Okay, good evening everybody.

Welcome to the Bellevue City Council meeting for October 28th, 2025.

Thank you for being here tonight.

Um City Clerk, could you do the roll call, please?

Here.

Deputy Mayor Malikutian.

Here.

Councilmember Barkava.

Councilmember Hamilton.

Here.

Councilmember Lee?

Here.

Councilmember New Enhouse?

Here.

Councilmember Sumadoria.

Here.

Thank you.

So we have Councilmember Bargava remote, obviously.

And so I actually had selected him to lead the flag salute, so let's go ahead and have you do that anyway, since you're going to be able to do that.

To the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Councilmember.

We have uh two proclamations tonight.

The first one is Dutch American Heritage Day, and I really struggled trying to figure out which council member should read that one, but I finally decided that Councilmember Newenhouse was the one.

And we have Hans Brinkhoff on behalf of the Dutch consulate and the Dutch American community here to receive.

If we can invite him to come sit up here.

Okay, Councilmember.

Thank you.

And thank you, Chief Tate.

Yeah.

And uh happy uh National First Responders Day to all of our police and uh firefighters here today as well.

Umas the relationship between the Netherlands and the United States of America is the longest unbroken peaceful relationship the United States has maintained with any nation, and whereas Americans and the Dutch have shared values of freedom, of tolerance and opportunity since the earliest days of our history, with ties dating back to the early 17th century when the Dutch West India Company established New Netherland and its principal settlements, New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, known today as New York City and Albany.

And whereas the Dutch people demonstrated their support for American independence during the Revolutionary War, and thousands of American soldiers later gave their lives in the liberation of the Netherlands during World War II, forging bonds of friendship and gratitude that endure to this day.

And whereas generations of Dutch immigrants have enriched the United States with their language language, culture, and creativity, contributing to our nation's progress in art and science, education and public service.

And whereas the Netherlands and the United States continue to share strong partnerships in trade, innovation, and sustainability, ties that extend to communities like Bellevue through collaboration and business education and culture.

And whereas Dutch American Heritage Day celebrated each year on November 16th, honors more than four centuries of friendship between our nations and recognizes the many contributions of Dutch Americans to our shared history and civic life.

Now therefore I, Jared Newenhouse, on behalf of Lynn Robinson, mayor of the city of Bellevue, Washington, and on behalf of the City Council, do hereby became November 16th, 2025, as Dutch American Heritage Day.

You're welcome.

Welcome.

Thank you very much.

I'm not an historian, nor a political guy.

So I run back to my own period that I came from the Netherlands to the United States.

And I am hope you are familiar with the movie.

One bitch too far.

It took him halve yet to get the northern part leverated.

But by the end of the day, on May 5th, 1945, the whole country was back to freedom.

And freedom we all like.

In 1976, the celebration of the 200 years of America, I arrived in New York.

And I happened to be part of the celebration on July 4th that year, and we had a parade of ships on the Hudson River.

Which was a big celebration.

And we have to keep in mind that next year, our Dutch American Heritage Day will be also 250 years like the country.

Holland, America, Dutch, America Heritage.

And Holland America Line was the biggest transporter of Heineken beer, very important.

All the excellent cheeses, and of course the tulips, and not only the tubs, but also the bulbs, as now they're growing the bulbs here in Mount Verden.

I uh have served for if we followed the American line for 35 years in the hotel department, and we were taking care of all our American guests, and there were many, many, and over the years, millions of guests we were.

And they all had the chance to come back, and they came back.

So that's why we should keep the Dutch American relationship as a tradition of excellence, which was the logo for Holland America line, to continue that for many more years.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much.

I think you know, we'll just go down and take a picture with him now, and then we'll do that next proclamation.

Okay, our next proclamation is Veterans Day, and that's going to be presented by Councilmember Lee and accepted by Jared Larson of the Bellevue Firefighter Latter 107.

Okay.

Honors the courage, dedication, and sacrifice of those who have served in the United States Armed Forces.

And whereas the origins of this observance trace back to November 11th, 1918, when the Armistice ending World War One was signed, marking a moment of peace after years of global conflict.

Originally known as Armist's Day, it was renamed Veterans Day in 1954 to honor all who have served in war and peace.

And whereas this day serves as a heartfelt tribute to the men and women who have defended our freedoms, often at great personal cost, and reminds us of our collective responsibility to ensure that veterans have access to the health care, education, employment, and community support they have earned.

And with us, Washington State is home to more than 500,000 veterans, including many who live and work in Bellevue.

And whose leadership, integrity, and service continue to strengthen our community.

And whereas the City of Bellevue joins the nation in recognition the extraordinary contribution of our veterans and their families, reaffirming our commitment to being a community where every veteran in respected, supported, and valued.

And whereas Bellevue Islands are veterans through partnerships, volunteer efforts, and community observances, such as the annual Veterans Day ceremony, reflecting the city's deep appreciation for their service and sacrifice.

Now, therefore, I, Conrad Lee, on behalf of our Mayor Lynn Robinson, City of Bellevue, Washington, and on behalf of the City Council to hereby proclaim November 11th, 2025 as Veterans Day.

Washington, and encourage all residents to join in honoring the service, courage, and sacrifice of our veterans and their families.

Sign Lynn Robinson.

Mayor, City of Bellevue.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Mayor Robinson, Deputy Mayor Malicudian, Council members.

It's not uncommon for veterans to find their second calling in the fire service.

The values are the same.

Teamwork representing something larger than yourself, commitment to protecting others.

Whether it's on deployment overseas or responding to emergencies at home, that shared mission unites us.

And when the alarm sounds and our services are called upon, uh, we stand ready to answer that call.

So, on behalf of the veterans within the Bellevue Fire Department, as well as those who have served and continue to serve in this great city.

Thank you.

Let's do the picture and I invite all the veterans in the room to join us, please.

I move to approve the agenda.

Second.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Um let's see.

Next up is oral communications.

We have people signed up.

This evening there are five pre-registered speakers.

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

So the total time of oral communications is for a period of not 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.

In both of those categories, the presiding officer is authorized to give preference to those who have not spoken to counsel 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.

Each speaker will be allowed to speak up to three minutes, and only three people will be allowed to speak to any one side of a particular topic.

And then additionally, I want to remind everybody 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, and that includes one's own campaign.

Anyone beginning to speak on topics of that nature will be asked to stop.

With that, I'll call our first speaker who I believe is joining us.

Whoops, virtually, and that's Debbie Lacey.

Ms.

Lindsay, can you hear me?

Yes.

Perfect.

Your time begins now.

Okay, thank you.

I'm not able to show my screen.

I apologize.

Um good evening, Mayor Robinson and members of council.

I'm Debbie Lacey with the nonprofit East Side for All, speaking on behalf of several nonprofit organizations, immigrant community leaders, and the Safe Haven Coalition to urge you to uh increase human services grants in the mid-biannium budget update.

The city's draft appropriation, if I'm reading correctly, includes no adjustment for human services despite a deepening crisis.

We're facing expanded unconstitutional immigration enforcement.

ICE funding has nearly tripled since 2024, now at nearly 30 billion, with a reported national target of 90,000 arrests per month.

In a report issued this August, UW Center for Human Rights outlined that the federal government is breaking international humanitarian law with actions that include enforced disappearances, which has happened to Eastside community members this year.

The first enforcement action under this administration that we heard about happened here in Bellevue at Crossroads Shopping Center in January.

As we anticipated these needs last fall, we asked council to allocate a portion of the one-time, nearly 2.8 million dollar additional funding for human services to culturally specific supportive services.

Unfortunately, not only was that unsupported, but only 6% of that funding went to organizations best positioned to respond, despite over 40% of Bellevue residents being first generation immigrants.

In my nearly 30 years of nonprofit service and coalition building on the East Side, I have never witnessed a crisis of this magnitude directly impacting community and public safety.

And this isn't a public safety issue local police can address.

The first responders are small immigrant-led nonprofits, often with budgets under one million, who are showing up at the Northwest Detention Center, helping families assign guardianship for children left behind and providing food and basic needs at the overcapacity detention center isn't supplying.

These organizations are trusted lifelines to impacted Bellevue neighbors, stepping in where no one else can or will.

This year, as the crisis worsened with incident reports increasing by the week, we appealed to Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland for a rapid response fund.

Please refer to our email communications to you in June and September.

Kirkland led the local response support with just over 166,000.

Redmond followed with 250,000 in support.

We asked Bellevue to do the same through a mid-biannium budget amendment to increase human services funding for immigrant community first responders.

We look forward to your conversations and deliberations on this.

We're here to support and provide information as you make these critical decisions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker on our list is Christina D'Goney.

It's okay.

You can go ahead and start speaking.

On the documents I've just handed out, the first page I think is probably best illustrates what's happened.

We've put in 4,000 lineal foot feet as highlighted in the red dash going up 140th.

And we're currently in the middle of negotiating a latecomers agreement with the utility department.

The utility department has refused to give us a reservation of capacity, despite the fact that we've taken two years, $3 million, and have done a main extension sewer on behalf of the city of Bellevue, in part.

In part.

We solved that problem for the city.

We also solved the middle housing problem by allowing sewer for those homes that are currently on septic.

Now, the reason I'm here today, tonight is again to ask that you direct the utility department to provide us a reservation of capacity.

There is no law stating that a reservation cannot be provided.

It's simply uh, however, a reserve uh we are entitled to latecomer fees from approximately 70 um parcels, uh not even, but they're the ones represented in blue here.

Um those are part of our zone of benefit, and those parcels will be providing a late comer agreement or latecomer dollars back to us over the next 20 years.

The problem and the reason we need a reservation of capacity is as we all know, within the next 20 years, Bellevue could look significantly different.

You will have gone through two more comp plans in that 20 years.

If the city of Bellevue upzones any part of this 315 acres that comprises the red hashtags and the blue, it will drastically draw down the sewer capacity that is left.

Overlake farm is the single largest landholding left in Bellevue, and we do have plans to do development on it.

We have recently submitted for pre-development of five to eight acres.

But let's face it, it is going to take time to develop that out to full capacity.

The city, the utility department has done an analysis as to the capacity under current zoning, and that is what we are asking for.

The city says that there's plenty of capacity, so we should not worry about it.

But if the city upzones any of this 315 acres in the next 20 years, that capacity will have disappeared.

Not only will we not have me.

Unfortunately, your time has expired.

I encourage you to email the rest of your comments.

Absolutely.

I can um email this digitally to everybody too.

Thank you.

Our next speaker on the list is Lilita Opala, who's joining us virtually.

Hold tight.

Technical, Ms.

Apala, can you hear me now?

I can hear you.

Can you hear me now?

We can.

Your time begins now.

Okay, thank you so much.

Good evening, Mayor Robinson and the Bellevue City Council.

I am Lalita Upala, Go by Shi, Executive Director for Indian American Community Services.

Today I am urging you to increase the human services funding to support emergency crisis services across BIPOC communities in these unprecedented times.

We are where we are having to step up each day to address immigration-related crisis cases in an unprecedented magnitude.

We had earlier in the year reached out to this city council predicting a pandemic for BIPOC communities, which result in our small grassroots nonprofits rising to support communities despite slim operating budgets.

As a resident of the city of Bellevue, home to a very large immigrant community.

We are recognizing that we are not safe in our homes, in our workplaces, schools, and parks.

Just this evening, a neighborhood in Samamish, Washington, faced ICE agents asking residents, workers in schools and daycares for legal identification, proving their residence in the United States.

Panic has spread in our community, as stories are told in dismayed families recognize how othered we are today in the United States in Washington in our state and in King County and once again in East King County.

We CBOs in the city of Bellevue are seeking emergency funding support from Bellevue Human Services for providing emergency linguistically and culturally relevant immigration assistance, help desk education, know your rights campaigns, so that we can provide support to citizens, green card holders, legal residents, work visa holders, domestic violence survivors, because none of us are safe.

Our request of you as a city is to please step up and collaborate with us in providing and supporting much needed services for BIPAC communities, as did the city of Kirkland and Redmond.

For our work can only be sustainable and comprehensive if we meet the needs of our community in a timely manner.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

The next speaker on the list is Sue Mercer.

Um the other lady spoke about sewers, and I want to remind you that there is a lake at the corner of Southeast 16th and 156, because the culvert has not been cleaned out properly.

The water's not flowing.

Okay.

Um I've forgotten what I wanted to say.

Um I am going to be uh married to a green card holder.

And the city should think about bringing charges against any ICE people that violate our constitution by arresting American citizens or green card holders.

We should not allow what is happening in our country to happen in our city.

We need to stand up for the truth and for the Constitution.

The other thing is parking.

And I would like you to look at the parking laws.

When I bought my house 56 and a half years ago, it was free to park in front of my house.

And in 1990, you changed the law saying that you can't park for more than 24 hours in any given block.

Now I would like you to change that law, grandfathering those people who own homes before you change the law to give them free parking in front of their own homes.

And I'm not sure who permitted the original building of my home, but they did not permit a safe driveway.

