Name: Bellingham City Council - Committee Of The Whole meeting, Mar 23, 2026
Start: 2026-03-23
End: 2026-03-23
Location: City of Bellingham

City Council - Committee Of The Whole

Mon, March 23, 2026

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Meeting summaryAI-generated

Bellingham City Council — Committee of the Whole — March 23, 2026

This was a working session of the full Committee of the Whole, covering administrative appointments, digital accessibility compliance, and a significant public safety funding assessment. Council Member Lilliquist was excused; all other six members were present. No binding legislation was passed, but a consequential motion to form a Regional Fire Authority planning committee was approved.

Agenda Item 1: Appointment of New Public Records Officer (Bill 24865)

The city is transitioning day-to-day public records processing from the City Attorney's Office to the City Clerk's Office, which sits within the Finance Department. Senior Assistant City Attorney Sarah Chaplan, who has served as Public Records Officer since 2021, explained the rationale: public records requests have skyrocketed from roughly 1,200 in 2016 to nearly 5,000 in 2024. That volume increase, combined with the growing complexity of searching digital systems (email, cloud storage, databases), created an unsustainable workload for attorney staff.

Deputy City Clerk Kelly Getats presented on her team's preparation for the expanded role. She noted that the City Clerk is already the state-mandated steward of citywide records management under RCW 35.23.121, making the office a natural fit. Her team — including Records and Information Analyst Evan Reynolds and Records and Public Disclosure Coordinator Riann Finster — has been processing requests since early 2025, learning platforms such as GovQA (the public-facing disclosure portal) and Microsoft Purview. The team was awarded a Washington State Archives technology grant to purchase an in-house large-format scanner, eliminating third-party fees for maps and drawings. A new citywide records management policy was also signed by the Mayor last month.

Looking ahead, the Clerk's Office plans to launch an Essential Records Program targeting high-priority departments (Finance, HR), develop in-person and recorded training for city staff, build a public-facing City Clerk website, and expand in-house scanning and digitization services.

Mayor Lund expressed appreciation for the team's dedication. She asked whether the new in-house digitization work intersects with the city's photo archives — staff confirmed those are entirely separate functions. She also confirmed the newly budgeted FTE position has been filled.

Council Member Williams moved to approve the appointment of Kelly Getats as the city's designated Public Records Officer; Council Member Huthman seconded.

Vote: Passed 6–0 (Lilliquist excused). Council President Stone noted she would bring the formal recommendation forward at the evening council meeting.

Agenda Item 2: Digital Services Accessibility Update (Bill 24866)

Communications and Community Relations Director Melissa Morren and ADA Coordinator Holly Peterson briefed the council on the city's effort to comply with a federal Americans with Disabilities Act Title II rule issued in April 2024, which for the first time sets specific technical standards — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA — for all publicly available digital content. Because Bellingham's population exceeds 50,000, the compliance deadline is April 2026, one year ahead of smaller jurisdictions.

The scope is broad: the city's main website, social media, mobile apps (including ClickFix), third-party platforms, PDFs, forms, video, audio, and live meeting broadcasts all fall under the requirement.

What the city has done so far: Staff conducted a comprehensive accessibility inventory audit covering more than 9,000 PDFs, over 140 online PDF forms, and all third-party applications. Most third-party apps are already compliant or have committed to compliance by the deadline; those that cannot comply are being evaluated for replacement. HTML web content is generally in good shape, with staff trained to provide proper alt text and heading structure.

The PDF problem: PDFs were identified as the biggest challenge. Manual remediation using a tool called Equidox proved unsustainable — a single ADA transition plan document took nine hours to fix; an 800-page council packet was estimated at 40 staff hours. The city is instead contracting for a one-year trial of an AI-driven tool called Doc Access, which automatically generates an accessible HTML transcript of any PDF, complete with image descriptions and navigation structure. It also offers live assistance for users who need help interpreting complex visual content. A cost comparison showed manual remediation of 16 test documents cost roughly $1,100 in staff time; Doc Access delivered the same result for $134. High-sensitivity documents (legal, public safety) will still receive manual review via Equidox.

Video and audio: This remains the most unsettled area. New standards require captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions (narration for visual content) for all video — including live and recorded meetings. AI tools for automated audio description exist but don't yet meet the city's quality threshold. Staff are watching for platforms like YouTube and Meta to catch up, similar to what third-party software vendors have done.

Ongoing monitoring: The city uses a tool called Siteimprove to crawl its website monthly and flag issues such as missing alt text, broken links, and insufficient color contrast.

Council Member Anderson highlighted colorblindness as a persistent accessibility issue in charts and graphs, and staff confirmed they are incorporating guidance on patterns, textures, and color contrast into a staff training toolkit. Council Member Hammill asked about consequences of errors in AI-generated transcripts; staff clarified that having an inaccessible format available is the compliance failure — an imperfect accessible transcript does not itself constitute non-compliance. Council Member Anderson also asked what happens if the city is found out of compliance; staff explained complaints come to the ADA Coordinator, who works with departments on remediation and communicates a fix timeline — monetary penalties are not expected, with a corrective plan being the more likely outcome.

*This item was for information and discussion only; no vote was taken.*

Agenda Item 3: Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment (Bill 24871)

Deputy City Administrator Forrest Longman presented the results of a yearlong, interdepartmental assessment of fire, EMS, and police levels of service — and funding options to sustain them.

The core problem: Public safety costs are structurally unsustainable. Even with no new services added, the combined fire and police budgets are projected to require approximately $3 million more in general fund revenue in 2027 than current revenues can support.

Fire and EMS findings: Calls have increased 35% over the past decade, from 15,000 to 24,000 annually, with 75% being medical calls. The city operates a cross-staffed model where three firefighters operate both an engine and an ambulance — a model the department has now outgrown. Unit availability (time not on calls) has fallen below the target of 90–92% at nearly all city stations. Fire total response time is met only about 67% of the time against the department's own targets.

The assessment identified tiered needs: Tier 1 (critical) items include a second battalion chief, uncrossing fire and ambulance staffing at city stations, restoring training capacity, and related support. Fully implementing Tier 1 recommendations would cost approximately $21–22 million annually above the current $60 million fire budget by 2036.

Police findings: Patrol staffing on most shifts amounts to two supervisors and six to seven officers city-wide — a number that surprised several council members. The city received 53,000 calls for service in 2024. Using an International Association of Chiefs of Police staffing model, the assessment found the city should have 150 commissioned officers; it currently has 130. Three staffing scenarios were presented, ranging from 1.3 new FTEs per year (foundational) to 3.2 per year (comprehensive), which would reach full recommended staffing within 10 years. The comprehensive model would add roughly $7–8 million annually above the current $51 million police budget at full implementation.

Other cost pressures: State Supreme Court changes to public defender caseload limits are expected to push the city's public defense costs from $1 million today to $2 million by 2028 and $4 million by 2035. Jail per-diem rates increased 25% in 2026, with further increases expected when the new county justice center opens. State funding cuts have also reduced support for the Alternative Response Team (ART), GRACE, and LEAD programs.

Council Member Cotton raised questions about ART call diversion modeling; staff acknowledged they don't yet have a solid model for that and committed to follow up. Council Member Huthman asked about alternative response models beyond behavioral health calls, noting many dispatched calls don't clearly require a sworn officer. Council Member Hammill confirmed the fire and police cost structures were additive versus alternative scenarios, respectively.

Funding options reviewed: Staff evaluated four revenue mechanisms available to the city:

1. Ambulance Utility — Council-only (no public vote needed), but the most regressive (flat fee regardless of income), and may reduce federal GMT reimbursements.

2. Fire Benefit Charge — Fee based on building size and fire risk (less burden on residential); requires 60% public vote and six-year renewal cycles.

3. Property Tax Levy — Simple majority public vote, conceptually familiar, but struggles to keep pace with inflation and places heavier burden on residential taxpayers.

4. Regional Fire Authority (RFA) — Staff's recommended option. Creates an independent taxing district for fire and EMS. Requires a simple majority public vote (60% for an accompanying fire benefit charge). Would free up an estimated $20–24 million in general fund currently devoted to the fire department, creating capacity for police, alternatives, and city operations generally.

Why staff recommends the RFA: The fire budget's growth trajectory is expected to require an RFA eventually regardless; peer cities including Kent and Renton have established successful RFAs; labor units have expressed support for exploring the option; and the city began this process in 2017, meaning significant groundwork already exists. The city would lose direct control of fire and EMS under an RFA, and it reduces future property tax levy capacity.

Proposed next steps: Staff asked council to form an RFA Planning Committee jointly with Fire District 8 — three city representatives (recommended: the Mayor plus two council members) and three District 8 commissioners. The committee would develop a service plan over six to eight months, with council adoption targeted for December 2026 and a spring 2027 election, allowing the RFA to begin collecting tax revenue by 2028.

Council Member Anderson said she was not ready to vote, citing a desire for more comparative financial data — specifically, what the tax impact on a typical homeowner or a large commercial property would look like under each option before committing to any path. Staff acknowledged they could provide some of that data now (property tax and ambulance utility estimates are more straightforward) and that the RFA planning process itself would generate the detailed modeling for a fire benefit charge comparison. Anderson also noted the 2017 RFA exploration was abandoned largely because a budget surplus emerged at the time, and expressed concern about framing: she wanted assurance that analysis would be balanced, not designed to reach a predetermined conclusion.

Council Member Hammill acknowledged Anderson's concerns but argued that given the timeline (a spring 2027 election requires significant lead time), it was appropriate to start the planning process now — that's precisely where the detailed answers would be developed. He moved to form an RFA Planning Committee with District 8.

Council President Stone noted that staff had already informally gauged District 8's interest and received a positive indication, though District 8 would need to take formal action at their next meeting (second Thursday in April). She also noted the council member who was excused today (Lilliquist) was involved in the 2017 process, and proposed leaving the question of which two council members would serve on the committee to the next meeting rather than naming them today.

Vote: Motion by Hammill, seconded by Cotton. Passed 5–0–1 (Anderson abstaining; Lilliquist excused).

Old/New Business: I-5 Closure Update

Public Works Director Joel Funt briefly updated the council on the ongoing closure of northbound I-5 between the North Lake Samish and Old Fairhaven Parkway interchanges due to a landslide. No reopening timeline has been set. The city has made signal timing adjustments at the Samish Way interchange and is monitoring the Chuckanut Drive/12th Street corridor and other alternate routes. Staff worked through the weekend and made further adjustments Monday morning. Funt acknowledged that the local network cannot comfortably absorb the approximately 50,000 diverted vehicles per day and asked for community patience and trip flexibility. The city is coordinating with WSDOT on communications and operations, and with the school district regarding impacts near Fairhaven Middle School.

