Welcome.

I just saw the bumblebee in the back.

Okay, welcome to the Bellevue City Council meeting for October 7th, 2025.

Clerk, could would you like to do the um roll call?

Mayor Robinson here.

Deputy Mayor Malikutia.

Councilmember Bargava.

Here.

Councilmember Hamilton.

Councilmember Lee.

Councilmember New England.

Here.

And Councilmember Simon Devoria.

Councilmember Hamilton, would you like to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance?

My Pledge of Algie.

The United States of America.

And the Republican individual with liberty and justice for all.

All right, so here's my minutes.

Okay.

Okay, so we have three proclamations today.

We have Indigenous People's Day being read by Councilmember New in House, I believe, and received by Sharon Sini, ADA Title Six, Equal Opportunity Officer for the City of Bellevue.

Welcome.

Go ahead, Councilmember.

Thank you, Mayor.

Honored to read this proclamation this evening.

Whereas Indigenous people have lived in the Puget Sound region since time immemorial, and whereas we acknowledge the land we are on as the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, the Suquamish tribe, the Makoshute Indian tribe, and the Snoquami Indian tribe, and whereas native communities and tribal nations across the countries have endured centuries of displacement, assimilation, violence, and erasure, yet continue to persevere and sustain their cultures.

And whereas we express our deepest respect to the original caretakers of this land who continue to live here today and honor their heritage.

And whereas indigenous people have made and continue to make vital contributions to our region through stewardship of the environment, advancements in science and technology, leadership in the arts and literature, and countless other areas.

And whereas the City of Bellevue reaffirms its commitment to equity, inclusion, and opportunity, and to strengthening relationships with Native Americans, Alaska natives, Native Hawaiians, and all indigenous communities.

Now I, therefore, Jared Newenhouse, on behalf of Lynn Robinson, mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, on behalf of its city council, do hereby proclaim October 13th, 2025 as Indigenous People's Day here in Bellevue, Washington, and urge all residents to reflect on the history, the contributions, and the resilience of Indigenous people.

Bellevue further commits to building strong relationships with our tribal neighbors and honoring the heritage and ongoing contribution of Indigenous communities.

Sharon Sene Yenesha, Zentin Nishle, Kisani Hopi Fire Clan, Bush Jean, Honakani Desh Ado Hopi Sun Clan de Chinale.

My second clan is who I'm born for, which is my protection clan, which is Fire Clan, which is from the Hopi tribe of Northern Arizona.

My third clan is my Che, my grandfather and my mother's side, which is Honogatni, which means one that walks around, which is one of the original Navajo clans.

My fourth clan is my Gua from my Hopi side, and we are a son clan from that side.

As an indigenous woman and a veteran of the United States Navy, I am proud to be here working for Bellevue as a public administrator and as a professional here.

Working at the disability inclusion, language access programming, and equal opportunity.

Most sincerely, this proclamation for Indigenous People's Day represents the existence of my people and indigenous people across the world who are still here and who still matter.

May each of you walk in beauty today and every day.

That means I walk in beauty.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Please uh stay around and at the end of all the proclamations, we'll do pictures.

Thank you.

Okay, next we have uh walk and roll to school day, read by Councilmember Bargawa and uh accepted by Dr.

Heather Sanchez, the chief operating officer of our Bellevue School District.

Councilmember Barga.

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

Um, whereas walk and roll to school day in October continues to encourage children to safely walk or roll to school or to the bus, school bus, while supporting the growth of safe routes to school programs across the United States and around the world.

And whereas all children benefit when communities work to improve the safety of people walking and rolling.

And whereas parents and caregivers play an important role in teaching children about safety when traveling to school and in encouraging healthy habits that will last a lifetime, and whereas choosing to walk or roll as modes of transportation can help reduce traffic congestion and provide environmental benefits for the entire community.

And whereas this year's walk and roll event is coordinated by Bellevue School Pool, a partnership between the City of Bellevue, King County Metro, and the Bellevue School District, encouraging families and students to explore safe, healthy, and sustainable transportation options.

Now, therefore, I, Vishal Bargava, on behalf of Lynn Robinson, mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, and on behalf of its city council to hereby proclaim October 8th, 2025 as walk or roll to school day.

In Bellevue, Washington, and encourage everyone to consider the safety, health, and well-being of children traveling to and from school today and every day.

All right.

Thank you very much.

And I'm pleased to accept this proclamation, and thank you to the council members and the mayor.

And my name is Dr.

Heather Sanchez.

I'm so pleased to be here to accept this.

And I just want to take a moment to celebrate the partnership between the city of Bellevue and the Bellevue School District as we cultivate education, infrastructure, safety, and sustainability in our community.

It's an exciting day this day and always, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here to accept the proclamation.

Again, thank you very much.

Thank you, and please stay around so we can do pictures after.

And then our last proclamation is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month.

And I'm going to read this, and Aaron Hunt from Bellevue Overlake Medical Center is here to accept, so welcome.

Whereas pregnancy and infant loss is a common but often unspoken tragedy that affects many families.

And such losses can occur suddenly and without warning through miscarriage, stillbirth, preterm birth, sudden infant death syndrome, accident or other causes or complications.

And October 15th is recognized across the nation and around the world as a day of remembrance and awareness for pregnancy and infant loss.

An increasing awareness of the causes and impacts of pregnancy and infant loss can foster greater understanding, support, and resources for families in our community.

And this month is time to honor the lives of children taken too soon and to support grieving parents and families whose lives are forever changed by such loss.

And recognizing pregnancy and infant loss awareness month allows the people of Bellevue to reflect on how, as individuals and as a community, we can both support bereaved families and work to reduce preventable losses.

Now, therefore, I, Lynn Robinson, Mayor of the City of Bellevue, Washington, on behalf of the City Council, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2025 as pregnancy loss, pregnancy and infant loss awareness month in Bellevue, Washington, and encourage all residents to learn about ways to support grieving families and to raise awareness around opportunities for prevention and healing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Robinson.

Thank you, Council members.

My name is Aaron Hunt, and I am honored to be here.

I am a labor and delivery nurse at Overlake.

And on behalf of Overlake Perinatal Bereavement Team and all of the families who have suffered a loss, we thank you for acknowledging October to honor these tiny little lives.

One of those families is here with me tonight, whose son Lucas, I helped deliver sleeping at 38 weeks, and who has no doubt changed the lives forever, but also my own.

His big sister Emmy is with me.

I was also able to be with her when she was delivered.

It is such a gift and an honor to walk with these families in loss and in true joy.

The loss of a child, no matter their age, affects not just the parents, but the families, the grandparents, the friends, and the community that they live in.

Their love for that baby was not just measured in weeks, but in their hopes and dreams of the future.

The sound of their cry, their birthday parties, the future homecomings, their weddings.

Every loss of these tiny little lives is an enormous tragedy and a loss.

And we are so grateful that we as a community will honor them with some extra special love in October.

For those who have suffered, I stand with you.

And you are not alone, and you never have to forget your baby, and there is a community surrounding you here for when you are ready.

Thank you for this time and this honor.

Thank you so much.

Let's do a picture.

Is there a motion to approve the agenda?

Are you moved to approve the agenda?

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

Um we have anybody signed up for oral communications, clerk.

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

There are two pre-registered speakers on tonight's list.

So before I start calling names, I'll go over a few of the rules that the council has in place.

The total time of oral communications is for a period of no more than 30 minutes, and all topics must relate to City of Bellevue government.

People speaking to items on tonight's agenda will be called first, and then if time remains, people speaking to items not on tonight's agenda will be called.

The presiding officer in both of those categories is authorized to give preference to those who have not spoken to council within the last 60 days, or who will be speaking on items that will come in front of the council within the next 60 days.

So each speaker will be allowed up to three minutes to speak, and only three speakers are allowed to speak to any one side of a particular topic.

And then additionally, I want to remind folks that in compliance with Washington State campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections.

No speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for election, which includes one's own campaign.

Anyone starting to speak on these topics will be asked to stop.

So with that, I will call our first speaker, who is Joe Kunzler.

And I'm going to uh add also in general that I ask that the speakers be polite and refrain from obscene language and rudeness and express uh their opinions on topics that have to do with the Bellevue City Council.

Okay, I do not actually I do see a hand now, sorry.

Uh Mr.

Cunzer is joining us virtually.

Oh, thank you so much.

Perfect.

Sorry, technical difficulties.

That's fine.

Um can you hear me now?

Yes, we can, thank you.

Your time begins now.

Thank you.

Um sorry here concerned, friend of Bellevue.

Um tonight I understand you have a resolution about making sure there's accountability for certain misdemeanor crimes.

Um however, it has come to my attention that there are some crimes that King County court district court will not restore into competency.

One of them is a trespass violation.

And you're probably wondering how do I notice?

Well simple.

Alex Zimmerman recently got off because he was found incompetent to stand trial.

And the King County District Court, who I blame 100% for this, made a determination.

I think when you debate and deliberate tonight on this new legislation, you need to make sure that the King County District Court will restore the competency.

Because I think that that's what you want.

I think it's what uh um the justice system deserves.

