Transcript
machine-generated transcriptDate: September 24, 2025
Chair: Harry Steinmetz, Deputy Mayor
Roll Call and Introductions
Harry Steinmetz: Let’s call the Citizens Advisory Board meeting of Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 to order. I’m Harry Steinmetz, the deputy mayor and the chair and facilitator of the meeting. First things first is just go around the room in order and that will allow us to take roll.
Katherine Caffrey: Katherine Caffrey, city manager, city liaison.
Harry Steinmetz: Harry Steinmetz.
Barton DeLacy: Barton DeLacy Woodmont, also airport advisory.
Allyson Chapin: Allyson Chapin, resident around the corner.
Eddie Duggar: Eddie Duggar, North Central Wesley.
Jeff Crompe: Jeff Crompe’s commission.
Charlene Balcazo: Charlene Balcazo, business rep.
Mackenzie Meyers: Mackenzie Meyers, business rep.
Jim Lamparello: Jim Lamparello at large.
Bill Linscott: Bill Linscott, Marina Tenant.
Randy Richards: Randy Richards, Adriana resident, senior advisory board.
Diane Hoyer: Diane Hoyer, human services advisory committee.
Corine Anderson: Corine Anderson Ketchar. And I’m the chair of the human services committee at large.
Mary Ellen Laird: I’m Mary Ellen Laird and I’m at large.
Victoria Andrews: Victoria Andrews at large and also on the human services subcommittee.
Lisa Grondo: Lisa Grondo and part of the human services subcommittee.
Bettina Carrey: Bettina Carrey a Marina resident and I’m choosing not to be at large. No, I’d rather be skinny or petite. You’re tiny on the arts commission. I’m representing.
Harry Steinmetz: We now are up to 22 people on this committee. So that’s fantastic that we have 22 people that really want to be involved. Congratulations. I’m glad to see I think almost everyone here. Just as a reminder, if you want to speak, turn your placard up. I will call on you. And then when you’re done, try to remember. You’ll find that gets better with time and practice.
Approval of Minutes
First order of business is approval of the minutes of the July 30th meeting. Is there a motion?
Speaker: I motion to approve the minutes.
Another Speaker: Second.
Harry Steinmetz: It’s been moved and seconded. Everyone in favor? Anyone opposed? Motion passes. The minutes are approved.
Strategic Plan Overview
The second item is the strategic plan overview which will be a presentation by Katherine Caffrey.
Katherine Caffrey: Sarah, do you mind starting the presentation? For those of you that have been on the CAB, formerly the CAC, for a little while. I touched on this I think back in April or May. But if you’re new, you’re not behind at all because this is going to sort of be a review.
What I wanted to go through tonight is talk a little bit about what the strategic plan is. I wanted to sort of talk about what the strategic plan is, the timeline, the public engagement effort partially so you’re informed as a CAB member and you’re informed of what’s going on in the community. But then I also want to talk about the role that really the entire cab can have as it relates to public engagement for those of you that would like to assist. But I am looking for one or two of you to volunteer to sort of be my lead people on the strategic plan effort to represent the cab. We’ll talk a little bit about what that means, but that is what I’m looking for tonight.
I think you all saw the PowerPoint that was sent out. Hopefully, if you chose to review it ahead of time, you had a chance to look at some of those links. I think they are working since Victoria pointed out that they weren’t. But the strategic plan is really a long-term vision that really outlines what the city’s priorities are. And why it matters is we have a lot of competing demands. I’ve been here now only about 10 months, which is only 10 months and it feels like I’ve been here 500 years now. So there’s a lot of competing demands and it’s hard to make progress on anything if you’re not really picking a few that are the most important and that’s kind of the direction you’re marching. So, as a staff member, that’s what helps me lead our organization.
But the creation of this document and knowing what really are the city’s priorities truly lives with the city council. But they don’t do that in a vacuum, right? So they get lots of public input. They get lots of input from like focus groups and other things that sort of help inform when they ultimately create the strategic plan.
So if you had a chance to look at some of those example plans, really the point isn’t the content like you don’t need to know that Bothell Washington wants to do XYZ. That’s not really the point of looking at it. It’s more so for you to get a sense of what’s the level of information in there. What are kind of some of the things that people address in there. So that’s really the point. Any questions on that before I go on if anybody looked at those?
So I also feel like this is helpful to talk about what it is and what it isn’t. So it is an aspirational document but it needs to be appropriately aspirational. And so what that means is it is important to talk about dreams and goals and things that you want this city to do that are more than what it is doing now. It is also important to be grounded in a certain level of reality. So hopefully everybody sort of gets what I mean by appropriately aspirational.
It is a tool for decision-making in the sense that usually once a city has an approved strategic plan. Are we taking on this initiative? Are we going to start working on this? Because new ideas come up. You kind of go back to well is that something that’s in the strategic plan that was a priority or is it not?
It is focused on the big picture. We do use it as a foundation for budgeting, but now that I switched to the isn’t category, it is not a budget itself. So, it is not also a to-do list of every single project. It is not like a rigid document that’s a mandate. So, it really is a living document that should reflect the community. It typically guides council decisions and really staff work for three to five years. Sort of typically how it works.
So when I first joined the city, it was my very first meeting. The council did this mission and vision and they also determined sort of what their values are. That is sort of like step one. So if this is like the end in mind, the strategic plan is really going to talk about like what are some concrete steps we’re going to take to begin making progress on that.
Why We’re Doing It Now
So why we’re doing it now, I heard a lot about it through the city manager recruitment process. Now people didn’t come up to me and say we need a strategic plan, but I don’t think it’s noteworthy that of like the four candidates for city manager who we all spent like two days together. We all agreed a strategic plan was needed. So, I think what it really means is if there isn’t really a guiding document that says what’s the most important thing, then nothing’s the most important thing. And in a community where resources are stretched as thin as they are here, you’re not going to make progress on anything if we don’t know really what’s most important and that’s where we’re putting our really limited dollars and efforts. So it is really important to kind of really mark progress.