*No vote; informational only.*

Key Takeaways

New Public Records Officer approved: Deputy City Clerk Kelly Getats replaces City Attorney Sarah Chaplan as the city's Public Records Officer, reflecting a structural shift of public records processing from the City Attorney's Office to the City Clerk's Office amid nearly a fourfold increase in annual records requests since 2016.

ADA digital accessibility deadline arriving: The city is working to meet a federal WCAG 2.1 compliance deadline in April 2026, with a new AI-driven PDF accessibility tool (Doc Access) being contracted to replace an unsustainable manual remediation process; video/audio compliance for social media and live meetings remains a work in progress.

Public safety faces a structural funding gap: Fire and EMS calls are up 35% in a decade; police are running 6–7 patrol officers city-wide; response time targets are being missed regularly. Even maintaining current staffing will cost $3 million more in the next budget cycle.

RFA planning moves forward: Council voted 5–0–1 to form a Regional Fire Authority Planning Committee with Fire District 8, a step that could lead to a spring 2027 public vote. If approved by voters, an RFA would remove fire and EMS from the city's general fund and free up an estimated $20–24 million annually for other priorities — but would also remove the city's direct control over the fire department. Detailed financial comparisons with alternative funding mechanisms are expected to be produced through the planning process.

I-5 landslide closure is ongoing with no firm reopening date; the city is actively managing signal timing and alternate routes but warns that local streets cannot fully absorb diverted freeway traffic.

AI-generated summary from voice-to-text transcript. Not the official record. Verify important details with the source documents linked above.

What happened at this meeting

Old/New Business

Under Old and New Business, Public Works Director Joel Funt provided an update on I-5 closures caused by landslides between North Lake Samish and Fair Haven Parkway interchanges on northbound I-5. Funt reported that WSDOT is working on repairs with reopening still to be determined, and the city has made signal timing changes and is monitoring traffic impacts on alternate routes including Samish Way, Chuckanut Drive, 12th Street, and Iowa Street. A council member raised concerns about the impacts on local roads absorbing approximately 50,000 diverted vehicles per day and requested monitoring of potential impact fee implications, to which Funt acknowledged the challenge and emphasized the city's coordination with WSDOT and the school district while asking the community to be patient and adjust travel times when possible.

Appointment of a new public records officer for the City of Bellingham

# Summary: Appointment of Kelly Getats as Public Records Officer

Staff presented the appointment of Kelly Getats, Deputy City Clerk, as the new public records officer, replacing Sarah Chaplan who will continue providing legal advice on public disclosure matters. Senior Assistant City Attorney Chaplan explained that public records requests have grown from approximately 1,200 in 2016 to almost 5,000 last year, necessitating the transition from the city attorney's office to the city clerk's office. The city clerk's office, supported by new hires including Rian Finster, Evan Reynolds, and Sabrina Gibbons, will focus on three core areas: compliance with state public records laws, stewardship of historical records, and operational efficiency improvements through standardized practices and new technology tools like GovQa and Microsoft Purview. Plans include launching a new public-facing website, implementing an in-house scanning and digitization service, and developing staff training initiatives across departments. Council Member Williams moved to approve the appointment, seconded by Council Member Huffman, and the motion passed 6-0 with one excused.

An update on City efforts to improve digital services accessibility

# Summary: City Digital Services Accessibility Update

City staff presented a comprehensive update on efforts to meet the federal ADA Title II digital accessibility compliance deadline of April 2026, with Melissa Morren (Communications and Community Relations Director) and Holly Peterson (ADA Coordinator) explaining that the initiative covers the citywide website, mobile applications, social media, council meeting broadcasting, and over 9,000 PDFs. The city is implementing WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards and addressing major accessibility challenges, particularly with PDFs; staff recommended adopting DocAccess, an AI-driven tool that is more cost-effective and less disruptive than manual remediation, while continuing manual review for sensitive documents through Equidox. Staff are also developing best practices for presentations, documents, social media, and visual content (including patterns and textures for colorblind users) and expanding accessibility standards to video and audio content, with ongoing staff training through tools like SiteImprove. Council members raised concerns about AI accuracy and compliance checks (Council Member Hamill), color accessibility in visual charts (Council Members Anderson and Paul), and grievance processes, with staff clarifying that the city is moving away from PDFs where feasible and has already deleted over 2,000 PDFs, with complaints handled through the ADA grievance process.

A presentation of the Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment

# Summary

Deputy Administrator Forest Longman presented the results of a year-long Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment covering fire and police departments, which identified significant service gaps driven by increasing call volumes that current staffing cannot sustain. The fire department faces a 35% increase in calls over 10 years (15,000 to 24,000), with only 67% compliance with response time targets and unit availability falling to 67% versus the healthy 90-92% standard, while the police department handled 53,000 calls in 2024 with minimal patrol staffing, prompting recommendations to add personnel and a second battalion chief at a cost of approximately $21-22 million over ten years for fire services alone. Council members, particularly Council Member Anderson, raised concerns about cost methodologies, whether alternative response mechanisms could reduce call demand, and the need for comprehensive comparisons before proceeding. Staff recommended forming a Regional Fire Authority (RFA) planning committee with Fire District 8 as the most sustainable long-term solution to free up $24 million in general fund resources, which the council approved despite some members expressing concerns about losing local control and the need for additional information.

Agenda items (4)

Procedural (4)

4ProceduralOld/New Business

This is an open section for council members and the public to raise any additional topics or business not covered earlier in the meeting.

What happened

24865ProceduralAppointment of a new public records officer for the City of Bellingham

The city is hiring a new public records officer who will handle requests from residents and businesses seeking access to city documents and information.

What happened

24866ProceduralAn update on City efforts to improve digital services accessibility

City staff will report on progress made to ensure the city's websites and online services are easier to use for people with disabilities.

What happened

24871ProceduralA presentation of the Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment

The city will present findings from a study examining what police, fire, and emergency services Bellingham needs to adequately serve residents.

What happened

Additional votes recorded in minutes

Appointment of Kelley Goetz as public records officer

aye 6 · absent 1

Daniel Hammillaye

Edwin H. "Skip" Williamsaye

Hannah Stoneaye

Hollie Huthmanaye

Jace Cottonaye

Lisa Andersonaye

Michael Lilliquistabsent

Direct administration to form Regional Fire Authority planning committee

aye 5 · abstain 1 · absent 1

Daniel Hammillaye

Edwin H. "Skip" Williamsaye

Hannah Stoneaye

Hollie Huthmanaye

Jace Cottonaye

Lisa Andersonabstain

Michael Lilliquistabsent

Verbatim transcript available

344 transcript segments indexed

So the next committee this afternoon is committee of the whole. Um just wanting to note that the majority of council members are present. Council member Liquist is excused today, but we have more than a quorum with us.

City of Bellingham Committee Of The Whole minutes March 23, 2026, 1:50 PM Chair: Hannah Stone Phone: 360-778-8200 Members: Hollie Huthman, Daniel Hammill, Email: ccmail@cob.org Edwin H. "Skip" Williams, Lisa Anderson, Web: cob.org/council Michael Lilliquist, Jace Cotton City Council committee meetings Standing committee members receive reports and information, ask questions, and vote on a recommended action for consideration by the full Council at the regular meeting.

There is no public comment period during committee sessions. Call to order and roll call Council President Stone called the meeting to order at 1:51 p.m. Present: Council President Hannah Stone, First Ward Council Member Hollie Huthman, Second Ward Council Member Daniel Hammill, Third Ward Council Member Edwin H.

So we have a few items before the committee this afternoon. The first is agenda bill 24865. This is an appointment of a new public records officer for the city of Bellingham. According to RCW42.56.580, each state and local agency shall appoint and publicly identify a public records officer whose responsibility it is to serve as a point of contact for members of the public in requesting disclosure of public records and to oversee the AY's compliance with the Public Records Act.

Since 2021, senior assistant city attorney Sarah Chaplan has served as the city's public records officer. The city has recently transitioned public records processing duties from the city attorney's office to the city clerk's office.

"Skip" Williams, Fourth Ward Council Member Lisa Anderson, Fifth Ward Council Member Jace Cotton, At-Large Excused: Council Member Michael Lilliquist, Sixth Ward Committee Of The Whole 24865 1. Appointment of a new public records officer for the City of Bellingham Summary: Sarah Chaplin, Senior Assistant City Attorney, and Kelley Goetz, Deputy City Clerk, provided an update on the transition of public disclosure operations from the legal department to the finance department.

Council Members discussed the presentation and asked questions. Action: Edwin H. "Skip" Williams / Hollie Huthman moved to recommend approval of the appointment of Kelley Goetz, Deputy City Clerk, as the City's designated public records officer.

Miss Chaplan will continue to provide legal advice and representation regarding public disclosure matters and deputy clerk deputy city clerk Kelly Getats will replace Miss Chaplain as the city's public records officer.

A brief presentation will highlight the rationale behind the change and provide council with an update on activities by the city clerk team. So for this item, I will first turn um to senior assistant city attorney Sarah Chaplain.

Page 1 of 2 MOTION CARRIED 6-0. 24866 2. An update on City efforts to improve digital services accessibility Summary: Melissa Morin, Communications and Community Relations Director, and Holly Pederson, ADA Coordinator, provided an update on citywide efforts to improve digital services and develop a sustainable strategy to meet federal accessibility deadlines in April 2026.

Council Members discussed the presentation and asked questions. 24871 3. A presentation of the Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment Summary: Forrest Longman, Deputy Administrator, presented on the Public Safety Level of Service Needs Assessment, which identified current service gaps, resources needed to fill those gaps, and evaluated the possibility of additional funding sources.

>> Thank you. I am really excited to be here today talking about this public disclosure transition. Um my name is Sarah Chaplan. I'm a senior assistant city attorney in the city attorney's office. And just a little background, for the past 15 years, an attorney in the city attorney's office has served as both the public records legal adviser and the public records officer.

Council Members discussed the assessment and asked questions. Action: Daniel Hammill / Jace Cotton moved to direct the administration to form the Regional Fire Authority (RFA) planning committee. MOTION CARRIED 5-0.

So interfacing with the public, processing the day-to-day public records requests, searching for records within the city. So for 10 years, this role was James Herb. And then for the past five years, it has been me.

ABSTAINED: Lisa Anderson 4. Old/New Business Summary: Joel Pfundt, Public Works Director, provided an update on the impacts of the I-5 freeway closure to City infrastructure. Council moved into Executive Session at 3:52 p.m.

And just a little more background about how this transition came about is I was looking back at the number of public records requests the cities has received over the years. In 2016, the city received 1,200 public records requests approximately.