And I will say that your prosecutor and deputy prosecutor did ever sing correctly and rightly, as well as the assigned defense counsel on contract to the city of Bellevue.

The attorneys weren't the issue here.

The proceed, in my opinion, the procedures of the King County District Court were and I'm very disappointed in them for the attorneys who performed admirably in a case of much public interest.

Um I will say with a minute left to go.

I asked that he not issue a Nazi salute or make any other references to genocidal dictators because of what happened two years ago.

When over 1,100 Jews were killed.

And on top of it.

Um there was a rise of anti-Semitism that started that night.

It changed the calculation for me and for others who I won't speak for.

Taking out themselves and the re would when you have meetings of certain regional bodies that we have to not allow or accept references to World War II to be just water off the ducks back.

I find a call the statement that Zimmerman makes at the beginning.

A borderline death threat because of this history.

I asked that it stop.

I want to thank you for your public service.

I want to especially again thank the Bellevue City attorney and his staff as well as the defense council for their public service, and hope we can see some positive change come out of this situation.

Thank you again.

The next speaker on our list is Alex Zimmerman.

Oh, it's me.

I'm sorry, I'm disabled man.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, my name is Alex Zimmerman.

Yeah.

Oh guys, you see this?

Yeah.

Stop, Mayor Robinson.

Nazi guest up a pig in anti-Semite.

It's exactly what is I want to speak right now.

Why believe the city?

So anti-Semite city.

It's very important.

Yes.

Right now, because we have too many problems right now with anti-Semitism.

Yeah.

So happy Jewish holiday today and for another 5,000 years.

And today, very important day.

What is Belvi Council not respond to this?

Two years ago you trespass me, the 7th of October, because approximately 2,000 Jewish people in Israel killed by Iranian bandita.

Emir Robinson cut me in policemen arrest me because I have this opinion.

This exactly happened now and happened two years ago in 7 of October when I speak here.

Because by definition, you're not only anti-Semite, you are Bandita, a Nazi Gestapa pig.

That's exactly who you are.

And for 35 years, you fighting only with one man.

Refugee, old, disabled Jewish man for 35 years.

Look how many rules you change.

Fifteen years ago, you changed rules only for Alex Zimmerman.

So only 30 minutes and 10 people can speak.

And 150,000 people cannot speak because you are Nazi pig.

You are a Nazi pig.

Yeah.

Right now, a couple of weeks ago, you changed a new rules only for Alex Zimmerman.

So you right now want to trespass me for six months.

I only one man who you terrorize, trespass, five times prosecute, and five times I win.

I've been five times for 35 years.

You understand about your talking?

So I speak right now to everybody.

So this Nazi guestapa anti-Semite big who don't understand.

We exist for five thousand years.

We will be exist for another five thousand years.

It's not a question about this.

But when called Council identical in acting like a Nazi anti-Semite, it's a very important point for everybody.

You need to stop on this.

It's America.

You cannot do this because you're anti-Semite, and because Alex Zimmerman have different opinion, and because I am a Jew and I'm disabled.

This is exactly what is the Nazi Gitler did this.

You know what this means?

Kill Jew and kill disabled people.

You're doing exactly the same.

So right now I speak to everybody.

Viva Trump, Viva New American Revolution.

Stand up.

Slav and happy cow.

This America.

Thank you very much.

That is the end of our pre-registered speaker's list.

So I'd asked at this point.

If there's anyone else who would like to make comment to the council this evening, please raise your hand.

Mr.

Sergeant, I see your hand, please come forward.

My name is Lee Sargent, and I live across Renner Lake High School and have done so for over 46 years.

So it's been a while.

And one of the things that I've experienced in the last almost three years now that I have been in the presence of such esteemed people as you I have seen you do your job.

And you know what?

People in the city disagree.

But you always come to some conclusion.

And I think you have focused in ways that are helpful to the city and to the people that uh you represent, no matter what they say or how they say it.

And they don't always understand it.

But I do.

And I think I've been here during every session during those years and watched you represent those people.

And I appreciate you very much.

Thank you.

There are no additional hands online.

I'll do one final call out in chambers.

Okay.

No hands, Mayor.

I'll turn it back to you.

Thank you.

Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?

I move to approve the consent calendars.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

So we have two study session items tonight.

One's for information only, the first one, the second one's for direction.

I'll have the city manager introduce these for us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor Robinson, Deputy Mayor Malikutian and Council members.

Very happy tonight to have Emile King, our director of community development and Liz Flores, our cultural tourism specialist here this evening to give you an overview of some of the planning work that's underway for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

It will bring uh lots of attention to our region with Seattle hosting six matches.

And we want to be a city that's poised and ready to welcome the visitors.

And that's what Mr.

King and Ms.

Flores will be sharing with you this evening what our planning work is to date and what's yet to come.

And so with that, I will hand it over to Emil.

Thank you for the introduction, uh City Manager Carlson and uh good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and members of council.

Uh Liz and I are really happy to be here tonight to describe the city's game plan for the 2026 uh World Cup.

Um as the city manager noted, this is a significant event, and the uh Seattle Bellevue region is very fortunate to be a host city for a number of games here.

Um in just 35 weeks and two days, uh the 2026 World Cup does kick off.

And the the first game is going to be in Mexico City, uh, Mexico.

Uh, this World Cup is unique in that there are three host countries.

So we have Mexico, the United States, and Canada all sharing uh the hosting uh responsibilities.

And just four days later, the first of the six matches will occur on June the 15th during our beautiful summers here at uh Lumen Field in the city of Seattle.

Um just as far as introduction, uh soccer has been described as both the world's game and the beautiful game.

Uh it's played in many countries, and it's estimated that there are 3.5 billion fans worldwide.

So that's out of about 8 billion people who live uh in the in the world.

Um what we'll be describing tonight is our uh detailed game plan for what Bellevue is going to do to be part of this team locally to really welcome uh folks to this region, um both close in statewide, nationally, and international folks who are gonna be visiting here as well, and most importantly, to make it a really uh cool event for our residents and businesses, so that it is a memorable thing uh for them in uh years and decades uh to come.

Tonight is information only.

Um, as the excitement has been uh building in this region, we're gonna share with you both the overall strategy and then we're gonna drill down into some of the specific plans for Bellevue.

The agenda where Liz is going to go into some detail.

We'll talk about what to expect leading into 2026 and specifically for the five weeks that the World Cup will be occurring, so all of the 104 games, and specifically on the three-week period where there's going to be games in this region.

We'll also go in uh next to the regional context of how we are part of a broader set of entities that's uh cities, county, uh businesses, nonprofits, all doing the collective work to welcome visitors and most importantly provide a great experience for folks who live and work in this area.

We'll then go into details of Bellevue's specific plan.

So we've thought um long and hard about how to uh capitalize on our proximity to the city of Seattle.

We'll have the East Link Light Rail uh opened by then, so we're we'll be focusing on how we can use our regional connectivity uh to really be a way that we can benefit from this.

And then Liz will go into what to expect next.

Uh we have some things even starting up later this month that we'll describe to you.

Thank you.

Okay, so as was mentioned, um the 2026 World Cup will be the largest ever, spanning three countries and across the North American continent.

This is the most watched sporting event in the world with about five billion views last tournament in comparison.

A Super Bowl has about a hundred and fifteen million views.

And while this numbers are great, it's the games are going to be spread across the three countries, um, spreading the tourism across the continent.

While we have been developing our World Cup strategies, it's important to note that we do not know which teams will be playing in the cities until after the official draw on December 5th.

After this event, we will also know if any team has decided to stay in our area in what is called a base camp.

This too could determine the number of visitors we receive and will inform our future planning.

These are the dates of the six games that we have in Seattle.

They are all weekday games.

And now we're going to give you a little bit of the regional context.

This is what's going to be happening in our state.

While initial media reported that we could expect 750,000 more visitors to King County during the World Cup.

A recent study from Deloitte and from Tourism Economics and CoStar have reported that we can expect about 145,000 more visitors to the county than we normally do.

This is our high period during our high tourism period, and while occupancy is over 81% during this time.

But it's good to note that we will have a different profile of visitors during this region.

So people who may have chosen to come to Seattle might not come during this time and might come after or before, but we will they will be replaced by World Cup tourists.

The Seattle Center is going to host the official FIFA fan zone, offering large scale viewing experiences, entertainment and cultural programming.

This is the primary official fan zone and the only one in King County.

Additional fan zones are being planned in nine communities across Washington State.

Fan zones were chosen by the local organizing committee in order to spread spread across the state broad participation and the bring to festivities to many different areas, communities large and small.

The Seattle Chamber and other regional partners are offering grant funding to support World Cup related activities outside of Seattle.

These grants are decided designed to empower community organizations, small businesses, to host their own events and activations, bringing the tournament to neighborhoods across the region.

Playbooks and webinars are also happening to inform the community about how to participate.

Here are some of the local and community impacts we can expect.

As state's second largest hotel market, we are well we are well prepared to welcome 15,000 World Cup visitors that we currently expect in Bellevue.

These additional visitors are expected to give an economic impact of 23 million to the city.