And I'm in the process of making my driveway safe, but I think it's the city's responsibility to correct the curb so that my property has a safe, not a too steep driveway that could allow a car if the brakes failed to end up in the in the middle of 156 or even across.

Thank you very much.

I'm looking forward to meeting with somebody who is going to draw up the regulations to change parking, especially along 156 between Southeast 16th and the five-way stop.

There used to be free parking there, and you put in a bike.

Your time has expired.

I'd encourage you to email the rest of your comments.

Yes, if you could follow up with her and make sure we will.

We will thank you.

Everything what is your pure?

Yeah, my name is Alex Zimmerman, and I live in Bellevue for four years.

And what's happened right now for Bellevue in Bellevue for the last few years.

For my understanding, don't have an analogy in America.

And I explained to you situation, what is absolutely idiot.

First, we have two council who have two citizenship.

By definition, it's not law for protect them for this position.

You know what has been in everybody who works for government possibly have one cons one only citizenship.

I think this open to all country on this planet.

You know what has been in Bellevue is a huge exception.

Yes, support but Mayor Robinson, you know what is meaning in support by Council Balducci.

Yes, it is absolutely critical.

Another point what is absolutely critical.

We have approximately 120,000 people.

What is I called jungle slave?

You know what is meant, what is come from India.

65,000, they come from Chinese 45.

I can ask you to refine your comments to be civil when you're speaking in this house.

This is the people's house.

You don't need to be rude to people.

Thank you very much.

You interrupt me every meeting.

I'm very happy with this, you know.

It's so who you are.

Yes.

So situation very critical because many from ZMDA Harbor to citizenship.

Is this not good for America in the case?

This has nothing to do with the Bellevue City Council.

It doesn't have anything to do with our council work.

But you approve this for the last few years.

You know what this means makes it 120,000.

I've given you a warning.

If you continue, I'm gonna shut you off.

Ben you stop and acting like a creetina.

You are pure creatine, that is exactly who you are.

Okay, that doesn't have anything to do with council business either.

So you're done.

Your cat your public comment is over.

I'm gonna ask you to leave, please.

You're doing this every meeting in council.

And now you're disturbing our meetings.

Doesn't trespasses.

Why are you doing this?

Now you're disturbing the meeting.

It's absolutely you.

Okay.

We're going to move on.

So under council business and initiatives, we have a consideration of appeal.

So I'll have our city manager go ahead and introduce this for us.

Actually, Mayor, I think that um our city attorney will um give you the uh information about how to take up the appeal.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Uh good morning, Mayor, deputy mayor, council members.

Um explained in your memo.

Chair, uh Conlu to Alex Zimmerman.

Chair Conlu issued the exclusion order on October 22nd, banning Mr.

Zimmerman uh from attending planning commission meetings for 60 days or until December 21st.

Mr.

Zimmerman has filed a timely written appeal of Chair Conlu's order.

And per Bellevue City Code, the council is uh to consider Mr.

Zimmerman's appeal by reviewing the notice of appeal, which contains the basis for Chair Conloo's uh order, as well as Mr.

Zimmerman's written appeal.

Council should not consider any other information, facts, or testimony other than what is contained in the uh in these two documents.

Uh this means uh council should disregard if you have heard any other comments uh about this matter.

Uh after your review and consideration, council has two choices.

Denied appeal, which means upholding the decision that Chair Condu um issued, and granting the appeal, which means overturning the decision.

Those are uh the choices that you have, and I'll turn it back to you, Mayor.

Okay, thank you very much.

So let's start with uh just a motion and then we can have a discussion or answer any questions and trisna, you'll be available to answer questions.

Yes.

Okay.

I move to deny the appeal of the notice of exclusion issued by the planning commission Chair Honlu to Alex Zimmerman on October 22nd, 2025.

Are there any comments or questions about this?

Okay, not seeing any.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay, that passes.

Thank you very much.

Okay, next we have the consent calendar.

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?

Okay.

We have four study session items tonight.

Uh, two are for information and then two are kind of bundled together for one uh direction.

Um, so city manager, go ahead.

Deputy mayor and council.

The first study session tonight is on uh brand identity community feedback report.

And this work does support the council's priority to develop and establish an updated brand identity for the city, one that hopefully resonates with our diverse communities and aligns with the city's core values and vision.

Um taking a look at the city's um how the city is viewed and perceived is important for a number of reasons, including assessing how the community views line up with what they value in this city.

So earlier this year, staff uh with consultant assistants conducted outreach in the community.

And tonight, Michelle de Grand, our chief communications officer.

And I don't know if Megan is here.

Megan is online.

Megan Hathaway, uh research director from DH Communications and Ian Hansen at the table, senior account executive from DH.

They're here tonight to give you an overview of that work and to seek some uh feedback and let you know what the next steps are.

With that, I'll hand it over to Michelle.

Thanks, City Manager Crossing.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council members.

It's uh really great for us to be here tonight and share with you some of the findings that we got out of the outreach that we did earlier this year towards our brand assessment and identity enhancement options, and we'll go through some of those for you.

See if I can get this thing to work.

It did work earlier.

Oops, I probably went too far then, didn't I?

Okay, great, got it.

All right, so our presentation is for information only tonight.

Um, but we would love to get your feedback on the areas of this work that really speak to you, things that you've heard out in the community as you've spoken to people.

Um, you are an important uh stakeholder in this, and so definitely want to get your feedback on this as we go forward.

This input will help us really begin developing the specific tactics that we'll have in the work plan to be in making these brand enhancements as we go forward.

So I have just a couple of slides on our project background for you.

We'll also go through the different methodologies that we used when we did this outreach earlier this year, and then I'll hand it off to Megan and Ian, and they'll talk about some of our key findings and also synthesize that up to what some of the community focus areas and suggestions really turned out to be.

And then I also have uh just some next steps to share with you as well.

All right, so for some background, mostly for the community.

Um, the top yellow box that you see there is our council priority number two, and it is really related to developing and establishing an updated brand for the city, and as the city manager said, something that really resonates with the community and yet still aligns with our city values.

So that's really what's driving our work and what drove our outreach that we did earlier this year.

The lower box on the screen is council priority number 10.

And this is actually related more to enhanced community engagement.

That effort will be led by a separate team within the city, but one that is equally important and very tied into communications because as someone interacts with the brand, they often do that through engagement activities.

So we wanted to make sure that we were incorporating that.

Um we also have our community engagement uh team members here in the audience today, as they were an important part of this process and also attended our focus groups.

So wanted to establish some of the some of the council members have seen this slide already, but really this is for the community.

Wanted to establish really what is a brand because that means different things to different people.

Um, the history of a brand goes all the way back to um livestock uh history where they actually used a brand to put a mark on an animal.

And so, because of that history, I think people really think about a brand as being your logo, it is your mark.

Um, yes, that is a part of our brand, but what's really important and we wanted everyone to understand is that it's really just one of three important parts of your total brand identity.

It is part of your visual identity, which is that top green circle in this Venn diagram.

It's how you look at your logos and your materials.

But importantly, there are two other equally uh heavy parts of your brand.

One is behavioral, it's what we do and our values and actions that we show when we communicate about our brand, and it's our verbal identity, which is what we say and how we communicate.

And really, all three of these things together create our brand experience, and that's really what we wanted to assess.

So the questions that we did in this outreach really were looking to get at what that brand experience is for people today and how we can again make that more relevant for them and still align with our values.

So, just going through the ways that we conducted our outreach earlier this year to achieve a number of different things.

We wanted to give people the ways to engage that were easiest for them.

So we did focus groups so that we could have in-depth discussions and really dig into what people's perceptions and communications preferences were, but we also held a community listening session, which allowed us to get a broader group that was open to the public.

But we also held a community listening session, which allowed us to get a broader group that was open to the public.

We did a community survey that was open to the public.

And we also engaged with internal groups of city staff and city council members as well as doing some small business outreach.

Importantly, we already understand that we do have some work to do in reaching all of our diverse communities in Bellevue.

So as we did this outreach, particularly with the focus groups, we leveraged our teams at Mini City Hall.

We leveraged our Bellevue Diversity Advantage Network.

We leveraged our communities of color coordinating team and also our diversity advantage team to be able to reach out to and specifically target some of these communities in Bellevue to really get that in-depth conversation through our focus groups.

So I think that's important for us to mention.

All right.

So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Megan Hathaway, who is virtually on screen with us, and she's going to walk through the first section of some of our key findings in the work that we did here.

So Megan, take it away.

Thank you so much, Michelle.

And thank you to you, Mayor Robinson and City Council for having us here today.

We're we're very grateful to be here.

So we do have a comprehensive report detailing all of the findings across our methodologies that Michelle just shared, but wanted to distill some of the key findings to share with you today.

So one of the first things we asked folks to consider in both focus groups and the survey is their perception of Bellevue.

And more specifically, we asked them to share the top words and phrases that come to mind when thinking about Bellevue.

So as you can see in the word cloud reflected here, some of the things that most that came most top of mind included the city's beautiful parks and green spaces, its safety and cleanliness, the growth and development of the business community, and for some of the higher cost and affluence within the city as well.

I'd also flag that in the focus groups in particular, folks commonly shared that the city's diversity, culture, and welcoming neighborhoods were top of mind as well.

So next, we asked somewhat of a similar question, but this time about the perceptions of the city of Bellevue as a local government.

So top terms that came to mind here were that the city is well managed, efficient, and responsive, that the city is growth and business-minded, and that it supports and facilitates high quality of life and community connection.

In addition, we did hear some more constructive comments sharing that the city government can feel complicated or bureaucratic, that for some, it does not feel like it's geared toward the needs and focuses of all residents.

So we additionally asked participants to share the concepts that they associate most with Bellevue and those that align with their own personal values.

And there was strong alignment in the top two areas associated with both the city and participant values.

And those included beautiful natural areas and clean and safe city, which you can see are reflected here in those top two spots for both categories.

This line of questioning also showed an area of opportunity, really.

So there were some instances where the community showed high personal value or prioritization, but did not necessarily perceive Bellevue as representing those values as highly.

So some examples include high-quality services and caring community.

Participants stated that they really personally value these qualities highly, but did not necessarily associate them as highly with the city of Bellevue.

And we know, of course, that these qualities in particular are highly valued by the city of Bellevue.

So this really just reflects an opportunity, rather, to tell that story in a better way and to demonstrate behavior that the city really is committed to those values.

So we then asked a little bit about feedback on informational materials that are produced by the city.

And participants shared most commonly the following that I'll walk through here.

So first, while resources were perceived as professional, they are often too dense.

So materials, including the website, the City of Bellevue website, would be easier to use and to digest if they're more scannable, with the most critical of information prioritized.

Next, we heard that resources really would benefit from the use of more visuals, especially graphics and photographs that use that can be used to help communicate critical information in an easier, more digestible way.

Participants noted that they would prefer more visuals over more wordy information whenever possible.

Related to that, the third note here is that participants would like to see selected visuals reflect the diversity of the city.

So as you heard earlier, participants really do highly value the city's diversity and would like to see visuals that represent the many communities across Bellevue being reflected across informational materials and resources being produced by the city.

Fourth, while Bellevue currently already works hard to translate its critical materials into the most common languages spoken in Bellevue, participants did note that they would like to see more materials available in language when possible.

And then last but not least, we heard commonly that participants shared that the city's branding and materials can feel sterile at times.

And they aren't necessarily reflective of the city's beauty and vibrancy that we heard folks really, really value earlier in this presentation.

Participants do understand the professional real excuse me, professionalism required of city materials, but they really would like them to reflect more of the city's beautiful qualities.

Okay.

So as we shared earlier, when it comes to consideration of branding, communications and engagement really do go hand in hand.

So while there are other community-wide efforts that are taking place, very specifically focused on engagement, we did collect some feedback related to community preferences for engagement, and we'll share those with you today as well.

So first, we heard that folks would like to see engagement as an ongoing and relational process as compared to something that feels more transactional.

Folks want to know that they'll have opportunities to engage with the city in valuable ongoing ways.

Next, we heard that rather than asking communities to come to the city, folks really would like to see the city meet communities where they are and come to them when it comes to city engagement and outreach opportunities.

Next, we heard participants recommend partnering very closely with community-based organizations within the city of Bellevue.

And the reason for this is that these really are the places and spaces where communities are spending their time.

And it can serve, they can serve rather as trusted messengers to relay important information across Bellevue's diverse communities and neighborhoods.

Next, we heard folks would like to see more opportunities to co-create these engagement opportunities.

So they shared that so often opportunities are set or established or brainstormed before communities are approached.

And they really would like to be a part of that planning process and shaping these activities to the extent possible.

And then lastly, but again, certainly not least, participants shared that while they do see Bellevue doing this, they would like to continue see to see inclusive ways for people to get involved.

So this is factoring in all learning styles, abilities, languages, personal experiences.

And then this slide here represents a combination of our survey results and the top responses from our focus group discussions.

So when we asked folks about preferred communications channels, people across methodologies share that the City of Bellevue website, the City of Bellevue newsletters and email announcements, and the It's Your City newsletter letter are communications channels that they use most commonly.

