Edmonds City Council Retreat – February 9, 2026

The Edmonds City Council held a special meeting and retreat in the Brackett Room at City Hall, beginning at 8:30 a.m. and adjourning at 2:24 p.m. The agenda and transcript header are dated February 6, 2026, but this summary uses the supplied meeting date of February 9, 2026. The retreat was a working session, not a voting meeting, focused on establishing council priorities through the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) performance management framework, reviewing the city’s community survey and vision, testing Tyler software reporting tools, and aligning council and staff work for the year ahead.

GFOA / Performance Management Framework

• City Administrator Todd Tatum presented the GFOA planning framework, noting the city’s strategic plan was developed in 2013 and last updated in 2015, and that the Puget Sound region has grown by roughly 30% over the last decade.
• Tatum distinguished metrics (any quantifiable data point tracked) from KPIs (a small set of critical measures tied directly to outcomes, priorities, or strategy), and said the city has strong department-level KPIs but needs work on city-level KPIs residents understand.
• He described GFOA, an organization with more than 30,000 members, and its “Financial Foundations for Thriving Communities” pillars: long-term vision, trust and open communication, collective decision making, clear rules, and fair treatment.
• Councilmember Folsom asked how to bridge community priorities with residents’ willingness to pay for them; Tatum responded that staff is exploring engagement tools and has created a public/customer engagement working group.
• Councilmember Chen supported the framework and asked whether the city already has a KPI base; Tatum said there are parallel tracks: continuous improvement now while building a more rigorous structure.
• Councilmember Barnett disagreed with the characterization that the city lacks transparency or accountability, and said the framework should address a perception issue and make work more visible.
• Councilmember Payne said the previous strategic planning process had gaps, including assignments to community groups that were never followed up on, and urged using social science expertise for nuanced metrics in human services and law enforcement.
• Councilmember Nand described the council’s oversight role versus the administration’s service-delivery role, and said the city must continue educating residents about how government works.

Community Priorities & City Vision Review

• Staff reviewed the 2024 Edmonds Community Survey conducted by EMC Research, described as a statistically valid survey of roughly 350 randomly selected residents.
• The top six resident priorities from the survey were public safety; infrastructure and core services; fiscal responsibility; housing and growth management; parks, recreation, and public spaces; and economic vitality and local business.
• The city’s vision statement from the comprehensive plan was read: “Edmonds is a charming and welcoming city offering outstanding quality of life for all with vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, safe streets, beautiful parks, and a thriving art scene that promotes healthy lifestyles, climate resiliency, and access to the natural beauty of our community.”
• Councilmembers noted the importance of remembering residents who do not participate in surveys, especially the most vulnerable community members.

Priority Setting Workshop

• The workshop used a “1-2-4-all” facilitation method, followed by a “five whys” root-cause analysis, and a PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental) framework.
• In the values exercise, groups said public safety should reach beyond residents to visitors and business owners, communications is a core service, low-income families need more housing support, environmental stewardship was missing, and Highway 99 and annexed neighborhoods should receive comparable attention and investment.
• Desired outcomes included a clear strategic plan, financial sustainability, safe and welcoming neighborhoods, maintained roads, reliable and efficient permitting, support for local businesses, balanced budgets, modern technology, and inclusive decision-making with clear trade-offs.
• Opportunities and gaps identified included strong council-administration alignment, economic development beyond downtown, real-time public data, updated strategic planning, neighborhood-based council engagement, volunteer leverage, improved internal processes, and better communication.
• Barriers discussed included limited financial resources, low diversity of revenue sources, siloed information, capacity and bandwidth, outdated systems and training, resistance to change, community engagement challenges, fear, geographic diversity, and unclear priorities.
• The five-whys exercise traced resource challenges to siloed information and lack of a shared framework; motivation problems to firefighting and lack of strategic planning; and low engagement to lack of accessibility, education, and trust.
• Staff synthesized the workshop into draft priority themes: economic development; engagement, communication, and transparency; prioritization, trade-offs, and capacity; strategic clarity and direction; and financial stability.

Tyler Software Update

• During the working lunch, staff shared the status of the Tyler Technologies ERP implementation.
• General ledger, accounts payable, and accounts receivable modules are live but roughly two weeks behind the goal of a January 1 start.
• The HR project launched in January; the first payroll run in the new system is scheduled for the first pay period of 2027.
• Utility billing is tentatively scheduled to go live in Q3 of 2026, dependent on internal bandwidth.
• Public-facing financial dashboards are being developed; staff showed examples of budget, revenue, and vendor payment dashboards used by other cities.
• Councilmembers requested dashboards that show budget-to-actual at project and fund levels, revenue sources with expiration dates, historical data on major expenditures, staffing levels and vacancies, cost-center visibility for facilities like the Francis Anderson Center, and portfolio tracking for major efforts such as Highway 99 redevelopment.
• Councilmembers also discussed using the existing maps.edmonds.gov GIS tool to connect residents to current city projects.

Communication Practices Update

• Public Information Officer Natasha Ryan, in the role for four months, presented the city’s 2026 communication strategy.
• She emphasized conversational, non-government-speak messaging, proactive transparency, sharing what is known when it is known, honest uncertainty, and closing the loop after public input.
• Ryan outlined the public participation spectrum: inform, consult, involve, collaborate, and empower, noting each level carries a different promise to the public.
• Examples included the mayor’s weekly Wednesday video summaries, a snow-plow naming contest, a street-sweeping video that received about 15,000 views, memorial tree planting storytelling, and employee recognition.
• Councilmembers praised the communication work, linked it to rebuilding trust and staff morale, and cautioned councilmembers to remain mindful of the Open Public Meetings Act when responding to comments online.
• Councilmember Nand framed the communication effort as the first step of a social contract with the community: showing residents what the city offers before asking them to trust it with their money.

Administrative Legislative Calendar Review

• City Clerk Luke Lawney presented a new annual “living” administrative and legislative calendar to replace the quarterly version.
• The calendar maps anticipated council, committee, and study-session items across the year and will be updated regularly on the public website.
• The new committee structure includes finance; parks and public works; and public safety, planning, human services, and personnel.
• Lawney introduced an “items for future consent” category for noncontroversial items that can move directly to a consent agenda if no councilmember objects during a study session.
• Councilmembers noted public works items are filling study sessions, and suggested cross-assigning some public works topics to other committees or considering whether public works needs its own committee.

Next Steps and Implementation

• Staff will refine the draft priority themes using input from the day’s sessions.
• Council President Dodge said a study session the following Wednesday would be used to further distill council priorities, with staff then aligning programs, services, activities, and KPIs to those priorities.
• Dot-voting results showed the highest concentration of “urgent/foundational” red dots on financial stability (especially sustainable revenue and aligning the budget with priorities), strategic clarity and direction, breaking down silos, and economic development aligned with growth.
• “Important” yellow dots concentrated on economic development and engagement, communication, and transparency; “dependent” green dots marked items that rely on other foundational work first.
• No formal motions or votes were taken during the retreat. The meeting adjourned at 2:24 p.m.