
sequential or timing has something to do with it, it is something that would be
good to explain in a B or a C. Why it's not happening now because
it is a second step. It is nested under another one and first we need
to collect data and then we will go out and lobby for additional metro service,
that kind of thing. When we're going through these descriptions, it would be good, I
think, to let the council members know both of those aspects. That's a good question.
Yeah, and just to better understand how did those that were moved to B or
C, how did that? Okay, thanks. Council Member Hunt.
On the last page, there's the two items that are
no cost, no hours, I guess. And it says complete in 2019,
and then it has start in 2019, and then just done. So the last two
items. So I'm just looking for interpretation on those. So those are things that are
going to be done before we even start the plan. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah,
those were the ones that David mentioned as we went through. We had the budget.
We had the staff application already happening in 19 because those other columns are about
2020. They were listed as potential action items in the
plan. So I think there was a degree of continuity
whether or not those will be. Okay, yeah, I guess it would be
helpful to understand, and it doesn't have to be right now, but I think it
would be helpful to understand what has been done on those because they
were identified as actions to meet our goal, and so if we're already trying to
meet them. Yep, 10-10. Yep. And I think we know there is, We're still
covering some additional information on that second one about the outreach strategy to new residents.
There's some work that's underway developing essentially a welcome packet for businesses.
And there's some preliminary work that's underway for the residential side. So there's how far
we're going to get on that part I think we're not so sure about. But
we can certainly provide more information on that.
There are no more questions. We will assume that the two that are listed under
a priorities and mobility are on the board, on the wall for discussion later on.
Move to growth and development. Yes. Okay.
So, growth and development, GD1A, update codes and standards to retain and
protect essential characteristics in established neighborhoods. This action in the
first year, it is projected to be starting 2020, go through 2024, so it's a
few years long. This is not an action that is currently in process now.
So this action in the first year, there will be some internal work to share
ideas about what essential neighborhood characteristics there are and doing some
prioritization about which neighborhoods will be addressed in which order. It's also assumed that they
would We would pilot this with one neighborhood in the first year to test some
of the outreach methods and how we go about doing it. And then in future
years, staff would anticipate working with about two neighborhoods per year. So that's why it's
a multi-year effort. The city will be engaging in the specific neighborhoods to
kind of identify those essential characteristics and then develop the codes to preserve them.
And the costs here are around mostly outreach with the neighborhoods. Thank
you. I didn't see who went up first. Council President Marks. Aren't we already doing
this? Aren't we already? Isn't that why we're looking at clustered housing
changes? We just talked about that at Landon Tour last night. I think it's bigger
than that. It was bigger than that. In the council conversation, it was about reunions.
I know, but it started. I get that there's a lot more to it. I
think we could almost point to anything on this list and say there are bits
and pieces that probably are underway on a lot of these. But this was a
focused effort to have a comprehensive conversation with each neighborhood about what is it that
makes your neighborhood unique and special so that we understand where there's a desire
to preserve those elements or enhance those elements. So it's broader than just the housing
piece. So
from a larger context, it feels like this was somewhat recently done
with TELUS and the Highlands when those development agreements were ended. Replacement
regulations. Yeah, the replacement regulations happened there.
And then I also question how important is it to do this at the same
time as the Title 18 revamp? Is that something that
needs to happen at the same time as Title 18? Or
do we receive maybe even some benefit from doing it after that review has happened?
I guess my initial answer would be you can't do it all at once. We
have Title 18 things that we know need to be updated and fixed if in
going through these conversations either on Title 18, some neighborhood
characteristic elements seem to need to be attended to, we can do that during Title
18, but the focus conversations with each neighborhood, we can have those subsequent to that
work or concurrent with that work, as the case may be, and then come back
and make whatever code changes need to happen. The intent was to have that open
conversation first and then identify, are the solutions to that code-related or are
they something else? And if they're code-related, then we can go back and do My
general thought is that if the idea of Title 18 code
revision is to achieve clarity in how things are presented,
it might make sense to do that before going out to the community so that
we're not having to have that conversation twice. So that would be my thought. Thank
you. Council Member Goodman.
I'm not exactly sure what we mean by neighborhoods. So we have
residential neighborhoods and then we have all the areas in the Central Issaquah Plan and
we've talked about protecting neighborhoods in the Central
Issaquah Plan. We've also talked about going out to the neighborhoods and seeing what is
it asking them, what's important to them. So is this all of that?
I think as we had shaped this up, we had identified
which areas of town we think define themselves as a neighborhood and having the
same sort of conversations that we have had, for example, with Old Town or with
Highlands and Talos, but having those conversations and making sure we hit all the neighborhoods
where we haven't had types of conversations and then posing those questions about what's important
to you, what makes this place special, why did you choose this place, what do
we need to enhance, protect, et cetera, what's missing, which ties into another goal
area as well. And then look at, again, what action we would need to take.
Any other questions on this one? We'll keep
moving through growth and development. Okay. GD2A
is Conduct a Review of Progress Towards Growth Targets. This one is
a 19-20 action and it is one of
two also related to GD2E about PSRC allocations. So
in 2020, council will be adopting new allocations for 2023 through 2043
by the end of 2020. So this is going to be a process to update
some information about detailed housing and jobs numbers in the city to help prepare for
that conversation. And it's also going
to be, the state is already collected annually, but this data will that next round
of conversations. So looking, I'll talk about with GD2E at the same time with proactively
influence the next round of regional growth targets. So as I mentioned, that conversation will
be happening next year. So this is to do kind of some early work on
this to prepare for negotiations with King County and other jurisdictions to get
the data that we have our city and start to prepare conversations that we want
to have with council about what we see is how we want to do growth
in the city so that we have a recommendation from the city that would then
be negotiated with both King County and the jurisdictions. Ongoing body of work.
Yes. Councilmember Walsh. So I don't understand why
the estimate is higher for a review of progress toward growth targets where that
seems to be something that we're much more familiar with, whereas the numbers are
slightly smaller or half as big for proactively influencing where
I think we have to have a larger conversation about what do we want those
numbers to be and then do the influence as well. So that seems a little
bit backward to me. Fair money. I might
call on the department director to help explain that. I would just suggest
that I think there's some data collection and analysis that goes with
A that's a little bit . Actually, before we go
to department director, I just want to check in with you, Lindsay. So I think
It's fine to direct us that if this is important to you, can you go
back and look at those estimates so that we see it in budget, explain it.
Really trying to understand if it's something you want to have on the list or
not, if it's a priority. Because I think we could pull Keith up and he
could tell you about the exercise the long range planning staff goes to do a,
you know, available land, build a buildable lands map and an inventory and all of
that. But it's more tonight about is this a priority for you? It's work underway.
the strategic plan, I guess is you're probably going to say, of course we need
you to do this. So your choice though, if you would like to hear more
about the labor buildup, we could do that too. Yeah, I guess for me,
GD2E is more important than GD2A. Yeah, okay. So that's, thank you very
much for that. When we do go to the exercises of, you know, having the
council members use the dots to say priority, my guess is that you're going to
be looking at the forward forward one
going that's really important to me. Thank you. That's really helpful. Are there, oh, Council
Member Wages thing? Couple questions. Megan, help me understand the timing of these. So when
is, these are, are your, the state will be coming up with new numbers,
giving them to the counties. All the, then we'll enter into this stage where we
start to, you know, figure out what our new targets are going to be. And
then there's, And then there's a comprehensive plan update round. How do all, what's the
timing of all of this? And how do these activities? I might defer to Keith,
you might be a little bit more familiar with the exact timing. Okay, so the
reason I'm asking, I just want to make sure I have a complete picture of
where, I think I know where it fits in. But there's a timing here and
I wasn't really sure about some of the dates that you mentioned here. I actually
thought it was happening later and just seem to be doing this earlier than I
thought we would. So maybe I'm wrong. So we're doing billable lands right now. So
right now we're working with King County on updating our billable lands inventory, which
is really the starting space for all of this. Because you basically look at what's
out in your community, identify those parcels that are either vacant or
underbuilt, and then you... you have an exchange with King County to the
point where we get concurrence between the city and the county about what our buildable
lands inventory looks like. From there then are generated
the next round of allocations from, no I didn't use
targets, from the county that we then want to
So what we're talking about is rather than just taking those numbers from the county
and putting them in our comp plan, which is what we've done in the past,
to have a more interactive conversation with the council and letting there be
some potential influence locally on those numbers when
we send them back to the county. So we are expecting, there may be actually
some active negotiations with King County on what that next round of allocations might be
as opposed to just taking those numbers putting them in our comp plan and giving
them to you to adopt. So those all come from the count that process runs
prior to a comp plan update? Yes. Okay so that's why this timing of completing
this by the end of next year 2020? Yes. And the comp plan update is
when? So typically you guys do your comp plan updates in November,
December of each year. Well, okay. Okay. So, but these numbers would be in the
2021 update? They would be, no, they would be, we would come up, in theory,
we would come up with our numbers next year. So the buildable lands is in
19. And then the new allocations would be 2020.
That's my understanding. Okay. All right. Without looking at any documents. And as they're, thank
you Keith, and as they're articulated here, just my understanding earlier, this idea,
I like this idea. As far as I know, I'm not sure how many times
there's been an update of this allocation since I've been on council, honestly, but I
don't ever remember us being, trying to get ahead of the curve and try to
influence the negotiation. This is exactly where we need to be. So I like the
idea that we do the analysis in anticipation of the upcoming negotiation. Thank you. It
was 2006, so I doubt you were on the council. I'm going to do a
little time check with everybody before I go to Councilmember Hunt's question. We had allocated
another 10 minutes to get through the rest of this part, which is really seeming
to be the part where I think there's going to be a lot of questions
to ensure everybody understands what we're looking at before we go and say what's important.