So they're preferred communications channels.

Additional channels that folks use most frequently are ranked here in order of preference.

And that includes things like social media and Facebook and Instagram were mentioned the most frequently, word of mouth at community events and gatherings, city-hosted gatherings and meetings open to the entire community, contacting local officials, local media outlets, and use of the My Bellevue app.

Now I'm going to pass things off to Ian here, who's here with you in person, and he's going to share a bit more about some of the more specific recommendations for focus areas that were shared across our methodologies.

Yes, indeed.

Thank you, Megan.

And thank you, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council for your investment in this important council priority.

So time and time again through our engagement with community members, we identified six key focus areas that we heard in different ways, different mediums from different folks of different backgrounds.

So we'll start with number one.

It's important to maximize high-touch, trusted communications.

People want to hear from people that they trust and community-based organizations that they know.

And these trusted messengers can help bring messages to the community that may resonate more strongly than just from the city itself and allow for a dialogue with those trusted messengers back to the city.

Number two, an increase in the sharing of community voices in citywide materials.

Again, there's a sense of trust from hearing from the community, whether that's residents or businesses.

And we want to spotlight those in citywide communications materials.

Number three, communications should be proactive and not uh reactive whenever possible.

Um, some folks see the city as backward looking in its communications.

And yes, it's important to celebrate successes and accomplishments, but looking ahead and making the space and time for folks to know how they can get involved is equally important.

Number four, uh, visuals used in city communications should reflect the beauty and diversity of the city.

Uh, it's a city in a park.

It's vibrant.

Um, there's beauty in the diverse diversity.

And often the city can be seen as a sterile and formal brand and leaning into the vibrant colors and photography in our messaging and communications materials was desired.

Number five, further language accessibility.

Again, people value and celebrate Bellevue's diversity.

And the city does a lot of great work in translated and trans creative materials, but using planar language so that trusted messengers can translate those materials further and expanding the translations was desired as well.

And lastly, number six, transparency as a priority.

People want to understand what's happening.

They want to get involved through these focus groups and listening sessions and surveys.

I think that's clear that residents want to share their input and the city wants to listen.

So this again ties into proactive communications, but making space in physical spaces, digital spaces, social media would allow folks to do that.

Great.

Thanks, Ian.

And thanks, I can just quickly round us out here and walk through some next steps, starting with a quick timeline.

So earlier this year, um, we conducted our outreach.

We're in Q4 right now, where we're um analyzing, analyzing that data and sharing sharing the report.

Uh as we move into 2026, we're really looking to implement some updates that we can do within our current budget, and then really identify what other pieces we want to include in our work plan and what kind of timelines and budget might be associated with those so that we can build that going forward.

I want to draw your attention to the very last bullet on the far right uh column there, the Q2 plus 2026 item maintenance.

What does that mean?

It means this is not a one-and-done effort.

It means we will continue to touch base with the community.

We know that our community is constantly evolving, and so we want to be responsive to that and continue to do touch-based efforts and make sure that we continue to be resonant and in line with those shared values.

Also important to start out, we are not starting from zero.

We have a lot of work that is underway, and in fact, a lot of the findings that we got through this effort were affirmative of things that we already knew we could improve upon.

And so we've already started some of those efforts, including we are in the process of developing a plain language framework.

So, what that means is that we're using words that are understandable to all people and that are easily translated into other languages, which makes that language access easier.

Um, we're also continuously improving and expanding our technology tools and assessing how they're working for us in order to improve our communications and community engagement functions.

Uh, we currently provide and meet compliance with language access regulations.

We will continue to do that for vital information.

And again, as I said, our community continues to evolve, and we expect that that very soon is going to expand to even more languages.

So we will certainly do that and continue to look for those places to go beyond compliance with our language uh translation efforts.

And then finally, strengthening that communication and community engagement effort.

We've got that team, our community engagement team, and you're going to hear from them in the months ahead about the work that they are doing to build their own work plan to help enhance that function at the city.

So just wanted to kind of lay those things out there.

And finally, uh, just sort of some initial takeaways and opportunities for y'all to think about as you think about uh where those areas of focus might be that are most uh meaningful to you.

Very clear parks, natural beauty, and community environments vibrancy came up as some key visual values.

And so we can really explore ways to build that into our visual system immediately.

Um, noticing that gap between the Bellevue perception and the community values for some of those topics.

Again, same thing.

That's an easy get that we can start working on right away in terms of closing that gap and using that opportunity to better share our story in those areas.

The desire for content that's more visual, easier to understand.

We hear that and we can begin to build that into our system, begin to build in more visuals, and we're already exploring that with some teams throughout the city on how we can do that and what specific tactics we can put in our work plan.

And then building that regular engagement, transparency and community voice cadence so that we are responsive to that and building that into our processes.

Uh, that's a piece that we already recognize and that we are doing with that community engagement team as they do their work.

And recognizing people have limited time, but they are really interested in engaging with the projects that they care about through those trusted channels.

So doing that work to build up where are those trusted messengers and how can we leverage them in a better way.

And again, the top sources of information, those are all great places for us to start because we know that those are channels that people are using and that work for them right now.

All right, so with that, um, would love to again get any feedback that you have or any questions that you have for us as we begin to uh build out this work plan.

Thank you.

So, yeah, information only.

Before we start, I would like you to clarify something.

Two things.

One is brand identity, I think of like our logo.

And we're hearing a lot about outreach and community engagement.

So can you tell me how those two go together?

Number one and number two, explain the difference between our city brand identity that we're working on tonight versus what visit Bellevue does.

Good.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you, Mayor.

So first of all, as we talked about those three different pieces of your total brand identity, the logo as a as a visual element, engagement really fits into our behavioral brand identity.

So those are that's like the things that we do and how we interact with you.

So it really is a key piece of that overall brand experience that we are looking to assess and improve.

So that's kind of how those two things go hand in hand if I were to answer that question.

And then secondly great question about the distinction between what visit Bellevue does and what the city of Bellevue does in terms of branding.

Some of you may know that Visit Bellevue just recently did a campaign to rebrand their visit Bellevue brand.

And they are really focused externally on business attraction and tourism and so that's a little bit of a different flavor I'll say than what we are doing in terms of what the city offers and the identity of the local government entity.

Okay perfect.

Thank you.

Well let's start with council member new in house it's your night tonight.

Oh thank you and thank you Michelle Megan Ian for uh for the great start uh there was a lot of great uh nuggets as I was uh making my way through the um through the packet here um let's see and uh number of questions I'll I'll be um uh cognizant of the time not to uh take up too much time um but um you know great as I would call it kind of a brand audit uh that we we that we've done here and it's really you know not about what we say the brand is is what the residents tell us the brand is I don't think um in a lot of ways there weren't any surprises I think it reinforces what what what we think um or what what I hear from residents allowed time in terms of kind of those those top um uh I don't know uh identifiers if you will of what they think of when they think of Bellevue clean safe green um here it hear it all the time so that's so that's great um I I and I love that you spent a lot of time also on the engagement piece because that is so important that the identity lives up to the behavioral right what what they see um and maybe even the emotional tie that they see or that they have with the city that that identity lives up to that that it that it that it connects right with their experience with with the city and I think that might be the toughest part because there is a little bit of a of a disconnect there a little bit in terms of what we've heard in terms of um uh the the the the the communic um the communique as being uh sterile or not being as vibrant or as visual as what um they think of when they think of their city communicating with with them uh which leads me to my first question like how are we going to take that in and how does how is that going to be um reflected in terms of the overall cities like brand essence on the behavioral piece or on the engagement piece how is that gonna work itself into the into the final product if you will yeah so I think we got a lot of good directional information from people in terms of really what they are looking for, what they want to see from us in terms of the transparency in terms of the being um proactive and and forward looking as opposed to retroactive and backward looking those are all kind of behavioral things and then also the frequency came up in our um uh outreach in terms of like we want you know communicate often communicate early right and so uh those types of things are things that we can implement within our communications processes that really directly respond to that behavioral element and tie in with engagement and again we'll work closely with the engagement team to make sure that we are well coordinated through that effort and then as part of that that next step I'm sorry I don't have the exact timeline in front of me but establishing that that that brand positioning statement if you will um that captures the the the city's um uh uh promise and and and and and personality reflects who we are um uh uh today um what when when would that come come back to us?

And I would expect that we're gonna really take maybe through the end of the year to think about okay, with all of this information, what are some of those specific things that we can add into a work plan?

And then what are the things that you know how much time will they take, how much will they cost, and how much bang can we get for our buck, essentially?

Um, and then have all of those sort of built out around the first quarter of 2026.

Okay.

And as part of that, kind of have those, you know, four or five like main brand pillars associated with okay.

Um a lot of the feedback around the materials that was uh made during the uh the the during the engagement process, was that an open-headed question, or did you give specific examples of m materials?

I wasn't quite sure how that question was really uh communicated to the people that were engaged in this.

And I think we could have gotten you know slightly different answers based on uh uh what materials we were referring to.

Can you touch on that?

And just to clarify, council member, do you mean specifically the visuals?

Well, visuals, but many times you you just say materials, and uh and and that's why I'm not sure what you mean by materials, or is it or was it just you know an open-ended question?

It could have been anything, um, and and just left it to their discretion in terms of what materials.

Okay.

Um, so that was not a question that we included in the survey because that was difficult for us uh you know to give them visuals, but we did do that in the focus groups um and in the targeted outreach.

And so we did actually give people a range of materials.

So flyers, uh, it's your city newspaper, neighborhood news, newsletter, um, program flyers and pamphlets.

So we gave them a broad range of materials that we put out and had them visually assess them.

Um the clay organization was great to see you played a uh a fairly um uh important role in the feedback as well.

I'm just curious, were they all Bellevue organizations or were they outside of Bellevue as well?

So for the organizations that we um held that we reached out to and uh conducted the focus groups with, they were all Bellevue organizations, people that were connected to and serving the communities in Bellevue.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And then last question on the um their preferred communication.

Um I was just curious uh it kind of surprises me that website was number one, unless it was where do you go for trusted city information versus what is their preferred communication style?

Um, because when I hear things like you need to come to us, um, or we prefer that you come meet us where we are, but yet their preferred communication style was the website.

Uh, to me that didn't quite line up.

And I would think also that um, you know, given uh where we are today and all the different technological or technology tools at our um at our disposal, I would think that social, for example, might be more of a quick way to get the information that they need or be engaged.

Um so can you speak to that a little bit?

Absolutely.

So the specific question that we had was rank the following sources.

So we gave them a list uh based on how often you use them to get information about Bellevue.

So it was really about the poll.

Um yeah, and I will add to that we had the opportunity obviously to do more of an in-depth discussion in the focus groups, and so that's where we dug in more to like those specific channels.

So Instagram, Facebook, and then for our diverse communities, WhatsApp and some other um uh channels came up in those discussions as being very important for specific communities, yeah.

Okay.

So as it as we progress, for me, it'd be really important to know, you know, trusted source or where where they go versus their preferred communication style.

I think that's really really important that we clarify that.

I think that's a great distinction.

It's like what's available for me now versus what do I wish they had?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So thank you so much for the for the great update.

I mean, for for my colleagues, um, you know, this is something that we started uh pre-COVID that got sidelined, rightly so.

Um so it uh I'm just thrilled that we're able to pick this back up again.

Um, and this is just great feedback and great engagement from residents and organizations to and it it touches so many different things that uh we can um uh address, learn from, improve, um, and uh hopefully really get to a point where we have not only improved communications but an improved identity as well that really reflects um the city um and and city government as well.

So thank you for all your great work, appreciate it.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Lee.

Thank you.

This is a great piece of work.

Uh I think we started out went into seeing what brand we're making.

But I think that came out of this, which I'm uh, you know, really appreciating is engagement.

Uh you went through the process of getting people to talk.

What do they need to look at?

Especially when you talk about the gap thing.

You know, what people see, what people want to see, what Bellevue's pass has been.

But then it doesn't appear to be quite the same thing.

So we start communicating with them.

And I think the key thing came out to me that's really stand out, is really what the public is seeing Bellevue as a city, and what we can do to have better engagement with them.

Some of the key words I get, which is what I've been getting after 30 some years on the council, after living in Belvia for 50 some years.

I talk to these folks.

They know, I know how they feel, I know how I feel.

And I've seen how the government relates to the people.

The key word is trusted messenger.

That's the element.

You know, I'm glad that uh DH communications working with you.

They are the experts in communication, right?

So they know how to communicate.

They know how to get message crew, they know how to get listen to the public, so we know where we're going, where we're so I think that's good.

This is valuable, very valuable.

But I think the key should be focused on communication.

Because after communication, then we can start building the brand, right?

We are what we're gonna be, and how do we use various means to do it?

So I really like, and it's engagement's relational, it's not transactional.

People want to be staying with you.

They want to create, co-create, not create.

You know, co-create the keys.

They want us to one thing that we learned that we have to go to them because they're busy, right?

So they're gonna wait.

We're gonna if we just wait, they're not gonna come in again.

We gotta go to them.

So this is one step the city has to do.

I think that's an action we need to do.