The projected economic impact includes direct spending at hotels, shops, small businesses, and local attractions, all supporting jobs in Bellevue.

The visitor profile will be different, giving us an opportunity to showcase our community to new people who may become repeat visitors.

We're planning opportunities for residents to engage in World Cup festivities without needing a ticket to the game.

Expect food, music, and cultural events.

Finally, we are working to build a package of repeatable activations to improve city processes and expand communication in a way that can be used for future events, leaving a lasting impact on Bellevue's cultural and economic landscape.

The World Cup is an excellent opportunity not only to get ready for the world stage, but also to advance work that will benefit our community for years to come.

We're working with several different city departments to move this forward.

Some of the things you can expect in the coming months include infrastructure and maintenance investments, like improvements to light poles around the Grand Connection, and a new large-scale mural in the Bell Red Arts District.

Across the city, our departments are getting ready with parks and fam both holding dates in parks and spaces around the city for community proposed World Cup related events.

Several departments are working together to explore streamlining the block party processes ahead of the World Cup so that our residents can lead with programs that make sense for their neighborhoods while informing them of rules and processes that they need to make this happen successfully.

We have web pages dedicated to the World Cup.

The City of Bellevue's webpage will focus primarily on official information, business resources, and city programs.

Visit Bellevue also has a webpage with World Cup game info, regional activities, visitor information, a calendar of events, and business promotions.

And that's what you can see on the slide right now.

Based on the information we currently have and on expected visitation, and because we do not know where teams will play until they're announced on December 5th, we plan the following.

On Seattle match days, we'll encourage residents and visitors to take the two line to major events and work in with the community so that Bellevue's busiest stations will have lively programming before, during, and after the matches.

For matches outside of Seattle, we'll promote watch parties around the city and at local venues.

We will support community-led events near transit hubs and in neighborhoods across the city with improved processes.

Here's a little more detail on the two-line activations.

We're going to work with partners to curate programming around the two-line stations, including South Bellevue, Downtown, Spring District, and Bell Red.

On game days, we're going to be encouraged sustainable travel for those going to games, running an errand, or simply walking by.

These activations can be music, soccer-themed activity activities, cultural performances, and more.

Partnered with this, we will have tours and itineraries around each light rail station, which will highlight the things to do in each neighborhood, hopefully drawing people out into our community.

These themed walks will be a rich resource for everyone.

Future visitors will be able to use them to explore Bellevue, and residents will be able to discover new ways to engage with their city.

Small businesses will be meaningfully showcased.

The marketing will happen through Visit Bellevue, which has an array of effective marketing tools.

There's already a calendar on Visit Bellevue site, which highlights things to do in the city.

We intend that this way of activating public spaces and process improvements we are working on and regular communication with our partners across the city will leave a positive legacy even after the tournament is over.

As mentioned, we are not working alone.

We're working, we meet with uh the Eastside Regional Tourism Council, whose members are our neighboring east side cities and discuss strategies, ideas, share resources, and inform each other about the work that we are doing ahead of the tournament.

We're working with the district management organizations pictured on your screen, such as BDA, Bell Red Arts District, Spring District, and Visit Bellevue in the planning of our future community events and business readiness.

We have had discussions with the City of Redmond and Bothell to ensure that we're able to amplify each city's efforts.

These relationships, regular meetings, and focused communication will ensure that we will be ready for the World Cup each step of the way.

Thank you.

Coming up next, we have a public information session and a call for station activations on October 22nd.

This is where we where we will inform our local events organiz organizers and cultural organizations of grant opportunities and the partnerships that we will offer ahead of the tournament.

Human trafficking is an unfortunate issue that is always present in our communities, and Bellevue PD does a wonderful job making sure our businesses are well prepared in situations where these problems may arise.

We intend to work with PED to amplify these efforts ahead of the tournament to train businesses to recognize how to know and how to respond to the signs of human trafficking.

Communication is key, and we will work to ensure that business readiness resources are shared with our community, ensuring that those who can participate and want to will benefit from the World Cup.

Our work is evolving as more information about the tour uh tournament becomes public.

Mayor, that concludes our presentation.

We're happy to uh hear any feedback you have and answer any questions.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I assume we all have comments or questions, so let's start with Councilmember Lee.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Uh well, it's a great, great uh opportunity.

Uh we're gonna showcase this region to the world.

Uh so we are looking forward to it.

Well, obviously, you know, with what's good to something, always perhaps uh can be uh some problematic.

So uh just want to ask a few things.

Uh first of all is you mentioned connection to Ratman uh along the two line and all that.

Uh how about going east, uh I night to east of Mount Issaqua and Sememage, so a lot of things like Snow Kami, four, uh many things people appreciate people can look at, you know, mountains and lakes and all that stuff.

So uh perhaps you know either that should be looked at.

If it's not, maybe you can show something.

How do we work with our neighboring jurisdictions going east?

That might be a something to look at.

And uh the other ones, are you even going south, you know, to Renton?

Uh that might be something also because Bellevue is we are the center of the region, honestly.

West Seattle, North, you know, Lynn Road, Raman, you know, so on Averett, and East to Isagwa, South to Renton.

Uh so I think that maybe we can figure out to provide a even more uh opportunity for people who come into this area to learn about our features and our wonderful place where they can visit.

So maybe you can tell me are you looking at this?

And uh maybe if you do, say a couple of things, and I will have the one last question.

Go ahead.

Sure, I can start off with that one.

Yes, it's uh a great point, uh, Councilmember Lee that we're gonna have folks coming to this region, likely for the first time.

So as we learn what teams are actually playing here, we'll have visitors first time to this region.

Uh it's great to have visit Bellevue as a partner in this effort.

They have a lot of good material that showcases Bellevue as a good place to stay, stay in a hotel, use our amenities in our city, but also a launch point to go north, south, east, west to enjoy all the great tourism amenities we have in this region.

So I think you point out a a great benefit to being a host region from a tourism standpoint to have new people come here and showcase this entire area.

Right.

You did mention how to connect to Redmond.

So I would like to maybe see you develop some specific ideas, go in toward the other cities as well.

Yeah, Liv, do you want to talk a little bit about our coordination with City Armand?

Um You don't have to say it now because I don't want to interrupt your presentation.

Okay, but uh I'll get to the next point that uh uh let's see.

Uh public safety, traffic, you know, these are things when we have tour tourists coming when we have 140,000 people here.

Not all of them are kind of once, but hopefully a lot of them would.

Uh so how does it how do we do to prevent these activities to interrupt with our local communities?

Uh you mentioned about human trafficking, but we have this now brings international trafficking, which is probably going to be magnified many times.

It's different.

So I like to make sure that we can handle that, or at least prevent that, or manage it.

Uh, the second, of course, public safety in general, be more people there, more other things, maybe shoplifting, even I don't know.

But we have a crowd of the street, things can happen.

Or actually incidentally, you know, we have having accidents.

Uh second, traffic, obviously, that's going to have a bearing on people, you know, who live and live in Bellevue.

So maybe you can talk a little bit about the two.

Yeah, so so Liz is our main point person working across uh a number of departments at the city.

So as we flesh out um where our events are going to be in the city, looking at the the game days as Liz mentioned or all weekdays, so we'll uh dial in on the time of day to look at peak loads from both a um pedestrian standpoint and a traffic standpoint.

We think people in Bellevue are likely going to be going to our parking rides using those as a good launch point to get over to Seattle or go to other places along the uh two line up into Redmond.

And you you did mention the very serious issue of human trafficking.

There's there are other things that we'll be working with our police and fire departments about having events that are well planned, well staffed, and safe for our community.

We have to make sure we have resources to handle that, in addition to just keeping our city safe, nobody anyway.

So just keep that in mind.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Hamilton.

Great.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thanks for the presentation.

It's all very, very exciting.

Um certainly appreciate all the planning that's uh going into making this uh fun and uh entertaining and exciting time for the community.

Um of course have a wonderful opportunity to welcome visitors from around the country and around the world and show them what makes Bellevue such a special place.

Um couple of just quick questions for you.

Um you've mentioned a few times that uh local activities are focused on the Bellevue light rail stations.

I'm just wondering what adjustments you're gonna make to how we approach the World Cup if light rail service is not available across the lake by the time the World Cup starts.

Um we're in close communication with Sound Transit.

As of now, everything is set to go as planned with the light rail revenue service opening ahead of the World Cup date.

We are confident that the activations will benefit the community currently riding.

We will have an um more tourist in our area at this time.

We'll also have our workforce that already takes the light rail, and so they could be going to Renton or they could be going through Bellevue to the Arts District.

We are working and we believe that it's still a benefit to our community.

Okay.

Yeah, if it does uh turn out that things are delayed, we'll want to look at the you know the regional bus service and clearly trying to get as much bus service that can go across the lake to get people uh to the games, and we have some wonderful parking rides in in the city of Bellevue as well.

Okay, good.

Uh yes, certainly hope that uh it all goes as planned, but um glad to know you're thinking of some other options if if for some reason it doesn't.