If the group is in agreement, I'm not sure when the food comes. I'd like
to at least spend another 40 minutes, so moving off of the agreed schedule that
we had so we can continue to go through this because these are really great
questions and I think they're adding a lot of clarity if the council's good with
that because we have a lot to go. So continue with this through 630. Okay,
Councilmember Hunt. So I think there are some
actions that are not given a category. So specifically, GD3,
there are two that I'm not seeing anywhere.
There's one that's already considered that it will be complete, so it would be helpful
to know how that's being completed. But then there's also Prioritize projects to address the
central Issaquah plan vision and address gaps and then explore concepts for development of a
new north-south under over-crossing in conjunction with light rail planning. I don't see those. That's
correct. So when David showed an early slide, we said there were, I'm making up
numbers because now I don't remember exactly, 52 action items and 21 of them we
put on this list into that ABC tier. So there are additional ones under
multiple goal areas that aren't reflected. So I guess is there somewhere like a system
by which you explain why those are not even ranked
within the ABC system? Just so, from my understanding about why those, for example, were
not considered. Yeah, I think there's not one answer, multiple
answers, but as we had staff look during plan development about the
sequencing of each, targeted start and completion years.
And that one that you just mentioned, we don't believe
we're going to have enough information, for example, to really has to do
with under-overcrossing to put the whole core in 2020. So we think there's other steps
that we have to do ahead of time. There's other actions that need to start
in 2020, and so that one we just... we would start in the
future, in a different year. So I guess if there's a spreadsheet somewhere, because I
don't think we have that about those other ones, but just about why, if it's
timing or if it's too expensive or if it's something that's already done or whatever
it is. I think there is a version. Is there not a spreadsheet that we
were using that had different start dates? We have a spreadsheet that looks a lot
like this that has start-stop kind of dates or completion dates on them. What we
don't have is that thinking because it maybe multiple things. So we don't have a
spreadsheet that shows that thinking. That was more discussion.
Megan, do you want to continue with growth and development? Yes. So going with
GD3A, create a comprehensive infrastructure master plan, public and private, to address
development areas planned for growth. So this is a multi-year action proposed 2020 to 2022.
So this action would address the preparation for future
growth and focus on the central Issaquah area, where it's anticipated to have the most
growth in the coming years. The project would review existing plans, start to identify gaps,
and determine what build out is required to support that growth. It would also establish,
include when and where infrastructure needs to be prepared for growth, as well as any
improvements that would be needed to make that ready. So, for 2020
specifically, staff will begin scoping the process, including coordination between departments
and working to develop a detailed scope, schedule, and cost estimate for developing the plan.
So, that's why there is just labor here and not dollars, so it's anticipated in
2021-2022 is when the actual plan would be developed. Any questions?
Seeing any, let's move to the next one, growth and development. GD-4B,
develop code amendments to address missing middle and other housing options. So this is one
that is currently in progress through the housing strategy, which was adopted in 2017.
So this is strategy eight for that. So this action is intended to add more
options for smaller and less expensive housing to have more affordable housing types in the
city. It would fill the gaps between the single family and larger multi-family complexes
that are being built. So staff will develop recommendations,
work closely with stakeholders to ensure that there's appropriate housing in each of the zones.
So there's work going on to inventory for this to see what we currently have
in the city. Start to research the types of housing that we want to be
seeing. There'd be a process to kind of do an internal check on this and
then develop a recommendation which would be worked through some of the committees. And also
some effort in doing some outreach and education to see what types of projects
are working in other cities. of those to incorporate council into those as well.
Council Member Hunt. So in GD4, there's also
identify and implement code changes and activities to address neighborhood based and community wide gaps
in amenities and services. And I would think that through the process of updating the
codes and standards to retain and protect essential characteristics in established neighborhoods, that that would
be to do this update at the same time. So basically when you're going out
to the neighborhoods and you're talking about what you like about your neighborhood and then
also what you need in your neighborhood, you could do the code updates to both
protect what people like but also to enhance to this objective. So
it seems like those just go together versus making a code update for one thing
and then going back and making a code update. Yeah, I think we anticipated having
the neighborhood conversation about desired amenities and
desired character and then coming back and doing the scope of work on the code
changes and having that second conversation that you talked about, how to bridge gaps.
So it was a sequencing thing. We think one will, the action item that's listed
on the page now for Tier K can help us do some of the background
work that we need. We'll answer that next one. Maybe I misunderstand, but it does
have GD1 as tier ones to start with now. That's the
one that says update codes and standards to retain and protect essential characters. It does
have the update codes. It's not just start a conversation. Then there's also
identify and implement code changes into the second one. My opinion would be that these
seem to go together. Or the combination of the
outreach in both of these happens in one year and the code amendments for both
of these happens in another year. What you're saying is they're very linked. So if
it happens over two years, the conversation might happen one year and the updates would
happen the next year. Right. I just would not want it to be that you
go to the neighborhood and you ask, what do you want to retain? And they
say these things. We make code update. And then you go back and you say
what you need. Another conversation. Another update. That's a really good point. And then you
come back and then you do another. We see that too. We think they're very
interrelated and able to get a few elements on both done at the same
time. I can add to that. I agree there are those pieces that are connected,
and I think staff had identified that. The one piece that's a little bit different
is the services or amenities that may be community-wide as opposed to neighborhood-based. So you
may not need to have a grocery store in every neighborhood, but grocery stores are
important services and amenities to have in the community. if we're going through the different
neighborhoods one by one or two per year, that outreach could identify some of
those needs, but the citywide amenities and kind of wide distribution to how the city
might be. I think we hear your suggestion, which is why there's two,
well, there are two listed here. You believe that they may be put together in
different ways and done in different years. That's good input. Thank you. That makes sense.
And Council Member A. I'm just going to pile on because just as she was
saying that I was circling it, it seems to me that these are either both
A's or both B's and they're both multi-year initiatives. So since we're talking about changing
priorities at this time, I think this is one that I think it would be
very appropriate to promote from Monday. Second one up to an A.
And are we through growth and development? Yes. Okay. Moving on to
environmental stewardship. All right. So looking at ES1C,
align environmental management approaches and implement training and education activities. This is
proposed to be multi-year 2020 through 2022. It's not something that is continuing from this
year. So with this action, there would be work across departments to identify and align
environmental management policies and practices. So there would be work to be done to review
current codes, policies, and practices and start to identify improvements in order to have more
consistent approach across the city. There's been some discussion that there has
been some areas where it would be helpful to have kind of more clear interpretation
and priorities in order to help meet the objective of protecting and improving the
environment. This action also, it would establish new policies and procedures to
standardize interpretations and the priorities across the city. And there would also be some
training and overall education with stakeholders about this approach.
Keep going, Megan. PS3A, complete parks, stream side, forest,
flood plain and critical area studies to provide a comprehensive view of land acquisition goals
and needs community wide. So this project will review property needs identified in various city
planning documents and prioritize the city acquisitions. The analysis would
include existing plans and plans that are in progress as well.
It would include analysis to make sure we're filling missing links, looking at consideration for
critical areas, and identifying various gaps. So
it's estimated that staff would gather the base information that would be needed in order
to do the analysis. And then the dollars here represent consultant services to start to
synthesize that information, create some final mapping. and also help with the development
of the prioritization criteria. This is a multi-year action.
That's my role. How does this relate to the park strategic plan? Is it kind
of the next step of identifying the properties needed to
implement that, or is it a reworking of the work that we just did? I
don't think it would not be a reworking of the work that's done. I think
of it as a mashup of the Park Strategic Plan with other critical area needs,
for example, or other land acquisition needs so that they can be considered in the
context of the needs citywide. So it would take, I think, some of
those acquisitions that are identified within the Park Strategic Plan as one of several inputs
into an overall approach and prioritization. Member Winterstein. Thank you.
In one seat, when I read
words like align, align, and then I guess
maybe it's the verb train or implement training, your estimate of labor there, how do
you come up with that many hours when we're aligning something? I think with this
one, it's, so I, I think the labor actually for this one would be across
those full three years rather than just the 2020. So I think that that is
a little bit of a typo there, but it's also taking into account all the
different departments that would be involved in that effort. Which are?
Probably parks, public works engineering, public works operations, OS, and DSD.
And could I just ask for a very simple level kind of description of the
problem we would be addressing?
I think what we've heard from staff is that there's a whole variety of different
environmental regulations and policies and procedures. And there can be different
interpretations of how to apply some of those pieces, depending on the circumstances. So trying
to get some additional clarity on which ones prevail and do we have consistency?