And last year, the city received almost 5,000 public records requests. So the number of public records requests has increased signific significantly yeartoyear and also the way that we search for public records requests has changed a lot due to changes in technology, changes in where records are stored.

to discuss three items until 4:20 p.m. 1. Potential litigation 2. Potential Litigation, Claim No. 2025-36 3. Potential Litigation Adjournment There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 4:40 p.m.

A few decades ago we might receive a public records request and know and search in a filing cabinet or a couple other locations. But now we receive public records requests and a lot of the times we're searching email, we're searching the cloud, we're searching databases and there's so much more of a need to be leveraging technology and different expertise in searching for records and in managing records than we had a few decades ago.

So with all these changes, it has also resulted in an increased workload for attorney staff and a city attorney's office support staff as well. And it occurred to us that what if another city department um would be able to take on this role of the day-to-day processing of public records requests, this really important role that involves interfacing with the public, searching for records, um interacting with city staff when appropriate, redacting records.

And the city clerk's office in the finance department stepped up to the plate to take on this important role. They did not have to do this, but they were team players. And this is a huge task to take on.

Um, and so you may remember that last year, city council, you approved the creation of a new position in the finance department to to be coordinating responses to public records requests. And I really think that the city clerk's office is the department of the city or part of the finance department that is really well suited to taking on this role because in addition to public records processing the city clerk's office they are really the experts on records management and also on techn records management technology and those are just skills that try as I might I am not an expert on a lot of the technology like onbase and these workflows and So over the past few months, Kelly gets Rian Finster and Evan Gets or excuse me, Evan Reynolds have um just been doing an amazing job taking on this role of processing public records requests.

They have already improved a lot of our workflows relating to public records processing and I am think Get is just very well equipped and ready to take on this title as public records officer for the city.

And with that, I will let Kelly take it away with um a brief presentation about what the clerk's office is doing. >> All right. Thank you very much. We're excited to be here and talk through this transition, just give you guys that operational insight into what we've been doing.

As Sarah mentioned, we've been really trying to to work together very closely and then just make this as seamless as possible for the public and for the staff here. So hopefully we're achieving that through this transition.

So, as as Sarah mentioned, I mean, one of the main impetuses is really opening up capacity in the city attorney's office, but I will say when the legal department approached us, it it really did seem to make sense operationally.

As Sarah mentioned, uh, the city clerk is responsible for citywide records management. And I think we can all agree that if we, you know, records management is really the how to we respond to public disclosure.

And if we have a strong records governance here at the city, we'll do a better job um in our public disclosure responses. Um and this also just allows us here at the city, you know, we've grown um in our complexity and our size, as Sarah mentioned, nearly 5,000 requests here at the city.

Um, I think it's helpful that we're going to create a central resource here for staff um and the departments and the public so that we can we can standardize a little bit, make sure we're all doing things the same way so that we're all set up for success in the long term.

So, I thought it might help to just take a step back and articulate a little bit about the role of the city clerk. Um the city clerk is a statemandated position who again among other duties is primarily responsible for public records and records management.

Um RCW 3523121 kind of gives a brief overview and you can see I've got an excerpt from their city charter there as well. Um I just highlighted public records but um here at the city of Bellingham we have a clerk treasurer model and what that means is that our finance director Andy as Bejornson is the city clerk and you know different cities have different models but that is how we have it here and I just thought that would be helpful to help every one understand why is records and in the finance department.

So what does this mean for our team? Um, it means we're really focused on compliance, right? We've got several state laws that we have to follow. Make sure we're managing our records and storing them properly.

We're scanning them appropriately if we're going to destroy them. Um, again, following the Public Records Act, making sure that we're we're protecting the records, storing them, and responding in a timely manner to the public.

And really, that that creates us and our team as stewards of the city's work. you know, it's our responsibility to help preserve and protect the legacy and the history and the information um that you all especially are creating, but also just internally.

And then again, making sure that that information is is accessible for the public. And I think third and third thing that we're really trying to focus on is operational efficiencies. I believe that if we can really weave records management throughout city operations, if we can help inform staff how to organize their documents, their files, how to name um you know, standardizing some of our metadata tagging that we do, we can do a better job responding to public disclosure, save time, um and really empower us to be able to tell the information that we need to and the stories that we need to tell.

So how have we been preparing? Um really we've been focusing and you know as this transition began really early 2025 and trying to figure out what this would look like focusing on our internal governance.

So the people processes and the tools. And so first and foremost we evaluated the the staff that we have um the roles and responsibilities. And and I will just note that as Sarah mentioned too, there was an FDE approved in the the 2025 budget.

Um and we have hired and recruited that person. I'll just mention that my my team is here behind me. Um Evan Reynolds is our records and information analyst. And again, he helps us with, you know, the the table to the right there, managing all of our systems, making sure that we're we're following things the right way.

uh Riann Finster who's our records and public disclosure coordinator and she's the one that's primarily managing the day-to-day responses for public disclosure and the records center. And then last but not least, Sabrina Gibbons, who's our mail services technician, and she helps a lot with our data entry and scanning.

So next up, we looked at the technology tools that we would need to learn. Um so we have spent a lot of time the last six months tackling uh GovQa which is our public disclosure uh processing system. It's how we interface with the public.

It's how we engage, send emails and track and upload and redact our information. And then also learning um getting into Microsoft Purview which really is how we manage all of our Microsoft 365 information.

We were really excited. We applied and were awarded last year a Washington State Archives technology tool grant to purchase a large format scanner. And what that meant is, you know, at times a member of the public might request a large map or a drawing.

And in order for them to get that, they would have to go pay a third party uh fee. And so now we can do that in h inhouse um if there's a request. And then finally, just um you know, we just approved recently the records management policy.

I think was signed off by the mayor last month. And again, that just emphasizes that the city clerk's office is becoming this central resource and this place of, you know, knowledge and training and support for the departments around the city.

So, moving into this year, um, as I mentioned, we've been focusing really internally and now trying to be more proactive and engaged with city staff and the public. Um so first and foremost, we're going to be working on developing our what's known as our essential records program, which is just really what the Washington State um Secretary of State's office identifies as our really essential business functions.

So you can think finance, HR. So we'll be targeting and working with departments to understand those records, where they're where they're being stored, who's responsible for them, and then ultimately likely getting them into OnBase, which is our document management repository.

We're also looking to engage with a records training program um this year. So more in-person and recorded trainings. Again, we're trying to just set up everyone for success, getting some baseline documentation about processes so that we can all know what the expectations are for how we manage all of our records information because we it's challenging, right?

Everything there's so many more everything's so much more complex with all the tools and the technology that we have. We're also working to revamp kind of in that vein is that communication our internal websites and public facing websites.

Um we do not have a public facing city clerk's office website and that's something that we'll be working on later this year. And then we'll be housing the public disclosure and kind of folding everything into that one place.

And then I'm also really excited as part of the technology tool uh grant that we received, we'll be launching a new scanning and digitization service here. um that will really allow us, you know, for staff that have collections that they want to get into our system that we can do that in-house.

Again, we don't have to go out and do a third party um and pay that fee. And also that means that we can ensure that we are scanning things appropriately before we destroy them if if that's so decided to do.

So, thank you guys for the opportunity um to come here and present, kind of give you an update on what we've been working on. I just want to extend a huge um amount of gratitude to Sarah and Allan for their support during this transition.

And um you were, you know, Sarah and I are here if you have any questions and then just again asking for your approval as the new appointment for the public records officer. >> Thank you very much. Anything further from you?

Go. Okay. Any questions from council members? Council member Williams. >> I don't have any questions. This was a very enlightening presentation. I didn't know that you did all that work or that your team did all that.

And uh based on that, I move to approve the appointment of Kelly Getats, Deputy City Clerk, as a city's designated public records officer. >> Second. We have a motion from council member Williams and a second by council member Huffman for the approval.

Council member Anderson >> just pointing that the mayor had their hand up. >> Marilyn, thank you. Uh I think as was evident in today's presentation that I just want to express my appreciation for this team.

Um, I think their dedication, their professionalism, and even their passion about thinking about the city's records really shines through, and we should all feel very lucky to have such um a great team thinking about such an important part of our local government.

So, any other questions? Um, I guess I I had one question. It just came to mind when you were mentioning about the scanning and digitization and what's possible now with I assume that new machine. Um, is there any intersection between your team and department and then the archives the city?

Like I guess that's more of a photo archives, but is that I think of Yeah, there being some similar >> or separate. Yeah, >> completely separate. Okay. Yep. Um, wonderful. And excited to know that with the budget, the position that was included in the last budget that we've been able to fill that position and because that was my going to be my big question was are you do you have the sufficient support and staff um there in the the clerk's office to be able to take on this added work because as you noted the number of records requests has really really grown.

So um great. Well, if there's nothing further, we have a motion before us. Um, and I will So, the motion is to approve the appointment of Kelly Gets, Deputy City Clerk, as the city's designated public records officer.

All in favor will say I. >> I. >> Any opposed or abstensions? Seeing none, that passes 6 with one excused. And I will bring forward that recommendation this evening. But thank you so much for your commitment and thank you for your service in this capacity up to this point, Mr.

Chaplain. We're greatly appreciative. So, thank you. So, the next item before the committee this afternoon is agenda bill 24871. This is a presentation of the public safety level of service needs assessment.

No, it's not. The next agenda item, there are two right close next to each other. The next agenda item is 24866. This is an update on city efforts to improve digital services accessibility. City staff have undertaken a comprehensive assessment to identify gaps in digital services accessibility, addressing all online services such as the citywide website, mobile and other thirdparty applications, city council meeting broadcasting, and more.

This effort supports the development of a sustainable strategy to meet a federal accessibility compliance deadline in April of this year, 2026, as well as enhance equitable access to city services for all community members.

City staff will provide an update on this project, including plans to continue monitoring and improving digital services accessibility as part of all city operations. And so with us this afternoon, we have Melissa Morren, communications and community relations director for the city, as well as Holly Peterson, who's the ADA coordinator.

So I will turn it over to you. >> Good afternoon. Thanks, council. Melissa Morren, communications and community relations director for the city. Um, we're we know that this topic has come up at a few meetings with council before, so we wanted to make sure to take some time before we close out this project to give you an update.

Today we'll cover a bit about the ADA title 2 um and the the ruling that came forth in uh April 2024. We'll give you a bit of an update on the compliance deadline. We'll talk about what we've done so far in the project and where we are headed next.

Good afternoon. I'm Holly Peterson. I'm the ADA coordinator for this city. Um, with the Americans with Disabilities Act, we fall under title two of the ADA. So, it's state and local governments. We need to make sure that our um activities, services, programs are accessible to everyone and to persons with disabilities.

So, that has always included uh online digital content and services. But the new thing, the update now is the minimum technical standards that we're having to implement to make sure that we can meet those accessibility guidelines.