Um, to uh just in the agenda memo, uh you talk a little bit about the World Cups, a chance for local entrepreneurs to showcase their unique offerings and for a cultural institutions to share the rich heritage and creativity uh that makes Bellevue so special.

I'm just wondering, Ian, you talked a little bit about this, and um maybe you you might have a little bit more to add about that, and kind of you know what exactly that support looks like.

So, what are we doing in the outreach?

But then maybe you could talk a little bit about what those kinds of uh groups could do on their own.

I mean, is there are there some resources, some things they can do to kind of just enhance the World Cup experience more on their own, place that they could go to look.

Yeah, so we're gonna we're gonna be providing resources for people who want to participate in uh support that we have directly to them.

This year we've been doing the community programming fund, which has been very successful, and I view that as a bit of a test case to be able to have uh culturally uh based events in the city of Bellevue, and now next year we can repeat that, grow it uh quite a bit, and have it focused on uh that that month of soccer in the in the world cup.

So if people want to uh participate in that uh that uh uh event, we have the October 22nd is our first uh kind of welcome and getting people uh acclimated to that, answer questions, have any ideas they have.

And then Liz, if you want to talk about just in general, if people want to do soccer related things in the community resources that we and others have up.

Yeah, um, we are preparing the community.

We have a uh city FIFA webpage that has resources, it links people to official information from the local organizing committee, which includes playbooks, um, watch party guides that will help prepare our small businesses and large businesses do what they want to do during the time.

Okay, and that'll be regularly updated so as we are going through it.

What about in addition to the web page?

What about email alerts or text alerts?

Is there a plan for that so that uh you know we can kind of get that information out to folks and maybe especially community members who might be impacted by an event?

Any plan for for that?

We're currently working on setting up an email address that people will be able to um email and contact us directly, and then we'll forward that to any appropriate department most relevant to whatever their question is.

And then as we plan uh some of the events that might impact a portion of the city, getting knowledge that those events are occurring and if they tend to be on the bigger size going through our appropriate measures to let the community know that we do have something happening on that specific day.

Okay.

I think it might be great if there was a chance for community members to sign up for alerts so that that stuff could hit their phone or their email so that just as things are going, they can plan accordingly and hopefully get involved and have a good time.

Uh great work, super excited to see this all come to Bellevue.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Excuse me, thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Newenhaus.

Thank you.

Very important question.

Um, what are we doing to ensure that the Netherlands will be playing here in Seattle?

Because then we'll surpass our 15,000 and it'll be a sea of orange everywhere.

And the only thing we'll have to worry about is running out of Heineken and Dutch cheese.

Um kidding, of course.

But I am so excited about this.

Thanks for uh so much for the update.

Having been to World Cups previously and uh having been a professional soccer player myself previously.

This is just um uh amazing that we're gonna have the opportunity to participate in this way.

Um thank you.

Thank you, thank you in all seriousness for bringing up the human trafficking.

This is a huge issue that FIFA has identified, and it happens every single World Cup.

Um are we coordinating with them and taking away any key learnings from past World Cups, be it South Africa, Italy, Spain, wherever, have our are we working in coordination with them or even connecting them with BPD to understand um how it works differently if it does work differently at a at a at a World Cup versus uh another type of major event?

Yeah, um I think we're we're working with Bell VPD who has a little bit more expertise in this area, and they're going to be working with external partners.

Um I can give you more detail um data.

Well, I would just encourage to reach out to FIFA um as we get closer here, because I know they have a playbook for this sort of thing because I've dealt with it time and time again.

Um so um I would just encourage you to do that.

Uh additionally, um have you been connected yet with um I guess King County and Seattle in terms of the transportation um issues, uh being on the East Side Transportation Committee.

We just got an update in terms of what this is going to look like from the Seattle side.

Um, but there would be a lot of coordination going on with the East Side.

So have we been uh in in talks with King County Metro and and other transit authorities to ensure that uh we're on the same page?

Sound transit is aware of our plans and they're supportive, so we're working with them, but we're also working um with the local organizing committee and chamber of commerce in Seattle, um learning from them and resources.

It'd be great if we could get a little bit more as we as we start to get closer, because I think some of my colleagues you know have some concerns around that too, especially if you know, light rail um yes, you're right, but just in case we need some alternatives here, and I I just think the the full scope of options that people are going to have, it would be great to have maybe a fuller presentation on that as you update us as we get closer and after we know who's coming, um after that December 5th.

Um time where we're gonna announce the announce the games that that would be great.

Um the art installations, will those be permanent or are will those just be temporary for the World Cup?

And is there any way for residents or uh art organizations that are based in Bellevue to participate in that?

Um these yes, um it will be a permanent mural in the Bell Red Arts District.

We're also working on um utility box reps, I believe.

And um residents can interact with us through the arts commission for this.

Okay.

Will we actually be proactively outreach and say this is an opportunity, or do they have to reach out to the arts commission?

It's gonna be part of our our outreach.

It will be okay.

So the the art is part of the outreach that's upcoming.

Okay.

And then you mentioned on I think it was slide eight, uh, streamlined processes.

Which processes are gonna be streamlined and what will the impact be?

Yeah.

Um we're working um cross-departmentally um to look at maybe block party streamlined um streamlining block parties.

Offer permits and permitting and making things um easy to understand for residents.

So this this summer has been a good experience with the community programming fund.

So we've been helping out uh people who were successful award recipients to streamline that uh that effort to actually do things out there.

So more to come.

We think there's there is gonna be more events next year, bigger events, so we have a good uh uh footing right now that we can build on for next year.

That's terrific.

And then um last question around the the the kiosk.

Obviously, visit Bellevue has got the great um mobile kind of kiosk about you know restaurants, hotels, etc.

etc.

Are they planning on expanding those numbers or or or having them out, I guess, in the field more uh more often during that month during the World Cup?

Because they're such great um uh informational kiosk for anyone who's new to the city trying to figure out you know anything from a park to go to or what restaurant or hotel, will that all be um well if they it's probably gonna be too late if they're looking at that for a hotel tonight, uh, but uh any other type of information would be really important.

Yeah, we'll get more info from Visit Belview about if they're gonna use what they have or if they're gonna actually expand uh for for 2026.

Okay, great.

Thank you so much, and thanks for the great presentation.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Sumaduria.

Thank you.

Um I think it's I uh first I want to give a big praise to Lizette.

I think before you was being a console, she actually, and also the city staff was really proactive about how to learn about anti-human trafficking.

Um and that was really great because we are thinking ahead.

Um and you know, as a proud community ambassador for human anti-human trafficking myself, I think it's really important through the knowledge and the training to know how to prevent it.

That's the best step to do.

What does that look like?

Yeah.

We have been in conversation with a particular organization.

We are just again coordinating cross-departmentally with Bell VPD to find the best approach for our city.

So we do want to expand what we normally offer and expand into businesses as well.

Great.

Thank you.

Which which organization is that?

Best.

Oh, okay, perfect.

Another question I had was about this small business readiness resources.

The business readiness grant.

What can we offer from Bellevue to support small businesses?

And then also trying to, I think this is a great opportunity to attract business.

And as they come available, make sure that everybody knows how to engage in a way that's best for their business.

That's it.

That's all my question.

I'm excited to learn about the space activation.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Barga.

Okay, thank you.

First of all, you know, like Councilmember Nona's, uh, I soccer was my first sport of choice growing up.

Um, even though I grew up in the line of cricket, so you say something.

Uh to call it football, uh, that's most of the world calls it at that point.

Um also I think your data on three billion, Emil, could be wrong.

I think it's understated.

It could be larger than that.

I think outside of the Olympics, the soccer world cup, I think is the biggest sporting event every four years for the world.

So this is an incredible opportunity and really excited to be looking forward to it.

Um couple things.

Uh, three things actually I wanted to talk about.

One is um focused on sort of sort of the encouraging of local spending, and are we thinking about anything that is leading up to the World Cup?

Like pre-World Cup events, like even like we do um movies in the park and things like that.

We could do uh you know, top goals or finals of previous workups that for folks could really build excitement with and get involved in in sort of the teams and you know, showcase the teams that are playing or something like that, just building up to it so that it starts to create some resonance within the community.

Uh, have you thought about anything leading up or just during?

Uh we are thinking about both.

So we're we're um starting with this uh event uh in the next couple weeks.

There is an excitement in this region and in the city of Bellevue, so we'll we'll make sure that we we have a great uh uh five weeks of the World Cup next summer, three weeks of the games here, and then we will be thinking about how we can uh have soccer kind of um uh front and center between now and the summer of next year uh within within the the city hall, we're already actually incorporating it into a lot of things we're doing as uh city staff and some of the routine events that we do as well.

Yeah, I mean I would encourage us to think about uh strategy leading up to it and how we can get some of our business folks like the chamber and others who are providing support and also small businesses involved to try and create uh you know an inclusion and the opportunity to actually take advantage of the massive traffic increase we're gonna get, uh, which is a real opportunity.

Um the other thing I would say is like on safety, I think there's a lot said that I'll just add a couple things.

Um emergency response, I think we have to be thoughtful about when we have that many people coming in.