And obviously, we're talking about the other things, language, orders important, diversity, people like to see it.

These are all things that we heard.

So I think ultimately the word is transparency.

That means communication, talking to them, telling them, they understanding us, they see us.

That's transparency.

Again, that's relationship.

It's not transactional.

Okay.

And the key is how do we maintain this?

How do we keep it long term?

Not just today, you're gone.

Transitional, not transactional.

Relationship is long.

It doesn't just work one day.

Parental relationship, family relationship.

It's not one day, it's forever.

So I think these are the key.

If we can understand how this can be done, how we make the effort to build this relationship, we come a long way.

It's wonderful work, but make sure you focus on building relationship, communicating.

And relationship, not transactional.

I'm I'm flawed.

I'm saying I think this is great work.

So thank you, uh Michelle, that you started this conversation.

And thanks DH communications for doing this.

One thing I was gonna say is I don't remember being part of the uh communication with city council discussion on this.

Uh I I thought maybe I did, because a lot of these things you put down is what I'm thinking about.

So I'm glad.

I'm glad, you know, so regardless.

Well done.

Good job.

Okay, thank you so much.

Councilmember Summitwiria.

Thank you.

Um wow, I love this.

I love marketing and PR.

This is like so amazing.

And I love how you describe how different marketing branding versus engagement, because I think they are into like intertwined together, but they're like different, right?

So there it's good that you cleared that message.

I have a few questions to ask about this.

One of the page that was saying that um the trusted voice from the community member that includes like maybe council members too to help to message together as a collaboration.

Does it count?

I'm just wondering if it's beneficial.

Um I think that's an excellent point, Councilmember.

And I think that you all could absolutely serve in that role.

You certainly have connections, trusted connections, right?

Two different aspects and parts and elements of the community.

When we had that discussion within the focus groups, what folks were really talking about, and it could be you, it could be someone else, but it's people who look like them.

It's people from within their communities who they already have a relationship with and trust.

In a lot of ways for us, that is our community-based organizations and really using the relationships that have already been built to be able to share those messages.

So that's really kind of where folks were thinking when they were talking about those trusted messengers.

And again, it could be anyone from anywhere in the community, just someone who you have that trusted relationship with.

I think it's really helpful for us to get trained how to having very unified message when we show on a showcase how amazing our city is.

So with proper training, we we we I think I mean for me, I think I want to be utilized more, right?

Yeah.

So um thank you.

And then another question I had was so I am actually really interested.

One, you know, when we have one part of the survey was directly to small businesses.

So I'm wondering if there is how can we using branding also elevate like small business restaurants in our city as like the gem of our um because we add because the small business adds vibrancy and culture, and then you know, the definition of what Bellevue's personality is.

Um, I'm just wondering, putting out there, I wonder what is their capacity to maybe kind of add the element into the branding final products through either branding, marketing, or maybe storytelling of you know, why did they pick Bellevue?

Um, why are they how are they thriving and how you know being Bellevue is like the first choice?

Would that be a possibility?

Yeah, so what I'll say there, number one, as you know, council member, uh, they are strapped for time.

So it is, you know, we whatever we do, we have to make it easy for them.

But also, absolutely, we can work with the economic development team.

Um, we have the benefit of having that as one of our pillars within the economic development plan update, right?

Which is that we want to be able to focus on that diversification in those small businesses.

So absolutely we can do some of that with that team.

I mean, as long as we don't add extra work for them, but kind of like elevate their branding, you know, I mean parallel of what they're doing on their own already.

I think it would be really helpful for them.

Um, I think.

Oh, you know what?

I have one last question.

Um, that was on, you know, how like there is one page on the response, and then and then it listed out what's the most iconic and then memorable thing about Bellevue.

And I see there's old Bellevue, there's Bellevue Square, the City Pride.

Um, would we have opportunity or like maybe allocation of the resources to highlight, for example, like I love owning Bellevue?

That's just like such an iconic place in Bellevue.

And we're not gonna be the same.

I just took my Kiss Chico treating on Sunday, and it was amazing.

There was full of people, so much full vibrant, right?

So is there any way we can elevate that, like focusing on these iconic pieces like the old Bellevue?

That was one of the reasons why we asked that question to council member was to really figure out what do people associate with as iconic in the city and how do we kind of leverage those things in the ways that we communicate?

So absolutely the plan would be to use the data that we got from this process and uh promote and leverage those things more and build them into more solidly, I'll say into what our brand experience is.

Thank you so much.

I'm looking forward to it.

Thank you.

Okay, I think council member Bargava.

Yeah I so appreciate the presentation.

Um I can uh uh again uh uh go plus one to some of the positive remarks on the on the clarity and and and and depth of the work done.

Very impressive.

Um also really uh, you know, uh wanna plus one the sentiment of actually going beyond communications to actually how the brand is perceived through communication and through engagement, what you're calling sort of the behaviors that come out and that perception of the brand becomes much more real at that point.

So uh appreciate that.

Uh I I just a few comments from me, uh, and maybe just one two questions really quickly.

Uh plus one on the idea of actually going from dense to simple.

I think that is one of the challenges uh that reduces not just the ability to communicate the idea, but also I think it impacts engagement.

If people find it difficult to digest information once or twice, it's very good chance that people are coming back to engage with the information as frequently as they would like.

So that simplification and really uh making it such that I love the idea of being able to translate that also with clarity in the same simplicity.

So what you can communicate in English with simple language and terms also translates to how you communicate in other languages and maintaining that simplicity and also importantly auditing for that, I think would be uh a really good thing.

Um, and then uh the idea of visuals that uh sort of represent the diversity of our city is kind of an interesting thing.

Um beyond just photographs, I wonder what that would mean and and and and uh how that translates into the way things are represented.

Not totally clear to me, um, to be honest with you, but uh something that you know um definitely caught my mind.

I was trying to think about what you'd be doing.

So maybe towards the end you can give some remarks on that.

And then uh plus one on the translation of communications, and that's an evolution.

So those are on the calm side, you know, uh some key takeaways for me.

Um would I just also go through my uh other thoughts as well uh before I get to the question on the behavioral side?

Um, you know, the idea of um not meeting, not just meeting people where they are, but also early engagement of what uh council member Lee was talking about co-creation, I think is really important because I think I've heard that as I engage the community that you know, decisions coming down the pipe are you know, it's too late for the engagement, it's almost reactive and not proactive.

And so um the more we can do there, the better outcomes we will have, the better engagement we have, and it also enhances the perception of the brand and the way people are thinking about uh um the city, which I think is really helpful.

And then um partnering with trusted organizations and being that voice, I think is just a really, really important aspect.

And I love that you're doing that with Bellevue-based organizations.

I love that you're leveraging that, which kind of takes me to um the question that I have uh for engagement is meeting people where they are.

I have one more question after this, but but meeting people where they are.

Uh, I know we do a lot of effort uh in trying to do that already.

So uh coming out of this, are there any specific ideas or any specific feedback where you thought gaps were there when people felt we're missing a demographic segment or missing our ability to engage with people where they are, um over and above what we already do?

Sure, absolutely thanks, council member.

I can address that.

And then I also would love for Megan uh who is there facilitating all of our focus groups as well, because there might be things that she thinks of that I don't, but I think one of the main um pieces here in terms of meeting folks where they are is uh we did hear from our focus groups that for a lot of communities, um, City Hall, for instance, is a little bit intimidating, right?

So um doing activities, events and meetings in places that are not seen as an intimidating government facility is one of those ways.

Um, also another thing that we heard in terms of meeting people where they are, are you know, are we tabling out in the community, for instance, at places where people are going regularly?

Are we utilizing and leveraging some of the community-driven events uh or you know, uh places where people shop, you know, places where people congregate.

Are we kind of like utilizing those in a strategic way to be able to be out in the community where people are?

Megan, did you want to add anything in terms of what you heard from the focus groups?

Yeah, I think I think that was wonderful, Michelle.

Thank you.

The only piece or sort of additional color I would add is that um it's not only going to people, meeting them where they are, but also meeting them.

This is terrible grammar, but meeting them when they are, and I'll explain that.

Um at organized events, places and spaces where they're already planning to spend their time, events that are already taking place, rather than asking them to come to you at a pre-scheduled time somewhere else, going to them at events and and organized activities that are already taking place and and engaging with them in a place where they're comfortable at a time when they're already planning to physically be there, of course, with with the permission of those groups and those people to spend that time with them.

But I think it's not only just going to them, but also at a time and space that's that's appropriate and where they're already planning to spend their time.

Okay, great.

That's um super helpful.

So love to see how that translates into tactics as we drive engagement further.

And my last question really is um, you know, a lot of the feedback that seems to have come um is very tangible.

Um, you know, proactive communications, better language translations, simplify the language.

And I get what that means.

And even uh the question of represent diversity more effectively in our visuals, one can understand.

The one that I did have a hard time really understanding the feedback, and I'm looking for your take on this, is that our communications appear very sterile, and we have to try and change that to make it more vibrant and reflective, the beauty of our city.

How are you perceiving that feedback?

Uh yes, thank you, council member, for pointing that out.

That was uh a term that did come up in the focus groups.

Um, people do appreciate that that we have professional communications, but they were they almost said they were overproduced, so they looked a little too sharp, a little too uh, you know, uh government-y or sterile in that way.

Um, and so uh or they looked all sort of the same.

And I think um getting back to your earlier question, council member, about like how do the visuals represent or what do you think about, or what are examples of visuals representing the diversity of our community?

I think uh people were kind of expressing to us that our community is colorful, our community is vibrant, and the materials that we put out, they're very blue, they're very you know, um, structured.

And so uh I think those were some of the things that we were getting from folks.

And so we just have to uh come together with our professional graphics team and talk about what are the ways that we can kind of potentially make uh you know adjustments to our system to uh respond to that.

Megan, I don't know if you had anything additionally that you wanted to add there.

This is not like an earthquake, is it?

I think it's someone with very loud music.

Yeah.

Oh okay.

It's all about that base.

Yeah.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, the the only thing I would I would add, I think you captured that wonderfully, Michelle, is just it's a it's a feeling of warmth that reflects the kind of community dynamic in the neighborhoods and the vibrancy that the to some extent city materials do need to look and feel professional, but to whatever extent possible, making them feel that kind of warm community-based feeling that folks value in the city of Bellevue, reflecting that not only in the visuals, but the language that you're using to make it feel more accessible and and reflect more of that warmth that people value in in the community and the neighborhoods of Bellevue.

Great way to say, Megan.

I got it, I get it.

Appreciate it.

Thank you again.

Great work.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hamilton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thanks for the presentation.

A lot of really good work here.

Certainly appreciate the thorough response to our council priority number two.

Thank you for that.

Uh, want to take a moment to express some appreciation for all the work that you currently do, uh, telling the city story so effectively.

Michelle, you and your your team really do an excellent job of supporting the community and its effort to engage actively in the life of the city, and appreciate your collaboration and making the engagement even better through refining, enhancing and enhancing our communications efforts.

Also uh appreciate uh Jason Grinn, want to acknowledge the effort uh that is underway there and his support of uh all of uh as council members and our efforts uh to engage the community through our own social media channels.

Um, and just want to add on to Councilmember Sumatouria as well in just looking at ways that we can even enhance that kind of engagement uh with the community.

Um I think you've landed on a comprehensive list of brand enhancement focus areas, appreciate that.

Um especially interested to see the impact of content that is more visual and easier to understand, uh, as you've heard from my colleagues and and you've already expressed the desire to have that.

Um appreciate the focus on early and often.

Um I think that makes a lot of sense and and uh anxious to see uh more from the community engagement team as well as we move forward.

Um would like to focus on early and hope that we can provide as many options as possible for community members to sign up for a wide range of automated communication options.

And I know there are a number of alerts that are available now, but I hope as we go through this process, uh we can look to enhance that list.

And I wonder too, when we talk about kind of broad channels of communication, if there might be a way for folks to kind of sign up for alerts that are more general.

So wherever it might come from, uh from within the city, for example, if it's a transportation-related issue, they've kind of tagged transportation as an issue that's important to them.

And so wherever you know, we're doing something and it kind of touches on transportation, the environment, housing, whatever it might be.

So if they could just sign up in a really general way and get a bunch of information on a specific, you know, target that they have in mind.

I think that would be great.

Um, but great work.

I think you're really uh you've done a lot already, and I think you're really on the right track uh to do even more.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh thank you, Michelle, uh, Ian and Megan, and thank you for everyone who did all of the outreach.

Great work.

I think this is uh could be a great foundation for uh future work that improve our brand.

I just wanted to highlight something that uh I've heard uh Councilman Murley and Council Member Summodaveria and some other council members mentioned in the community engagement.

I think the three things that it was very resonating with me was maximum high touch trusted communication.

That's something that we are hearing a lot.

Why don't we rely on community-based organizations, neighborhood associations are telling us they can help us?

So I think we need to rely on them more.

Uh the other one was communication should be proactive, not uh retroactive.

I think I am hearing that a lot uh in planning commission on the council.

They wanted to know what no knowing what's coming.