We are kicking off this process now and I’ll talk about that in a second, but it is going to bridge both the existing council and the council that will be seated in January. So, right now, the existing council did one-on-one interviews with the company we hired to do the work and then we’ll do public engagement through the fall and the new council will really be the ones that like make this document of what are the priorities.
So, as I mentioned, we hired a firm to work on this. You typically do have outsiders do it because a it’s a ton of work actually to lead this process but also it’s good objectivity to have somebody else say I heard all this and this is really the themes I’m hearing. They are a national firm they do all sorts of work for municipalities from like rate modeling to facilitation to strategic planning they’ve worked with many many municipalities the project lead is out of the west coast she’s out San Francisco and she’s worked with I think over 300 different city councils. So, nothing I told her was going to scare her. Which is good. Well, I don’t know. I’ve got a call with her tomorrow. We’ll see what she says. But, no, she really has had a lot of experience with this. So, I think we’re in good hands.
Timeline
So, what the timeline is is sort of this fall, early winter, we’re really focusing on public engagement. So hearing from the community, the council, and they’re also actually going to be doing a survey of city staff, what you know, for what it’s worth, like what staff thinks are priority areas. So sort of we’ll be getting this holistic view.
In early 2026 when the new council is seated is when there will actually be strategic planning workshops with the council where they’ll take everything they heard from the public and stakeholders and CAB and all those groups and they’ll sort of really create that document and then in the spring you finalize it and then there’s this implementation plan that’s really important to staff that is less exciting to the public but it’s really like how are we going to do this with like accountability goals and things like that and this is actually ideal timing because we do biannual budgeting here and so that means that we do two-year budgets and so the next sort of round of budgeting that’s really significant is 2027 and 2028. So this allows us to have really fresh information on what the community wants us to be working on and where they want us to put our resources and so that really informs the budget.
So in March when we talked about this you all and I’m not going to go through all this but this is just here to refresh your memory. In March you all gave some great really high-level first thoughts on some of these big questions. What kind of community do we aspire to be? What are our challenges? So I’m going to pause for a second so you can look at that just to kind of remember some of the things we heard.
We had a preliminary conversation on sort of how can we ensure long-term financial stability which will definitely be a priority. And then we talked a little bit about populations whose needs aren’t being addressed and how we can really get everybody involved in this process but also make sure that you know the city is mindful of the fact that we have a very diverse population in many ways. So that was sort of a starting place for the conversation.
And now as we kick into what the real fall public engagement is going to look like, we are going to we being the city, but this is also a precursor to how CAB is going to help. We’re going to be doing all sorts of community input opportunities. So, our big tools that we’re going to be using are a survey, multiple focus groups, and then sort of these mini input events where people can give input on things in sort of a real way. And then we’ll also be having a town hall. But in order to sort of advertise all of that, we will be doing many, many, many, many different types of marketing and advertising to be as inclusive as possible. We will be partnering with all sorts of entities to really make sure everybody knows we’re doing this and gets a chance to give input.
How CAB Can Help
So, how I need CAB’s help? So, as you all know, we have a small staff and we actually don’t have any dedicated communication staff. So, we do have a few like contract people we use and there’s a few people that help us with some of that stuff, but really to have meaningful public engagement where we have touched people not just at one event or man if you missed that email, you didn’t get to participate in the survey. Like, if we really want to do this right, we have to really be where the community is and we have to be there many times. And I love to be present in the community and I’m happy to do that, but I as a human cannot actually be at like 200 things this fall. I think my husband will like leave me in the middle of the night. So really I am looking for a cab to sort of help with some of that like boots on the ground.
So what we’re really talking about is once we get going and I know right now it’s still sort of vague but we’ll talk about it in a second. CAB ideally should be the champions for this project. You’re talking to your neighbors. You’re talking to groups you’re involved in saying like, “Hey, did you know the city’s doing that this fall? Like you should definitely make sure you’re filling out that survey or you should definitely go to that town hall and like give your input.” So, you’re sort of championing this project and helping spreading the word.
We are going to have multiple focus groups as part of this effort. I do think the cab alone will be one focus group, but then we may look for your ideas as to names of people in the community to be included. The council will also be giving input on that, but you know, we want to make sure we’re getting not just the usual suspects involved in that.
And then we will need your help with kind of the boots on the ground public engagement. So, we will be having at least one town hall. Again, city staff will do the heavy lifting on that, but it is always helpful to have like some people there you know, greeting people or helping to walk around and be like, “Colleen, this is how you do this exercise or whatever.”
And then we also want to do some things called passive engagement, which means we’re popping up at places where citizens are and you know, like I do a lot of our youth, I don’t do them, my kid does the youth sports that are at the fieldhouse. And so, I mean, I’m kind of captive there on a Saturday, right? And so if there was some booth that said, “Hey, while you’re standing here, you know, you could fill out the survey or do this, you know, visual exercise where you tell us what’s important to you.”
So we want to do a series of those this fall and that’s where we really could use some CAB volunteer help on doing that.
So, our first place to start is that I am looking for one or two cab members to be lead liaison on this. meaning like you will really help me plan this. You will coordinate with the other cab members like we’re going to have a community engagement exercise at the soccer games on Saturday who can be there to help. You will also be like kind of training other cab members. This is not super complicated, but you will, you know, kind of be like here’s what you need to do. And then you will also help collect and consolidate the input that we get. And then of course they’ll volunteer at the town hall.
The ideal people for this is actually people that have experience with public engagement in some way like either you do that professionally or you’ve like served before on boards. That’s really kind of the ideal person because you’re going to sort of be a quasi volunteer staff member to help with this. And so I am looking for one or two volunteers on that. But then the entire cab will get the opportunity to both participate and help. So if you think I do not want to help you with all of that, no problem. You can just participate, help spread the word or you know volunteer at the town hall and that is super helpful regardless.