What are we going to do to make sure that we're our emergency response readiness is right on top and what we need for additional capacity or backup or business continuity, like that's really really important, especially when we're hosting so many people from around the world.

That becomes important.

The other thing I would think about is sort of increased transit safety.

Um is another really important thing to just keep in mind because I mean soccer has a reputation uh football, and so we want to be careful and we want to think about that and be prepared for that.

And also, you know, while this is sort of a uh sort of a Debbie Downer comment, but like we should think about sheltering in place and wayfinding and evacuation routes for any emergencies, and you know we should be prepared, not expecting anything to happen, but that's really important for us to be prepared from things that we don't think can happen, but you'd never know.

So I would just put that in a list of things to think through that we have to, especially in public spaces where we have large public gatherings happening that we don't frequently have in the city at the scale.

Um then uh the last thing I would talk about maybe is the sort of mobility parking requirements and things like that, but even things like transit frequency for buses or for our uh light rail, like especially you know, pre-game or post-game opportunities, but we think about a faster and more uh uh look like the capacity needs might increase for those durations of time, and what are we doing in partnership with our regional partners and our uh transit partners, etc.

would be things I would uh just encourage us to think more about.

Otherwise, really excited, and this is great.

Thank you so much for the really great presentation.

Thank you.

All right, thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Uh thank you, uh Mayor.

Thank you, both Emile and Liz is at uh for bringing this update.

I think there are a great question already have been asked.

Uh I think I just have maybe three additional questions.

I think I I'm going to also emphasize in like other council member in given the larger scale of coordination with sound transit, we'd visit Bellevue, with Washtot, neighborhood cities.

I think we are going to need to have a risk management approach to all of this.

The the traffic has been mentioned, the transportation has been mentioned mentioned, the crowd management and the public safety already have has been mentioned.

And as you mentioned, we have three 35 weeks and two days.

So hopefully we are going to have uh or act together for that.

Uh I love you mentioned that this is not just going to be a word cop, this is going to be a leg legacy impact or something in the I when I hear all of these words, I'm becoming very happy.

But then the immediate question would be what metrics do we have to measure the legacy impact that you are uh referring to.

Do we have one?

Uh we haven't developed the full suite of um of uh metrics, but that's a good point that we'll um put a uh pen to paper on getting those uh uh written up.

I mean, at the high level, it's number of visitors and spending and things like that.

But to be a true legacy, there's more than that.

More to uh the different events we have and uh really selling this region.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Uh so I think you're talking about two metrics.

One would be the success of this programming for the World Cup.

That's great.

I think we should have metrics, but also the legacy impact that continues and we are prepping for that.

I think would be awesome.

Um the I think the last question I have actually has been mentioned and talk.

I think I'm good.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

Thank you.

Okay, yeah, thank you.

So I've got three things here.

Um, so I've been it was um ride your bike or don't drive week last week, so I um and my car broke anyway.

So, anyway, I was been doing a lot of bike riding, and um just those holes in the connections between light rail and key parts of the city.

So, you know, old Bellevue is a pretty popular part of town.

Um, whenever we ask the community, that ranks pretty high, and we still have an incomplete bike path from our east main light rail station to old old Maine.

And it just, you know, if we could just put some paint there that shows that the cars have to share the lane with the bike.

I I just really want to expedite some of this work to have it done by the time people come because they're not allowed to park in Seattle.

So you're gonna have a lot of people looking for multimodal transportation, and I think it's you know, it's incumbent upon us to provide safe routes for them.

So that would be a priority for me.

Uh number two is uh we're gonna have like a calendar of the of events on the visit Bellevue website, but I don't know that everybody knows to go there first, so I hope that the City of Bellevue website has a big banner that forwards people to the visit Bellevue website.

And I like Councilmember Bargava, I think we're gonna have a lot more people than we're anticipating, and I think there's gonna be a lot more cars on the road in Bellevue as people try to figure out how to take light rail and bus in.

Um and we have a lot of people going to work at the same time who are gonna still be wanting to park their cars and get on the bus or light rail, and I don't want to crowd them out.

So I hope that we're looking for alternative parking.

I know our South Bellevue park and ride is pretty empty.

We have lots of space there, but maybe we can look at church properties and make some agreements with them, especially if light rail does not end up being open.

That would be really helpful to have that already figured out that we can just do shuttles from there or something.

So those are my thoughts.

Great points, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

So we have another study session item, and this one we are going to have a vote on.

Take action, city manager.

Thank you, Mayor.

And given all of the conversation about being prepared, this is a good timely presentation because we have Carl Lunek, who's our emergency preparedness manager, and also Christy Osterveen from Transportation here tonight.

They are going to present the hazard mitigation plan and also a disaster debris management plan.

These are very important parts of our emergency management overall strategy and approach, and the hazard management plan in particular helps us identify potential hazards and to develop mitigation strategies to improve our preparedness.

This took several years to get to this point tonight of presenting it to you, and it had lots of input from city staff across all of our departments and our response partners and also community members.

And we have a consultant also online, I believe, Christina Woolman, who is with Pertite, who provided assistance with developing the plan.

And then our disaster debris management plan is a is uh something that also is very critical and given our experience last year with the um bomb cyclone.

That was a little bit of a taste, and I'm sure Christy will go into more detail on that.

So with that, I will hand it over to Christy.

Thank you, City Manager.

Thank you, Mayor Robinson, Deputy Mayor Malikushin, and council members for allowing us to be here today to give you an overview of our hazard mitigation disaster degree management plans.

So we're here asking direction to be able to get some consideration to return with a resolution to actually adopt our City of Bellevue Hazard Mitigation Plan at a future council meeting, as well as giving you some information about our disaster debris management plan process.

So tonight we're going to give you kind of an overview of how all of the emergency management plans really work together.

We'll talk about the hazard mitigation plan.

We'll talk about the disaster degree management plan, and we'll go to next steps.

Carl?

All right.

Well, good evening.

Um not quite as exciting as World Cup, but uh nonetheless, emergency plans it is.

Uh we have a lot of different types of emergency plans across the city as you would expect.

Uh, a lot of those plans are tactical, very incident specific, uh, a lot of standard operating procedures, especially for our operational departments across the city.

We also have strategic plans.

Uh the Office of Emergency Management lays out a three-year strategic plan that rolls up into fire strategic plan, and other departments function very similarly.

And then we have our big arching umbrella plan that all the rest of our plans kind of fold up into, and that is our comprehensive emergency management plan.

Uh, within that, two key pieces uh we have completed this year and are real excited to kind of get across the finish line.

And those are our hazard mitigation plan and our disaster debris management plan.

This is a a brief example of our kind of regular cycle in emergency management, um how we function.

Before we get into it too much, we need to talk well, what is the definition of mitigation and quite simply it's any action taken to reduce future disasters or the impacts, lessen the impacts to the community as a whole.

And we look at mitigation as a key piece.

It's ongoing and continual, it never really stops.

Um, it fits in there with preparedness, protection, recovery, response, uh, and so on.

And it's a continuous cycle that we work from.

Specifically the the benefits and the purpose of our hazard mitigation plan.

Well, it starts with identifying uh all of the natural hazards in our community.

It does differentiate between like human-caused emergencies or disasters.

This plan specifically speaks to the natural hazards that impact our beautiful community.

Uh we look at what those hazards are, and then kind of judge uh how probable it is to occur, and then what the impacts uh potentially are from those.

So we assess that information, look at what our vulnerabilities, what our capabilities are to respond and recover from, and that's based on historical data as well as the latest information that we have about our communities.

The benefits of mitigation and our mitigation plan really comes down to a cost savings.

I mean, it really boils down to that.

Yes, it helps protect us, make us more resilient, it does a lot of beneficial, uh, allows us to plan better and coordinate with our community members and partners, but really it comes down to dollars.

And there's different figures, whether you're talking the business community or city government, where for every dollar of mitigation that you spend, it usually saves you between six and thirteen dollars worth of response and recovery post-disaster.

So mitigation actions are usually dollars very well spent in the community.

Our planning process, uh, similar to a lot of our other plans.

Um, this particular planning process uh began with a grant.

Uh, very thankful to our transportation department.

Uh, when we were in a transition between emergency managers, transportation took the lead with hazard mitigation planning and was able to get this process started with a FEMA grant.

Uh, we followed, of course, a competitive bidding process to uh retain a contractor that is joining us remotely.

Uh, PETIT was selected in that process.

We pulled together basically every department here across the city.

It truly is a one-city planning process because mitigation and hazards affect us all.

And so all the departments had opportunity to be in the steering or planning committee and provide input into this plan and the planning process.

A big piece of that is also our community outreach.

We really want to reach out to the community as a whole, know what's on their mind, where their concerns are, what the hazards are specific to their community, and we did that through a number of workshops that we hosted specifically around hazard mitigation.

And then we also uh folded in like tabling events to other events like the Botanical Gardens Earth Day event.

I believe I saw all of you uh in attendance there for that particular one.

So uh really took in the public comment piece of it, uh, and then ultimately now we have completed the plan, have submitted it to the state of Washington for approval.

The state will approve it and pass it on to the federal government to FEMA for their final kind of stamp of approval, and we expect that in the next couple of weeks.