We are doing amazing work, but we can do better because the perception is we need to work on that.

And then the last one, transparency as a priority.

Uh, they wanted to know what is happening and how can they be involved from day one.

And that's again, if that's a perception that we are not there, I think we are doing our best to be that, but if the perception is that, so we need to be better.

I have uh two just a small questions and then maybe uh one comment.

Uh do we have any metrics uh that's like we are going to say, hey, this is our baseline, or do we have that before, or this is the first one?

Because then we can track if this perception is changing over time and what is the cadence you are doing that and what by what cadence you are coming back to us.

I saw some future steps, but I just wanted to maybe elaborate on that more.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um so uh what I will say is that yes, we'll be developing a set of metrics, and that is um engagement.

It is also uh Council Member Hamilton, you mentioned uh kind of where those automated alerts occur, right?

And and doing some work to try to enhance that and grow that base of people who are um getting uh automated alerts from us.

So there's a number of metrics there, just from uh how are people engaging, how are they positively engaging, right?

Once we uh make some adjustments to the ways in which we're talking uh about our brand, so that verbal element of our brand.

Um so, yes, we already have some ideas on what those uh metrics might be and how we would be tracking them and also then connecting and touching base with them.

And it includes just that talking with people, right?

It is like going back to the community uh at regular intervals to say, how are we doing?

Um, you know, is it resonating with you?

Are there things that are still an issue?

So we've got a couple of different ways by which we can actually gauge and measure um the effectiveness of this work going forward.

Great, but when we go back to them and say what we are doing, if we don't have a baseline metrics, if we don't know what their comments could translate to what we are doing.

Does it make sense?

Gotcha.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would say as a baseline, we have the work that we just did earlier this year, right?

So that would be an example of our baseline.

And then if we went back to someone, say six months or a year from now and said, hey, now how do you perceive Bellevue or how do you perceive the ways in which Bellevue is communicating with you, we would be able to see those differences.

This work would be our foundation of the baseline, and then moving forward.

Again, if we haven't done with this work, some key uh metrics and KPI would be great, maybe to add to the next one.

Like, and again, by maybe more quantitative quantitative uh metrics that hey, what is your level of awareness?

If the average was seven, and then we go back to them now, the average is eight, then we are doing something good.

Or how much do you trust the Bellevue government?

If there was 10 out of 10 before, and now we improve that to 11 out of 10, that would be uh something that we can track.

Uh uh then there is a there is a slide that I really like that has two segments, then there is a gap.

Uh, you talk about what uh what cities you are perceiving the can you go to that website?

What you perceive Bellevue and what is your values.

Great work on this slide, by the way.

Do we know what is our neighbor?

Like, is I know this is probably average of all of the surveys that you guys did or all of the focus group, but do we know which demographic or which neighborhood groups showed more gap, less gap?

Like, do we have all of I know there is a slide or uh there is a some survey of how many neighborhoods you which neighborhood you are, seven people in downtown, eight.

Do we know exactly based on demographic and neighborhood how this gap is going to be wider or narrower?

Basically, that's my question.

Um, so we do not have that level of detail um to say sort of what each person individually and where they live and how they responded to this question.

That said, we can absolutely do some more targeted, right?

If we if there are certain things, and that's again where I think we'll work with the neighborhoods team and the engagement team in terms of like what are the topics, the hot topics in different neighborhood areas, and how do we sort of maybe do some more targeted uh communications with the neighborhood associations and really kind of figure out where their gap analysis is?

We can do some of that, yeah.

I think it would be great because the average is good, but I think if we, for example, if we think downtown people have less gap, again, I'm throwing like on high quality service.

If you live in downtown, you don't feel that, but if you live maybe in East Bellevue, you feel that gap more, then we can have a more targeted um mitigation plan.

My last question is I know this is as you mentioned, uh this is mainly happened in the city of Bellevue, like our target audience, and they have a perception of the city that they are leaving, like assume they are internal stakeholders.

Do you see a benefit if actually for this work we go outside of Bellevue?

And we see how people in Seattle, for example, perceive Bellevue.

Um, do you see benefits in that work?

Yeah, our team actually uh had a robust discussion about that.

Um, and really this work that we did in the just recent outreach is really just foundational.

Uh, we see that there could potentially be further opportunities in the future to expand and to go out to other audiences and really kind of do a broader assessment.

But this was really foundational to us figuring out okay, what is our you know, brand within the city and where can we close that?

You know, do we have the gap?

Yes, we've got a bit of a gap in a couple of areas.

How and how do we close that?

Uh now you brought uh you said you'd had discussion on this topic.

Have you talked about what are the benefits of going maybe to some external stakeholders foresee what how our brand is perceived?

Yes, absolutely.

Um, and I'm happy to take this offline with you as well, Deputy Mayor, and just kind of talk more in depth about kind of the different things that came up in our conversation in terms of like what are those other perceptions from you know outside and regionally that exist uh that we could potentially delve into more and do some targeted outreach beyond Bellevue.

Yeah.

My question is what are the benefits of doing that?

Have you guys discussed that?

Like what is what are the some of the top two benefits of going and do this work?

Yeah, and that's really why we started and prioritized really within Bellevue to start, because that's the foundation that we want to build.

But certainly there are benefits to understanding like what do people think about us outside of the of the community because we are a regional player.

Um we uh we take part in things that are beyond the borders of Bellevue, for instance.

And so understanding how we play within that regional landscape is really important to figuring out okay, how do we communicate?

Because when we do communicate, it doesn't stop at our borders either.

It goes outside and it goes to the region.

Megan and Ian, I don't know if you wanted to add anything else about that.

I think one one thing that comes to mind for me is um or an opportunity is in attracting talent, attracting new people to the area from various different um professional realms to support different organizations to support different roles and responsibilities within the city of Bellevue, getting a perception of external stakeholders allows you to understand, you know, what what opportunities are there for folks who may be considering relocating to Bellevue either personally or to their business?

That's one that comes top of mind for me.

Thank you so much, Mayor.

Okay, um, just quickly, you know, one thing that you said stood out to me that people trust people who look like them.

And I was thinking, how do we develop trust with people who look different than us?

We're one of the most diverse cities in the country of our size.

And you know, that's finding shared values and common goals, and it's being a city that demonstrates consistency and integrity.

And I hope that we are focusing on those two things so that we can earn that trust because it's just human nature, a basic uh reflex to trust something that looks more like you're familiar with, but we need to make that effort, and I hope that that's part of this program.

And I and I think those uh those trusted communities that people already have established are pathways into that.

Um, right?

Yeah, definitely.

All right, thank you very much.

Thanks so much for okay.

We're gonna take a break, come back at 10 till.

Come back at 10 till the study session item, which is information only again.

City manager, could you please introduce yes, thank you, Mayor.

Uh Deputy Mayor and Council.

So we have two items for study sessions, as you said, but um several are connected related to our um fees, uh fee updates.

Um the first item is informational, and this is uh the overview on our mid-by mid-biennial budget.

Um we have John Risha here to to give that.

Um you heard in July our financial forecast, which indicated we have a fortunately we're still seeing bumpy but stable ish revenues.

Um so in looking at this mid-biannual budget, um, we do not have large increases we're suggesting.

We do not have decreases we're suggesting.

So this is not an investment nor a decreasing um biennial budget.

We're making some, we're proposing to make some technical adjustments with which John and Evan will cover.

Um, a very, very small in nature, which also is uh fairly true to most biennial uh mid-biannial budget adjustments.

So that's kind of the punchline.

I think John and Evan will go into a little more detail, but um we'd like to share this information with you tonight.

They'll talk about the schedule for the mid-biannial um update and get some uh feedback from you.

We'll take a break after theirs, and then we'll go into the the fee adjustment um presentations.

So with that, I'll turn it over to John.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council members.

Um tonight uh is uh usually a great exciting moment of budget discussions.

Uh unfortunately, as city manager shared and as we've discussed, this is not that year.

Um we are sitting in the midst of turbulent economic times.

Um we have charted a course during our budget process, and the mid-biannial process is usually about technical adjustments, and that's precisely what this will be as well.

We're moving some dollars from one fund or proposing to move from one fund to another just to make sure that it's in the right accounting place for uh spending purposes and the appropriation or spending authority is in the right place.

That's really what this mid-by does.

It does not change any policy direction, it does not change any service delivery, it just puts the dollars in the right places.

Um our schedule is tonight.

We'll have an overview and then we'll go into a rates discussion to seek some guidance.

On the 12th, we'll be back for our hearing and any additional guidance you will have for us.

And then if all goes well, we would be back proposing adoption on November 18th.

Um, as I shared very briefly, um, the nature of this uh mid-biennium budget really is moving from certain funds to other funds.

So there's some negatives or reductions or disappropriations and some increases of appropriation that net out when you move from one side to another or from one fund to another.

Um as we're looking at things, we've got the 1% property tax adjustment that is baked into your original decision of last budget.

This each year we bring that forward for your action.

Uh there'll be some rate adjustments that uh we'll talk about a little bit later.

Um there are some minor movements of personnel adjustments.

Uh in fact, our general wage increase came in almost exactly where we had forecasted it wouldn't come in, which turned out to be a really solid piece.

So there's very marginal adjustments there.

Um there's some contract adjustments.

There are some certain contracts that have gone up or down in cost and value, and just making sure that we're adjusting for those, no different levels of service or anything different.

It really is just the change in the cost of it.

And then as we had shifted things around to try and account for the double budgeting issues in the last cycle, there were a few things that we missed that just need to get into the right accounts.

And so that's really all that this does.

I'm gonna ask Evan if I missed anything critical in that.

No, I don't think so.

I mean, the key thing to remember here is because we update our health benefit rates and we get new pension rates from the state in July.

These are the things that we're trueing up for, as well as the collectively bargained contracts that you have all approved.

This is just taking the budget action to true those up for the 2026 fiscal year.

Um so a lot of this actually reflects count previous council action that is now being actualized as part of the mid-by.

So with that being said, um, this slide should look familiar to many of you, but perhaps not all of you.

This is the 2026 property taxes, as John mentioned, this is something that we have to bring back every year as we have to submit our property taxes, our property tax ordinance to the county by November 30th every year, and we do that one year at a time, even if we've approved a tentative increase for the second year of a biennium budget.

What you're looking at here is what we call our penny slide.

This is shows how the property tax bill gets split for the average property uh owner.

Um, just for your awareness, the median property now is at 1.58 million dollars in the city of Bellevue, um, of which that property, that median property would pay the city in 2026 um about $1,500, and that is a $15 increase for that um 1.58 million dollar home to account for that 1% adjustment.

Key thing to look at here are the other jurisdictions as you're spreading this out, other jurisdictions, people ask what that is.

That is just sound transit, that is the port of Seattle, EMS, some of the smaller jurisdictions.

Um, King County is what it is, and Bellevue School District in the state of Washington, that reflects 61% of the property tax bill for the city of Bellevue property owners, and all of that is going to education either to the Bellevue School District directly or as Issaqua renting school districts, respectively, and the state of Washington's education fund.

So that's the rough allocation.

Um, and this is pretty stable over time.

Um, but the one thing that hasn't been stable is that median property um assessed value.

So with that, um, I'm gonna move us on again.

We said we would be quick, at least in this portion.

I we're going back to the agenda slide.

So we will be back.

Sean and I will be back on November 12th with you all as you host a public hearing.

And from that, we will have a follow-up discussion to hopefully close out the overview of the uh mid-by-am and ask for your consideration of direction for November 18th, which is our tentative adoption night.

And with that, Mayor, I hand it back to you for questions and discussion.

Okay, great.

So um we'll go through the council, and if we can keep our comments and questions um down to three minutes each, that'd be helpful because we have a lot more to do tonight.

So uh let's start with councilmember Vargava.

I can make it just not having any questions right now.

Oh, what did you say?

I don't have specific questions on the other.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, John.

Thank you, Evan, for the whole finance and asset uh management team.

I think this looks great.

Uh it's uh technical adjustment, and you guys did a great job on a timely manner.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Hamilton.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Thanks for the presentation.

Um, just uh we'll certainly follow on and uh be brief.

So um, I think this is really an important effort here, obviously.

I think the community expects us to be responsible and careful with their tax dollars, and I know we all take that to very seriously, and it was certainly reflected in the 2024 budget.

Um, and also currently here in the mid-by process.

Um, so even though we're looking at technical adjustments in advance of our full budget process next year, uh, this is an important body of work, and I look forward to the conversations and collaborations that we're starting now in that effort.

Uh look forward to the public hearing on November 12th and final adoption after that.

Um, between now and the 12th, I'd like to hear uh from the community and from our staff regarding the best way to support our immigrant and refugee community.

Uh recent federal immigration enforcement actions are directly impacting members of our community, and we're not anticipated at the time we adopted the biennial budget.

So I'm interested in the council considering directing some of our unallocated council contingency fund to the human services fund for contracted agencies that support members of our community who desperately need support right now.

So, whether that be in the form of a community navigator position, creation of a rapid response fund, additional legal assistance or other effort, I'd like to see us provide some much needed additional support.