I’m not going to do focus questions yet. So let me pause there. Any questions on so far what you’ve heard or is there anybody that thinks like oh I have background in this and I would be happy to volunteer for that.
Questions and Discussion
Bill Linscott: Could you talk about the comprehensive plan, how it relates this because that went through a similar kind of process or a ton of data? Is the two aspirational and this is the appropriate part where you prioritize it? How does that work together?
Katherine Caffrey: That’s a great question. It’s almost like wow, that’s a terrific question. I should have like prompted you with it, Bill. So, the comprehensive plan is a document that actually the council will be voting on tomorrow night. It is the result of several years of work. A comp plan, and this gets really governmental, but they are significantly different. A comp plan is about land use. At the end of the day, it’s about densities and the land and the physical experience of being in a city. So, it’s very important, but it’s a very document that guides like our city code. It guides our development process.
This is going to capture stuff the comp plan never talks about. So like if you looked at a bunch of cities comp plans, not that you would want to do this, but I have. They never talk about police because public safety really doesn’t have anything to do with like the land environment, but I bet if we asked a bunch of citizens in this room, what’s your most important service? It’s going to be public safety. So, I think this talks more about priorities and like things you want to see happen here that may or may not be about like the physical space. Does that help?
Harry Steinmetz: Can I just add one thing? The comp plan is less budget oriented and the strategic plan is a little more focused on how do we spend the budget in the next couple years.
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah, great point.
Allyson Chapin: Oh, just wondering if there’s any budget to go with those kind of passive…
Katherine Caffrey: There is a budget for this project. We do have a contract with the consultant who’s doing it and there is a budget in the sense of like yes, we will do all the signage and materials and we will provide all the supplies and we’re going to pay for the Survey Monkey subscription and things like that. What is there something that you’re thinking?
Allyson Chapin: Know if you’re at a fall cold morning soccer match on the field, you know, having a coffee stand or something or just having complimentary coffee to lure the…
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah, we could definitely talk about a certain amount of that. I don’t have like a set budget for that, but like we could make something work within reason. So yes, I mean I think in general what I don’t have money for, which somebody suggested was like like gift cards for everybody that fulfills the survey. Like I don’t have money for that unless you want the gift card to be like a penny, right? But stuff like that. Yeah, we would we would talk about that.
Barton DeLacy: Yeah, I was going to not to get ahead into the subcommittees, but our senior services committee met and one of the things we decided we could do is outreach at those communities. So, I mean I’d be happy on their behalf at least, you know, this that would be one important segment of outreach. And we could not only solicit actively their concerns, we can also use it as an opportunity to distribute the passive surveys. So, I mean I’ll volunteer on that basis alone and obviously I have other background in planning and commission work.
Katherine Caffrey: Okay, that’s great. Thanks, Barton.
Colleen (Speaker): I just wanted to let the committee know or the board know that I’d be happy to volunteer for this role. I mentioned that I think at our last meeting that I didn’t sign up for a committee because this is in my line of work. I do community engagement for with my company called PRR. And I would love to help coordinate our group get your ideas and how you’d like to volunteer to do the community engagement effort for the strategic plan. So, I just wanted to put my name out there for you all.
Katherine Caffrey: Thank you. We appreciate it. You got one.
Speaker: So, I love all this. Of course, I’m not going to sign up to volunteer. You know, I’ve already been too busy. But one thing that might be of benefit is to have a digital as well as a physical world packet that we could pick up and go to because these events are listed, but there’s no specifics. It’s just a general list of things. But there may be opportunities that just pop up and we could just swing in and grab a packet that has everything in it and or digitally that we could share socially especially.
Katherine Caffrey: So, yep, great point. Yeah, we would definitely develop some type of kind of toolkit for you. And these are just really like to give you a sense of what we’re talking about. Assuming everybody’s comfortable with Colleen, like she and I will meet and like really flesh all this out or whoever else wants to help with the lead.
Victoria Andrews: The other city’s strategic plans seem to be three years. Is that what we’re thinking as well?
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah, we’re looking at a three to five year outlook.
Randy Richards: Andy, can I get the Adriana on the trick-or-treating stop this year? We did it on our own last year. We just grabbed kids as they were going by and say, “We got candy here, too. and the parents went, I look out. But how do we get how do we get on the list for this year?
Katherine Caffrey: So, the trick-or-treating event is actually not a city event that’s done by we actually the people that are doing it this year have pulled in the permits. So, I’d be happy though to pass that on to them and I’ll connect them with you if you’d like. Right. if it could go through Jeanie our director manager. I don’t know if you have her. I don’t. So, what I’ll probably do is connect you Randy with like it’s actually not DDM this year. It’s a just organic businesses on Marine View Drive that are doing it. So, I’ll be happy to connect you though with them.
Randy Richards: Yeah, that’d be great. Then I’ve got Jean’s should have brought her business card, but I’ll get her email.
Katherine Caffrey: Okay, I’ll just connect you and like you guys take it from there. How’s that?
Randy Richards: Thank you very much. Sounds great.
Charlene Balcazo: Barton got me. Yeah, there you go. That leads me to my question because I saw a sign at the Merkantile and it said October 25th, I believe. And I always thought that we did the walk in the past as close to the actual day.
Katherine Caffrey: So I think that’s actually Marina Merkantile’s private events. They’re having something of Halloween events. Okay, good. And then the trick-or-treating path again is not a city event. So like I don’t control the date on it, but the permit they turned in is for Halloween or the It’s a Saturday I believe this year. It’s a Friday. It’s a Friday. Okay. So, I need to be on that list as well. There’s a my business. There’s a the an event at the senior center or the activity center on the 25th though. That’s maybe what you saw. That’s the 18th actually.