And um some of those projects and information with this city would include, you know, all of our websites, social media, mobile applications, third party applications, um you know, our CC click fix app, etit anything online with the city is included in the scope of this.

So um that could also include our audio and video content as well. So, we're going to cover some of that information, what we've gathered so far, and then um kind of compliance steps going forward. So, it was the Department of Justice that issued this final rule for web accessibility.

Um that was in April 2024. And it's really just under that title two of the ADA. So state and local governments is who is kind of um this new technical standards is applies to title two. So um those minimum standards are it's called wicag 2.1 level doublea that stands for web content accessibility guidelines and those are developed by the worldwide um web consortium.

So it's developed elsewhere and provided as the technical standards to meet. And those WICAG principles do support equitable access for all community members. There's basically kind of four um technical categories that they have.

And that would be uh everything needs to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. And so under each of those things, it goes into very technical um parts of each section there. So, as Holly mentioned, we're coming up against this deadline next month.

Um the compliance deadlines were set by population size. So, because we're a jurisdiction of over 50,000 people, we are at the forefront of meeting these deadlines. Um, anyone any any jurisdiction smaller than that has an additional year to comply.

Um, as Holly mentioned, this applies to any of our publicly available digital platforms. So, we've focused a lot on the website. Um, but this also, as she mentioned, applies to any of our thirdparty platforms.

Think about cclick, etit. Um, it applies to social media and any other mobile applications we h might have. Um and as we said the while there while we are coming up against this compliance deadline really um the heart and the value that we have around ensuring that there's equal and independent access to information is what's driving a lot of our work.

Um this isn't new work for us. Uh even though the rule came forward in 2024, the city's already made a lot of effort to be accessible. Um we're just aiming to meet this higher standard that's been set forth.

Um some of the things that we've done in the past are to have um updated our procurement requirements for any new software. So when we look at purchasing new software, it um ensures that that software can meet our accessibility standards.

We also um several years ago updated our web content management system that allows us to more readily and easily meet a lot of the accessibility guidelines and have done a lot of staff training to ensure that we're using those tools appropriately.

In October 2024 though, we launched um a web accessibility compliance project. We've um been retitling that digital accessibility to clarify that that applies again to all online digital services. Um we did this in anticipation that it would take a lot of work and effort to meet this deadline.

And so um thanks to Holly and to Steven Nethermire, one of our um IT analysts, um we are on track to meet that deadline. and they've done an extraordinary amount of work over the last um year and a half to get us on track.

So, one of the big things we wanted to do to just see where we were at and where our gaps were was to do an accessibility inventory audit. We pulled everything that we could um including all of the thirdparty apps, our mobile apps, um looking at all of our PDFs that we have online, which at that point it was over 9,000.

Um PDF forums, we had over 140 PDF forms that were online and uh video and audio content. So, we've kind of been figuring things out as we go. This is a new landscape for everybody to navigate. um we're you know having those conversations internally and kind of just prioritizing you know what can we fix first there's a big list there's some gaps and it's like you know prioritizing what what we can get done prior to the deadline and then you know steps after the deadline how do we contain continue to monitor our compliance some of our findings in the inventory audit um for our thirdparty applications.

Most of our third-party applications are compliant or have said they will be compliant by the deadline. Um we're not the only ones going through this process. It's kind of hitting everybody. So, a lot of vendors out there are on top of things and making sure that they're providing accessible features in their platforms.

And with the um apps that maybe aren't going to be able to come into compliance for whatever reason, we're evaluating those upgrades and replacements for those. So, we have those on the list to make sure that we're um evaluating which ones we need to replace first.

And our HTML based web content is also pretty good. Um, we're just working with staff to improve areas like providing good alternative text for pictures and images and using uh proper heading structure so that people can navigate through those web pages and PDFs have been really a big focus for our project trying to figure out you know can we get rid of some PDFs online that just aren't applicable anymore for the ones that we need to have you know, if they're PDF forms, can we convert them to those online HTML forms?

You know, those standard online fillable forms. That's the most accessible format. Um, we're going that direction for best practice with forms. PDF documents can be anything from, you know, short one-page information to complex reports or several hundred pages of, you know, council material and, you know, big plans and all kinds of other things.

So, we really had to evaluate how can we how can we address PDF accessibility. Um, it's not it's it's it's a difficult process to go through when a PDF has been made to go through manually and and tag everything to be accessible.

There's a lot that goes into making sure that you have those structured accessible features and that takes time. So, we um we'll talk about kind of what we did over this last year to figure out a best way that we can provide those going forward, but um we just wanted to call out that PDFs have been kind of our biggest focus and have taken a a lot of our time so far in this project.

So, as you know, the city does produce thousands of PDFs online and um a lot of those historically have kind of been considered images of text. If it's scanned in, it's considered an image or if it's printed as a PDF, that's also an image.

It takes out any kind of accessible features if you print it as a PDF. So there are tools out there um and they provide ways to go in and manually fix those PDFs and put in those accessible elements. So we've spent a lot of time um testing the different the product that we incorporated is called Equidox and staff have put in that time to learn the product, try to use it and figure it out.

Um and we'll go into a little bit more of that. So Equidox is just one of the remediation tools that are out there. There's several out there, but we found that this one u made the most sense. You can upload a document and then go through every page and every line item.

Make sure that you have all of your um you know, alt text provided and your complex charts are all you know with descriptions. You have data tables that you have to go in and fix everything through. So when I went through and did our ADA transition plan in this um Equidox program, it took me about nine hours to fix the one document.

So if you multiply that by 9,000 PDFs, that's a lot of hours for staff to um make accessible PDFs. So we also estimated like an 800page council packet could take 40 hours for one staff member focused dedicated time to go through each page and remediate that.

So you know we were ready to go that route until the digital world kind of changed and there was a new a new product that came out that we're excited to talk about. So we still have Equidox. We can use that as we need to.

Um, but the next thing we'll talk about is Doc Access. So, we just came across this tool um in December, I think it was fairly recently. Um, it it also is fairly new on the market, too. So, um, it's an AIdriven automated accessibility tool.

It provides within the same PDF on the website, it'll provide a toggle to go through an accessible transcript. So that transcript is like an HTML equivalent um page that provides text and uh provides image descriptions and headings.

It also provides um a really detailed outline so anybody can navigate that document very easily and it provides um uh live assistance. If somebody calls and uh needs to have like visual interpretation of a complex report, um you would have 30 minutes with somebody who can kind of you know through I think it's called ARA, IRA, something like that.

Um they'll go through and give a visual description of what that information is. So that's kind of provided within doc access within that accessible transcript view. So um turn it over to Melissa to talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of this product.

>> Yeah. So just to summarize um we are planning to move forward and are in the contracting process to do a one-year uh test with doc access. Um we've chosen to go that route. Um I think you can probably guess from what Holly has just shared.

Um, a lot of the staff time that we found went into doing that manual remediation using Equedox was just simply not sustainable. And we found ourselves asking questions about our ability to be really transparent and provide a lot of the documentation beyond the public records which we just talked through.

Um, wanting to really have information out there for folks to understand city decision-making processes. um but really wrestling with the fact that we couldn't invest the amount of staff time that that would require.

Um the other pro to this is that it doesn't change uh significantly staff workflows um to publish PDFs on our website. So this essentially just becomes sort of the um platform that people use. We don't have to do anything differently in terms of how we are already providing PDFs on the website.

whereas with Equidox, it was an extra step. Um, and if there were any changes to the PDF, we would have to go back and do all of that. So, it just simplifies the process. Um, we also found that docs doc access is actually far more cost effective.

So, we did um Holly alluded to a test that we did with um 16 different documents that sort of ran the gamut from that one or twopage PDF to much longer reports or even presentations. Um the cost to do that uh with staff time was uh over $1,000, $1,100.

With Doc Access, the cost was $134. That's the cost of of just having the product. Um, and that's probably at this point an overestimation because we've seen that Doc Access has since changed their pricing structure.

Part of that is because they've been acquired by Civic Plus, which folks may be familiar with as one of the leading sort of government content management systems for websites. That gives us a lot of um hope and confidence for where this tool is going to go for the future.

Um that said, it is a new product. So um it's not um you know, it doesn't have years under its belt to show where it's going. Um but we do expect this to be growing over time. I think the landscape of how um AI is supporting a lot of this work makes us feel, like I said, very confident going forward.

Um it's also not a perfect tool. So there may be issues with that AI generated transcript. Um, we did find, again, we did some of this testing going back through and having staff um, determine how accurate the transcript was during that test.

And I'd say we were all um quite stunned at how what a great job it did, including for some of those complex charts and graphs and images providing a really well explained version of of what at this point if we were to be doing that manually um wouldn't we wouldn't be able to go into that level of detail.

So again, it's making that just very accessible in the moment for folks who want to use this service. Um, but like Holly said, um, if there's issues, folks have that opportunity to have live assistance.

And then as staff, we have the opportunity once we're aware of an error to go in and manually fix that within doc access. Um, oh, I should mention too, um, actually just before we move on, we are still going to use Equedox for some, um, high sensitivity PDFs where we want to make sure that we have that added layer of, um, staff review.

So, we'll continue to have manual review for things like legal documents, public safety information, and a few other categories of information. Um, so thus far we've talked a lot about our written content, our other static images.

Um, the we're we're leveling up also when it comes to video and audio information. These new standards or this these new guidelines um set a much higher standard for our visual and audio content and that includes live meetings like the one we are in right at this moment.

Um, it includes recorded meetings like the recording of this meeting that will be available very shortly. Um, it includes any of our pre-recorded videos like public service announcements or some of the short form videos that we have talked about wanting to do more of on our social media or on our websites.

Um, this is a area where it's a little bit trickier to meet and that's in part because the platforms that we use aren't quite up to the standard of being able to meet these requirements. Um, we certainly can for our website and have plans of how we will get to that.

But when we think about YouTube or some of the social media platforms on, we're having to get creative about how we're going to be able to do this. So right now where we're at, staff are receiving training on making sure that we're always providing captions and transcripts for accessibility.

We do have to provide audio descriptions for videos. And that's where we're still researching sort of the best practices of how to do this. So audio descriptions means that for someone who may be blind or have another visual impairment that not only are they um able to hear the audio but that there is audio that is describing what they cannot see.

Um and we there are just like doc access has come on with some AI assistance tools that are helping us do that for PDFs. There are some AI tools out there that can add audio descriptions. We've tested those and don't feel that they yet meet the the quality that we would expect to provide.

Um so going forward, we are continuing to look at some of those platforms. I think um what we're hearing from other government communicators across the nation is that there's that same expectation that platforms like Meta and YouTube are going to kind of come up to where a lot of our other thirdparty vendors have been and provide um the tech technological um what we need technologically to be able to do this.