It sounds like there is a number of cases where there are some conflicts or
clarifications that are required in order to improve how we go about doing some of
that work. So I would, I've been unaware of
there being impacts to this condition. Are there any circumstance, any things that have happened
in the past just to help eliminate for me a little bit
And then why we're part of this priority. I'm not saying it's not
important. I'm just trying to understand the task.
So I'm not seeing a lot of hands jumping up. Paul, can I put this
on a parking lot when we come back to this one as one that we
definitely need to have more conversation on? Thank you. OK. Yeah, and I don't think
I'm not looking for anything elaborate as I'm trying to get understanding. You're proposing this
as an A and in concept. I have no problem with that. I just need
to better understand. I think this is definitely something that's more internal looking to the
organization. And for example, the choice on a capital project would certainly
affect how we go about doing operations, for example, and trying to meet certain codes
and requirements. And we've seen that show up in policies about approaches for stormwater
management in different shapes and forms. And one department might be trying to meet the
design and construction requirements of a permit for National Pollution, MBDS permits, for
example. But that has significant ramifications on O&M for operations and maintenance of a rain
garden or a street. And there are different choices that can be made in the
design and construction of that facility, for example, which It might
conflict with other policies or different approaches. And try to get some better arms around
some of those and what are the priorities. Okay, so just value engineer up front.
You got it. Figure out,
as David said, what should prevail. And get some consensus around that. And then document
that, and that becomes the protocol. Thank you.
We move on to social and economic vitality. All right, so the first one here
is SE1A, conduct a study and propose tools that would give the Saquois a competitive
advantage to recruit employers that fit the city vision. So for this one, the city
will conduct a study to identify the Saquois competitive advantages and assets in attracting target
industries that were identified in the 2015 sector analysis. So the study would
recommend strategy options for how Issaquah can enhance its competitive advantages it has.
The economic development department would then create a marketing strategy to target the potential prospects.
So the consultant dollars here would be used to provide some of the base data
that would be needed for the study and also help with the targeted marketing efforts.
And this is just a 20, 20 year action and it's not consistent.
Next, SE1C, expand support for small business and startup training and
development. This is a multi-year project until 2024.
It has the city updating resources and work with local organizations
to expand support for training and development. The work would focus on ensuring that there's
local and affordable resources for topics like business plans, financial options,
legal and HR requirements. The city would be partnering with several different organizations on this
effort. Small Business Administration, SCORE, Chamber of Commerce by promoting and
participating in their chamber university. Startup 425 with their classes and
Port of Seattle. Ongoing? until 2024. It's part of a
body of ongoing work though? Yes. From my understanding, there's been work with these groups
already. Question? Council Member Goodman? To what degree is it
ongoing? Because it calls for fairly
significant resources. I believe these, the expenses here
to supporting some of those partner organizations that I believe have already been funded in
previous years.
Keith? So we just executed a partner agreement with Startup 425.
Our contribution is $15,000 per year. We
use port grant money for a majority of that. We
also partner with the Chamber on their Chamber U
classes. This is work we're doing already. This
isn't actually an expansion of what we're doing on workforce development and what we're
already doing. So then why does it say expansion?
Currently my question is I see a lot of things on here that I feel
like we're either doing already or we shouldn't be doing. And so if there's internal
issues going back one or two internal issues about how we're going to interpret and
handle stuff, I'm a little frustrated that it would be on a
strategic plan. I just see a lot of things that we just should be doing
anyway as a city. And so back to this one, why are we calling it
an expansion We're
already
doing it. Why is it in here? I'm looking through my five things. I actually
have way more than five. Hang on. We can park a lot if we want.
It's just a question. Can you park a lot for now? Let me see if
I can find you an answer later. Social and economic
vitality, SC2. One second. Sorry. So
to me this seems like something that would need a lot of, if it was
actually an expansion, a lot of buy-in and work with the chamber and Dia and
things like that. Are they aware of this as a work
item or whatever you would call it? And do we have their buy-in to move
forward in a big part? Like basically, I know we said this would be
working with them, but to me this seems like a significant number of hours that
would need to be partnership. Have they committed to holding up their portion of
that? From my understanding, it's kind of two parts. So it is doing that
work, but there is also some updating of the city's website and
resources in order to kind of provide more resources for small
businesses and startups. So I think it's possible some of the hours are
part of that work. But I think that, because they do have the partnership, the
ongoing partnership, I believe they're aware that they're working in. Partnerships are established. The
partnerships are established. The one thing that I look at staff's notes, the one thing
that is an expansion is it looks like we, and this is something we've had
on our to-do list and we haven't done yet, is to work with the school
district in Gibson Eck to connect our local businesses to high school students
because there's, we find that there's a lot of value that can be
given through that kind of a program and that's done in some other cities. And
so as we look at the expansion piece of this, that would be something that
would be new that we're not doing right now. Thank you for that, Keith. I
think where my head is at is that we're having a struggle
getting through all of these. It is our first year, and we are
testing this out. I think what I'm sensing from the questions is that if there
is something on here that we are already doing, and if it's a minor expansion
or no expansion, I'm not sure that we need to give it as much air
time. we do for those things that we've never done before. So I think there
was always an assumption. It is fine, I think, to have the council say, we're
doing this, put it back in the budget, take it off our strategic thing for
now, and let us just focus on the ones that we're not doing. Only because
it seems to be creating some frustration to be talking about stuff we're already working
on. So I'm not sure if you're agreeing with that or not. Having said
that, I've been marking as we've gone on things that are already underway or we're
already doing, and it's the majority of what we've just spent the last hour and
a half talking about. So, what are your thoughts on
dealing with just those items that are on here that are new, where you need
to understand what the scope is? That's my agreement. Thank you. I'm still feeling
as though it's helpful to go through them, however, because I'm learning a lot. Fair
enough. Just checking. Let's continue on then with social and economic
vitality. Oh, Council Member, what did you say? Yeah,
in response to your question, we did a strategic plan.
Now this is the first opportunity not only to get more from staff, but also
to begin to shape not only a potential work plan for next year and years
after, but get a sense of the size of these and potential budget impacts as
well. Doing this comprehensively like this, whether it's new and or continuation or expansion,
is very helpful to me. Okay, okay, thank you. Thanks for that. Let's keep going
down to economic vitality. So we have SE2A,
Implement and Enhance the Housing Strategy Work Plan. So this is work that we are
doing already. Again, the housing strategy was adopted in 2017, so we're in the middle
of implementation for this item. So the specific work that will
be occurring or expected to occur in 2020 for this item is continued work with
strategy two on limiting and mitigate teardowns. Work on strategy
three to seek out affordable multi-family housing to retain. Some of that work is
going on already right now with inventory work in 2019. But some of the 2020
work might be some outreach to property owners around this action item. There's also
expected to be continued work on strategy nine for this item as well.
It is, the housing strategy goes until 2022 and it'll be expected that
We would look at the entire strategy itself and see which items out of nine
strategies might need some more work or need to.
Next.
SE2C, determine if city property assets should be used for affordable housing needs.
So this is just a 2020 item. However, this work does come out of work
that's currently being done in 2019. related to the assessment of city owned properties.
So with this action item, it would create a policy and process to help govern
decision making regarding the use of city property to accommodate affordable housing.
SC3B, adopt and implement the healthy community strategy. This is work
that is ongoing. right now and is proposed to go through 2024.
So the city is currently working with a consultant to develop a healthy community strategy,
which is expected to be adopted later this year. So this strategy is anticipated to
identify ways in which the city can improve health and equity outcomes in the community
through partnerships, policies, and direct actions. So this item is the budget is a
placeholder to begin implementation of these strategies in the future years. after adoption
of the strategy. And so we're expecting to get draft actions or anticipated in Q4
of this year. So again, this is kind of a placeholder for those actions.
SE3C, facilitate. . Why would we want a placeholder for future years in
here? I mean, why wouldn't we? We're already anticipating.
adoption later this year,
it just seems to me that we're one step ahead of ourselves. We don't even
know what it's going to say yet. So the work of the
Healthy Community Strategy was identified by staff to be directly related to the objective
of how we would reduce inequities in the city, but it is work that we
are doing now, recognizing there's that need. But again,
there's been some work on knowing what some of those actions might be, but we
don't have that full list until later this year. I think it's because it's early
in the development of the strategy itself, and it's anticipated that the strategy would be
complete and adopted by the end of the year, but our budgeting process is in
advance of the adoption of it, so that is why it would be only a
placeholder.
to the next one. Facilitate nonprofit organizations to locate or expand to
provide needed services locally. This is another multi-year action until 2024.
So the community needs assessment identified that decentralized service
landscape on the east side has been a significant barrier for getting some basic services
in Issaquah. So this action would support getting to some of these services in a
few different ways. One is continuing public private partnerships for development of new service
locations. So a recent example of that is the TOD project with the Opportunity
Center. Evaluating existing land and building lease arrangements for
nonprofit services. So example, this is the properties like Seventh and
Juniper at work site. identifying and facilitate partnering or joint use
arrangements among service providers so that could be co-location of services in the city
councilmember hunt on this one as I know that there is some work ongoing
I would be helpful to understand what this action supporting it or supporting it would
how it would deviate from what you're currently
Emily, are you looking for some additional information? Well, it
sounds like it would be helpful on a lot of these. I think that's one
of the trends is that some of these are ongoing and to different degrees. So
I don't necessarily need an answer now, but it's one that I would be interested
to understand better how much of a change represents from what we're doing and we
support it. City leadership and services.