No, I saw a merkantile. I’m glad I saw Now we’re talking about Halloween. So, the Boo Bash is on the 18th at the activity center. It’s a family dance. Please come. I will be there with my eight-year-old. And then Marina Merkantile is actually having a witches brew special event that just they’re doing as a business owner. So that’s that’s what I think you saw. And then your business Charlene, it’s actually Robin Des Simone from Iris and PE is the one who turned in the permit. Thank you.
Harry Steinmetz: Are you volunteering to be one of the leads? Did I understand that correctly? So you and Colleen be working. Okay. Now you can get buy me that lunch that you promised. Well, I waited for another date. There you are. And do you want another volunteer? I think two’s good. I mean, because everybody’s actually going to get a chance to work on this unless somebody else is dying to do it. That’s the idea. Yeah. That everybody would get. Yeah. Yeah.
So then just like wrapping up looking ahead and you will have you will have more to come on this but we’ll be doing some focus groups and so we will be looking for not only your input on names of people to potentially be in the focus group but you as CAB will be a focus group. These are a sampling of some of the questions that I’ve seen the list is actually quite a bit longer but we’ll talk about this at a future meeting to see if you have suggestions for what you’d like to on there, but you may get an email from me that’s, you know, soliciting some names to participate on a focus group.
Traci (Speaker): So, which, you know, the way that you guys are or this group is spread out is to cover the entire city. So, maybe hopefully it would be nice to have a focus group in each neighborhood like you you represent a neighborhood everybody board does pretty much. We I think we have a couple of at large members, but that would be so cool if we could get a focus group out of every or we are not contracted for that much, but we will figure something out. But we’re absolutely going to get everybody involved.
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah. Well, we can still have the outreach and maybe not instead of having nine or 10 separate meetings, we have two or three, but you know, people have, you know, they can kind of sit together and I think that would probably work out.
We’re going to talk about with the council because like you’ll probably want like a business focused one and some well one thing that came up and I got together to talk about this idea and you we we’re not going to not putting this up for a vote or decision tonight or anything but just for you to think about when you go home is we might be able to work out a system where we can have an email address that wouldn’t have to be your personal email address like mine might be zenith demo moy.com or something like that. Just making it up. And then so the idea behind that is like if there was an article in the newspaper in the newsletter or in the city manager email that goes out, it could say Colleen Gance Zenith demo.com. So it wouldn’t have to have my personal email address, but that way if pe because I don’t have a distribution list for Zenith of all the people who live there. So they could contact me, you know, kind of boost up my contact list if they want to participate in the strategic plan. So, something to think about if you’d if you’d be interested in having a ghost email address so that your neighborhood could reach you to participate because I don’t know otherwise how we get, you know, kind of big distribution lists for our whole neighborhood. So, just something to think about and then that way when I go off the committee, the person who takes my place can then use the same address and and receive emails from the from their neighborhood. Just a thought to consider. to think about if you want to do that.
Victoria Andrews: Are are we going to talk at all about our impressions of the three cities strategic?
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah. I mean, if anybody reviewed those and wants to tell me, I’d love to hear that.
Victoria Andrews: Yeah, I I I did. And the one thing I saw that was missing from I think it was your city. You were used to be my city. Your your old city city is our city. Well, the your well your former city I think was the third one, right? No, Cedar Park is the middle one. Cedar Park. Yeah. Well, that was the third one that I looked at. I looked at the local ones and then I looked at yours was that it did not have the the metrics for how are you measuring success? And and both was to me probably the most specific, which I translated as the most expensive.
And I don’t know if that is true or not because I remember the conversation the council had about the price range of what these companies were going to charge and what we could afford. So, I looked up the populations. I thought, you know, wow, Bothell’s tax base must be way bigger than ours. And they’re only 51,000 some odd. Gresham is double that. Gresham Morgan, double that. And and then you yours was like 77,000. So do you know the budget for those three strategic plans?
Katherine Caffrey: So it’s partially So if you guys looked at the plans and again I put them out there just to sort of give you a sense and Colleen could hold one up. Okay. So they’re, you know, they’re various glossy documents with like cute family photos. But the the things that I think are interesting about them is the level of depth they go through. So some some of them are pretty high level and some of them get very granular. And so when we originally talked to the council about this, I think the one that really is like the Cadillac is that’s local is Issaquah. It has a very robust metric system. So you can go like look up well how are they doing on their goal to fill all the sidewalks and it’s partially budget but it’s really more so do you have a system in place that you already have people measuring performance and tracking we don’t right so this is the city’s first strategic plan we need to start with something that’s achievable what did I write appropriately aspirational so I think it’s appropriately aspirational to like come up with the plan and then there’s an implementation document I referenced that’s I mean it is public facing but it’s really more for staff that will have specific metrics of like okay so here we’re I’m going to borrow this again Colleen like let me use an example so like Bothell has like their vision and then they have these big goals right connecting neighborhoods community of trust and respect economic vitality like you know these very broad goals right that usually are kind of like everybody USA And then you get into like a specific goal. So like this goal of economic vitality. So then they have create a plan that does XYZ blah blah like as a list, right? And so there’ll be an implementation plan that staff will follow where we will say like, okay, we’re going to try and target this in 26. We’re going to try and start that at the end of 26. And so we will be I mean I will have to be reporting to the council our progress. And we’ll be doing certain public updates, but that really, really, really robust tracking, if anybody’s ever worked in a corporate world where you’ve had to do like performance measures and stuff, that is a process to get there. And we just don’t have that set up right now. Like I don’t have a system or staff or counting everything. But some of it was very easy that you already do like population, crime statistics, think, how would you measure it annually? Those are things that you already can do. So, some of those looked very doable and achievable, you know, from from the word go. And as for the everywhere USA goals, we’ve already given you those at the very beginning of this thing. Well, you guys gave me a little bit of input, but remember Oh, sorry. We mission, vision, values.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, council. Those three Yeah, those five goals that that’s it, isn’t it? I mean, aren’t we approaching it from that? No. I mean, this will definitely drive things. Yeah. Right there. Those those five, but I think it’ll be things like what I predict is it’ll be like ensure budget, fiscal sustainability. Yeah, there’s no budget in there. Yeah, it’ll be economic development that generates prosperity. So, I mean, it’ll it’ll probably it should connect to that. It shouldn’t be counter to those, but it’s not just that. is what I expected. But they but but they looked very similar to what I was seeing. All the cities had very similar. Honestly, most people do want the same stuff. You want a safe place to live. You want things to do downtown. You want to have places to go. You want to have parks. I mean, like a lot of those are very general. And that’s not bad. That that’s what people want, right? But we’re going to want to like drill into like what’s the most important here.