So you can't talk about the natural hazards or at least revealing some of the mystery behind the curtain, and that is where are our big hazards here?

Uh and according to the plan, the largest natural hazard we face is severe weather, which for most of us probably not much of a surprise.

Um, every year or two, we get a large you know, snow event, ice event, wind event that impacts us.

Uh to score out these uh different hazards, we look at the probability as well as the potential impact, dollars lost, the impact to the community, to individuals, the business economic impact and infrastructure as well.

You'll notice that there are two different earthquake scenarios up there, and that's just because they are vastly different.

One of them is the Cascadia Fault Line, which is off our Washington coast, huge subduction zone there.

It has a different impact than does, for example, the Seattle Fault Line, which basically runs under Interstate 90, kind of east-west direction.

So taking into consideration all those things, we score them out, and that helps us know where our money can best be spent.

Um of the other ones that always get attention.

I want to assure everyone that volcano is on the list.

We're not hiding a volcano in Bellevue.

Uh, that is just because we are prone to ash fall and other things if many of the beautiful mountains around us were to happen to erupt.

So once we really study and analyze and look at the hazards and the probability of them occurring, uh, we worked with all of the different departments to help identify different strategies to try and mitigate uh the impacts of those.

Uh the map, I apologize a little blurry, is um our fire hazard map.

Um, and if you look at that, it it seems to reason it's all of the highly vegetated areas around the city.

Uh, and so some of those mitigation strategies are simple things like community outreach, uh, management of you know, grasslands or areas that are unkept, um, you know, proper maintenance of vegetation uh and just good community information that way.

There are a lot of different things that we can do uh in those mitigation strategies to try and reduce the impact, everything from earthquake retrofitting to simple things like public education.

So the hazard mitigation uh approval process, as I briefly mentioned, I we were very fortunate with the timeline of our plan in that FEMA just released a guidance this last uh early in the year, and we were able to incorporate that into our plan so we meet the latest guidelines and standards.

Uh, we have submitted to the state of Washington uh Office of Emerged Management for their review.

It will automatically go to FEMA.

Uh we just got an update today that it's somewhat delayed in that process as one might expect.

Uh, and then uh ultimately we will uh ask for adoption for the hazard mitigation plan by Bellevue City Council.

Now I'm gonna give you a little bit of information on the disaster debris management plan that we also have been working on.

So when we think of that, we think about our windstorms, right?

We think about all of the different debris that will be out on the streets, and one of the main things that we want to make sure that we can do is open up the transportation system to be able to get our public safety, um, be able to have the hospital districts and things like that back open.

So we knew that we needed to create some kind of plan so that we would have some action to be able to take.

Uh, this plan along with hazard mitigation plan are the first plans uh by East Side Cities to be done specifically by the city itself.

So, some of the purposes and benefits of this particular plan.

Again, it lays out those roles and responsibilities that we're going to have when we have a large catastrophic event that has a lot of debris.

It will tell us the resources that we're going to be able to use, basically how many and how much we're going to need.

It also will minimize those recovery times.

Uh, hopefully, some of our mitigation actions are additive to this, but hopefully it gets us back online to be able to get back to normal, whatever that might be after an event.

We were able to facilitate local coordination with this.

We did ask our neighboring jurisdictions if they would like to uh come aboard with us, and we were happy to have uh Clyde Hill, Hunts Point, Newcastle, Medina, and Euro Point join us in this effort.

So it make we make sure that we have uh hit all of the regulation points, and that through this guidance and following the directions from FEMA will be able to better ask for FEMA reimbursement after the large event happens.

So, one of the things that the disaster debris management plan looks at are the different kinds of incidents that could happen.

Uh obviously, we're very familiar with windstorms.

Uh, we are also planning for the big one, right?

The earthquake.

So, how we activate our plan, who's going to be responsible.

It is actually under the purview of the transportation department to be the responsible branch to open up the debris branch and then work with our other departments.

Uh, making sure we have priority routes that get us to those hospital districts that get us to the different commerce areas that make sure that we can get around to the fire stations so that they can do their safeties, making sure that we have debris collectors and haulers.

We will not be able to do this with city staff alum.

So being able to make sure that we have some that are already ready and know that they are going to respond to Bellevue to be able to help that to be able to respond to Bellevue in the cities that have come along with us on this plan, having site monitor to actually watch the different debris that comes in, make sure everything is actually separated so that it when it goes to our temporary debris sites that it's separated properly before it goes to what we call its final resting place, which is usually in eastern Washington.

So this particular table uh gives you an idea of exactly what we actually might look for when we're talking about the total debris that we could have from we went with severe weather and we went with an earthquake.

So that is about 3.5 million cubic yards of debris that we could imagine being here in the city.

Take us about 180 days to be able to pick that up, and that's using other debris haulers and collectors to be able to do that.

Um, and it will take up like 216 acres of land when we're actually talking about all of the different kinds of debris.

A cubic yard can be thought of as one washing machine.

So think about three and a half million of those throughout the city.

Uh large amounts of debris is what we're thinking about, and what do we want to be able to plan for?

We think about the priority routes.

We already are always planning the priority route.

So on this particular slide, you see on the left-hand side happens to be the emergency routes for priority from the transportation department, and on the right-hand side happen to be the routes that were provided to us by the points communities.

We also need to have some temporary debris management sites.

So there are different regulations for them, and all of the sites that we have selected, and we did a process with the parks department to be able to go through and actually evaluate these.

But these are our top seven.

We have tier ones where preferred sites, they have to be at least five acres, they need to be flat, they have to have an excellent ingress and egress, enough room to be able to actually put all of the different kinds of debris and separate them.

A tier two is very close.

It might not be exactly the uh five acres, it might have a little slope or something to it.

The ingress and egress out of it might not be as much as we would like it to have, and maybe we have to put some of the debris closer together.

But when we're looking at you know areas in the city, we don't have lots of just pavement because we are a city and a park.

So you'll see that there are a lot of parks that are listed here.

The nice thing about lots of the parks, they actually do have parking lots.

Uh and what we can do by using our own sites is that that allows us to be able to then put it back to what it's normal was before the event happened.

We also can try and work with some agreements in other places in the community, but we felt as we were going through this process, it was easier to be able to do it just with our own infrastructure to start with.

So our next steps.

Uh the hazard mitigation plan.

Um again, we're looking for council to provide some guidance for us to return with that plan.

Um, and then once we have FEMA approval that will be uh completed and wrapped up, and then we'll begin the process of training staff on it and exercising the plan, which is part of our normal cycle.

And for the disaster debris management plan, we are in the process of a uh request for proposal, and that is going out soon.

Hopefully by the end of the year.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Uh hopefully very soon uh to enter into a relationship with those uh contracted haulers and debris monitors, um, which is an essential piece of the the plan itself, and then again back to the training and exercise schedule with all of our other plans.

So again, uh why we're here specifically for the hazard mitigation plan uh is to consider, please uh consider directing staff to return with a resolution for adoption of the city of Bellevue's hazard mitigation plan at a future council meeting.

And if you have any questions, we're happy to uh to answer them.

Okay, great, thank you.

So um I'll just you don't have to ask questions, but I'll give you everybody a chance, Councilmember Bargava.

Oh, okay.

Uh I do have a couple things.

They're not all questions, but maybe some are learnings for me.

So on your risk assessment, I really appreciate that you have them categorized by level of likelihood and the various different types of uh risks.

What I was looking when I was looking for that, I was thinking like there are certain things that have a higher propensity of occurrence potentially or probability of occurrence, represent a higher threat, and they may not be the most severe.

So, how do we find the balance between the low likelihood, high severity event preparedness versus the other?

Because it is an ROI question at the end of the day, like you started by saying.

So, how do we manage that?

How do we balance that just looking for your point of view?

Yeah, that is a an ongoing challenge that that really is coordination between all the different kind of operational departments across the city and the planning process.

Um, I think the best example that came to mind as you were saying that is our snow response, right?

Transportation does an amazing job in partnership with utilities at removing snow, plowing, sanding, icing, the that type of it.

And that's always a it's a moving target.

We never know from year to year what that's going to look like.

Do we have the right number of plows?

Do we have the right amount of equipment?

Um, and it's a constant ebb and flow and adjustment and balancing.

Um, and that goes with training and staffing and all the rest of it.

So maybe I'll just paraphrase one more time.

Are we ready for a low likelihood, high severity event to happen?

It will it depends on how you define ready, right?

The the catastrophic plans.

Seattle earthquake could happen right now.

Um have we put plans in place?

Yes.

Do we have amazing staff and training and practice?

Yes.

Is it going to be sufficient?

That is always the question that you've got to do.

That's what I was asking for plans in place.

Yeah.

So I appreciate that.

And the only other thing, uh, two things I would say is uh continuity of critical services.

Um how do we think about that?

Like what are the most critical services when you think about continuity in those situations?

Yeah, excellent.

Um we're currently right now uh looking at the what we refer to all those as lifeline services, um, and those specifically are detailed out in our comprehensive emergency management plan.