CS1B, working with the community, identify and remove barriers to accessing
city programs and services. So this is a multi-year action.
This action would work with stakeholders in the community and also convene a community-based
working group to help identify needs and gaps. It would help ensure the city's programs
and services are updated and reflect the changing needs of our diversity in the community.
The working groups would review and prioritize a list of programs and services to identify
and implement service improvements. So this action would include some targeted outreach to
diverse populations, as well as working with nonprofits and community leaders.
It's a primarily staff-led effort, but there's also could be some consultant support for doing
some community outreach or doing some specific material development. Did you
have a question? Let's keep going, Megan. Create an equity and
cultural competency initiative for the city. This is work that is continuing and
is going, proposed to be multi-year action. The initiative will help provide
the foundation for city staff to increase awareness and capacity to better serve the community.
It includes work with leadership and staff on values and policies, citywide training, and
some special equity related projects. It's expected in the first year of 2020 to
have a citywide equity policy as well as establish a committee on developing and sustaining
equity. And
CS2A, implement improvements to the employee experience. fostering development,
organizational values, and connection. This is also ongoing work and is proposed multi-year
action. So it would enhance customer service and service
delivery through a city that's high performing and attracts, develops, and retains talent.
The city currently has an employee experience team that's working on a few items, including
employee recognition, performance evaluation method with more frequent check-ins,
establishing semi-annual all-city meetings, and also doing some organizational-wide training.
The labor here represents, since it's a city-wide initiative, several different employees and all different
departments participating, and some dollars for our training.
EDS2C, evaluate the condition and performance of current city facilities and options for
improving service delivery. So this is
also continuing work and expected to be completed in 2020. So for 2020,
the work is a continuation of work that's currently underway in terms of assessment and
long range planning for the three buildings, the City Hall Police Building, City Hall South,
and this building here, City Hall Northwest. Depending on city council direction later this
year, or this year, the project will take the next step in analyzing the preferred
option or options that are identified. So this would be both
staff work on this in order, and then also expected to have some consultant work
with the architectural team and start to do some site analysis or initial concept design
depending on what the direction is.
S2E is update financial information to be accessible, clear, and available on a regular basis.
So this is work that's currently underway and will be going through 2022.
So this includes a number of actions from the finance department for preparing budget information
and then making it accessible to the community. The specific pieces that this covers is
implementing the munis reset to both improve internal processes and also accessibility of
information for the departments. Also includes the preparation of the 2020 budget book and posting
to the city website. Preparation of variance reports for the city's website and also updating
financial management policies, which is being done with some GFOA
consultants right now. So it's a mix of all of the
staff work on this and then also the consultant report.
I'm just curious why the one block of all the blocks is in yellow on
the spreadsheet here. That is, so the costs for this
that are represented here are just the operational costs. And then there's also a CIP
request for this item. So this had just captured that number. But this is the
correct item. A couple of corrections that were made on this spreadsheet. That was one.
The other one was for infrastructure, IN1A, which was a
typographical error. So these were corrections from the first time they received their package.
Okay. Let's go to infrastructure. So IN1B, plan for
and budget operations and maintenance costs with all new capital, including both city-developed and dedicated.
So this is a 2020 item. to create and implement a policy that will govern
the identification of operations and maintenance costs for capital assets that are dedicated to the
city or purchase outside of the CIP process. So the current CIP process is
starting to identify the O&M costs for the new city developed capital purchases.
So this would be both staff effort and then also involve the GFOA consultants as
well. a template to standardize the cost for
use in budgets and agenda bills. And then also provide some training on that across
the city for its use. Council President Martz and then Council Member Hunt.
So for the entire infrastructure subject, we have 50 to 100
hours of effort is what we're proposing. I mean, I look back at our strategic
plan. The item that we have is a C, which is develop and implement an
organization-wide asset management policy financial plan to ensure sound stewardship of city
assets. That's got
some more meat on it. I'm very surprised that the net sum of our estimated
effort towards this element of the strategic plan is 50 to 100 hours. That's nothing.
Looking for more. City Ministry of
Newham, do you want to talk to that one? Or David? A couple of notes
on that. So if I agree, the other potential action in other infrastructure is by
far the medium or more meaningful one. It's the one that we'll consider the long-term
ramifications and life cycle costs of maintaining our infrastructure so it stays in good repair.
We do have some significant, this is one of those areas where we have some
known limitations on construction and that's specifically in our finance department. And so this
one is one that was looked at, but it's anticipated, proposing that we start to
take this on in future years, in large part because of that, because of its
importance. This is, I agree, to be a relatively simple and
straightforward piece, but something we can do to kind of make sure that we're stemming
the flow, if you will, on all new considerations. The city has started to do
that work but hasn't done it, especially as it relates to dedications, things that come
through developer dedications to the city. So that is a part of kind of helping
to fill out the picture. And then the other piece is that on the infrastructure
side of the equation, there is a proposed action. I forget the GD number
on it, but it is about the infrastructure master plan and some work on scoping
of that and beginning that process so that we have an is
for growing areas for central as it was there. So there are other infrastructure related
pieces even though they're not identified under this priority area because it's more growth related.
Okay, I guess this is where our sort of prioritization system is a little bit
weird, right? Because it's not a low overall priority, right? It's just I understand that
it's something that is hard to start in 2020, but
you know, the element that's in there that's listed as a C for 2021
to 2024 is incredibly important. So I just, I don't know how to call it
a C. So we put that criteria up at the very beginning and the
sequencing availability of resources, all of those were factors. So
you shouldn't consider those labels of A, B, C to be the levels
in terms of a popularity or value contest. But more
about we can't get it all done at once. A lot of this is important
and some of the steps have to be completed before others. So when we look
at all the factors, all the resourcing factors, timeline criticality,
that's how we built it. This is a great comment though, Tola,
because I've been taking notes on what I'm hearing are sort of, I'm going to
call them the pain points as we go through this, but where the information can
be presented potentially different as we evolve through this process. And one is, and I
can't remember who said it, might have been Vicki or Lindsey, was that instead of
an A, B, or C, if it's not being proposed in this initial round, there
could be more of a written explanation of because it's nested, because finance has got
a full book and they're prime and so it's going to have to happen in
and out of year. So yeah, ranking, we should look at that. It might not
really be ranking. It might more be notes on why not this year. So that's
great help. That's a lot of help. Well, it would certainly help me. So I
mean, I guess it would help the public too. Yeah, absolutely. So again, I want
to check in both with Emily and the team that's presenting and the council. We
did not, we have gone through everything that was recommended as a, let's call it
a tier one. Wanted to get your thoughts on, is it clear
what's being proposed, how it fits in, if it's ongoing work or new work, and
now what to do with the remainder of the list. Oh, council member Hunt. I
just, I wanted to, I would like to look at if we can do
the infrastructure, develop and implement an organization-wide asset management policy action
and start that. Because the other one is forward-looking and it just seems like
we're starting on this forward-looking action item because it's maybe easier or
smaller. But the first one, in terms of taking care of what we already have
and having an organization-wide asset management policy,
So I would like to look at that again and really understand why it's not
here. Okay, so a question then, and I'll pose it to the administration team as
well, is that I think what we're hearing is that based on our staffing resources,
we can't take the other project on. So is where you're headed with then the,
if we don't have the capacity to do the bigger project first, are you thinking
you don't want to do the little project, the project?
Well, I would like to understand what the options are because it's difficult to understand
from it. Okay. Sure. I mean, just as a way of example, I'm not sure
if on your spreadsheet, but my spreadsheet has no labor hours on that one, which
is not accurate at all, but is indicative of the fact that our finance team
was super busy putting together our CIP and getting ready for budget, that they may
have had time to fully develop a plan. around this.
It's on scene because we have other priorities in the finance department and the finance
department is going to have to be heavily involved in this. So until we can
get some of that precursor work done, give you an example, understanding what our
fleet or street assets need, we have to do a fund analysis of those two
funds first to just understand what's in there now. to create
sustainability in those funds, propose some immediate action steps
to fix any problems that we have in those funds, and then we can build
out long-term policies and that financial plan. But there's
just some unraveling, some auditing kind of work, some
basic accounting work that we need to be spending time on before we can dive
into developing new plans. This is the April 1st presentation to Council?
Yes. About the GFOA. Yeah, and subsequent work that we have since learned that we
need to do. And as Beth alluded to in that presentation, we anticipated we would
be back asking for additional resources to do the volume of work that we
need to do in our finance department. So it's not just a resourcing issue, it's
actually a sequencing issue. Get your house in order before you go into this one.
Correct. Maybe if I could also add the
work we're doing on our systems that I think are also going to be critical
so that we have a better ability to track these assets and
set aside those costs. So that's another foundational piece that I think needs to be
in place in order to allow us pivot and move on to this
yes it's absolutely important and big we should be doing
this we want to be doing this but we've got to have these foundational things
in place before I'm going to councilmember
whoo
okay it's ray before winter sima I have no idea how Walsh fit in it's
really Walsh winter's time it's Ray Walsh winter's time comes my right Almost alphabetical.