Just hoping that you could bring back some ideas on how we could do that for us to consider on November 12th.

So thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Sumeraria.

Thank you.

Um great job on the on the information.

And then on the um website, I I love the how it's allocated different funding that we're able to provide.

That's actually really clear about where the CIP and other funding is going to directly.

Um along the line with um Councilmember Hamilton was pointed out.

I was wondering, is there any way that because our budget is pretty flat already?

Is there a we instead of giving money, but we give resources?

Because my understanding is it's actually a lot of nonprofit out there, is made for immigration and refugee work.

So uh maybe city manager can tag in.

Is there any way we can maybe add on like my value app like direct them to resources?

Because these are professional people, they know exactly what they're doing.

So maybe giving information is right now is more powerful.

I mean, equally powerful.

Thank you, Councilmember.

That is a great point.

We do have some linkages that we provide already to websites to direct people to resources, but we can look at some additional ways to do that.

Yeah, can we share with um the public commons um attendees today, like you know, that uh Debbie Lacey and others maybe they can share with the community, I think it will be helpful too.

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Lee.

Thank you.

As always, you know, your presentation is very clear, precise, you know, right to the point.

So thank you.

Uh I do have two questions.

One is on the line of what uh council member you know, Samaderi you were saying.

We cities not always necessarily be the best uh you know, provide this, you know, uh because that's not a business.

Uh maybe we should explore other partners and opportunities, like other nonprofits, you know, helping them in any way we can.

And also we have uh other businesses, organizations.

I just name a few, you know, the obvious ones, Amazon sticks out.

They always are there to help the community.

And the communities providing good economy, good business for them, we support them.

So that may be some consideration.

So I would like to explore what other resources that is uh relevant, uh more direct and easier to uh to help.

That's what I'm saying, before we go to our community, go to our residents to you know to to do this.

That's all relative explore.

Second question is on the one percent uh adjustment.

In the past, I recall that we always want to uh add the one percent because we're considering the long-term uh revenue and expense.

We feel that sometime we are going to be needing uh additional money.

So we're trying to keep the line from crossing.

So my question is are we still taking this one percent for the same purpose?

Uh how we reach that point, or are we still just putting the away for contingency?

Or have we actually designated where we're gonna spend the money?

So I would like to see if you can tell me that.

During our last forecast and our last budget process and the current forecast, which is in a continuation of that, what we're experiencing is is a downturn in our other tax revenues, and the lines have crossed.

Um we're currently in a dip in revenues that has caused many jurisdictions around us to cut programs and cut staff.

We've utilized our cash reserves and are relying on small adjustments like the 1% adjustment to help us ride through the dip as we see things ride back up.

And so this is anticipated because the lines have crossed, council member.

That's that's new information, and I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I would also say the one percent is also we've talked in the past conversations about how we are becoming more reliant on sensitive revenue sources like our BNO and our sales tax, property tax is definitely one of the most stable, if not the most stable revenue source.

So keeping that one percent helps balance our revenue portfolio in a way that's a little less economically sensitive.

Um and you've also asked in terms of where this funding is going.

I would point out that about 41% of the property tax increase goes to voter-approved levies like our park, our 2022 parks levy and our fire and transportation levies.

Do we already have designated way it goes, or just being there, right?

So Sunday, to me, you said it's already pro, of course.

And we know exactly what the one percent would go to.

It is programmed into general funds.

Okay.

But that's a designated purpose for it.

We know.

Right?

This we know how it's gonna need it to be spent.

We know how it is needed to be spent, but council member, I will share.

We do not specifically designate the general fund dollars.

We utilize those to meet our general government needs.

Maybe I can speak with you offline.

I would love to.

Second question may be offline as well.

We have bank capacity as well.

Uh are we considering that or just going to state bank capacity?

Um during the mid-biennium uh budget process, we had not been asked to consider bringing bank capacity forward.

Um, as part of your retreat and your future discussions, you will be looking at some options on some of the gaps and where you want to invest in as part of a regular budget process for the next year.

Okay.

That means what you're saying.

We are a financial position is getting less and less uh uh what's the what's the name?

Well, it's getting tighter and tighter.

We may be that it may be necessary for us to consider bank capacity.

In the past, we have so much revenue coming.

We're in much better position financially.

Maybe that's the right word.

We would not have to consider bank capacity.

So what you're saying is that the financial condition we now is getting to be less and less rosy.

So we may need to consider bank capacity.

Is that right?

Or not what's you have already gone to no situation?

I think we have gone through the worst of the bumpiness.

Okay.

And we're hoping that we're on or finding that bottom and starting to rise.

There's a larger economic climate.

That is a question that I think you'll have to wrestle with relative to the types of services or the types of gaps that you and the community see.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember New Enhouse.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, yeah, great presentation.

Thank you so much uh for the quick update.

Um appreciate my uh colleagues' comments on this thus far as well.

Um property taxes, if it wasn't already in your plan, I do believe that should be a separate vote on November 18th, as we have done in prior years, getting head nods, thank you.

Um, and I just want to uh reaffirm that uh technical adjustments, so no program is being cut in 2026, right?

No program, no service.

Great, great.

Um thing that I would also um like for my colleagues to consider, although, and this is probably not the appropriate time, but I know that um director Horner has been doing a lot of great work in terms of continuing to improve and streamline our permitting process.

I would like to hear back um during the either either during the 12th or during the 18th, in terms of um are there any additional resources that she might need in order to continue that very important process of um uh again improving and streamlining our permitting process.

If there are additional resources needed, I would like my colleagues to consider uh dipping into our uh council uh contingency funds to help uh shore up those efforts.

So would that be something that we would discuss now or at a later date?

I think we would be happy to bring back information later date.

Um, but also to remind you, council member, in addition to our council contingency, development services has both a contingency and reserve um that is generated through some of the peak times of development, and they're very judicious and careful about keeping that reserve uh to ride through some of the economic times and from time to time using that for these types of expenses.

And I believe if they come back and say we don't need it, that's great.

But I want I want us some assurances that they have everything that they need in order to get that important work done.

Um and then lastly, did you see the letters uh that came in from uh ATT and I think a couple other wireless providers that had concerns regarding the fee adjustments around uh right of way?

I have heard that they came in.

I have not yet seen a copy of them.

I'm waiting to see a copy of them, and I do know that we need to have a conversation uh with staff and council around that specific before uh you're ready for actual any action on that.

I think we're gonna be talking about small way of those facilities in the next.

Yeah, that is well.

I just want to make sure that we're not hurting the companies that are either doing business or want to do business uh in the in the city of Bellevue.

So um uh would like additional information there to ensure that um also I think that you know staying within the RCWs that they reference as well in terms of the types of fees we can or cannot uh add during that uh uh I guess that permitting process for those right-of-way areas.

So something else I'd be interested in learning more about.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

So maybe we can have that conversation when we are at the next um item D to if we want to talk about that anymore.

Um I find it really interesting that 61% of Bellevue property taxes go to public education.

That's pretty amazing.

We have like Bellevue school district is the best in Washington State, so thank you to all the ratepayers.

Um I noticed in here in this mid-by budget that we're anticipating a general wage increase and cost of living adjustment.

And I also know that council does not get that.

And what we have found in the past is we wait 10 years and everybody's woefully underpaid, and we have to go through the salary commission and and have this conversation, it's a big deal.

And I think Cl Councilmember Sumaduirio was on that commission before she was a council member.

So I would like to bring forward a discussion on how we would put in a cost of living, an automatic cost of living increase into council salary if that's something we want to do.

Um, I also appreciate the request for different uses of the council contingency, so I'd like to make sure that we have a separate discussion on council contingency and all the things we could um do with that.

Um, I really love the navigator idea, the human service navigator idea, and getting something like that on my Bellevue app.

So would love to get more information on the feasibility of that.

And then um I appreciate the permitting recommendations.

And so I'd like to hear uh if development services has the funding for that and if they think that that would be a valuable use of it.

So that's I appreciate that.

And let me just see if there's anything else I was gonna say.

I think that was it.

Okay.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you.

All right, so we can move on to item City Manager.

Go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

So the next presentation, we have um Lucy Liu, director.

Yep, there we go, director of our utilities department.

Um she will cover the uh proposed 2026 sewer rate increase.

Lucy Excellent.

Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Council members.

Um I'm gonna introduce very quickly.

We'll have a discussion of the utility sewer rates, then followed by development services permits and school impact fees, and then transportation wireless fees.

Uh, leading that off as we step into this.

All of these rate adjustments are based off of current methodologies.

Um, and they're they're technical in nature, but there are some ups and some downs in this conversation.

And I'll turn to Dep Director Lou.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor Debbie and Council members.

This evening, I want to bring you on one technical house adjustment to the city's 2026 sewer rate, primarily to reflect the higher wholesale cost that Bellevue will pay King County for wastewater treatment.

The Bell Views adopted 2026 sewer rate had planned for a 7% cost increase from King County to Bellevue full wastewater treatment.

Earlier this year in May, uh, the King County Wastewater Treatment Division uh director brief council on King County's proposed 2026 sewer rate in their long-term uh forecast and consistent with that May briefing.

The King County Council adopted a higher wholesale wastewater treatment cost increase of 7.5% instead of the 7% that was planned in the city's adopted uh budget and 2026 sewer rate.

As utilities is funded by rates, these higher wholesale costs would require an additional 0.3% increase in Bellevue's 2026 sewer rate.

So from the adopted rate of 7.6% to 7.9%.

Um this adjustment is consistent with city financial policy, which directs all wholesale costs to be passed through to our ratepayers, and that is so that local operations and programs are not degraded by regional cost increases.

And that is so that local operations and programs are not degraded by regional cost increases.

This enables us to continue service delivery to the community.

Esking County's forecast rates are expected to rise over the coming years.

We will be reviewing future wastewater wholesale treatment costs with council next year as part of the upcoming 27-28 budget process.

I want to note that there are no proposed changes to the 2026 adopter rates for Bellviews and Water or Storm and Water utilities.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Mayor, Deputy Mayor, members of the Council, Rebecca Horner with Development Services.

We have a bit of a team effort this evening.

So with me is Jake Hesselgesser with Development Services, Vanessa Humphreys, and Cassie Davis with transportation.

So tonight we will give you, we're very excited to give you a development update, some development activity update, as well as an update on our cost of service study.

We will also update you on school impact fees and then round it out with an update on telecommunications and wireless fees from transportation.

So with that, I will pass it to Jake to give us the development update.

Great.

Thanks, Rebecca.

Good evening, Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Council members.

Great to be with you this evening.

Starting first with this slide that may look familiar, which shows our permit application and issued permit volumes, the top line representing applications, the bottom line representing issued permits.

The story in 2025 is still pretty robust.

Permit activity happening within the pipeline, albeit that we've seen some slowdown with the major projects over the past couple of years, difficult financing conditions, high construction costs, and interest rates have made many of those projects not move out to construction.

That's really signified in this next chart, which is our building valuation data.

This uh chart shows the value of issued building permits by the different segments of our building permit population, starting at the bottom with new single family, single family alterations or additions in that maroon color.

The dark blue pattern is commercial alterations or tenant improvements, and then the stripe pattern at the top are the major projects.

And as you can see in 2024 and 2025, we just haven't seen uh those major projects moving out to construction for those uh reasons that I mentioned earlier, and that's very visible in the community, especially in our growth centers with the lack of tower cranes.

We do have a very robust development pipeline to give you a flavor of what that looks like.

We have a very high level of residential permitting within the pipeline just to look at one segment of that of our building permits.

The single family market uh remains very strong, both for new single family and uh reinvestment.

We're starting to see middle housing interest.

I believe we have 17 permits that have come in the door for middle housing, so that's a good sign.

We have over 6,100 multifamily units in for building permit review.

So, as those financing conditions get better, we we have uh housing in the pipeline to push out to construction.

So looking forward to economic conditions, right sizing.

Wanted to touch on our uh affordable housing fee reduction program briefly.

Uh, this has been a very successful program.

We've had 461 units qualified under this program, receiving the benefit of lower fees for uh permit activity, um, at least 240 units in the pipeline that that may grow.

So looking forward to this program's success in the future.

The bridge project here is one of those projects that qualified for permit fee reductions.

Um, as we've experienced a little bit of slowdown, heard from some of the comments tonight.

Development services has been focused keenly on process improvement over the last couple of years.

We do this by uh centering the voice of the customer through a couple of different forms, our Bellevue Development Committee, our customer experience program, and recently this past weekend, we held a permitting expo here at City Hall where we had over 300 members of the community come, ask us questions, provide feedback, and uh gave us some uh areas of challenges and opportunities.

We hear a lot about permit streamlining just to give you a few uh examples of things that we are working on in this arena, our small business program where which we're in the process of standing up right now to bring more resources to small businesses at the front end of the permitting process, uh trying to make that a little bit simpler and easier for small businesses who may lack the resources or expertise to navigate that permitting process.

Very excited innovative innovation partnership with Gupstream AI that we announced earlier this year, where we're partnering with a local startup to streamline the entire ecosystem of permitting.