So, that’s where the survey is coming into play. Then the survey will drive what the values. So the survey, the focus groups, the in-person engagement will all provide really valuable input that then the city council in January will they will receive all this information and then they will be led through a public process to develop the plan. We’re going to have a busy three months.
Barton DeLacy: So am I understanding you will then be prior prioritizing the visions during that time or No, it’s more so like the input that the community gives plus the council. There will be 200 great things that people want and the council will work to really narrow it down to what the priorities are. So like the city manager doesn’t decide what those are, the city council does because ultimately the city council is responsible for the vision of this community. Think of taking 200 and distilling it down to five or six. Yeah. Creating the list like how we named the backstage alley, right?
Jim Lamparello: Can you speak a little bit to how this kind of plays in with annual annual budgeting in the sense that you said, you know, three to five years, that’s one and a half to two budget cycles. Like when I heard strategic plan, I was thinking more like five 10 year kind of thing.
Katherine Caffrey: So the city I used to be at that Victoria just referenced the goals I was there for almost 20 years. The actual goals never changed. the like specific things we were going to work on towards those goals are what changed. So I think if you’re doing this right, if one of the goals that comes out of this is creating a safe community, that’s never going to change. You know, like I would be shocked if that ever changed, right? So that turns into sort of telling, you know, the council has a commitment then to like that is where we’re putting our resources, for example. Okay. So, it ends up being the three to five year part is sort of the like I’m so glad you printed one of these out, Colleen. It’s like this type stuff like the specific things you’re going to work on, but the big picture stuff usually stays the same because it’s usually like what really is important to people that choose to live here. Does that make sense?
Jim Lamparello: Kind of.
Bettina Carrey: So, I’ve been here just over three years, so a little bit ahead of you. And several things have occurred through consultancies that have covered some of the bases and it’s like having a leaky bucket, right? So we if we don’t go back and revisit those consultants that we paid for and the outcome and the deliverables that they put together you were when very initially when you first came in there was what resulted from the mission and vision and values but that entire meeting also had very similar questions as what’s going to be addressing addressed in the focus groups. There were other meetings that have been hashed out through our branding, through exercises again with consultants involved. The hiring process when we went through determining as a council what in fact was going to be important to in the hiring process. So is the consultant that you’ve hired going to be able to go back? Are they go back and pull all that together?
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah. So, she sent me the data request actually last week. It’s like every master plan that the city has. It’s communications guidelines. It’s the comp plan. And I totally understand her comment, right, which is like how many times do people have to ask us this question that we have to keep answering it? And I think what I would say is because you didn’t have this, it had to keep being asked because when I was a candidate and when I came here, I had no document to go look at to be like what what matters to this city council. There’s nothing I can find that has that. Yes, I could read a parks master plan from 10 years ago. Yes, I could read a comp plan that’s about some zoning stuff, but this should really tell you this is what matters to them.
Bettina Carrey: Yeah. But also, they’re being able to watch, take the time to watch the videos because a lot of that conversation, a 4-hour workshop that you did, there was valuable content that was produced to the conversation that if not watched, it’s not going to show up in a summary document of any kind.
Katherine Caffrey: Yep. That’s a great point. So, you mean from this meeting that was had all the meetings that I’ve been to in three years, there have been many t times when the everything has been addressed that we’re going to be addressing in the strategic plan in parts. But it’s like again, you we’re spending all this money in consultancy, but it’s like having a leaky bucket because nobody’s capturing it all in one place and keeping it as intellectual property of the city.
Katherine Caffrey: No, I think you’re totally right because there is nowhere to go look at I mean what are the council’s priorities? Yeah. So, yep. I think that’s a totally valid point.
Corine Anderson: So, Bettina has just triggered me because I hope in a good way as she often does, but no. As a trained and I’m a social worker, but I was trained in planning, administration, and management. And all of this reminds me that you have to have the the vision, the mission, and then your goals, objectives, and the nuts and bolts of implementation. And if you don’t have that for implementation, you’re going to keep going to the leaky bucket. So, it’s to me really important that we focus on that implementation plan to such a degree until you get it done because otherwise you’re going to be in the leaky bucket.
Katherine Caffrey: Yeah. So, the implementation plan, which we didn’t talk a lot about on here, but is part of this, that is primarily a document that comes in into the spring. So, fall, early winter, it’s what’s important to everybody. What do you care about? What do you think we should be doing better, etc. Early 2026 is a new city council. You’ve heard all this content. what what should the priorities be? And then the implementation plan is candidly really done by the staff to talk about like what are those nuts and bolts of what we need to get done to get to get progress on those things that you can show measurable improvement on.
Victoria Andrews: And Victoria, who will evaluate? Will this consultants will staff? Oops. I’m so sorry. Who who will evaluate and how will the nuts and bolts be evaluated? By whom? By staff, by city council, by the consultant. Does the consultant contract include followup a year after to see how we’re doing in our measurables?
Katherine Caffrey: So you’re saying evaluate what we put down as the implementation plan. That would be like your city manager who then reports to your city council. And so I mean it will be a very visible public thing that I have to report to them how things are going. The consultant has experience leading groups, working with communities, working with elected officials who sometimes don’t start at a position where they think they have anything in common. And she’s very skilled at like let’s find the ven diagram where you all overlap, but she’s not gonna her team is not an expert on like what De Moines needs to do for a year. You know what I mean? Like you just you can’t. So I guess what I would say is who evaluates that? I mean, I guess my work is evaluated by these seven people. And then it’s pretty public like what what we’re working on. Does that make sense?
