Good evening, Everett Washington.

Uh, welcome to the Parks and Built Environment Council committee meeting.

Today is February 11th, 2026.

We're here in council chambers.

Uh, tonight we have uh four items on our agenda, a couple updates and briefings from staff on a number of uh awesome topics.

Uh, some are a continuation of just uh discussions that we've had at council uh previously, uh and one's a newer item for council to review.

So looking forward to an informative evening.

Uh first on our list, we have the utility ordinance update and staff uh from staff.

Uh so uh folks, if you don't mind introducing yourselves for the record and providing a little briefing and background uh before you diving in, that'd be great.

Thanks.

Great, good evening.

Um Ryan Sass with Public Works and with me tonight, I have Lindsay Moo.

Uh Lindsay is our support services manager, and she uh oversees utility billing or warehouse system or meter shop and some other important functions within public works and is our subject matter expert.

So in December, uh we had a kind of a lengthy discussion on utility billing at council and ended up with a uh council ordinance that was passed.

And at the end of the meeting, there was some discussion that after we had time to figure out exactly all that was in it as amended, we would come back with some proposed changes perhaps.

Uh so what I wanted to do tonight is just give you an update on that.

So staff have been continuing to work on any potential ordinance revisions and also looking at our practices and procedures.

And our intent is to be back next month with a detailed proposal of what we would like to do or change, if any.

But in the meantime, I also wanted to uh just cover a couple items uh in the intervening time.

Uh since our December meeting, Lindsay and the team have uh enabled a pay later function that allows customers to schedule the payment in advance to be paid without requiring enrollment in our auto pay system.

And then uh we're also working with our current payment process or in the near term to try to enable direct ACH bill payment where you can pay by a direct ACH transfer as opposed to a check as an alternative.

So that's going on in the background of just you know, minor continuous improvements.

Uh longer term, uh the team's working on a request for proposal to find a better online payment portal.

Uh the one we have is limited.

Uh so some of the things we're hoping to accomplish with that would be uh for customers to be able to pay by ACH from their own bank's bill pay portal without having to log into the city uh or software portal.

Um provide free messages by text and email, and that would enable us to send uh past due or late notices at no cost, and then we don't have the five dollar cost recovery that we do with our current notices.

Uh and then uh looking for easier bill payment through different platforms like text messages with a link to pay the bill and that sort of thing.

So to try to get us modern.

Um that'll probably take the better part of a year to do those kind of uh rollouts because once we get a new software platform selected, we'll have to do extensive testing, make sure it all works right before we roll it out.

But that'll be continuing as well.

But in the meantime, we plan to be back uh next month on the 11th of March, and we'll come with any proposed changes that we would recommend to the ordinance and also any kind of practices and procedures that we'll would like to change as well.

Great, thank you.

Um what is the uh the ordinance that we had passed in December had an enactment date?

What's that?

What is that date again?

It was uh 90 days in after it became valid, which works out to be uh March 27th, I think.

Okay.

And then we'll be back before then.

And then if we propose changes, there'd be three readings.

So that would put us into the beginning of April with a third and final reading.

Well, I see March 11th would be if that's a first reading, then the 18th and then the 25th would be the third reading, which would be in time for the 27th.

Yeah, if we did the first reading the same day as the committee meeting, yeah.

Okay.

Or we can follow the week, you know, the week after that.

Yeah, we might.

I don't know if we need to check like the effective date too, like the night the ordinance passes, and then there are like a delay.

Anyways, there all of that being said, it is a little bit of a tight timeline for those three readings, the effective date, a review by committee.

So I know the goal was we gave that the council put that um past that kind of 90-day holding period to give staff time to review and recommend so that we can if changes are needed, make those changes before it becomes effective.

So we're not like under a new regime and then a new one a few days later.

So um yeah.

Yeah, I'd be comfortable with um the next briefing on the 11th being at full council in conjunction with the first reading.

So then full council is aware of uh any changes.

And then the third reading would be on the 25th, which would be in time to adjust what the current ordinance is.

Happy to take suggestions.

I'm just thinking, uh I think it's a minor thing, but the delay between the ordinance being passed and when it's actually in effect would create a time between the 25th and that that might be clumsy.

I don't know.

Maybe maybe Mr.

Hall can tell us if we'll run afoul of that or I think we can make that.

Yeah, that was my thought.

Yeah.