Almost. Is this the point where we start talking about the Bs and
Cs or are we doing that later? That was the process question that I had.
I think it's great that we've gotten through sort of what we would call tier
one. If you want to continue with this and do the Bs and Cs now
or the something that's not on the list, I think we should do that. I
have a couple of Bs and Cs that I think should be considered and I'd
like to know why. Sure. What the rationale for not? Let's put them on the
table. What have you got? There are three of them, and they are all ones
that I think are externally focused. They are the ones that are focused on the
people who live here. One of them we already talked about, which was GD4A, the
implement, identifying and implementing code changes. So I've already stated that I think that one
is an A. The next one is SE1D, conduct a review of the city's permitting
to provide consistency and predictability to businesses. numerous
occasions that this causes our businesses a great deal of frustration and something we can
do that would really would be helpful in terms of economic development and then the
other one I would like us to consider is city leadership
CS 1A implemented new and enhanced public outreach strategy build upon a review of
engagement efforts and updates to the city's toolkit for public engagement because I believe that
one of our most significant issues, and we've heard this in Council way too often,
is about how do we effectively engage with the community. So those are the three
that I'd like us to consider or I'd like to just understand why they are
where they are. So we will get answers to that. I think what I'd like
to do is get everybody to throw theirs on here so we have a full
list and then we'll start to go through and we'll answer. Walsh. Council Member Walsh.
I was going to say was actually going back to the infrastructure one. It sounds
like there's a lot of conversation about the financial areas that we can't yet tackle
because we don't have all of our ducks in order. But I feel
like we might, and maybe this is just a question, we might be able to
look at more listing out the physical attributes, their age, getting
into that portion. Just to clarify, because I don't want you walking out of
the room to think we don't have that. So we have inventories of assets.
We have condition assessments of assets. This is work
that I've been involved with across departments, but in particular in Parks and Rec recently
for several years. And we use that information now to build out our
capital improvement plan. and to think about long-term spending plans, and in
cases where it's necessary, charges to departments. So we do that on our IT infrastructure,
we do that on our fleet assets. So that work is done.
So what I'm doing, Emily, is I have circled this one just so that when
we have our full list, we can provide a little more information about what this
is, because I think you've just told us what it isn't. Got this one circled
as well. And Council Member Goodman and then Deputy Council President Batiste.
So for SE1D, conduct a review of city permitting to provide
consistency and predictability for businesses. I didn't understand why this was limited to businesses.
Adding residences and businesses. And we are going to come back to that one as
well. Was there any others on here? No. Deputy Council President
Batiste. Thank you. So
I think Council Member Walsh has pretty much already asked this question. I'm just going
to ask it in a little bit of a different way. In terms of infrastructure
and the specific things that we talked about that are already in place, but the
finance department has other things that they need to be prioritizing, is there anything based
on and one that we could be queuing up that the
finance department would be asking for as we head into that
particular item? Well, the
example that I would give is even though we have a new inventory, for example,
the work that they will be doing is to examine those charges to departments.
a need to do two things. We need to look at the formula that is
charged to departments for the annual operating expense of our fleet division.
So labor, supplies, et cetera, that should be shared across departments.
We need to examine that formula. And then there's also charges that are applied to
departments to pay for annual vehicle replacements. We need to look
at that formula to reasonably believe that that formula is off at this point
because it hasn't been examined for some number of years. And as
Council knows, we've built a fund balance. We tapped that fund balance for this budget.
That's an example of what might be referenced in asset management policy and financial
to do that in a few different asset categories. We need to build out an
approach. We may have the inventory. We may have kind of decided about what needs
to be replaced when, but the financial planning still needs some
work and commitments that are policies that need to be replaced for some asset
categories. I would also maybe add, and this is a
little deep in the CIP this year, you'll see that we've included
some estimates about operating impacts. And I will tell you, they make me very, very
nervous because we did not have the time, capacity to really vet
those numbers. And we owe it to
the council as the council is making decisions over time about capital investments.
to have an honest assessment of what that is. So we
made some preliminary and we've caveated the heck out of the numbers, but I would
like to get to the point where it's part of our practice when we're building
the CIP that we are, we're integrating those, we have kind of vet them,
that's collaborating with departments, I'm looking at the big capital departments to my right and
left. But that's something that, and what assumptions need to go
in, some consistency with those estimates. So that's another thing that I think is part
of this. Let me clarify, just because there's, again,
we have so many interrelationships in this plan. IN1A is
about organization-wide asset management policy and financial planning. You have under Tier A, IN1B,
which is about planning for budget operations and maintenance costs for all new capital,
including city developed. So that's the stuff that shows up in our CIP typically, and
the dedication. And I think we tried to distinguish this before. While we have done
exactly as Beth has said, we've asked departments to provide estimated O
and M expenses for for every capital project that is proposed. We need to
develop more of a structure around that work. We just said give us your number.
We did a little bit of testing, but not enough. And we need to provide
more guidance. We need to provide a framework for them to do that cost estimation
work. That's a body of work that will be going on as we move forward.
The dedications, as you know, we have not, we've started to build that
into the agenda bills, but we haven't, planned for necessarily the implementation
of those projected OMM costs for land dedications in our upcoming budget. So that's the
work that's expressed in that Tier A item, which is different than the one that's
kind of about the asset management planning. Council President Mertz? Okay. Oh,
I'm so sorry. I'll go ahead. Follow up if it's on the same thing. No.
Are you sure? How's that March? No, it
was you, you, and then I don't know between the two. So I have kind
of a large suggestion, and you're going to say that you can't scope it tonight,
so I just want to put that out there. That's great. Because it actually relates
to three areas that I think might actually be all birds that could be killed
with one stone. So you've got environmental stewardship, ES1C, aligned environmental management
approaches and implementing and education activities, and then It's already been mentioned
SE1D, which is in the B section, conduct review of city permitting to provide consistency
and predictability for businesses. To which I would add, SC2D set customer service
standards to improve customer response service delivery. and accountability.
So these are all standards and processes, right? And so what I wonder is if
we could look at an implementation of ISO 18091, which is ISO 9001
for municipalities, and whether that might address all
three of those simultaneously. Okay.
We're going to switch to project. Council Member Goodman?
I'm just interested in moving CS2D up to tier 1,
which is set customer service standards to approve. Customer response, service delivery, and accountability.
Thank you. Council member
Hunt. So I would like to further discuss
that under the acquisition,
is to make a study and so I'd like to
put on the table pursuing one or both of the other ones so that we
have a more actionable. So they are not on the chart. They are which ones?
ES-2 and ES-3 actions two and three. Okay. And
Council
Member Walsh? Just to clarify, Mobility 2A, I assume that
that was pushed to C because we need the Mobility Master Plan first.
Is that correct? Sorry, can you repeat that?
Yeah MO2A.
MO2A,
yep. MO2A. Yep. So, that's the near term action. We
have something we're proposing via the CIP.
I think that's why it's showing up on C.
The actual funding of it is
tied in the TBD sales tax
and that is why it doesn't show as a start until 2021.
Lindsay, can I take pause for a second? I have now got one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight listed that we want to be able to ask some
more questions on so you can scope it out. Can we, before we finish food
and get into the scoping, or get food and finish questions on scoping, can we
add to this list so we get a full list, we'll get food, and then
we will come back through and do scoping on each of these so that there's
a clear understanding. And Mariah, are you adding to the list of? I have a
question. Is it one of the ones? I've circled on the second page, I've circled
GD4A SE1D CSP ES2D MO2A
CS1A, IN1A, which had a, I got maybe taken off.
ES3, 2, ES3, 2, and 3, or is that ES2? It's B and C. B
and C. Okay, so I have those highlighted as ones the council would like to
ask some more questions about, so before we get to prioritization, they have a good
understanding. Is there anything else to add to that list? Yes. Okay, we're at it.
So I have a comment on SE1, the city permitting, but I'll wait until we
talk about that. I just had a question about MO3, develop a citywide
transit plan that includes lessons learned from case studies on station area planning. Okay.
And why, I just, I don't have a problem with that being in 2021, but
I'd just like to understand the C part of it. So my proposal
would be, if we have all of them out on the table now, is to
take a break, grab food, come back, and then we will go down this list
and go through the scoping of these. So before we go into our prioritization exercise,
you can decide whether or not you want to add some of these ones that
were Tier 2 and Tier 3 onto the list before you prioritize. One last quick
question, maybe it's not a quick question. Is there something that is not on the
list that Council wants to talk about tonight or just
the eight additional ones that we have here? Meaning, is there something
we are completely missing? Lindsay? Can we think about that while we eat? You can
think about that while you eat. Thank you. Okay, Council President Maritz. I'll just point
out that the idea of implementing a QMS system is not an item on the
list, but it would address three items on the list. The QMS system. The ISO.