Victoria Andrews: So, I also did program analysis and evaluation and it’s it’s your data points. It’s h how do you know you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to accomplish? What’s your work plan and how are you going to implement that work plan and make sure you’ve got the data show that you have accomplished that and so otherwise the leaky bucket and so that is what’s wrapped in to the implementation so yes our contract does include the priorities I’m getting I’m just your visual okay so the community is going to tell us all the stuff that’s really important right the big picture stuff then the council and staff have sort of collectively figure out what are the specific things we’re going to work on to achieve this and then there’s a layer underneath this that is like okay so this first one says develop a long range financial plan for budget stabilization so probably and I don’t know maybe the Bothell city council used those words but probably what they said is we need a real plan that looks long range and tells us what our finances should look like and the staff said oh what you’re actually saying is you want this long range financial plan and then there’s probably a layer underneath it that says you’re going to hire the team to conduct that analysis in the first six months of 2026. You’re going to have the analysis done the second six months of 2026. You’re going to present it publicly at the beginning of 2027. And that level of evaluation, I mean, that is the city manager’s job is to ensure staff are are doing that. So, I mean, that that is ultimately my job is to make sure those work plans are happening and we’re staying on track. And if you don’t stay on track, which does happen, you have a reason why. This happened. We got new information. So now we needed to pivot. I mean, those things happen in these type of things. And so then you just sort of make sure there’s transparency and accountability.
Speaker: If I can kind of public safety is the big goal, increasing public safety. And the council says, “Okay, we want to hire two new police officers each year for the next three years.” And then the nuts and bolts are how are we going to get that done? That the staff’s going to figure out. And if it doesn’t get done, we have an easy way to measure that because we know the goal was two police officers and either we got there or we didn’t. And now we know why because we have a way to do that. That little Nope.
Corine Anderson: So, what I wanted to say about that is it’s really important that outcome data is transparent is that your citizens know that what is being done and what isn’t being done and why and what is the plan thereafter. So…
Speaker: Well, I want I wanted to just comment on what Karen said earlier, too. And we were talking about one of the things that community engagement 101 is sort of like what we heard and what we were able to implement. You know, what you said, what we could do here and oh, we also heard this, we aren’t able to do this and this is why. So, that’s like the transparency. There’s this other process called the racial equity toolkit, but it’s done in like city of Seattle and some other places where one of the key things is like don’t ask people over and over and over again the same question. They’re like because no one knows I did I answer that for the government or did I answer that at a open house I was at or when I already answered that a hundred times. So that’s why the lady at consultant is asking for the data because I guess what she’s probably going to do is consolidate it and then say, “Yeah, we have heard this. We have heard over and over and over that safety is a number one thing.” So then they want to like supplement that with new information that they might ask during this process. But it’s obvious that that that one because it was mentioned in so many other reports and studies that they’ve done before. So that’s good. I’m glad they’re doing it.
Katherine Caffrey: Anybody else? All right. That’s all I had.
Harry Steinmetz: All right. So hopefully we now have a much better understanding of the strategic plan process. Thank you, Colleen and Barton. Sure thing. Thank you both for volunteering.
Subcommittee Reports
And then the the next thing are subcommittee reports. And to to sort of preface this a little bit, I have in the time that I’ve been running the CAC or the CAB, tried to facilitate discussions and generally I think they’ve ended up with a consensus even if there were some dissenting votes. But we’re not trying to tell you what you should be. And it’s come to my attention that there have been a lot of questions now about the relationship between the cab and the subcommittees. What should that be looking like?
My impression that I got earlier and the point of this is sort of sort of for discussion because I want to throw it out there before we actually get to some reporting is that you know essentially the functions of these subcommittees have been delegated by the cab to the subcommittee to come up with this to make some decisions about what’s it going to look like for those things. I think we should be getting monthly reporting of what the subcommittees are doing back to the cab that are worthy of discussions and head nods, but not necessarily we’ll take a vote to approve everything the subcommittee did because you’ve already delegated it.
That it does need to be pretty clear though that the CAB itself and therefore the subcommittees do not have any spending authority that has to either be done by staff under a certain amount or over a certain amount has to be approved by the council. And so you’ve got a staff liaison that you can work with should those issues come up. And that’s Sarah.
And then I think sort of following along those lines to add a little more clarity is that each of the subcommittees really needs to develop a work plan. I’m going to throw out December meeting as a good place maybe to do that. So, with those points kind of in mind, we want to have a discussion about the relationship in the cab to the subcommittees. Am I on target for what I think I have heard or not?
Corine Anderson: So, my confusion is that human services always had a budget to work with because we have to allocate funding to the agencies in the community. So that’s different. That’s very different. And of course, we don’t have our report to know where things are at with the last allocation yet. We’ll have it in October. We plan to meet in October to be able to discuss that and then develop a work plan. But from what you just said, we don’t have a budget. No. To work with. Okay. I mis I misunderstood.
Harry Steinmetz: That’s not what I meant. Okay. For example, all right. There’s a line item budget that says this is our human services budget and the human services committee in the past has been tasked with how to appropriate or how how to spend that money or what’s the process to go through. Yes. The arts commission also has a budget that they are looking to keep it in mind or or in line with that. So there is there are monies to be made but that doesn’t mean you or the arts commission or anybody in the camp can sign a contract. Right. That’s right. No, we are only advisory and it is Yeah. It’s advisory about okay yes within this pot of money right for the human services right how should we spend right words matter yes well that’s that’s why we discuss and get greater clarity
Katherine Caffrey: Catherine also Karen as a reminder last year the city went to bianual budgeting so the work that human services did last fall with Michelle that was the budget for 25 and 26 okay I just want to make sure you remember that. Yeah, that’s but we get a mid report about how things are going because we have to kind of evaluate based on that in terms of future allocations. Yep. Okay. So, I just I just want to make sure you know like you’re not going to be asked to divvy up another 170,000. Oh, no. No. Right. That’ll be a bigger thing you’ll do for 2728. Yes. Got it. Okay. Just making sure. We know. Totally got that. We we’ve been through that. Exactly. Words matter.