And as we go through the planning process, whatever emergency situation we're looking at, we look at those lifeline services and how robust they are, where the the gaps are, and and what we can what can be done to to support those and make sure that those lifelines uh are resilient as they can be.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

And the last thing I just to comment that I really appreciate that we've picked up and have a debris management plan.

Uh, you know, coming out of the bomb cyclone uh I don't know how many months ago that was, but uh I really appreciated the fact that they're putting together the plan and we're thinking through it thoughtfully with capacity and and and timelines and all of that.

So I much appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Sumendourian.

Thank you.

Uh first of all, thank you for um creating this plan that I really enjoyed the tier two, and also I love the educational piece that we bring to the community to educate about the um emergency plans.

The slide we had is actually my kiddos.

That's why two my kids they learn so much.

They still talk about how to save things if something happens.

Because I think last time when we had the cyclone plan, my parents was like trapped at home for like a whole whole week with no food and then was really cold.

Um, in situations like that happened in case hopefully it doesn't happen again.

Do we have any plans how to reach out to the really vulnerable groups in the community?

How we can like maybe bring I I don't know what's it look like.

What like just out of curiosity?

Yeah, for the bomb cycle and such a widespread event like that where mobility for responders is as limited as as residents and and business members.

Um, and so it it is extremely challenging to get into each neighborhood and community and short of going door to door with 150,000 residents in Bellevue, um, there's not there's not a great solution to that problem.

Um we are working uh desperately with a lot of the community partners, neighborhood associations, anywhere that there's groups of community members that gather together that we can you know multiply that force uh and have them check on their neighbors and loved ones and then share that information up really is gonna be the key to being more resilient for the next one.

Yeah, I think that's a great model, by the way.

That's really good.

I think using um information like make the ring that the next door um technology like that really helps with kind of supporting neighbors like that.

Thank you.

And then my other question is there's one of the slides um you mentioned that uh every dollar of medication we prevent.

Can you remind me what's the number of to be churned on that?

Yeah, there's there's two different studies that we reference.

Um I was gonna look to see what if I had them both down.

One of them's from the Department of Commerce, um, and the other one is a FEMA number, and it's somewhere between six dollars and thirteen dollars.

So if you spend a dollar on a mitigation action, strapping down your water heater that's potentially saving six to thirteen dollars of cost in the response after it falls and leaks all over.

So simple way to look at it.

Do we have information like that to share with the community?

Yes, we we definitely do have those studies.

Um we uh have a link.

Well, we had a link to them on our website.

I'm not sure if they're still currently there, but uh yeah, real happy to get that information out of the community.

Is it multiple languages?

Yes, okay.

Yeah, all of our stuff on our website and emergency management is translated into our top languages.

Okay, great, perfect.

And then I think that's I had one.

Oh, you know what?

I had one question about how the cities near us, we are working together with them.

And I really enjoyed the um the map of priority path.

And then other than the sharing the information and how to support each other, what it I just I'm out of curiosity, what's that partnership look like for us to support you know the other cities, the smaller city right around us?

So the cities that are involved in the disaster debris management plan, we actually have contacts with all of them.

I will say that we also asked the city of Redmond and the city of Kirkland if they would want to join us to kind of have a more regional type as well as the village of Beaux Arts.

And uh at the time it was not uh good planning time for Kirkland or Redmond and uh the village of Beaux Arts uh declined uh to join us.

So we do have connections uh that we try to have annual updates of information with them to understand what their needs might be to understand their routes, what kind of equipment they might be able to lend to the whole entire process as well.

Um they're obviously much smaller.

Uh but being able to have that kind of connection and communication with them is how we're trying to move this forward as we try and do annual updates for making sure that our information is current because we never know when that disaster is gonna happen.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Hamilton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks for the presentation.

I I also kind of wanted to build on some of the comments that I've heard so far from my colleagues and specifically around public outreach.

And so I'm I'm curious what what is our plan to support community members in such a way that they can incorporate the hazard mitigation plan and disaster debris management plan into their own disaster preparedness planning.

Do we have a website?

Do we have some materials?

Are there um things that they could print off and have available in case of a you know some kind of disaster, and that they they know how to kind of jump into action.

What do we have for them?

Yeah, great question.

Specifically for uh the hazard mitigation, we we have um a lot of resources available on uh the City of Bellevue's Office of Merchant Management website.

Again, all of that is translated, uh, including a number of kind of the top uh mitigation steps that anyone can take.

Uh and so those are are are well spelled out.

Uh, one of the pieces that once the plan is completed, again, our work doesn't end, it begins the training part, and that training includes that public outreach to get out in the communities and say, here's how what we've identified as our main hazards, and here's some ways we can be better prepared for those, and those will include kind of the latest, greatest information that we can provide on mitigation steps for for residents, businesses, and and other partners.

And then kind of a basic outline of what we plan to do so that they understand that and they can plug into that process.

Yeah.

Okay.

Great.

Um, so this is great.

I mean, it's a relief to know that you guys are doing this work.

So every time you're here, a little sigh of relief knowing that uh we've done this planning and that we can all be uh as prepared as possible, understanding that uh we can't always prepare for everything.

So uh great work.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Newman House.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, outstanding presentation.

Thank you so much tonight.

This is such an important topic and one that I think um sometimes kind of dismiss, like of course already, but you know, we don't often get into the weeds a little bit on on this, and it's uh really um I I think all residents should should feel good that we have people that are thinking about this, all the mitigation plans and and uh all the other preparedness that we're doing in in case something does happen.

So uh uh outstanding.

Um I always have one question, and that's regarding the uh local coordination with these partners.

So I'm I'm curious why BoArts wouldn't work with the city of Bellevue, and then I'm also curious about um why some of our other east side partners wouldn't work uh with us as well, because I mean it would be to their advantage as well.

We would need, I would think maybe I'm wrong that um coordinating with Redmond, Kirkland and other municipalities could only benefit how the whole region reacts to an event, regardless of what that event looks like.

So I don't want to put anyone on the spot per se, but I'm just kind of curious in terms of do they do they have their own plans?

We're good, we don't need it, uh Bellevue, or you know, what what is that what does that look like, or how do we get to a point where we can fully develop the plan to cover the entire East King County area?

Yeah, so when we went into the planning process for the disaster debris management plan, we went into it hoping that we would be able to do that, that way we would be able to create those relationships uh specifically for the village of Beaux Arts.

We were told that they were sure we were creating this plan because we wanted to put our debris in Bozarts, to which we couldn't have explained to them any better that they don't actually have any great areas to put any debris uh in Bozarts.

And so we tried probably four or five times to have conversation and they just were not interested because they were sure that something else was happening.

Uh, for Kirkland and Redmond, uh, because it's really important for us when we're actually thinking about some of our different transportation routes that we have connections to, we really wanted them to be able to participate.

And at that time, the response from Kirkland was that debris wasn't an issue for them to think about.

And for Redmond, um, we had also been able to get dollars to be able to do um this plan.

And uh so they were going to have to participate with a very small um amount of money uh to be able to do the discovery of their own equipment, disaster, you know, the debris they might have, and uh Redmond couldn't come up with the money um at that time to be able to participate.

They were wanting to.

They just could not get any approval to be able to join our plan.

And we had decided that we wanted to have our own standalone plan because it's the best way for us to be able to get these haulers and monitors in our back pocket, so to speak, so that they will be available for us so that we know when that disaster happens.

They know that Bellevue is where they're coming.

Seattle already has a plan and they have theirs all nice and secure.

We wanted to have something like that.

We thought it would be a great coordinated effort on the east side.

And the ones that joined us, they'll be able to, you know, go on with those monitors and haulers as well.

We just weren't able to do it.

What was the the cost of the fee that would read?

For them it was $30,000.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, thank you so much.

And again, thank you for the outstanding uh presentation tonight.

It's really really great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Lee.

It's great to uh have a plan to be prepared for you know thinking about this and actually doing something to prevent, you know, not prevent to address disaster.

Uh you know, and whether the debris, how to dispose of it, how to manage it, how to mitigate it.

Uh but I think it's more important also, maybe not more important, just as important.

You mentioned about uh prevention, right?

Or I don't know, maybe you can say a couple of words about mitigate.

What do you mean by mitigate?

Prevention is probably the best, you know, it won't happen.

But when you mitigate means it's already happened or before it happens, or we could be both.

It could be both, but a lot of our mitigation actions, if you take the the wind event, for example, a bomb cyclone, um, some of the mitigation steps include things like proper tree maintenance, right?

By no means are we saying everyone should chop down trees, but you know, having an arborist assess dangerous trees on your property or properly prune trees so that they're much more resilient to a wind event.

It's a simple mitigation effort that we can do ahead of time that hopefully will prevent the problem.

Okay.

So uh oftentimes, of course, disasters are natural, which we don't know what's gonna happen or when it's gonna happen.

Uh my question then is uh when it does happen, or what kind of things that people can do, the residents, all of us can help to prevent certain things.

Certain things cannot, it happens like earthquake, right?

We don't know when it's gonna happen.

If it happens, happens.

Uh so are there other things that we actually can do something about that we can do that?