We're in the early stages of this pilot, showing some great success.

We have lofty goals underneath this pilot, one of which is to cut permit review cycles by upwards of 50%.

So we're looking to report on that back to the council and the public as we make additional progress in that venue.

Another area where we hear a lot of feedback is around consistency, predictability, building a more responsive and transparent permitting process.

So just a couple of quick examples include new onboarding program that we rolled out this year for staff.

So think about additional training to prepare them for serving the community, as well as performance system improvement.

When I say system, I'm not talking about technology, but the rigor by which we review metrics and ensure that we're actually delivering the process that the community expects of us.

We have another project underway right now, which will conclude in 2026, where we're standing up public-facing performance dashboards to really break down the entire permitting process and report on our performance against established targets.

Some of you may remember last year's Senate Bill 5290 coming through.

We do publish a static report on just those segments of permits.

This is going a step beyond that, reporting on the entire permitting lifecycle for all of our permits in a very transparent way to the public.

So shifting gears into the financial portion of the presentation, I'd like to start with our cost recovery objectives.

This is what really sets the policy direction for development services.

These objectives have been in place since the early 2000s.

And I'll start by saying that development services operates under a full cost recovery model.

We receive revenue from two sources: the fees and rates we charge to customers, and for certain services, we receive a small subsidy from the general fund.

For land use, discretionary review, engineering review, and inspection, all the boots on the ground out there in the field, our technical and administrative support, so permanent processing finance technology, all of those services are 100% supported by the fees and rates we charge to our customers.

For pre-submittal support, public information, policy development, code compliance, and programs like our affordable housing fee reduction program and small business program, those are funded through the general fund.

Each year we conduct a very in-depth cost of service study and we apply a set of financial management guiding principles that have served us well for many years now.

The first of which is that our funding structure should support development services through economic cycles.

We do this by setting aside reserves and contingencies for things like core staffing, technology replacement, and to get us through periods of time where economic uncertainty is occurring and to retain core staffing to be ready to respond to development when that comes back.

Permit applicants should pay for the services they receive.

That's why we conduct the annual cost of service study.

Fees should be predictable and understandable.

And each year we conduct a little bit of regional benchmarking.

We have seen some sharp increases by some of our neighboring jurisdictions, King County being one of which raised their rates by 49% last year.

In terms of our proposed fee adjustments, there's three main fees that we charge as outlined in the agenda memo and attachment A.

Our hourly rates, which we're proposing updates to those, and also our flat fees, which we charge for some of the quicker turnaround permits, and then our building valuation fees, which are based on the International Code Council's building valuation data, which we adopt and then modify for regional conditions.

And then we adjust the fee table for those building valuation permits by CPIW as outlined in the fee ordinance.

The proposed hourly rates are shown in this chart here for land use, fire transportation, and utilities, review and inspection.

You see the 2025 adopted rate and then the 2026 proposed rate.

Rate increases range from 7.1 to 9.6%.

Cost drivers behind this include personnel costs, MO expenses, citywide overhead costs, such as facilities and technology replacement projects, as well as allocation of three of our vacant positions to support more continuous improvement work in our business services and land use division.

Couple of quick examples on the fees for flat fees.

We see here a tenant improvement example for land use review and fire review going up by 121 dollars and eighty-eight dollars respectively.

And then for valuation-based example for a minor commercial project going up by 365 and single family addition of 500 square feet, going up by 197.

Spoke about regional competitiveness.

We benchmark against our neighboring jurisdictions.

So here we see where Belleview sits in the region for a 100,000 tenant improvement project with respect to Seattle, King County, Redmond, Kirkland, and Issaqua.

Seattle, Bellevue, King County, and Redmond are all full cost recovery, while uh Kirkland and Issaquah do receive subsidy from their general fund to support permitting services.

And with that, I'll turn it back to Rebecca to talk about school impact fees.

Thank you.

So with us tonight is Matt Feldmeyer.

He's virtual.

He is the executive director of Renton's capital planning and construction team.

Issaqua School District was not able to attend.

School impact fees are one of those fees that we collect as a pass-through fee.

What that means is we collect it on behalf of the school district and pass it to them once it's collected.

We collect them for single-family and multifamily residential units.

And uh they're based on capital facilities plans, and you actually do have a copy in your in your desk packets of the capital facility plans for both Renton and Issaquas school capital facilities.

For reference, we have four school districts in Bellevue.

They are shown here in this map, Bellevue, Lake Washington Issaqua, and Renton School District.

And of these, only two collect school impact fees, and that is Renton and Issaqua.

So these are the proposed upcoming fees, and as you can see, they are all eliminating all of their fees, which is likely due to a lack of planned new capital facilities in their districts.

So with that, I will pass it to Vanessa for the transportation update.

Good evening.

We're here tonight to discuss our transportation fee ordinance, which proposes to formally adopt existing telecommunication wireless lease fees into a fee schedule.

Wireless lease fees are charged to telecommunication carriers when they want to make use of city-owned assets, such as mounting small cell wireless equipment to a city street light or placing wireless communications ground equipment in the public right-of-way.

The code authority to charge lease fees for these purposes was established many years ago under Title VI of Bellevue City Code.

The methodology for calculating the small cell wireless fees was also established years ago along with the small cell wireless program.

As such, this fee ordinance is an administrative action to formalize fees by ordnance so that they are visible and predictable to the carriers.

If directed, the plan is to return next month to seek approval of the ordinance, and the 2026 fees will then be published on the city's website so that the communications providers can easily find the current rates.

And with that, I'll turn it to Cassie so she can give more information on the lease fees.

Thank you, Vanessa.

Uh we are presenting on three fees tonight.

Two fees that are related to small wireless facilities, and one fee that is related to wireless communication facilities in the public right-of-way.

The fees related to small wireless facilities are calculated and adjusted annually using the consumer price rates from October.

So the rates shown here on this slide are for 2025, and the 2026 rates will be calculated in November after the October CPI rates are published and will come into effect January 1st of 2026.

Both fees related to small wireless facilities are optional fees.

Provides the option for carriers to utilize city electrical infrastructure to power their privately owned small cell wireless equipment.

This fee is charged annually on a per site basis.

The poll reservation fee provides the option for the wireless carrier to reserve a city-owned streetlight poll prior to submitting a small wireless facility permit application.

The pool reservation provides assurance to the carrier during the scoping and design phase so they can conduct the necessary studies at a particular site and not run the risk of the pull being taken by another carrier.

The pull reservation fee is charged on a per occurrence basis and is charged to the carrier when the permit is issued.

Now the wireless communication facility annual lease fee will apply only to new wireless communication facility sites in the public right-of-way.

This fee does not affect existing sites or replacement structures at existing sites.

The lease fees for existing sites are subject to the rates in their site-specific agreements, lease agreements.

The wireless communication facility annual lease fee is also subject to negotiation between the city and the carrier per state law.

So we do intend for this rate to be the starting point for site-specific negotiations.

The wireless communication facility annual lease fee is also regionally competitive.

It was recently updated in February of 2025 using a comparative analysis of wireless fees and other local jurisdictions.

For more background information and how these fees are calculated, please refer to the information in the agenda memo as well as attachment B.

So in closing, we ask that you consider directing staff to return at a future meeting with legislation to adopt fee and rate adjustments pertaining to utility sewer rate, development services permits and school impact fees in transportation wireless fees.

And with that, I'll turn it back to you, Mayor and Council for further questions.

Thank you.

And you put the slide out of exactly what I was going to say.

So that's great.

So it we will be making uh decision tonight and giving direction, but I'll give everybody a chance to comment or ask questions.

We'll start with council member Hamilton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thanks for the presentation.

Just wanted to kind of touch on the sewer rate adjustment uh briefly.

Uh first, um, and I know how sensitive our rate payers are to utility rate increases and what could appear to be a small increase can make a big impact on some of our ratepayers' budgets.

I'm also aware that uh uh director Lou and her team uh share that sensitivity to rate increases and do everything possible to smooth rate increases when they have to occur and make every effort to keep them as low as possible.

Uh keeping utility rates low in Bellevue is truly a group effort.

And I think this is all the more important considering the growing need to make significant improvements to drinking water, wastewater treatment, and sewer infrastructure over the next few years.

The city code rightly directs us to set rates that cover all costs of the utility.

So while I know that this increase will impact our ratepayers now, the system we have in place keeps rates as low as absolutely possible into the future.

I'm interested in hearing from my colleagues, uh though ready to move forward on the implementing the rate implementing the proposed rate adjustment.

And as it relates then to the other topics covered, uh certainly that's great presentation.

I really appreciate the detail.

Uh appreciate the focus on continued improvement efforts that streamline and improve our permitting process.

Um it's thanks to this effort and others.

I think Bellevue is becoming the leader in quick and efficient permitting.

I'd like to continue to support and invest in those efforts so that we continue to speed up our permitting process and help bring critically needed development projects online even quicker.

And I think that we could and should become the area leader in permitting efficiency.

Um ready to move forward on that one as well, Mayor.

Thank you.

Great, thank you.

Um okay, Councilmember Newenhouse.

Thank you.

Um love the part about the permitting.

That's great.

Um I still like you to come back and make sure that uh indeed you have everything uh that that you need to continue that that great work and that great progress.

You know, part of that too is is, and I'm glad you mentioned about um kind of the educational, the training part to it, because um, you know, too often there uh seems to be a times of disconnect between interpretation of the code, so um whatever that might be.

So um really appreciate that, but again, would like to um have that uh uh considered.

Um I'm gonna ask the same question I asked before about some of the concerns by our wireless carriers uh in in the region.

I don't know if you have an opportunity to read their concerns.

Um I know that one specifically asked that, and I believe this is per state law that a city may not charge a right-of-way fee for a facility attached to our placement poll of no more than 60 feet in height.

I'm assuming we've taken that into consideration already, but uh there's some other questions in here too that I would like to get an answer to if you're not prepared to do that tonight.

That's fine, but I would like to uh understand their concerns a little bit more vis-a-vis our are our rate creases.

Um I want to make sure we're also being a good partner to our uh to our carriers and and tech partners in our city.

Um this is you know economic development issue as well.

So uh at least for me it is.

Um let's see, I had one other um comment, and then I can't remember what it was.

Oh, the increases um to um let me just bring this up here so I get the language right, but the increases, and I know they're I believe pass along, right, in terms of um the cost for our utilities.

Um I'd also uh would like to get some information um Lucy regarding uh maybe expanding.

If I remember the last time we you had a presentation, the the fund that we had for um for assistance for um uh those were uh impacted by the increase in utility rates.

Um but I think we had a sizable amount left over, if I remember correctly, um, because it was very narrowly defined in terms of who would be eligible for that relief.

Uh, would it be possible with these continuous increases to kind of expand um uh the uh criteria for uh rate relief of residents who are uh impacted by the by these increases as council member Hamilton mentioned, it's it's an ongoing and increase, especially those for uh on very limited um uh uh budgets and fixed income.

Uh every one of these increases uh potentially could mean they're doing without something.

So um is that a possibility that we can do um for 2026.

Excuse me.

Um absolutely um sorry.

That's what we'll keep talking if you want to catch the bigger thank you.

Um actually uh we have been thinking a lot about affordability and residents of our community who are facing uh financial hardship and need help uh paying their bills.

We do plan to bring back uh to council, we're thinking in the spring, uh, some policy options to uh uh consider expanding our uh rate assistance program to help more low-income residents, including looking at our eligibility requirements and looking at how we might be able to possibly consider expanding our long-term assistance in addition to the short-term assistance programs that we provide.

Great, thank you so much.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Mayor.

Okay.

Um councilmember Sumaduiria.

Hi, thank you for the um update.

I was just about to open my Bellview app actually to check what we have up there, just make sure.

Um, so with the um residence assistant, is really it's like similar line.

Can we add it out to the Bellview app?

So it's like a one-hub portal that they can get all the information for the navigator like the mayor's idea.

Is that possible?

Okay.

And then one other question I have about the utility raise, the fee rates, because I can imagine the residents must be anxious about the rate because it's going to the budget.

How um is there any way we can work with the community engagement um team to like kind of explain the reason in a more plain English way where so they can understand like the reason behind it?

Absolutely.

We'll make sure to do that.

Okay.

And then uh the next question is for the development uh dashboard.

Um, I'm actually really intrigued about how we can see exactly where a step at the way.

Um so I think that because when you're building a new TI for any type of businesses, um, there's multiple players and then in the team, right?

There's the plumber, there's the um electrician, there is the architect.

On the dashboard, would there be any um capacity to able to see exactly where it's updated, like which contractor is on.

Um the reason I ask is because sometimes, for example, for the signage, um, when they apply for it, sometimes it's not our permitting process holding it back.

It could be the the vendor who's holding um not turning the information on time.

So is there a capacity like that?

We can see where the bottlenecks is, so can we can have a more clear SOP for the TI process where the the business who's applying it know exactly when they're gonna be able to open and so they can be keeping up to their um operational plan.

Yeah, so uh a couple thoughts on that.