Senior Services Committee Report
Allyson Chapin: Allison. Oh, he had a sub. Oh, pardon. Okay. Well, I don’t know if we’re ready. I think we had a very high functioning senior services subcommittee meeting. Jeff Coffee joined us of course and kind of brought us provided the history but passed on the baton. Now we don’t have a chair per se. I was asked to report out but I think we’re we’re on track without a budget to to really I think the important thing is is the outreach part. We identified you know the Ariana Wesley and and Judson Park as three communities where we would commit to meet with. I think that coalines very nicely with the strategic plan that kind of gives us something to talk about to start discussions but more importantly that we’re going to meet with the the heads Randy the late leader at Adriana her what’s her name? Genie Jeie. So we’re, you know, he’s one perhaps Randy will on our behalf meet with Jeie to to sort of solicit some of the community needs she sees as as being the the head there and and but we we see this evolving so that the subcommittee is visible again with these three communities. There may be other opportunities as well. And another activity that we would like to look at bringing to the communities are the I’ve been very impressed with the the presentations often made to city council and it’s sad there’s no one here to hear them and so if there were finding a better way to make those presentations available as a means communication whether it’s about 509 or other things that will come up we have on the list and that’s what we’d like to…
Allyson Chapin: I’m just looking for a little 101 as a newbie is it an expectation that members are also on a subcommittee and Okay. And what there are three subcommittees because we have had these three committees existed as separate volunteer committees in the past. Okay. And so now we have an overarching volunteer or committee organization. It made sense and they didn’t need to be staffed separately. They could be staffed as necessary. Okay. But there’s not a lot of structure to the committees. It’s up to committees to organize themselves. Are there is there opportunity to create new to add the new people to subcommittees if they wish?
Harry Steinmetz: Thank you. Sorry. You and McKenzie and Jim and Bill are the new people and And I don’t know during the process of coming on if you got a chance to be on a committee or or asked if you wanted to be on any one of these three committees. Probably not. And as far as answering the question, I don’t believe they were, but we’d be happy to get you guys up to speed. There are three committees, arts committee, seniors, and human services. And so we’d be happy to visit with you about what those are and and see if you want to join in. You don’t have to though if you don’t want to.
Arts Committee Report
Jeff Crompe: Jeff, you want to give us an arts committee or are you the designated? Yes. Representative? Yes, I am. So, our arts committee has met twice. We met in August. We met in September. We’re going to meet in October. Pretty much we’ll probably meet every month because there’s a lot of things that the arts commission has to do. We’ve got our Charlene, Eddie, and Bettina are here tonight. Rick is not. Speaking of Bettina, I just wanted to give her a little shout out for what a great Octoberfest it was down at the marina. Yeah. supposedly conservatively there might have been a thousand people there over the weekend. So that was pretty cool. And of course McKenzie hosted the whole thing. [Applause]
We’ve actually been pretty active in what we’re doing. We actually today last week we met with Katherine and Tara. Today we met with AJ and Courtney and we’ve already come up with our bands for next summer’s concert series. Oh man. And we’ll probably be publishing those in the winter currents. So that’ll be cool.
I never knew this, but there’s 25 art sculptures around town. I mean, I knew there were some, but I didn’t know there were 25. Some of them need a little bit of repair. So, we had Fred Andrews at our last meeting, and we committed to him that we would help with that. There’s a sculpture that was kind of in the woods down at the down at the marina and we’re going to revamp that and get it up and running again. To get it done professionally would cost quite a bit, but Fred said he and his friends could do it for less. So, we’ve kind of committed some funds to him. And part of that committing of funds was that we have apparently some leftover funds this year. that that number is still a little bit nebulous, but nonetheless, we also talked about I met with well I had I met with Patrice from Legacy and we’re looking at trying to do next year sometime a backstage alley jazz and blues festival. So that’d be cool.
And then Tracy turned me onto a guy named Serge who has a very interesting past. He he’s been involved with the international and the USA fencing federation for years as a photographer, but also when he was down in LA, and this is really a cool idea, they instituted a teen digital film festival whereby we would take the kids in our community that are in junior high or high school and ask them if they wanted to create a digital film like with their phone of four or five or six minute competition or a film and then we would have a competition. We’d judge them and ultimately we might show them to the whole community or show them maybe when the Des Moines Theater’s up and running again we could we could showcase those and then provide a prize or two for the first, second, third place. So that’s kind of cool. That’s still totally in the infancy stage.
We are going to be involved a little bit with Squidarama but that’s still up in the air. I got a hold of the gal today from Highline College that is running it and there’s a lot of questions there, but they’ve kind of taken over the lead on that. It’ll be down at the beachfront park in November. So, we’ll be involved in that a little bit.
And then one of the other things that we looked at, I don’t know if anybody here went on it, but about five years ago, the Argosy Christmas ship came and it was docked down here and we all got on. I was there. It was pretty cool. And that’s that hasn’t happened for the last few years, especially since COVID. But I’ve been in contact with them about seeing if they could get a ship here again next year. And the arts commission would participate in that. And the artsy part of that is that they have a big Christmas band that was on that boat. And that’s artsy. So, we’re trying we’re going to try and do that.
And then totally separate from the arts commission, but just throwing it out there for those of you that I’m sure most of you are aware, but we’ll be doing like our 11th or 12th shredding event here on October 15th at the activity center. So bring any and all of your shredding. It used to say there was a maximum, but we don’t get inundated like some of the shredding events. So if you have 20 boxes of shredding you want to bring, bring it on. Besides that, yeah, just a lot of cool things going on with the arts commission.