Do you want to put the list up again with the rankings of all the risks that you are addressing?

You just passed it.

No, well, that was the debris one.

There you go.

There you go.

So those are the things that they're those are our top.

I'm not sure that there's anything that community.

So the public can actually be conscientiously.

Yeah, doing something.

And keep that in mind.

That's it's another problem.

Another question I think council member Newhouse mentioned.

So we at least are prepared.

Wouldn't be surprised.

Yeah.

So we talked about the strategies that are in the plan itself.

And for these different hazards, one of the strategies is actual education of the community for all of the different things they might be able to do, whether it's preparing their home, whether it's preparing you know themselves.

That's how we will be able to help them to get ready for any of these that might be able to happen to the best of our ability, knowing that it's unknown exactly what that event might be.

But one of our strategies will be education.

Okay.

So we do see lots of that that during the years throughout the whatever, we do get that kind of information.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We the Office of Emergency Management just completed another community emergency response team training, 24 hours of training to help people be prepared for for disaster.

Um and some of those mitigation steps are covered in that.

Yeah, we do that with snow, it without storms, flood, but oftentimes many of these we don't even think about.

Yeah.

But that's it may be important for us to know as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Uh Deputy Mayor.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

Uh Chrissy and Carl, thank you so much.

Uh Andrew Molly, Chief Tay.

Uh, this is to me as exciting as a World Cup, by the way.

Just wanted to let you know that this is a very, very critical plans.

I am very happy that we are approaching these two.

It's very important that we are becoming more resilient because of your job.

And not just only respond to disaster, but how we prepare and reduce risk before it happens, as Councilmember Lee mentioned.

It's a very amazing partnership you guys have done.

I just have, and my first comment was the community awareness and education that I think everyone talk about that because I bet my money at least on no one in Bellevue knows about dam failure or a volcano.

So it's good that we should spread this knowledge.

I have uh three questions.

The first one is in this work that you guys did.

Have you done any social vulnerability mapping like some places is going to be disportionally affect seniors, renters, low-income, um, non-English.

Have you guys have done that kind of work?

Yes, actually, that was part of putting together the assessment and part of the scoring.

Um, if you would want more detail, I would ask that our consultant who's actually on the line, um, she can give you kind of a better background about how that was used.

But that was something that was one of the uh tools that we used and looking at the city.

I would love to learn uh about it later.

You don't need to tell me, but I'm very happy that you have done this study.

I think is great thing to uh have that in mind.

Uh we I know we are doing something about uh our environmental stewardship uh initiative plan update.

Do you guys see any correlation between this work and that work?

Yes, actually, we have been involved in both.

We have the environmental stewardship people on our planning team, and we too have actually participated in the work that they have done and um both been able to give each other feedback on both plans.

That's awesome.

This is all great.

I think the last thing I have is about dollar.

I think uh in the memo said there is no fiscal impact or there is uh as as of this moment, but maybe the question is when or how are we thinking about identifying dedicated funding mechanism for uh strategies or action items or any of those.

It would be anticipated that the departments who put the strategies forward for the plan will be putting together proposals uh to be able to fund those kinds of things.

We have a five-year time frame with annual updates that we'll be bringing to you about the progress that we make on our strategies, and so that is part of it is making sure the departments know that this is what we have put out basically on the floor to be able to try and work towards and showing how we would do that.

So we would anticipate if there was a budget implication that they would bring that forward as some type of proposal next year.

That's awesome.

Really glad that we are taking this a step towards uh more resilience future for Bellevue.

Uh is really awesome.

Hopefully, and I'm sure you are doing to make us uh make these documents a living frameworks to help all of our residents to be more prepped for all of these uh risks that uh we are facing.

So I appreciate all of your work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um thank you.

So um I have three questions.

Since you have the slide up, um, now that I'm on the King County flood control district, I'm really surprised to see flood uh second to the last on the list because we know that flooding happens quite a bit around our creeks in Bellevue, even though we've done some really good projects that's going to prevent a lot of those from happening again, but we're still um at risk.

So are we looking at those kinds of floods when we and why if so, why are we why is that below a volcano?

It it falls lower due to the the impact in the community.

So the flooding risk that we have in the city, it there are floods, areas that are impacted, as you well know and mention, um, but the economic impact to that is is lower.

There's not a direct threat or risk or very low score for human life or human health.

It it property damage is fairly low from those particular flood events or the economic impact.

It's part of that just calculation, and it that's where it ran and came out.

You know, um, I'd love to re-examine that because when Kelsey, uh not Kelcer Kate, when in factoria, when we had flooding multiple times, uh, families in low-income housing, their entire ground floor apartments were flooded and all their possessions were ruined, and they had to move out, and they had to mediate that entire uh housing that happened the next year.

And so it has a huge impact on people's lives, and uh living in areas that have flooded and maybe haven't been cleaned as well as they should be, can be really bad on the health.

So I I just don't agree that this is an eight on on this scale, to be honest with you, and encourage you to maybe consider that.

Yeah, we'd have to go back and look at the exact calculation and and what was taken into account, but for sure.

Okay, thank you.

Um the other two questions uh I had.

I know when we had our wind cyclone that we applied for FEMA dollars.

I know that this city went above and beyond to have people working 24 hours to clear debris and uh get the power back on and uh make the make it safe for the people who are trapped in their neighborhoods and their homes.

And so we applied for FEMA dollars to um help compensate us for all that extra work.

Did we ever get any compensation from the government?

No, we did not.

Okay.

Is it never gonna come?

State was rejected, and they uh they did appeal, and that was rejected as well.

Okay.

Um, and then the other thing is um last time you came before us and we said you were gonna do this plan and and reassess everything.

You talked about looking at our wells system in Bellevue.

We have old wells throughout Bellevue that could possibly provide water if we were to lose our water sources.

Do you have any results on that?

Um that is part of the uh utilities department's um, I forget the name of the exact plan, but it's their emergency water well program.

Um, and they did go out and assess the number of existing wells that at one point um did provide potable water to the community.

I know they're in the process with the Washington State Department of Health Office of Drinking Water that regulates well water to assess which ones are viable for as an emergency supply and having them reclassified.

Um, so some of them are in the process.

I don't know the total number or which ones were the best options.

Umtilities was taking that and implementing that plan.

So it was that department.

All right.

Well, thank you so much.

Um I'd like to make a motion.

I I feel like this could come back on a consent calendar if the council is agreeable to that.

Yeah, okay.

Would you like to make a motion to I move to direct staff to return with a resolution adopting the City of Bellevue Hazard Mitigation Plan for action at a future council meeting on a constant calendar?

All right, all those in favor say aye.

Aye, any opposed?

Great, thank you very much.

We have one more really quick item, but if we'd like to take a quick break before we do that, it's up to the council.

You want to plow through work?

Just plow through.

Do you want to break or do you want to just finish the meeting?

Well, I think Conrad uh Councilmember, you also want to finish.

Okay, let's do it then.

Um, so we have an ordinance.

Uh, we had a long discussion about this.

Um, I don't know if it was our last meeting.

I don't remember.

Okay, last meeting.

And so we asked that we uh bring it back to vote on as an ordinance, and here it is.

And so we'll have a presentation, and if we'll see if there's any discussion, if not, we'll just take a vote.

Go ahead, uh city manager.

You did a fine job of introducing Tanis and Steve Penner here to just give you a tiny overview and then seek uh direction from council action.

Okay, thank you, City Manager Carlson.

Good evening.

Um, deputy mayor, council members.

As you said, we were here not very long ago on this same item.

Um it's repeat offender sentence enhancement, aka mandatory minimums.

So Steve and I are back to uh due to short presentation and have you consider adopting this ordinance.

Um very short uh presentation for you.

We'll recall council direction and then we'll go through the components very briefly of the ordinance and then come back to the direction requested.

Uh recalling council direction, uh as you know, the intent that you had outlined for this item is to reduce public disorder crimes in Value.

That has been identified as theft crimes on September 23rd.

We were here.

Um, and the direction that you had given us is to prepare this ordinance for action.

And in addition to that, to include inpatient treatment alternative as part of that ordinance.

The components of the ordinance, just uh again, a short um kind of uh information here.

The crimes included are theft third degree crimes, the repeat offender definition is 18 years or older with two or more convictions of theft in Washington State in the past two years.

The minimum sentence that would be subjected would be 30 days for these repeat offenders.

We have several discretionary provisions, one of which is the new addition that you directed us to include, which is the inpatient treatment alternative for defendants meeting a certain criteria.

Uh we also maintain the two other ones in uh electronic home monitoring when there's substantial risk of harm to the defendant, and then if eligible defendants could still participate in diversion programs, including community court.

And we're back to the direction slides, so turn it back to you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you very much.

So I don't have any further questions myself.

Does anybody um here have any comments or questions?

Okay, with that, I'd like to take a motion.

You go ahead, Councilman Renee and House.

Enforcement provisions of the Bellevue City Code to impose repeat offender sentence enhancement for certain theft crimes.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No.

Okay, thank you.

So it passes 6 1.

All right, I think that's it, and we will see you all next week.

Thank you.