Um and we have a month where we're still going to be figuring this out. There's certainly a way in which we can um you know do our best to meet the standard. Again, if if we're concerned about complying, we can always pull back if necessary.

Okay, we'll just wrap up a bit here with um sort of the staff training plan and capacity building going forward. Um Holly and Stephen again have been doing a lot of training just on general digital accessibility standards and tools.

We've trained staff on Equedox. We've been doing a lot of training with staff on how to even create accessible content from the get-go in the in the source files, whether that's a word document or a or a PowerPoint presentation.

So making sure that we're baking it in from the get-go. Um we've also brought on a tool called site improve. Um, this is a tool that crawls our website and flags any accessibility issues like missing alt text, broken links, color contrast issues where it makes it hard for folks to read or or be able to distinguish the content.

Um, and we receive monthly reports about that and staff follow up to make those fixes across the site. Um, so just to sum up, we've definitely made a lot of progress. I'm very grateful that we began back in October 2024 to come into compliance.

Um we're focusing now on sort of what's the long-term sustainability plan to continue to meet these guidelines. We don't see this again as meeting an April compliance deadline. It's about that continual quality improvement and our ongoing commitment to make our content fully accessible.

Um I just want to mention um that we have information available at cobb.org/acess. orgac where we have that web content um accessibility statement and that's a place where if folks have questions or concerns or want to flag anything for us uh we direct them there to get in touch with Holly our ADA coordinator who um follows up on any of those concerns.

And with that we're ready to take any of your questions. >> Thank you very much. Any questions from council members? Council Anderson. >> Oh, sorry. >> Thank you. Um, someone who's professionally been um, working through this out of college.

Um, it is a huge undertaking. Um, I have department, you have city, so I can only imagine. Um, one of the things that, um, for years I've noticed is that um, when we do visual charts and stuff, we love colors.

So, blue will mean this, red will mean this. And for people who are colorb blind, they have no idea what this means. And are you working on educating people who put together those uh charts to use like different types of lines or texture or something in order to indicate what those uh those pie charts or columns and the graphs will mean?

Or are we still using colorcoded um for that? We are putting together some best practices for a variety of different accessibility topics. So presentations is one of them, documents, social media, um tables and charts, things like that.

So we are putting in information that the best way to do if you have a presentation with visual information, not just put colors, but put identifying text or patterns or things like that. So, we are putting that into our um training toolkit for staff.

>> There's also some online tools that we direct people to to do um a color check to make sure that there's enough contrast so that even if you only use color that um there's enough shading difference for folks to be able to tell the difference between the two.

And there's actually a lot of accessibility features built into some of the software that we use to create some of those visuals. Thank you, Council Member Hamill. >> Yeah, thanks for the presentation.

Very important work. Um, I guess my question would be uh checks and balances for ADA compliance. And if the kid get mentioned the occasionally there are mistakes made within one of these AI tools, what happens um when when that happens, does that take us out of compliance or how do we know that that even happened in the first place?

>> Yeah. So compliance is really about meeting the standard. So we talked about those WICG 2.1 level doubleA standard. Um that's what we need to aim to meet. Not necessarily that the product is perfect.

So we won't be out of compliance if say there's a mistake in a doc access version of a PDF. We'd be out of compliance if we didn't make that PDF available in an accessible format. Other questions from council members?

Council member Anderson >> just for the public. Um what happens if we're out of compliance? Who's going to notify us and what are the structures of progression? I assume there's warning and so forth, but I think for the public it might be useful to know.

>> Um so I would say that's kind of part of our ADA compliance plan already. uh we do have grievances or complaints that come in for ADA accessibility across all different services of the city. It would be treated fairly the same as far as a a complaint would come in and it would come to me and then I would work with you know it or the affected departments to figure out um what's the barrier, what can we do to fix it, communicate with the community member to say, you know, when it's going to be fixed or what the solution is going to be.

Um, and we do we are creating a compliance plan specifically for digital accessibility, too, which kind of keeps us monitoring and making sure that we're heavily focused on on the new content that's coming onto our website.

Just making sure that we're making those progressive steps for improvement. >> I think because this is new, we don't know what the sort of hammer is. If we are found to be out of compliance, I think our expectation is that it's probably um a plan to come into compliance rather than some kind of monetary penalty.

>> Yes, Paul. >> Thank you. I was hoping you found something that I wasn't able to find, so they just haven't clarified. Thank you. And you'd mentioned the April deadline and so it sounds as though compliance is sort of having the right the plan in place to meet those that higher standard um but not an expectation that all of the city's documents and platforms have been screened and are actually in compliance or what does that look like as far as the April deadline?

No, the April deadline is that we are in compliant, not that we have a plan to um there may be some areas in which we need to do some fast work um or make some prioritizations in order to fully come into compliance, but that is what we're aiming for.

>> And there was a um some extensive discussion about PDFs. I know that continues to be sort of a a thorn in the side of all of this this work. Um, but what I was hearing is that the doc access and the potential for that as a tool was going to sort of allow PDFs to continue to be used.

Is that correct? Because otherwise I was wondering if we were moving towards trying to phase out like our dependence on on PDFs and approach the information differently. >> I think we want to move away from PDFs where it makes sense.

So, Holly mentioned that we should be using HTML forms, web-based forms instead of relying on PDF forms because it's a better experience for everyone. Um, there's also often times when we may create a PDF when really that should be website content or provided in some other format.

So, I know we quoted the 9,000 PDF number. We've um deleted I think over 2,000 of those because at the same time we're just trying to clean up the website. Um so to answer your question um we aren't moving away from it because of the accessibility issues but in general I think we're trying to use good judgment about when a PDF is the appropriate format.

Anything else from council? Okay. This item is before us for information and discussion only. Thank you very much for the detailed presentation and yeah, best of luck with the continued work. It's a heavy lift, but great appreciation and hopefully it for our benefit to the community.

So, thank you for that. I know that we have one more item in committee. The whole I believe may be substantial or at least take some time. I just wanted to do a check. I know we went from one to the next and we did not take a break.

So, I just wanted to check and see did do we need a fivem minute break or Yes. Okay, we're going to take a um let's see. It's 38. We will come back at 2:45. Thank you. Heat. Heat. Oh yeah. Yeah. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Welcome back to the Bellingham City Council Committee the whole. So, we have one item left before us this afternoon. This is agenda bill 24871, a presentation of the public safety level of service needs assessment.

In response to increasing public safety costs, the city recently completed a public safety level of service needs assessment. This project evaluated current levels of service for the fire and police departments, identified service gaps, outlined the resources needed to fill those gaps, and examine potential new funding sources.

staff will present the results of the assessment. So for this item, I'm going to turn to deputy administrator Forest Longman. >> Great. Thank you. Um we uh have been working on this for uh better part of a year here and pulling this together.

It's been a um interdep departmental effort. So I will be doing the presenting, but um fire department and the police department were major contributors to this. And to the extent that there's questions about um portions of this that have to do with those departments, I'll be inviting them up to help answer questions.

So, the purpose of this assessment uh was to evaluate current and future levels of service for our police and fire department and other public safety aspects. It defines our current levels of service.

It identifies service gaps in our first responding public safety landscape. It provides options for improved levels of service and assesses revenue options to support expanded levels of service. So, and why we did this is really this public safety funding puzzle.

Uh the police and fire department are struggling to keep up with everinccreasing call volumes at their current staffing levels. And meanwhile, the city's financial outlook remains uncertain. Uh we can't keep pace with even the current staffing levels.

Um, you know, we anticipate that combined the fire and police department will cost an additional $3 million of general fund in 2027. So, in the next budget cycle, we do not anticipate that revenues will be able to keep a pace with this growth.

So, as the city continues to grow and increase in density, our public safety levels of service will continue to deteriorate unless we come up with some alternative revenue source and can expand our levels of service.

And basically, all this is to say that our our public safety costs um are unsustainable and we need a revenue solution to um or otherwise we'll have to continue to reduce services throughout the city.

So, jumping right into the fire and EMS level of service assessment, just for some context, um when we talk about increases in call volume for the 10-year period from 2015 to 2025, the fire uh service saw 35% increase in calls.

That's a 9,000 um call increase from 15,000 calls to 24,000 calls. 75% of those are medical calls which are typically longer and more complicated. Um we run a crossstaffed model at the city of Bellingham where three firefighters run both an engine and an ambulance.

Uh and that's why you will also always see an ambulance and a firetruck driving around together. um we've reached the limits of that and it all this increase in call volume has also reduced resulted in um impacts on unit availability.

So this is one of the metrics we look like looked at and this is fire and EMS unit availability. Those higher call volumes lead to um reduced availability. And the availability is the time that the the the units are not out on calls.

And when they're not out on calls, that means they're available to respond to calls um and do other things. And when uh uh a unit is busy responding to something and happen something happens in their area then a different unit from another area has to come and respond which leads to um longer response times.

A healthy fire and EMS system targets 90 to 92% availability and higher availability means higher response faster response times. So if we look at this chart we can see um most of the units particularly if you exclude 31 and 34 which are both outside of the city limits those are district 8 stations um we can see none of them are above that that 92 and only one of them is above 90%.

So what that directly relates to is our f fire and EMS response metrics. This is these are the variety of metrics that the fire department tracks for their response. Um from dispatch to turnout time, which is how long it takes the teams to assemble and get out the door to travel time to the final section is total response time.

So that's from including turnout and travel time. The first column is the target. They try to make it at 90% of the time. Um there's some other data but the compliance percentage is what percentage of the time they actually make it in that target time.

Um and you can see some of those particularly if we look at fire total response time for fire and EMS calls within the city limits it's about 67%. Um so that's not a you know if you're in an emergency you would you would hope that they're hitting their their response time targets.

So, the fire and the fire department identified a handful of critical needs. Um, I'm not going to go into great de detail of the actual assessment and the um and the recommendations within it. I'm we're happy to answer questions if you have them about them.

I'm just going to do at a very high level. Uh what it calls for is essentially a second battalion chief. So right now they have one battalion chief uh overseeing at a time overseeing all operations right so uh that's one supervisor essentially over all of the units and that when we look at the geographic area um this and the number of people that's a pretty large span of control.

Um, so looking to increase to improve that, looking to finish uncrossing uh the the units. So that would be a separate fire crew and a separate ambulance crew at every station. No longer having crews staff both of those.

Looking to improve training. Uh, you know, we we had to do some reductions to the training staff as part of the budget this year. We want to replace that and expand it. And then there's related support staff and facilities needs.

The fire section of our level of needs assessment sorted their um they're identified issues into three different tiers with the first tier being those critical to service delivery. Second tier those that improve service delivery and then the third tier is um optimal for service delivery.

And that allowed us to to sort of look at what those costs are as we look at that. And so this the assessment identified those tiers. And so tier one across the top there, those would be those critical needs costed out.