Sorry, Quality Management System, the ISO 18091. The ISO standards. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. So the plan will be, Tina, tell us about dinner, how they get their
dinner. That's a good question. We're going to take a break. Over here, but it
needs to come over to the tables. We're going to take a break, probably move
to the first row here, the tables forward slightly so that Fantastic and a
question is Wes going to record our break or are we going to go off
camera for our dinner break? I think we need 15 minutes just to get the
food in and get the food and then we'll turn it back on. That would
be great. Thank you. I
worked under an ICES system.
I'm actually just...
So if I can get everybody back to the table with or without the food,
that would be great. So the staff has tracked
all of those ones that were brought up that were not originally shown as tier
one. And we'll go through these to have any scoping questions you have left about.
Why didn't that one make the list? Or what does that one really mean? Or
is it started or not started? So let's start with GD4A.
Any questions on GD4A? Which? Yes, Paul. Can I make a comment before we do
time into this? Sure. I'm glad we were able to take a break. I think
it's very helpful to kind of organize people's thoughts. And one of the things that
occurred to me during the break is, and maybe it's because we did
goal, I was around when we used to do goal setting. And this has a,
like, the of goal setting of those that used to be part of it because
the council members would propose a list of things to do
staff would scope them write up a little bit of cost this much take this
much time we get together like this and we would go through them all we
vote them and we decide which ones we're going to do which ones we weren't
going to do then staff would go away and start planning those into the budget
and adding them to the work plan It feels a lot like that. And at
those times, if you had proposed something and it didn't look like it was going
to make the list, OK, you're missing out. But I have to keep reminding myself,
even this is only 20. How many is this? Half. This is half? Half of
the actions. This is maybe half of the actions, and there's another half of the
actions that are in our strategic plan. And nobody's saying we're not doing any of
them. It's just a matter in what sequence. and there's various criteria that you have
used to propose them to do a certain way. So I'm reminding myself that, and
as we're going to look at these tier B or whatever, the later ones if
you want to call it, it's more like there's start in year one, start in
year two, you start in year three. There's kind of, to me this is all
about a sequencing question, and it's got to be a work plan that you guys
can get done. So it's important to me to look at this and not think,
okay, if I don't get it in this time, I'm going to lose. That ain't
happening. We're not saying we're not doing anything. It's just when's the best time to
do these things. Correct. Thank you. That is very clearly stated. So we have 2,
4, 6, 8, 10. We have 12, 13 up there that at least
one of you has identified as not clearly understanding the scope of. So I'm just
going to... through them and if you have a question, great. Please flip your card
up and we'll get it answered. Otherwise, we're going to move on pretty quickly so
we can get you to the prioritization exercise. GD4A. So just as a
reminder, GD4A was about identifying and implementing code changes
to address neighborhood-based and community-wide gaps in amenities and services. I think we spent a
little bit of time talking about this one and how it may have some relationship
to some of the other based planning work specifically the
planning on neighborhood protections and then also for missing middle housing with
the potential that there is a piece in here that's a little bit different that's
also considering citywide services and not just neighborhood based work
I'm just going to do a check in with a couple of council members. I
had heard a proposal to combine these two and split the conversations into one year
and the code changes into another. Is that what you wanted to have up on
the board or no? Council Member Hunt? I think if it's
estimated to take about a year to do the conversations, then I think that would
be fine. suggestion wasn't so much specifically one year and the next. Just in terms
of order, I think it makes more sense to do the outreach first for both
because they're so related and then the implementation of the code change second. So just
to clarify, the outreach on the neighborhood-based engagement would be dependent on the neighborhood that
they're working with. So for the neighborhood protections, for example, the proposal was to start
with a pilot with one neighborhood and then proceed to do a couple of neighborhoods
per year after So it wasn't necessarily that all the neighborhoods would have engaged in
these. I'll reach in one year. Council Member Wray? Yeah, I think there are two
discrete things. I think they are, and they should stay two discrete things. And they
both run multi-years. I just think they run in parallel. I think we just can
start them at the same time. Okay, and they are both up here. So is
there anything else on the scope of those two, or should we move on to
SC1A? I just want to say something. Council Member Winsorne. I just want to
respond to what Chris just said. You just said, I think we can start them
at the same time. And I don't know that. I mean, that's not for me
to decide whether we can or not. It's do we want to direct them to
say, I want to prioritize it. I want you to start this earlier. I
think because, again, when I hear, I think we can do it at the same
time, it's like the other one's not out. It's just a matter of when it's
going to start. SE1D.
And David, if you just want to give, I don't know if we have to
read it, if you just want to jump in and talk about a little bit
around scope or we'll see if there's a question. Otherwise, we'll just move on. SE1D.
Any questions on that scope? There was a question about why it would be
limited to businesses and I don't know that necessarily necessarily needs to be limited in
businesses so we can take that direction and feedback if that was the interest. Is
it permitting through, it's not just issuing business licenses, it's
permitting for projects. Oh no, it's permitting. I think the actual intent was mostly about
permitting. To be clarified, it is about all permitting. Okay. All permitting.
Anything else on that? We'll move to CS1A.
outreach strategies, scoping. When there are scoping questions on what this might mean.
If the desire was simply just to have it to be one of the ones
considered, we got it. It's up here. Okay. Going to move on to CS2D.
Customer service standards. Scoping or just having it on the list? Okay. ES3.
So I don't have those on my sheet, David. So those were, and I think
the comment was either one of them or potentially both, I guess. And those were
the actions that were to follow the prioritization and identification of the
land acquisitions to actually either identify a dedicated funding source or make the
acquisitions themselves. Okay, Council Member Ray, Council Member Hunt. Oh, sorry, Administrator Moon. I also
add, but it might help clarify a little bit, that our capital improvement plan
leaves out a multi-year approach to acquisition, again, dependent on when we have funding available.
But the Park Strategic Plan, as an example, has a project for
acquisition, and so you see that reflected in the capital improvement plan. But as David
said, I think the intent was to kind of look across all types of land
and get a sense of what the need might be, and then
from there and then go in and
acquire. And so that's why we have this sequencing the way that it was. Okay,
Council Member Wright. So I would welcome any guidance or insight from the
team around some of the things that are V's and C's if there's a sequencing
issue and that's why you have them as a university. So just sort of what
you just did. Yep. Because we just went through a couple and I don't know
if the reason that they were where they were was because of sequencing. So thank
you. Council Member Hunt. Okay. So, because they're not on the list, I'm just going
to read them so we know what they are. So, one is establish a dedicated
funding source for priority land acquisitions and access improvements. And then number two is
prioritize. So, actually not in the one that is recommended to
prioritize. Prioritize and proactively pursue strategic acquisitions that add inventory to fill missing
links for parks, trail, open space, critical areas, and natural resource protection. I would like
to, and when we were in the strategic planning process, I was trying to pair
studies and plans with an action because I don't want to be in a cycle
where we're studying and then things have changed and we study and things have changed
and we study. So I really don't want to be in that kind of a
process and I would like to study and to what end and I don't see
that we have the to what end. Especially since also the prioritization is in a
separate step that is nowhere I think the difficulty that we had with that action
item was it was both prioritized, as it was originally written, it was both prioritize
and pursue. And it was the pursue part that we thought needed some sequencing. And
then what about the sequencing for just the second one, which is sort of for
B, which is establish a dedicated funding source?
I think we may have contemplated needing to get on
just the feasibility of current funding
sources and the magnitude of the need by doing that assessment
across all different types of land that might be acquired, that funding sources
could be contingent upon what type of land, is it eligible for this type of
grant, for example, and then how much do we need to try So I think
again, the consideration was sequencing. I'll just comment. I'm not sure
we're fully clear, but there is, so from that C action, it does say prioritize
and pursue, and we did incorporate prioritize into the proposed action for A.
So there was a slight modification or combination that was in there. I'm going to
keep going down the list then.
The organization-wide asset management policy. Is there any more questions around scoping, sequencing on
that? MO2A. And Council Member Hunt, I just want to
say too, all these ones, we've actually put them up there with the description so
that people will be able to see that. Council Member Wintersign? I'm sorry, before you
move on. I was listening to that conversation earlier, and I had this
sidebar conversation with Beth a little bit. This is an infrastructure. It really
feels like an internal systems thing. It's about cost allocation and implementing a proper
kind of asset management financial policy and plan.
That's very much how the organization needs to operate in managing its finances
and forecasting and But it's in infrastructure.
So I'm interpreting this one as a
business process, rules, policies, system project.
I think that's correct, but I'm just letting everybody know. I think Fav would agree
with that characterization. Thank you. MO2A.
Long-term action plan for the smaller capital projects. Questions on that?
MO3 sorry MO2B.
Transit agencies partnerships, questions on that?
I'm going to keep going. We can go back if I'm going too fast. MO3A,
citywide transit plan, scoping questions. Just a question on
scoping and sequencing to put that into 2021. So
Deputy Council President, that was also sequencing, thinking about getting the mobility master plan done
first and then moving on to that. Okay, thank you.
Can I back up just for a minute? We already passed this one, but
the MO2A, the near-term action plan, smaller capital improvements
starting in 2021. Could you just speak to CEP? Because the verb
there is implement, we're going to lay out a local funding strategy. So I think
we feel like we have developed an idea. We're going to bring that
idea forward as part of the CIP and the ongoing conversation about the transportation benefit
district. And shown as starting in 2021 because our
proposal is to utilize some of the proceeds from that sales tax to do those
projects. And the verb is implement, so you need the money to do more. Correct.