Speaker: What what time?
Jeff Crompe: Yeah. 10 to 2 on on Wednesday, October 15th.
Speaker: How is the shredding event?
Jeff Crompe: It isn’t. I said it wasn’t. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. I was I was use it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was just I was just giving a little shout out so that if anybody wasn’t aware of it, it is happening because it’s it’s it’s it’s gotten pretty good. We usually do 7 8,000 pounds of shredding and we get about 150 cars that come through and a lot of the community looks forward to it. I have Yeah, because we do it twice a year now usually April and October.
Speaker: Do you have another? Yeah, I have another question. Kind of just about basics of subcommittees, but do you have to be a member of the cab to be on a subcommittee?
Harry Steinmetz: I would say yes. Yes. Yeah.
Diane Hoyer: And with regard to the sculptures, I remember when I first moved here, there was something called the walking tour. That’s mentioned. And I remember address that. Is that coming back?
Jeff Crompe: Yes. Yeah. We’re working with Fred in one getting those sculptures that need new plaques changed out and restoring the one. but it’s in April of every year and it’s a world event about the sculpture walk. So we’re going to be participating. We really have a lot of crossover with legacy we discovered. So we’ll be promoting that event and that happens in April. So, at that time, my idea was that we would have a flyer about the sculpture walk with the sculpture map and have them have them placed in all the different local businesses and to pass out to the community. And there’s a lot of history. I mean, a lot of information just in each sculpture, too.
Diane Hoyer: Yeah, absolutely. Well, yes, we could enlarge it to even talk about the artists, right?
Jeff Crompe: Absolutely. And we’re waiting to get a list from the city because some of the sculptures that were placed over the years, a lot of them were placed on like a two-year basis. And the city would pay them a stipen to have that there. And then when that expired, they could either elect to leave it there because a lot of them had a price tag on it where somebody could buy it. So if some if no one had bought it, they could either leave it there or they could donate it to the city or they could take it away. and we’re waiting to get a list from the city of what the status is of all the pieces of sculpture. That was fun. That would be fun.
Speaker: Anyone else have any questions about any of the You rock. I will add that we also want to keep up with all the music events happening. So, if you know of something coming, you know, I just as an example, Krill Soul has kicked off a Thursday jam session every night that didn’t exist a month ago. And then he also does now special events in the stick lounge that are fantastic. Have me dancing up a storm. So, you know, if you know of something, say something and we’ll add it to the list.
Eddie Duggar: I know something. I’m gonna say something. This year I will be going to my very first Wesley’s Fall Fest and it’s October 31st and November 1st and it’s if you are a fan of jewelry, woodworking, quilting, knitted items, crocheted items, Christmas stuff, baked goods, those things are being donated by extremely talented folks at Wesley. My word, they’re talented. and people from the community can come and shop there October 31st 10 to 3 and then November 1st 10 to 1 at Wesley in the terrace on the second floor which is a brand new old building in the old yes the older part of but it’s a new floor it’s been totally remodeled and there’s a gorgeous club room there and they have really done a bangup job of pulling together the various talents of everybody and your contributions, cash or check. They can’t do credit cards yet. They’re working on that. go to support the foundation areas of greatest need for folks at Wesley and so I invite you all to come. I’ll be volunteering calendar. Yeah.
Speaker: Are we allowed to do that? Tag on a little bit.
Speaker: Bonnie, cool. Got to tag on a little bit with what Bettina brought up. We’re going to try and be able to maintain, we have actually a website for the arts commission and we hope to be able to have a list, a running list of kind of any event that’s going on around the city. So if somebody said, “Hey, I heard there’s something going on on Thursday the 14th,” they could go and look and see that maybe something is right with the community.
Speaker: Yes. Bonnie keeps that. Yes. And it comes out Yes. And it comes out every Friday in Yeah. In the manager’s report. And then every time I put out a mayor’s minute, it’s also at the bottom of that. And it’s very exhaustive. I mean huge list of what’s going on every Friday.
Human Services Committee Report
Corine Anderson: Human services committee. Is there a report? I reported there’s nothing. Not until October. That’s easy. We met. We had a lovely meet and greet. Oh, I’m sorry. She wanted to give the report. No, I didn’t. We met the end of August, I think it was.
Harry Steinmetz: Can you tell us who’s who’s on the human services committee?
Victoria Andrews: Victoria, we are Mary, Ellen, Lisa. Diane, and Mary. Mary, who’s not here? Yes. Thank you.
Corine Anderson: Yeah. So, we met, we got to know each other a bit and and they wanted more information, which we didn’t have at the time, but I did send out the last PowerPoint that Rochelle did that really laid out, what the plan was, what was being done, all the grants and everything. And now we’re just waiting for the report to come in and we’re going to meet in a October, go over the report, develop our work plan, go from there.
Harry Steinmetz: Presentation of the work plan in December sounds realistic from each of the committee. Sure. I mean, not that you aren’t already doing things. Yeah.
Victoria Andrews: Anything Victoria regarding the strategic plan again? We’re going to have a very busy three months all of us. When should we expect to get assignments as or assignments or volunteer opportunities to place ourselves in these various avenues for the survey that we haven’t seen yet?
Katherine Caffrey: Well, right. I mean that’s why we’re talking to you all, right? Is this is new. So I’ve got a call with her tomorrow. The consultant, her name’s Nancy. And then I actually just sent an email to Colleen to see if she has time to meet October 2nd with a consultant and so we’ll get organized. So I’d say later in October you guys should hear more. Okay, cool.
Adjournment
Harry Steinmetz: So when is the next CIB meeting? October 29th. October 29th. I move that we adjourn.
Speaker: Amen. Yeah, I second that. Is there anything for the good of the order? Thank you.
Harry Steinmetz: We have a motion to adjourn. Second. In favor. Anyone opposed? Thank you all very much. Woohoo.
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!