And this is on top of the the $60 million 2026 budget for the fire department. Um these numbers assume time taken to to staff and to step this all up, but you know by 2036 uh to fully implement the tier one recommendations would be uh $21 million almost $22 million um on top of the $60 million now, you know, plus inflation.

So, some pretty significant year needs there um on a 10-year schedule as we look out to keep up with growth and to to meet to be able to meet the standards that we've laid out for our levels of service.

And I guess I could pause there and if there's any specific questions about the fire level of service, we could have the fire staff um answer some of those or we I can go into police and we can wait till the end.

Whatever you prefer. >> So I just had a quick question. I think in the opening you'd mentioned that there was potential for $3 million more dollars needed in the 2027 budget and this looks closer to seven.

So that's that's at the current staffing level. So if we do none of the recommendations, it'll cost $3 million more for both departments combined in the next budget cycle. >> Okay. So potentially that three million would be in addition I mean this >> it is.

>> Is this taking that into account? I guess thank you council member Anderson. >> Yeah, I had a question. Um I guess now will be a good time since we're asking about you know questions on money. um taking a look through on the FTEES for all the positions that are listed.

Um some of them are tier three, a lot of them are tier one, but if we combine it, it comes up to about 63.5 FTEES that are in this list. And I'm wondering was that all determined internally um to decide what this would look like or was there any outside agency looking at best practice for decoupling um how we respond with a truck and aid or like how did the 63 was that an internal determination of how you would like to go forward or was this an external agency that did this assessment?

We did this work internally. Uh our fire department led the fire department assessment side. Um but it is based on breast practices. Um and our understanding of of how previous outside agencies have have provided recommendations to us and previous um uh uh strategic plans.

Yeah, I would add to that that the process um and I think it's outlined at the beginning of that needs assessment document, but the process included um both recommendations from administration. We went division by division throughout the department to find out from division managers where where their needs were.

We actually um had an outside company come in and facilitate some discussions uh internally with staff on um what the needs were there. Some of the stuff that came into that also came from a previous uh cultural assessment done on the department from an outside um outside agency.

Um, so there there's a mix in there, but ultimately the prioritization there came from the fire department staff that taking all those different pieces together. Um, I'd also say it, you know, judged against the or as we're looking at that, we also included those standards from Washington Survey and Rating Bureau, which is an outside agency that um looks at our or looks at us for determining what your insurance rates are.

Um, so we looked at WSRB data. We've looked at um other um well our city's adopted level of service, the county's adopted level of service. So there was there was a lot of different parts and pieces that came into that.

>> So the presentation wasn't included in the packet. So I'm not certain what else like the order of what's included here. So, just wanting to know whether to go back to council member Anderson or if >> Yeah, this is the this So, there will be there's a fire section and then a police section and then a discussion of uh funding mechanisms.

>> Okay. And this is close to the end of the fire. >> This is the end of the fire section. >> Okay. I just want to double check. Yep. Council member Anderson. Thanks. >> Um so, kind of decoupling because you know, thank you.

Um an internal look when we're looking at potentially um the 63 positions. uh is that just within city limits or is that taking into consideration fire district 8 and then taking a look if it does include additional personnel in order to staff differently uh fire district 8.

has there been an analysis of whether or not the amount of money that's coming in on that contract is actually going to be able to um cover those costs because we've kind of supplemented quite a bit over time the city budget to staff fire district 8.

I know that things have changed with their latest levy, but you know depending on it's every six years. So if we're escalating and it's going to be fire district 8, is the money coming in in order to take care of that cost or are we going to be subsidizing?

>> So the uh not a clear easy answer on that. Um but I will say the so the biggest increase in there is the increase to um our number of dedicated BLS cars which those right now are just cityoriented all of you know that and moving to uncouple uh the cross staffing model we are moving what's in the plan is to move to uncouple the city stations we the two fire district eight stations still have the capacity to function in that cross staff model um and would continue in that.

So all of the BLS resources that are in the plan are city resources. There's an additional um additional ladder truck in the plan that is to bring the city back up to the number of staff stations that or staff fire units I should say that we had back in the mid 2000s before we reduced our full-time ladder truck company.

Um, so that would be a very much a city asset. Um, and the support structure that goes behind that, there's always a percentage of the support structure um that supports the two companies that we run in fire district 8.

Um, but I guess the the main reason we need to grow that support structure is because we've grown two bails units already. We want to grow two more BLS units in a ladder truck in the city. Um, we've grown the ALS resources for a countywide contract.

That's why the growth in the support structure is there. So, the the change really uh the majority of the change is based on the growth of the city, not fire district 8. questions from the council >> a comment.

Um, as we go forward, I'll be really interested in perhaps a little further breakdown because it looks like there's an extra battalion chief to like divide um two areas. I I just want to make sure that that additional support structure and any additional um personnel that really will help augment um that we're taking them into account of that.

Um, so I'll as we go further down in time, I do have more questions, but I don't want to monopolize, you know, the genesis of this conversation getting into the nuts and bolts on it. >> Just we we do believe that at this juncture with the current rates of district 8 that it is it is carrying its full weight at this point.

Marilyn, >> thanks. I think one, you know, one thing for CA council's consideration as we, this slide is up before we advance is just the magnitude of the numbers that we're talking about um even in those tier one needs.

And we acknowledge that tier 2 and tier three are also likely in the community's best interest to work towards over time, but those are very large dollar figures. And so um I just wanted to compared to current budgets and um kind of some of the level of service standards and where we sit today, this is a significant investment.

um and how we um realize these monies to accomplish our goals is really how this conversation will advance. >> Okay, moving on to the the police side of the assessment. Um yep, uh the police department in 2024 had 53,000 calls for service.

This leaves the staff with very little time for proactive policing. Um, at most times of the day, the patrol staff in the city of Bellingham includes two supervisors and six to seven officers on patrol.

I think most people would be surprised to hear that. Um, and if we look at this uh response times chart, unlike the fire department, uh there are no national standards for police response times. So we don't have explicit targets for response times.

You can see uh how widely distributed a geographic area or police are responding to item to things and that impacts those six to seven officers how far around they can get to to responses. Um you can see that even a call one priority we're averaging uh just over 7 minutes in response time which I think um if you can look at the examples of what that is uh domestic violence in person burglary uh injury traffic collisions uh 7 minutes probably starts to feel like quite a long time.

What we did do for on the police side was we used the uh staffing model developed by the International Association of Police Chiefs which uh calculates how many hours a single officer is available to work in a year.

It factors in um typical hours worked per shift and accounts for time off. And it also considers how many calls for service the department receives um and how long on average each officer spends on each call.

And what we came up with is we currently have about 13 we've currently have 130 commissioned staff today. The assessment suggests that the right number for right now is 150. Uh that would be 11 added on the patrol side and 8 and a half on the investigative side.

Um you'll see the total of that is less than 150 because the other 150 are not patrol or uh investigative but are the staff the leadership staff. um management, others uh commission support staff. We then built out um recommendations over the 10-year period that assume a linear call volume growth um and and applied that same standard to it, the workload assessment.

And that built out uh three scenarios on the police side. So we did a little bit different methodology on this side. They identified a foundational readiness model which is to staff minimally increased overtime 1.3 FTE a year a strategic progression model which is sort of a middle option and then the comprehensive impact model which is represents the ideal organizational structure which is 3.2 two commissioned FTE a year.

And that's that's really building up over time to get us to where um that model suggests that we should be. Um and also takes into account uh the department's capacity to add staff over time. Uh because as we've discussed many times before, it takes a long time to train a police officer.

Um and there's limited capacity at ummies and things like that. So again, not going into great detail on how that comes together uh in the plan. I'd direct you to the plan and happy to answer any questions you might have about it.

But it came up with we build it out on that same oneear, 5y year, and 10-year uh framework and looking at the three models, we can see that even um that comprehensive model, this would be in addition to the current budget of $51 million a year.

Um it's a the numbers are a bit more manageable. Um they're incremental. Just adding those three officers a year um is more in line with what we see with traditional sort of revenue growths. Um so still a lot of increase needed there, but somewhat more manageable than on the fire side.

And there's additional costs associated with this um on non-commission staff and other items that are detailed in the plan, but they don't add uh significant growth on top of this. That's the end of the police section.

If there's any specific questions about the police section, we'd be happy to answer them. Now, >> Anderson, >> thank you. Um I wasn't exactly clear as far as um taking a look at the comprehensive impact given that we potentially are currently under well we know we're underst staffed what we need um in order to have that um more than 20 officers.

Is that 3.2 going to get us there or and keep us going forward with the escalating call volume and needs? or is there like a fourth one that isn't necessarily listed of catch up faster and then keep up?

>> So the the models that were built out that 3.2 gets us there and then keeps pace uh for the 10 year we only looked at a 10-year time horizon. So for that 10 year at the end of that 10-year time horizon we would be fully staffed according to the model.

Um, I would say there's potentially a faster one, but again, then we start running into those constraints around ability to train and hire and and get to the next level. >> So, just had a follow up on the chart.

So, in comparison to the chart that outlined fire, um, it looks like it's the inverse, right? Like in the fire at the it was like tier one, tier two, tier three and those appeared to be sort of cumulative.

Yes. And that it would be additive versus here the foundational readiness I guess is the base >> and then is that included in each line above or is that >> this one is not additive? So these are three separate scenarios.

>> Okay. >> Yep. Sorry. >> No, I just want to make sure. Okay. >> Any other questions at this point? Okay. Okay. >> So, there are other um funding challenges in our public safety environment as well. So, one of those that's uh that's top of mind is our public defense costs.

Um as you're likely all aware, the Supreme Court recently changed public defense standards dramatically reducing the case case load limits for public defenders. We currently spend about a million dollars a year on public defense.

We're expecting that to double to 2 million by 2028 and double again uh by 2035. We also know that our jail costs are going up. Uh prediums this year, the cost we pay uh per day for each person that is in jail increased by 25% in 2026.

We are fairly certain that when this community completes the new justice center um that those costs will go up more um you know that is going to be a better jail that is better for treatment and is more humane but we don't think it'll be less costly to operate.

We also want to have money to invest in our alternative responses. Um, art and other non police responses for people in crisis. We know that they improve outcomes. Um, art, grace, other other lead all those things out in our community are successful in diverting people and helping people in crisis.

We're seeing cuts in this area also. So the state reduced the city's or the the county's funding for art and for lead I believe in the adopted operational or the adopted budget. Um, so we're looking at ways to backfill those as well.

>> Mark, >> and um, feel free to punt this to another time, but I'm curious um, if we've modeled, um, what's the kind of the maximum call diversion from ART that would be possible with either increasing staffing or span and how that factors in um, to planning.