So sequencing. Okay, now you made me lose my place, Mariah. Am I at ES1C?
ES1C. I'm
sorry. Council
President Martz. So I just want to point out, so there's ES1C sort of on
its own, right, which is Aligned Environmental Management Approaches and Implement Training and Education
Activities. And then there's this idea that I had as part of a QMS. Can
I take a second to explain? Because I realize that there may be people who
don't know what a QMS is. Okay. So a quality management system is, it's sort
of centered around ISO 9000, which is sort of the broad,
broad standard and ISO 1809-1 is specific for government organizations. But it's the idea
that you sort of say what you do and do what you say and you
document everything, all your processes. So basically in each
area you identify focuses. So you'd have an economic development focus and you'd have a
DSD focus and you would have a parks focus and you would have an IBD
focus and you would go through and you would build your customer model overall process
of how your city works and then you have your specific processes underneath it and
then the crux of it is you do an audit at the end you hire
someone to come in and basically check that you're doing it the way you say
you're doing it and then if all that works then you're certified with it so
I have no idea how much it would cost I note that those three items
you put them together that's ninety three thousand to two hundred
fifteen thousand dollars this is this would be expensive but so I just I'll I
don't know because I suggested it today. CFS had literally no time to look into
it, but I did want to explain what I was suggesting. Thank you. And they
are bucketed together there because it came up in comments that they all had that
same look and feel. Any other scope questions on that? I
wanted to comment on ISO 900 because I actually have some strong feelings. It's a
million dollars worth of work to do with a city this size, so it's a
huge undertaking. studies have shown with ISO 900 about half of the organizations get certified
actually perform better and about half the organizations get certified perform worse so there's no
there's no correlation between ISO 900 certification and a high-performing organization
okay so we got through our list so I would I wouldn't I don't know
that I would think that's what we want to do okay hang on hang on
We have the, maybe, maybe. Let me jump
in here for one second. We currently have them listed all three separately. And if
you're feeling as you walk around and prioritize that they are linked for you, we
will find a way for you to do that. And yes,
I would just say that if an organization is going in, it's ISO 9000, not
900. If an organization is going in merely because they are contractually required to be
an ISO 9000 organization, there are ways to minimally do it and just basically put
out a cocktail napkin and say this is our process. But if an organization is
looking to actually effect change, so I would question whether the effectivity
relates back to why people are doing it. We're going to have to arm wrestle.
Okay, so we can do that at social time after. Anybody interested in learning the
merits, the pros, cons, and concerns about ISO systems can join us at the gas
lamp after. Okay, we are moving into the next part, which is? Make a clarification.
Sure. So on the sheets, we have those individually listed as well as combined. Well,
thank you. So that is the option. Thank you. And then I wanted to rewind,
if I could, real quick, just back to the I-M1A, the infrastructure. clarify with the
operating departments so there is the financial piece but I believe that there's also some
inventory and condition assessment work in some areas that is still needed so it's not
that's correct okay so it's not purely to just clarify Paul's comment it's not truly
a financial planning and policy exercise there are there is some additional work first steps
I think we're ready to move into the prioritization exercise and I wonder if you
want to explain how that's going to work. Sure, so we are, so multi.
Is that me? No, no, no. I think you should go. Then
I'll be happy to facilitate. No, I think you should go for it. Okay, great,
here I go. All right. We have a number of dots, a
very few for each of you. Again, this is just to
sort of help us. We've gotten some feedback through the conversation, but this is really
meant to be uncomfortable and have you help us discern what's highest
priorities perhaps. So we also are gonna
use this of course, looking at individual results and aggregate results to identify where we
have individual priorities or common interests. And we will use
this as a data point as we then walk away and contemplate
what we can incorporate into the preliminary budget. So
we are giving you two green dots and five blue dots.
Seven. What? Seven. Cooler doesn't get eight. They were cut. They got
eight. We didn't use the ISO 9000. There's
seven. I can badly give my dog. Wait, wait, wait. Wait. People are
seeing seven, and there should have been five. Okay, please. Honor me.
That ain't gonna happen. Y'all swore an oath. Just return your dots. Crumple up two
of your blue. You should have two green and five blue.
Thank you. Two green, five only. I only swore that I hold the Constitution.
I'm done. I'm watching you. This is pressure. Yeah, we can do that.
So what we would like you to do, and you may want to spend just
a little time here at the table if you need to, is we're going to
ask you to do the impossible. Your two green dots would indicate
perhaps your two highest priorities. And then you get the five blue
ones for other priorities. I think you would go.
OK. One number box. But I don't think we had that rule, so I think
you could, yeah. Put all five of my blue dots in one place. You can
weight your vote. We used to do, that's how I did it. Yeah, this is
seeming familiar. Okay, hang on a sec. I got some cards in there. Council Member
Goodman, Council Member Hunt. So there was some identification
of items on the list that are ongoing. So for example, we've got this mobility
master plan that we've been working on for a while. What happens
if? Good question. I got you. What happens to the things that are still ongoing?
I think we may need to have a conversation with council, whether it's tonight or
during budget, about whether or not those things just have to continue because
something in our critical services bucket is reliant on them. Or because we're going to
assume that utilize your dots for new things and that your old
priorities are still consistent. We're going to have to pose those questions.
I would also say that staff is going to make an argument too on some
potential action items that we think
may not be able to be stopped, right? But I think we have to look
at it in the context of what's available in the budget still. We may or
may not take this as a signal that you desire for us to shift direction,
but we're going to have to pose those questions back to you when we see
these results or as we're going through budget deliberations. Council Member Hunt.
So I'm wondering, I think that maybe ES3B and C are the only ones that
are on here in some form. So I wondered if we could,
just for comparing them in this setting, if there is like a
ballpark amount. That's a good question. Yeah.
Maybe while they discuss for a second, maybe there's another question. I
appreciate Council Member Goodman's questions we as staff have had that conversation too about
what we will do with this with this data when we get it back
we're gonna have to look at it with a few different lenses what are the
cost implications for keeping these things and do we already have it in the base
budget there's a bunch of different ways we're gonna have to look at it
I'm not seeing any more questions, but I'm seeing a lot of people studying less.
So I'm assuming you're not all ready to jump up there and do your dots.
So take your time. You don't have a lot of dots. Oh, I think this
is getting up. OK, wait. Can I pose one more question? Sorry. I saw
a little bit of anxiety on faces about
utilizing more than one dot on any of the items. Do we have consensus? I
think this is where I'm happy to entertain whatever rule you want to self-impose. Can
we give that to the ad hoc committee? We have an ad hoc committee to
sign that. Yeah, what are your thoughts as a group of seven?
Well, there's a down. So that's a, you should do one per? Yes.
Yes. All right. Anyone else feel... Does anyone feel differently and wants to advocate the
counterpoint? What was the question? Weighted or no. Whether or not you can use more
than one dot on an action item. I think no. No? Okay, so I think
the answer is no. Not seeing any other counterpoint here. So if someone comes up
with eight dots, you know somebody broke the rules? Maybe more than one rule.
Likely. Okay, so take the time you need to look at it.
We'll
come
in and then we'll summarize it. We had them on both walls, folks. Oh, okay.
But we, that's right, sorry. So we have, we have,
I don't, it doesn't pop up when I, you're too, you have another experience. That's
why I'm so unresponsive. Like, hours later, I'm like,
oh, jeez. It's just, it's just like, dream of a dream. There's two
projects
here.
Whoa. Yeah, we should have, we're doing great. No more going for people.
Council members,
council members, clarification.
Clarification
on MOC.
O2A, near-term, smaller capital projects,
mobility projects. I misspoke about the funding
plan. I'm mixing up too many things in the CIP in my head. The plan
is to utilize the school zone safety fund. That's the proposal, the
proposed funding source that staff will present in your CIP. the TBD sales tax.
So it will be school zone safety fund. Why we're
proposing to start that in 2021 is the CIP also shows
two particular projects designated for that funding source in 2020,
which is also on your CIP. So this is just a correction of which funding
source and why in 2021.
you
It's like hardware. Oh, yeah. I know. It does
that. So this is the emergency management guy. Oh, yeah. No, it just does. Ignore
alarms. I have to do that every half hour. You have to test your system.
Keep sticking along. It's in the market. It's hard for my cover. One of the
two. Yeah,
totally. Now it's incorporated.
Second person done? Sure. Very nice. They've done before you, what happened?
I don't have a process for you. At least. At least.
Yeah. But.
Just
go on to arm wrestling guys. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Have a strategy. And let the council see
the impact of a strategy. And what you can do if you don't use your
money here, you can use what
you can do here. Yeah,
look how you can...
What is a disaster?
Any planning system. Oh yes, thank you. You really
should only
get an ERP if you have a business model that you can't accomplish what you
need to do. You're like a supply chain company. If you're fine and you're like,
you know, even better with an ERP
system.
Oh, nice. I am
surprised that I got so much support so far. I am
pleased. Which one? GD3A. Comprehensive
Infrastructure Master Plan for Central Issaquah.