The performance dashboard that we're looking to stand up is specific to just permitting timelines, but I think where your feedback fits is with the rebuild of the front end of my building permit.com, which you all have supported, uh, another state funding ask within the legislative agenda for that.

Uh believe that project is set to kick off at the beginning of next year, and we've had a lot of discussion about two-way communication with uh customers through that portal.

Is that rebuild happens?

That's definitely one of the things that we've been hearing for from customers, and Bellevue has folded into the requirements for that rebuild.

Great, amazing.

Because I think for you see, it's more predictable when they're gonna be grant opening a store per se, and then so it helps them to save costs and then so allocate the marketing money more on the point where um economy is.

And then my next question is is for the school impact fee.

This is more clarified question.

I'm just um when a city doesn't charge that, does it affect doesn't affect the quality of education?

So the school district goes through a capital facility planning process to determine what they need in their capital facilities.

It might be expansions to existing facilities or new facilities entirely.

They base that on enrollment and need.

So when they determine what they need, they put it in their capital facilities plan, which is what you have copies of.

And those two districts in our city have chosen to charge school impact fees, but given their capital facility programs, they're telling us this next year they do not need to charge impact fees.

Okay, so it doesn't really scream flag on quality of no.

And Matt Feldmayer is online if he wanted to add anything to that.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, maybe he doesn't.

Um Councilmember Bargava.

Oh, wait, is there a stirring from online?

Sorry, yes, I am online.

Uh our capital facilities plan was uh has gone down to a zero dollar impact fee for the rent school district, mostly due to the lack of enrollment growth that we are projecting moving forward over the next six years.

We do have capital improvement projects coming online right now.

We just have none of those that are related specifically to growth, which is a requirement for impact fees to be charged.

So that's why they went to zero dollars.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you for that explanation.

Okay, uh Councilmember Bargara.

Yeah, thank you.

Um appreciate the presentations uh across the board.

Uh starting with the solar utility fee.

So I do uh sort of acknowledge the sensitivity we have it in the community for uh rate increases.

Um I also really appreciate the comments uh prior, uh which is going to be my question around uh assistance programs.

So I'm excited to hear that there's going to be uh opportunity to look at those um uh in a future date uh to see what you can do.

Um of the things sort of came around in question, I think in Council Mosumavera's uh comments was the implications are clear, but of not doing something like this.

What if we do not do a rate increase?

What would be the implications?

Is it a simple response?

Uh that you can provide that allows bring bring it to life why this is really important.

Council member, um we are required to pass those fees through.

We are because we are the transaction point, we actually have to pass those through.

We could make a choice as a jurisdiction to pay all of those costs ourselves with our general fund.

Um, but they are costs that because we are the utility and we are buying in at that capacity, and our policy is rate recovery.

Um, we do have to pass those costs through.

Okay, I appreciate that.

Um the permitting piece, um I really appreciate the the push for technology and the AI improvements to try and accelerate the process.

Um, I love the aggressive targets of 50%.

I also love the idea of transparency.

Uh, one quick question on the the benchmarks that you had put out.

Uh when you compare it against other jurisdictions in that slide that you had, are those benchmarked post-the increase or currently?

Those are 2025 rates, council member.

Okay, so this that may change a little bit post-increase.

Is that right?

That is correct.

We do know, for example, City of Seattle is proposing an 18% increase this year.

I'm not sure where they stand uh with their council.

Not sure about Renton and I mean uh Redmond, I'm sorry, and also King County.

As I mentioned, King County did a pretty steep increase last year to catch up with their cost recovery objectives.

Uh, we do the incremental increases every year to stay in line with our cost recovery policies.

Got it.

Okay, and then um school impact fees, my questions are answered, and so on.

Um I do have one comment on the prior agenda item proper to make it now or not.

Sure.

I just wanted to plus one council member Hamilton's push on the contingency fund valuation for human services.

Uh well just want to nudge and say that I would be supportive, and I would love to see what the options are there as well.

Great.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Lee.

Uh well, this is something that's uh interesting to consider.

Some of the things out of our control.

Uh I want to talk about utility uh sewer rate first.

Uh I think we have uh one of the best uh utility uh in the area.

Uh they have been very diligent.

They make sure that we have policies that the council approved uh that is uh how to raise the rate and how to have a reserve so that we don't run into a situation uh that you know we have uh uh rundown system.

We have contingencies to make sure that we have reserve to repair them, to keep up with the state of the situation, that we're prepared for growth.

So all this are very good contingency plans.

Of course, we cannot be perfect, right?

I mean, we just have to anticipate, but I think they're doing the best they can.

So I think they're cont they are containing the rates within good reason.

They're well run, very efficient.

We turn on the water tap, clean weather come out, we flush the toilet, 30 order goes away.

So I have no problem of uh you know uh supporting the rate proposal.

Uh I have a question.

I just heard uh Councilman Bagawa was asking about pass-through.

Is that retaining to utility?

John, yeah.

Actually, it can pertain to utilities or the school impact fees.

Okay.

Uh I want to uh mention uh about utility.

It's a King County's waste treatment costs.

Uh it's has to pass through.

I mean, we can absorb it.

I mean, we have to we have to be nobody else is gonna pay it.

A ray pay has to pay for it.

So there's not much we can do about it.

And it's dependable, dependent on the counties sewer cost and what they're gonna charge us, how much they're gonna increase.

So I think that's a very uh tough predicament.

I want to remind the council that we have to be working on the regional basis, making sure the the waste treatment division of King County, you know, can control their costs, making sure their cost covers or the growth or the old pipes that need to be replaced.

Their policy is not quite as good as we do.

They don't have a reserve, they don't plan for the long term.

So the increase will happen when they have to pay for broken pipes, they have to replace whatever they have to do, keep up with the new regulations.

So that's something we have to be very careful about.

So I'm just sort of warning every city, us included, what the potential increase may become unless we figure out how to contain county's uh rate system.

Okay, so that's good.

So I support that.

I want to mention about development services permit.

Uh I think they're doing very good job.

Uh they're responding to uh what the development community wants.

I want to compliment the director for communicating with development.

But we have seen that the last time we talked about middle housing.

Uh one of the challenges that we want to build uh as low cost as possible.

One of the cost factor is the time it takes to get permits.

You know, somebody was being the development people are saying developers takes three years.

So we want to shorten that, right?

Because time is money.

It's going to cost more money, and the cost is going to go up.

So we need to do everything we can to shorten it.

And I believe that you're working toward that with the technology improvement and all the other things.

But there may be other things you can do.

We don't know that.

One thing is that they need to be certainty.

One thing that uh makes development difficult, especially for residential small businesses.

Uh, that uh inspection sometimes and the requirements sometimes do not always uh well well explained, well coordinated.

So there's misunderstanding between uh customer and also the uh the development services, you know, we're not on the right page.

So this misunderstanding not you know, so this well, the city has many inspection requirements also from different departments.

So I think we need to make sure that we all on the same page.

So we don't we eliminate the misunderstanding and the delaying of the process.

Otherwise, I think it's good.

You need to have the money.

Uh just find out that you have a reserve on your own.

So, well, that's something that you can also be enable you to improve your permitting period.

And I think that's important.

So I've no question about it.

Uh, in terms of the wireless thing, uh I've no clue.

What is the cost to put a wireless system on a right-of-way?

I mean, I don't know.

It's a bit due to uh compet competition with other facilities, or do the co or due to whatever.

So I think you have to decide.

You have to look at what case what uh how do we provide service to make sure these wireless service companies provide the service to our customers here?

I don't know what they're willing to pay to provide the service or what they're not willing to pay.

So it depends on you know, the function, depending on the service the custom in Bellevue can obtain through various different companies.

You know, I think that's the competitive force.

So I think that you have to decide.

So that's my statement.

Other than that, I think that's what we're looking at.

But I do like to make sure that wireless system has to be available to our customers.

And how much can we charge to keep them here?

If they go away, that's not good for us, right?

Because we don't have the service.

We need to have the options, we need the service for our customers for our residents.

Thank you.

Okay, Deputy Mayor.

Uh, thank you, Mayor.

Uh, thank you, everyone.

Since Rebecca is here, I'm going to ask my permitting question first.

Sorry for moving back and forth between you all.

Uh, slide 17, there is a permitting fee regional competitive.

I highly recommend remove those two bottom cities that they are different.

We are not comparing Apple to Orange, they are orange.

Because if you remove that, then it's clearly shows that if someone goes to the other slide, if they are not included, we are the lowest.

So that's a great picture.

But if they are there and there is no description that they are different subsidies and subsidized and everything else, I think that doesn't look great.

In the agenda memo was written somewhere that you may reach out to your reserves to avoid in future, to avoid passing the cost to customers.

Is that correct?

Do we have any regulation?

How is that works?

What's what is the threshold that we go through that when we are putting the money back?

What are some of the framework?

Is it somewhere available you can send it to us?

So great question, Deputy Mayor.

The basic framework for that is in the comprehensive financial policies, which outlines the specific uses of each one of our reserve buckets and how we would actually use those.

So, for example, one of the reserve buckets is for core staffing to take us through downturns.

So if we got into a situation of a significant downturn where revenue is not coming in to support expenditures, we could dip into that reserve to keep those staff on board to focus on process improvement, have those staff available to be trained when development activity picks back up.

That's one of the core uses.

We also have a rate offset reserve that could be used in times where we have large rate increases that uh uh maybe uh coming to development services to lower the rates and smooth those out over a period of years so that we don't see sharp rate increases like we've seen from some of our neighbors.

So those are two examples.

That's awesome.

Nothing less was expected.

Thank you so much.

Then a quick question on the utility uh pass through.

Is there any detailed calculation to converts the King County increase into Bellevue's 0.3% increase?

And let me just rephrase my question.

So I know you said King County's uh charging more plus taxes.

How that translates to Belleview's 0.3% in increment.

There is a math behind that, I assume.

It is really just a math because their rate increases for all of their customer base to address things like the growth in and their capital plan for combined sewer overflow and some things that are coming at them.

To our rate payers, it translates to a smaller amount, which is as an incremental component, and it's really just a math calculation of here's the total amount, and then we calculate it based off of our rate calculation.

Here's your your portion of it.

Can we see that for the or public can see that?

Because to me is that's Matt's trans conversion is like a black box.

So if we can see that trends like from King County three to the 0.3%, I think would be a good thing for public clarity.

Uh and then the last comment would be uh plus one to Councilmember Hamilton to Councilmember New House or every other council members that uh we should think about the impact that all of these increases will do to our low-income uh folks, renters, small multifamilies, whatever people, whoever is going to experience that, we should think about that and do something for them that I'm happy that you are all doing something.

Glad to, and council members.

I'm playing the part of Lucy as her voice has taken it a further downturn, and I'm just acting as a voice and big shoes to feel my friend.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mayor.

Yes.

So you know, when I'm at these regional meetings and hearing from other cities, Bellevue is so fortunate to have a flat budget right now.

I'm hearing from other cities that have significant millions of dollars of deficit because uh they anticipated having more revenues than they actually got.

And so they budgeted for that, and it's really, really tough, and we're very fortunate we're in the situation that we're in, and I think that I'm very grateful for the staff who have been really conservative in their uh projections and accurate.

I'm also uh feeling really lucky about this development pipeline that you described.

That's quite remarkable also.

That's quite unique for the region.

And um, when I look at the affordable housing units that are being produced and that are in the pipeline, you know, we as a council recently made a commitment to create 5700 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years, I think.

And so that'd be 570 a year, and we have 700 in the pipeline, so yay.

Uh, we're on good track right now.

Um let's see.

I kind of um going along with what other council members have said, I would love to see the utilities department partnering with our agency human service organizations that do um utility assistance so that we're all working together on that, make sure that we have the funding that we need to support that effort and that what our funding is being well utilized.

Um and then the last thing outside of this is um back to the council contingency conversation, which we are now going to have at some point.

Uh we need to also discuss our travel budget for uh next year.

So put that on the list of things to discuss, please.

But um, I I'm grateful to be in this situation and that we can take this vote tonight.

And so uh without any other conversation or questions, um, may I have a motion, please?

I move to direct staff to return with legislation to adopt fee and rate adjustments pertaining to utilities, sewer rates, development services permits, school impact fees, and transportation wireless fees for council consideration at a future meeting.

Second.

All those in favor say aye.

Okay.

Any opposed?

Okay, great.

Thank you so much.

The last thing on our agenda is actually a written report.

It's on uh so we had a city manager's report a few weeks ago on uh the East Guide campus of Porch Light and Plymouth Crossing.

And at that time, our city manager describes some of the recommendations that the city had for the operations of those facilities.

And so this written report uh talks about what actions have been taken to the state, and there is no um data to collect yet because it they have not been in place, but uh in early of next year, I believe we'll be bringing this topic back to council with some data to assess.

Thank you, Mayor, and uh thank you, Councilmember Newenhouse for um asking for the study session.

Yes, we do want to bring a study session back to you when we have some information that that shows how effective um or not effective the actions are, and um get your feedback on that.

So we hope to bring that back uh by early January.

Okay, great.

All right, we are adjourned.

Thank you.