>> Yeah, that's a good question. I don't have a good answer for you. Um I those numbers are a little hard to to really parse um because it frees up um police to respond to things that they may not otherwise be able to respond to, right?

Um which in turn just still get the call volume. Um but we can follow up with you on that. >> Council member Hamilton. >> Yeah, I just want to run the slide here. The second bullet point, the jail costs the pdiums.

Do we have any sense on booking costs as well? Are those coming up? Um, we we don't have any booking. Yeah, the the so the book Yeah, there's a booking fee and then a pdeium and I think the Yeah, I think they brought the booking fees down and the pdeium went up.

Um, but the net impact was a was a significant increase for us. Or were you asking about the number of bookings? >> No, I'm sorry if I was confusing. So there's a cost per booking, there's and there's a cost per day.

Uh so I just want to understand the totality of the second bullet point. >> Council member Hudson. >> Um this is kind of on the heels of Council Member Cotton was was getting at. Um, when I sat in and listened to police dispatch, one of the things that really struck me was the number of calls that weren't clearly fire, clearly medical, clearly needed a police officer to respond to.

Um, kind of where this miscellaneous category and we've we've um we've created the alternative response team, which covers some of that, the behavioral health calls that are received. Um, you know, and sometimes budget constraints are a great time to think more creatively even than we have in the past.

I'm curious, and this could be just a thought exercise going forward, um, other types of alternative response that maybe other communities have implemented, um, even beyond behavioral health type calls.

Sometimes it's just people need somebody that is a grown-up to respond to, you know, a situation that they're involved in. Um I don't know if maybe there are other examples that are currently known or if that's something other communities are also looking into, but um I think we're, you know, we're not going to reduce the number of calls that are coming in.

It's just are there other ways that we can start to creatively think about adequately responding to all of those calls? Other questions from council members? >> Okay. Well, I will step into the potential funding mechanisms that we identified.

So, we have in the report it evaluates uh quite a few options that are out there, but um some of them the city has already done and are no longer available. Others only the county could implement. So, we widowed it down to the four that are available uh to the city at this time.

And so, they are an ambulance utility, a fire benefit charge, a property tax levy, and a regional fire authority. I'm going to go through each of those. The first is an ambulance utility. So, this creates a fee specifically for ambulance services.

It can't exceed the actual cost of delivering ambulance services for the municipality. Um and this one is unique that it only takes a council majority to implement. So the advantages of that are that low barrier to implementation.

It's council manic. Um and that it is a permanent fee. Uh the challenges with this is that it is the most regressive option on this. It's a flat fee that everyone would be charged. It's not it doesn't take into account uh your wealth or income.

It could also potentially impact our GMT revenues, which if you remember are a federal program that sort of bridges the gap between Medicaid funding and what it actually costs us to run our ambulance services.

So that potentially leaves federal dollars on the table. The second is a fire benefit charge. This is also a fee. Um it cannot exceed 60% of the total departmental budget. This one, however, requires a 60% public vote and it is on a six-year renewal site cycle.

The advantages to this are it's flexible, so you can that fee can be whatever it needs to be. Um, it typically also places less burden on residential, so that's appealing when we know that um the cost of housing is impacted by these costs.

So it's based on the size of the structure and the type of use that it has. So the higher the risk of fire and the higher impact, the higher the fee, which typically is more impactful on businesses, uh which is one of the challenges depending on your perspective.

Other challenges are again that 60% majority and that six-year renewal. Um also local governments are not exempt from a fire benefit charge. So, um, some of our government partners would need to pay that as well.

The third option we looked at is a property tax levy. Um, this would be just like our greenways or our home levy. It's an increase to our property tax levy either temporarily or permanently. Um, the city has significant uh levy capacity and it requires just a simple public majority vote.

So, the advantages are that that simple majority vote and that it's conceptually easy to understand. We have this structure in place for other city funding needs. Um, but the downside is that it would require reoccurring renewal.

Um, or and even maybe in spite of that, it could be difficult to keep up with inflation as we've seen with all of our other property tax revenues. It also puts a heavier burden on residential taxes. So the final option, the regional fire authority is what we are recommending um in the level of service assessment.

This creates a new taxing authority that with or without a fire benefit charge. Um it takes a simple public majority vote, although it does take a 60% to implement a fire benefit charge. This would put the fire department um in its own taxing district.

it would become its own governmental entity. Um, and that would free up up to $24 million of general fund. Uh, that would allow the city to absorb other public safety needs. It would allow it to invest in other alternatives.

Um, and it would build capacity across the city. The advantages to this are that it's permanent. Um, it allows the service to partner with other fire districts for efficiency. So, we're already partnered with district 8.

That would solidify this. It would also provide potential opportunities for other fire districts uh to join down the road. It limits the big C city's financial exposure to increasing fire and EMS costs, offering long-term financial stability for the city.

Um, as one of our fastest growing expenses, the fire service, if that was not part of it, that would slow the city's cost growth trajectory. It's also a transparent and accountable for cost of service delivery.

It's very clear how much is being spent to provide fire and EMS services. Some of the challenges is it was would reduce the city's property tax capacity. Not currently an issue, but something to be aware of.

Um the city loses direct control of fire and EMS services and it requires the largest effort to establish. I'd also point out that we started down the path of an RFA in 2017. Um, this effort was done.

So, we another advantage is that we have done a lot of the work and a lot of that documentation still exists. So, a little bit more in depth, why an RFA is we believe this is really the only um truly sustainable outcome in the long term.

Uh we do believe even if we went in one of the other options, the way our fire expenses have been escalating over recent years and we expect them to continue to escalate, we think ultimately we would pursue an RFA anyways.

Um we are seeing RFAS being successful uh all over the state. Some of our peer cities like um that are similar size like Kent and Reton have already established RFAS that are well established and very successful.

Uh sort of large sections of King Pierce and Snomish County um are already part of RFAS. Um our our union groups have been supportive have shown their support for the planning process. And just to be a little more clear on, you know, if we freed up $20 million, we would not only free up $20 million of general fund capacity, which could be used for other things or perhaps reducing um the tax burden from the city.

Uh it also frees up capacity in departments throughout the city. So the fire department is one of our biggest departments. It's also uh a department with high needs on things like human resources and finance, information technology.

All of those departments that end up being bottlenecks um when people want to get things done in this city uh staff do because they don't have the capacity uh would all of a sudden have quite a bit of capacity that would leave the room lots leave lots of room for growth and the ability to implement new programs.

So if uh the council thinks the RFA would be an interesting endeavor to go down, um the next steps would be to form an RFA planning committee with district 8. So that would look like a motion to form the committee and name three elected city of Bellingham members.

Uh we would recommend the mayor and two council members. Uh and then district 8 would identify three commissioners to be part of that plan. The planning committee would build a RFA service plan over the next six to eight months.

Um, like I said, we've done a lot of this work already, so we would be able to hit the ground running with this. Um, and anticipate a final adoption by council in December. Um, and then we would target an early 2027 election in the spring.

Um because if an RFA can only be formed in January and June and to be able to get tax revenues by 2028, it would need to be formed uh or need the election for it would have to happen in the spring. So we put this item on for information discussion today for council because it's a it's a big item.

Um but if council was comfortable with it and wanted to move forward, we you know the coun council could make that motion um otherwise we can come back for further discussion at your next council meeting.

>> Council member Anderson. >> Thanks. Um I'm personally not ready to take a vote to go forward because I have questions that I hope um would be valuable for others. Um, you know, page 270 has a little bit of, you know, how much revenue, um, other considerations, but there's not a lot of information about that.

I I would like to know the financial aspect of the regional fire authority. What does that look like for, you know, should it pass? What does that taxation look like for the average homeowner of a 2,000 square foot house versus um Walmart?

What would they be paying versus a property tax? I I'd like to know more about the financial of these so that I know how it hits the bottom line because if the RFA comes out, I'm just throwing out a number.

is going to cost the average homeowner on their um taxation uh $500 a year, but another one might be $200 a year and we still are able to maintain control of the fire department and still meet those needs.

Um, I would like to know that information before I step forward and I don't feel like I'm prepared because I don't know what these things look like in real numbers that are comparable that I can compare to know which would be the best option.

>> Yeah. And just briefly, that's what the planning process is for. We don't know at this point what those fees and costs will look like. Um, we believe we would need to undertake the planning process to really understand what an RFA would take and what all the costs associated with it would be.

>> Yes. >> So, if we're voting to go forward to examine an RFA, I feel like that's kind of indicating that that's a direction we're willing to go. That doesn't tell me that all these other things are going to also be considered and all be equally um provided that information.

Will that committee be looking at property tax and give us a full outlook of what property tax would look like in comparison to the RFA? Is that part of the mandate including the people from district 8?

I mean, yes, we could certainly provide that information as part of the decision package when the time comes. I think that all of the other options after our evaluation felt like something of a band-aid in terms of the city's financial stability.

Um, and so we we certainly can do that and we have a better sense of what those look like because those don't include creating a new agency and all the things that go along with that, right? So we we have a sense of what a property tax cost would increase would look like, how much could be raised with an ambulance utility.

Um, the fire benefit charge would take more work, but the RFA process can inform that because we'll build the tool to do that evaluation uh for a fire benefit charge. But we could we could certainly provide that information.

>> Council member Ham. >> Yeah. Um I have some similar questions to council member Anderson. However, I do think that um given the the timing on this, so we're what's today? The 21st of of 20 23rd even last time um of March.

and and just given that this planning committee would have to meet and evaluate these kinds of questions and go through a process to provide uh council uh broader information. I think it's time to start that committee uh to to do that research.

If we're talking about a February uh election, that doesn't give us a lot of time to to do this part of it and then the campaign over those folks would be would have to go through that process as well.

Um, so I'd make a motion to uh to form an RFA planning committee with district 8. >> Second. >> Motion's been made by council member Hamill and a second by council member Cotton. Um, do you have a Maryland?

>> I just especially for the public's benefit in 2017 when the council gave direction to explore an RFA and establish the planning committee. The ultimate outcome of that was to not move forward at that time.

So um you know this committee has been created in the past. That was their determination at that time. Um however as costs have continued to increase and I think Forest did try to make that point um many more cities have moved in this direction in the state because of the durability and it fixes the structural imbalance of those costs that we were looking at.

So I think there's much more understanding about how RFAS work. There's been many communities that we have years of looking at how that has played out to help answer some of the questions that we all share right now and what it will mean for the Bellingham community.

Um, but we'll be looking at everything um as part of the committee planning process. That was a clarifying question I had just with respect to the um establishment of this committee in the timeline there when it says anticipate final adoption of service plan in December.

Is that an item that comes back to council or when would that next checkpoint be with us? >> Yep. That the final adoption would I mean and we could check in along the way but the this would have to be adopted by council before anything could go forward to any next step.

