The Kirkland City Council met on August 5, 2026, for a study session beginning at 5:30 p.m. and the regular meeting at 7:30 p.m. Due to critical maintenance, the meeting was held in a hybrid format. The council addressed utility rate projections, a low-income support program update, multiple business items, and three legislative request memoranda (LRMs). All seven council members were present.
We are open to the public. Thank you. Let's ensure that Mike has gone live. Stand by. Okay, we're live. Thank you. Due to critical maintenance and upgrades underway in council chambers. During the meeting, we may take brief breaks as needed to address any technical issues and help ensure the meeting proceeds as smoothly as possible. And council, um, thank you so much. Please give me a little grace as we start out as I get the lay of the landscape here. I'm very appreciative to uh former mayor's suite having done this for quite a long time, but we'll get through it. So City Clerk, will you please call the role? Councilmember Tim Chison? Here. Councilmember Arnold. Here. Councilmember Prem. Here. Councilmember Falcone. Here. Councilmember Pascal. Here. Deputy Mayor Black. Here. Mayor Curtis. Here. All right. Our study session tonight is on two items. First, we'll have an update on the two thousand twenty-seven, two thousand twenty-eight utility rates. Second, we will have an update on the Kirkland Care's Low Income Support Program. We expect to reconvene our regular meeting at seven thirty. So we have the whole ninety minutes of the study session set up for these two topics related topics. I wanted to give a huge thanks to folks at Public Works and Finance to put together a lot of really complicated information. And also our consultant team are going to hear from, who has done a fabulous job. But it's all going to be led by Jenny Galls, our Surface Water Strategic Advisor. And she has lots of help who people will check in when needed. And Tracy Dunlap is also here at Deputy City Manager to chime in as needed, or she is in the Tri-Cities. So with that, I'll turn over to Jenny. Great. Thank you very much. Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the council. Again, I'm Jenny Gauz, Surface Water Strategic Advisor, and I'm managing the utility rate process for 2027-2028. And Brooke is kindly running the slides for me for now. Next slide. The FCS team and myself will be the main presenters, but we do have many other folks standing by as questions arise. Next slide. And before we launch into sort of the meat of the presentation, wanted to just highlight some of the process improvements that have happened since the last rate sitting process. We're doing more forecasting of revenues. Staff is reviewing and reporting on revenue trends each month so that we have the most up-to-date information. Water and sewer utilities have been split apart so that we can better see how each is faring financially.