We need these font sizes much larger. We need these font sizes much larger. At
least the labels. because then I can look at what they are down on my
thing. Younger eyes printed that, but I think I didn't. What's clear was not meeting.
E, S, A, yes, Z. So there
it's.
Yes we
could link that. Good.
cheering him on
There are seven of us. And there are those that say other. There are
seven of us and we each had seven dots. So 49
totes are made. And how many are
listed? Eight.
I did one.
I think it's interesting is number of green dots on these. I'm really regretting the
additional ones. There's multiple different options. Sometimes I'm sitting at
home at 10 o'clock at
night. Oh my God, there's so much to do. She dances to say, before I
get rid of it. That's well established by them. ISO 900.
She just
ripped
on it. Just... We couldn't hold up under the weight of the dot. A seething
mass. I'm already out of the drinks.
Okay, if you are making your way back to your seats, we're going to start
with a question and then do kind of a summary of how all the dots
landed. Okay.
So, I want to pose a question to you and give
you an opportunity. Our intent was to
try to maybe shake out what was a critical
priority. Have you placed your dots with that in mind? Yes.
We're going to go through and just read them out because I heard these aren't
people who have eyesight that's working as well as mine. And we're
going to talk about whether or not we need to parse through
of these votes. And then we're gonna talk about how,
just recap again how staff is going to utilize these.
That's all I can. She puts it on camera.
Alright, so we have MO1A
and B provide for timely and successful adoption
and analyze data to better understand regional travel behavior, define pass through traffic
policy objectives. There are three blue dots on that
one. M01C, develop and execute a long-term
funding approach for larger capital projects and ongoing sustainable management data
assets. Two blue, one green. GD2A, update codes and standards to
retain it. GD2A, conduct
a review of progress toward growth targets.
GD2E, proactively influence the next round of regional growth targets.
GD2A, create a comprehensive infrastructure master plan, public and private,
development areas planned for growth to blue to green
gd4b develop code amendments to address missing middle and other housing
options to blue es1c align environmental management approaches
and implement training and education activities blue es3a complete
park streamside forest floodplain and critical area studies to provide a comprehensive view of land
acquisition goals and
citywide one blue one green
se 1a city vision to blue one green as e to a implement
and enhance the housing strategy work plan one blue one green
3-2-C, determine if city property assets should be used for affordable housing needs, 1-green,
1-blue. 3-3-B, adopt and implement the healthy community strategy,
1-blue. 3-3-C, facilitate nonprofit organizations to locate or expand
to provide needed services locally, 1-blue. 3-3-C, create an equity
and cultural competency initiative for city staff, 1-blue. S2C,
evaluate the condition and performance of current city facilities and options for improving service delivery,
one blue. CS2E, update financial information to be accessible, clear,
and available on a regular basis, two green, one blue. IN1B, plan for and
budget operations and maintenance costs with all new capital, including both city-developed and dedicated,
one blue, one green. GD4A, identify
and implement code changes and activities to address neighborhood-based and community-wide gaps and amenities
and services. Three green. SE1D. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue Building upon
a review of engagement efforts and updates to the City's Toolkit on Public Engagement. One
green. CS2D, Set Customer Service Standards to Improve Customer Response,
Service Delivery and Accountability. One green. ES3B, Establish a Dedicated Money
Source for Priority Land Acquisitions and Access Improvements. One green. And...
IMPLEMT-M02A, IMPLEMENT A NEAR-TERM ACTION PLAN TO COMPLETE SMALLER CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRAMS
TO MAXIMIZE EXISTING FUNDING OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. ONE BLUE. AND THE
COMBINED ES1C, CS2D, SE1D, NEW
ACTION OF IMPLEMENTING QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IS09000 TO
IMPROVE SYSTEMS AND ENHANCED SERVICES. THAT WAS ME.
Thank you. Yep, this was in edit.
Questions, comments? Council members want to
discuss these results? Emily, do you
want to talk about sort of how you're using this as a broad filter for
our planning? Yep, I will. So we certainly will about this
in tiers, so we'll take the ones that have one or more dots, examine those,
and look at implementation timeline resources needed,
sort of start to prioritize those for possible inclusion into preliminary budget.
If we have some difficulty fitting
of those in or if there's some conflict in resource deployment, then
we will articulate that as we bring forward the budget and we will
look particularly at the action items that you have given
multiple dots to as perhaps bigger priorities and the ones that got
green dots since those were top priorities. They're not all equal in
size, right? There's different budgets that would have to be allocated for these.
They affect different teams. And so again, we need to do that scan across all
of them and think about how we would go about the implementation. So that's the
next step of work for staff. I think also it may be helpful, just as
if council wants to provide any reaction to what you see here. any
discussion about, for example, items that have only a single dot?
I'll get to your first question about what you see here. Actually, I had this
feeling. I think, sorry, .
Sorry. Thank you. I'll let Paul .
when we were going through the front of this page, what struck me, we
were not even halfway through it. And I thought, my gosh, what a,
that's a great work plan just as we got halfway through it. These, adding these
items, even though some of them are continuation, but seeing them through
is critical. And I think some of the new ones that are in there fantastic
and I just thought my feeling was is there's really no way we can go
wrong here. These are critical to I think many in the council, I think they're
critical to many within the community. They're essential for the city's long-term health and benefit
for people here now are going to be here in the future. So I mean
I don't really think there's any winners or losers out of this exercise at all
and So anyway, that's what I wanted to share. We were like,
okay, you guys have done a planning and we're gonna try to, we're gonna give
you some feedback on we want you to shift some maybe the order and priorities
of things. But I just wanted to share, I don't see any winners and losers
in this. I think there's so many good things here. The city's gonna win no
matter, and I mean everybody in the city is gonna win no matter what. Thank
you. Council
President Marks? So, I'm a little, I, I wasn't clear that,
I thought the purpose of this was to just, we had a strong man
by the administration and we had some feedback from the council and that the purposes
of the dots were to indicate relative particular intensity of
interest. I did not realize that we were potentially condemning
those that did not get dots. Which is I think what you just said you're
gonna go you said you're gonna go look at the ones that have dots well
So yes, I did and let me clarify so that's that's an exercises look at
the ones that have dots We will still do what I said before the exercise
which is look at the things in particular that are continuation items that have some
criticality that I believe through
The comments that were made tonight, we got a little bit of input about items
that may not have received dots but are still important to council members. This is
just one point of input. So I did not mean to say that if something
didn't get a dot, it will not show up either as a proposed work plan
item or as a budget item, but we will provide some explanation, justification about
that. So taking off my council president hat and putting on my one of seven
hat, When I get to budget season, what I would love, and I would love
to know how the other six feel about it, I would love to see all
the stuff that you guys came in here as A's. the stuff that we've added
from the B column that got dots with it. And I'd love to see what
that is in the budget. And then I'd love to see, okay, if you dial
out the things that did not get dots, here's what it is. And if you
dial out, if you then dial, and then you say only the stuff that got
two or more dots, here's what it is. Only things that got three or more
dots, here's what it is. Or something to that effect to say, look, if we
did everything that we talked about on June 7th, like here's the price tag, here's
what a, price tag is. And again, I would like to hear how my fellow
council members feel about how we would use that information. Understood. I think that's a
great idea. I think we're going to have to do that also in the operating
budget. We're going to have to identify this is what could fit within the revenue
box that we have constructed. And then, as we always do with the preliminary budget,
then we ask you the question, how do you feel about that? Here's some other
stuff that we considered but didn't fit. to swap things. Council Member Rick.
I thought this was a marvelous exercise. I think it really gave everybody an opportunity
to, in a very individual and non-threatening way, to express what they thought
of all of these things was most important to them. And I liked the greens
because it's like if there was only one thing up here I could have, I
could put a green on it. And I thought that was a really compelling way
to express my views on things. Going forward, I think
Council President Martz's idea of let's use this in the spirit I think it was
intended to, which wasn't to kill things, but was to help us prioritize what's important
to this group of people as we look at what we think is important to
the people we represent. Thank you. Any other comments? Deputy Councilor President Petit.
Just to follow up, I really did like the way that we were able to
work on that exercise. I think that that was great, this last exercise. And thank
you, Council President Martz, for asking the question because that's what was in my mind
as well. I just wanted to make sure that things, there were all sorts of
things over there that are very important that have
dots. So I just want to make sure that those are all incorporated and I
actually like Council President Mart's idea of breaking those down during budget.
Any other comments? I see some people have written these down.
Would it also be helpful in advance of budget for us to publish a little
report of this? Okay, great. Interesting.
If we have no more questions about process, I wanted to thank you all for
participating in this workshop because it's the first one we've done with the strategic plan.
And I would guess that year one, when everything looks exciting and fun, is a
very hard year to do. So it's hard not to want to start everything at
once and commit ourselves to these. But you did an excellent job. You had excellent
questions. and I'm glad the exercise appeared to give you
what you were hoping for, which is an ability to express what is most important.
So great, thank you very much. This is awesome, it is only 810, unless somebody
wants to bring something up for good of the order. Okay, we're done.
Is that like adjourned? That's like adjourned. Good night, class. Awesome.
Yeah, I would like to report it like I said. And