Yes. Thanks, Council Member Cotton. a couple questions and feel free to punt again for us. Um but um thanks for this presentation. I it seems pretty clear from our um level of service needs that um this is an option well worth exploring.

Um how um do other jurisdictions approach life safety divisions and you know thinking about fire code implementation is just part and parcel of urban governance and the county's fire marshal. I don't know what levmation's pyro code system is.

Um, how how might that work? And I'm sure that will be a topic for the planning committee. >> Well, it will certainly be a topic for the planning committee. I I can let Bill answer, but I can say different agency or different agencies do it different ways.

Um, and it would be an an item that we would have to discuss, I think. Anything to add? Yeah, I I think part of this planning process, one of the key chapters in a plan that would be required before we could take it to voters is what are the services that the RFA will provide?

And as Forest said, yeah, there's a mix of different uh RFAS that have contracts to do fire marshall services for their cities and then there are other places where the city retain those services. Um, but yeah, there's there's lots of options and that's one of the ultimate I I think we've talked about.

Currently, your fire department does life safety services, we do emergency management services, we do countywide fire dispatching services. Those things are a little out of the norm for just a straight up RFA or fire district in the state of Washington.

Um, and so those would all be things that we would need to look at in that planning process of what services do we provide and what services do we not. Council member Anderson, >> thanks. Um, couple of things.

Um, one, yes, the RFA was looked at, but I don't think it was necessarily the committee decided not to. It was under the pretense that we were really in the hole struggling a lot of money from memory serves of attending meetings and paying attention to it and then turns out we had a surplus.

So the the onus of like why we needed to do it the rug kind of fell out from underneath it and so things changed. I do believe now we do have very strong financial constraints. So that story could be now true today.

I'm not necessarily against going forward with looking at different creative ways. I would have liked to wait another meeting so that some of my questions could be answered. Like I'd like to know more about why um what's the 90% threshold?

Is that based on insurance? Is that based on some national uh accreditation saying we have to have that 90% versus 86%. We throw numbers out. Um, and I have like a lot of the written stuff here I have questions on and perhaps later those will be answered.

I do know that um, you know, the fire department has best practices and there are those guidelines. Our police department doesn't necessarily have those equal guidelines. So sometimes they've been secondary when it comes to funding and staffing and we know we have an issue.

We need to figure out how we can free up money so that we can actually have the um support we need not only for our fire department but also for our police department therefore our community. So we're going to have to come up with solutions.

I just am not comfortable saying right now it's the one thing I want asurances as we go forward that all of these items are going to be thoroughly investigated. We're going to have a report. We can do comparable numbers.

make the decision, you know, because you're saying that, you know, the ambulance utility is the most regressive. I always think you pay for the services you receive. So, what does that really look like?

Is it a taxation or is it a user fee? What are those options out there? I'd like to know more about what are some of our other potential for cost savings than and still staying within best practice. like would it be four additional aid cars and now we can have our firet trucks stay in the station and be more responsive.

What's the halo of response time? We're we're being told it's this elongated response time. I'd like to know more where are those times actually? Is it you block from fire station three or is it the two miles at the end of the circumference that is 10 minutes and then when you average it out.

So when you present data, and I love data because I do research, um you can present it in all kinds of way to support your argument. So I kind of wanted to pull it apart and put it back together. I won't be given that opportunity.

Um we very well may decide that the fire authority is the best route, but when the time comes, I'm going to have some serious questions because I hate losing local control. What happens when it all falls apart?

Um if it should. Um, so I'm going to be abstaining. I don't think I've ever abstained in a vote before because I think you're either a yes or a no. But I'm not against it. I'm not necessarily enthusiastic for it.

I just feel that one more meeting would have given us an opportunity to have some of the information that you say is available could have come back. And I'd like to be informed before I decide that we're going to form a committee and go forward because my fear is we're going to take a pathway and again research and data is going to be presented in a way to support a desired conclusion and I really want to make sure that's not the case.

>> So is um is district 8 prepared to to name three commissioners to participate in this if it were to move forward? they would need to take official action at their next meeting. They have been made aware that the possibility of reforming a planning committee is is something that was going to be talked about here.

Um, again, I I I can't speak for the board without them having an open public meeting to take that action, but I at our last meeting in the discussion um or we did have some discussion about a whatif and they indicated they were they would be interested in coming back to the planning committee again.

I'm just envisioning I mean I see this as a joint endeavor with 33 on this planning committee and so I wasn't sure if this is something that direction from the council then sort of mandates that that move forward or do we need I mean is there potential that district 8 was like yeah we're not going to show up to the discussion and then we can't proceed.

I was just curious about how that that moves forward. No, we with if council chooses to pass a motion to to form a planning committee, we would officially notify fire district 8 of that intent. And their meeting is uh scheduled for um it's the second Thursday here in April, so it's not that far down the road here.

And at their meeting, they would um I would believe they would reciprocate by passing their own motion to form it and identify their three people for >> Council Williams. Um just to clarify, they're already aware that we may do this.

>> The they were made aware that this might be an op that RFA coming back to the RFA discussion might be an option and and we wanted to because if they weren't going to be a willing partner, you know, when we were coming through the different different uh funding options, if we didn't think they were going to be a willing partner in it, then we wanted to know that.

So at their meeting here in March, we did talk to them about if this is a possibility, do you are you interested in going back to and again the planning committee is where we're going to get a lot of the questions answered?

Um and until you know and I think one of the slides there it also talked about you know the our our labor units being open or supportive I should say of the idea of a planning but until but nobody's nobody is ready to say yes we should do an RFA.

We're all just very much ready to say we think an RFA is is a direction we should look deeply at and the way we look deeply into that is we form a planning committee and then that's and we start start the work there.

Um so I think that's best way I can answer it. So, we have a motion before us at this time from council member Hamill that was seconded by council member Cotton and I believe the motion brought forward was to right form a or make that recommendation to form a planning committee.

I believe that there was some language from you Deputy Longman earlier indicating that the motion could in fact right make those assignments or determine who would be representing the city. There are three members.

I believe the recommendation was for be the mayor and two council members. I know we have one council member who is absent today. Um but whether you wanted to entertain amending that motion to name those individuals or if a vote at this time just to say yes, we want to form a planning committee and then revisit the actual membership at the next meeting.

Is that does that impact next steps one way or another for staff? >> No. I think probably either way is is fine. Um, whatever the council's most comfortable with. >> Okay. So, I'll leave it to you council.

>> I don't want to amend the the motion. I think that we don't have a full counsel here. One of the council the council member who is excused today was um associated with this decision uh back in 2017.

I have, you know, opinions on who might want to volunteer for this and I want to reserve that since the timing sounds like we're okay. We have a little bit of time to make the um how to populate that that planning committee on the council side.

I think we can make that decision next time. So, I'm just going to contain my motion to form the RFA planning committee with district 8. >> Any further discussion or questions on the motion? >> Council member Cotton.

Well, I I'll certainly um second sentiments from other council members. I still have lots of questions and I think um I hope the administration would welcome some opportunities to meet as a full council as this process continues to to keep asking those.

So, um but supportive of the motion that I seconded obviously. So, >> there's nothing further. Um I will call the question. All in favor will say I. >> I. >> I. Any opposed? >> Abstensions. >> Abstain.

>> Okay. So that motion passes five zero. I don't know if technically it's two. One for the abstension and then one is excused. Okay. All right. Um anything further on this item at this time? Okay. Seeing none, thank you very much for the um presentation and we look forward to hearing about next steps and in the interim this item will come back assuming at our next meeting um for further discussion about membership to that committee.

Next we have old and new business. Um there's one item I know that members of the council and public are probably aware of the recent closures to I5 um based on you know landslides that have taken place in that area.

And so at this time I don't know if the public works director Joel Font is prepared to maybe speak to that and provide an update that would be appreciated. Uh good afternoon, council. Joel Funt, public works director.

Um yeah, and I thought that it seems important to do this today because uh although the the landslide between um North Lake Samish and the old Fair Haven Parkway interchanges on northbound I5 is um their washd is working on it now.

At this point, the reopening is to be determined and uh we are still trying to working with our partners at WASHDOT and in regular communication uh to keep a you know keep an eye eye out when we think this this is going to be uh resolved, but the um impacts are ongoing.

So, I just wanted to let um council know that we made some signal timing changes uh right away on Friday. particularly in the vicinity of the Samish uh way interchange because that's where the the natural detour is in place.

And then we did have staff over the weekend monitoring conditions at um kind of those different impact points. Once again, that's that Samish Way interchange. It's also uh there at um in the Fairaven neighborhood on um Chuckut Drive and 12th right through the middle of that area and um and that is really uh the alternate route that Wash dot has been you know marketing and mentioning as well as you know Samish is the sign detour and then the um the corridor that we are also monitoring that is more of the ones for you know the the if you know you know you can use it is the of course the Ust Street Wurn um Iowa is another alternative that is a kind of uh when things get bad on I5.

Um so we are monitoring all of those. We made some changes on Friday. We made some additional changes over the weekend and actually made some more uh changes this morning. But those um modifications are of course uh we we are doing what we can, but it is difficult for us to absorb um 50,000 cars a day um onto our local system.

So, um, we would just like to say we will continue to monitor, continue to make changes, but ask that, um, you know, people in the community are patient, uh, knowing that the these impacts are going to be probably not something we can just take care of.

And also suggest that people, you know, when they're thinking about how and when they travel, um, you know, we all can make choices and see if they can adjust those trips that they can adjust. Not every trip is flexible to um avoid those areas or um and if if you do have to go into those areas just um be patient.

Um we are continuing to coordinate with washd on both kind of the communications side and the operations side. We have also reached out to the school district particularly around um how they are um how we can they can help us at in the in the ferry middle school area which is of course becomes impactful even without all of I5 clo northbound I5 closed.

Um but that's what we're doing right now and I just wanted to assure you that is something where we're we're watching. We do have, you know, technology now with cameras where we can keep an eye on all of this remotely and um and adjust and be nimble as we move forward.

>> Any questions or um as you said there's no timeline I guess for you know for when this may change but um I was just thinking about we talk about impact fees and and our roads right now absorbing that level of traffic.

So just also an ask I guess to you know as you probably already are but monitoring what those impacts may look like um yeah if there's anything to report but thank you for the response you know late last week and over the weekend to try and manage that as best we can.

So we appreciate it. Okay thank you. Other items for old and new. Okay, seeing none, we have a few items for um executive session this afternoon. There is a potential litigation item with Chaplain for approximately 20 minutes, a potential litigation item regarding claim number 2025-36 with Phillips for approximately 5 minutes, and a third potential litigation item with stamps for approximately 10 minutes.