Transportation Committee 8/5/2025

All right.

Good morning.

The August 5th, 2025 meeting of the Transportation Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I'm Rob Saka, chair of the Transportation Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Rink.

Present.

Councilmember Strauss.

Present.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Present.

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are four members present, although I will note that Councilmember Kettle appears online, maybe some technical issues.

I don't know.

All right.

Thank you.

I note that Councilmember Kettle is excused until he's able to join officially.

Colleagues, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

All right, and good morning again.

Thank you, members of the committee and members of the public for tuning in to today's exciting meeting of the Transportation Committee.

This will be our last and final meeting before the August recess, the last two weeks of August.

Today we have a full, robust agenda before us.

Our first agenda item will be a presentation from the Puget Sound Regional Council and the great work that they do regionally to support our transportation needs.

I have the pleasure of sitting alongside our colleague, council member Kettle on the transportation policy board, a sub board of the Puget town regional council and also their broader executive committee.

So looking forward to a, a fun filled jam packed presentation from executive director, Josh Brown on some of our work.

This committee over the past year and a half has dedicated considerable time to highlighting the terrific work that our own SDOT does every day.

But our regional partners, including Sound Transit, King County Metro, and today the Puget Town Regional Council also do excellent work.

We wanna highlight and uplift and amplify some of that work and share out some of the regional learnings.

So thank you, Executive Director Josh Brown for being here today.

Our second agenda item is a possible vote on an alley vacation known as the Grand Street Commons.

Now, we heard about this project in our last committee meeting, which is in District 3 and Borders District 2 as well.

Really looking forward to a refresher from our central staff and department expert on this topic.

And finally, last but not least, we have a briefing discussion and possible vote on a number of deeds and easements submitted by the department.

My understanding that there are no substantive policy decisions to be made on these easements and deeds, but they are nonetheless very important that this committee is briefed on them and making sure that this committee is comfortable voting on them today.

So this is the nuts and bolts of our committee work.

So thank you to our own central staff and SDOT for being here today.

That said, we'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Currently, we have one in-person speaker signed up and there's one remote speaker.

And I'd just like to note that Council Member Kettle has now joined us.

Council member Kettle is joined.

Welcome.

Yes.

I'm here.

Was here.

That was in the zoom penalty box, but I got out.

All right.

Welcome council member Kettle.

All right.

Each speaker will have approximately two minutes.

We will start with the in person speakers.

First clerk, could you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Public comment period is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Oh, Holly.

Holly Gardner.

Good morning.

I just am here today because I saw the Grand Street Alley vacation is up for vote and I wanted to take a moment to thank this council, City Council, the City of Seattle and SDOT in particular for a six-year partnership on a very complex project that I had the joy of working on.

It's lovely to be at the end of it.

It's lovely to see it complete and to see what a value it brings to the neighborhood that it's in.

So thank you for your time and your consideration on that.

Thank you.

Okay, and we have one remote public commenter, David Haynes.

David, when you're authorized to speak, please remember to hit star six.

All right, thank you, David Haynes.

You know how District 5 tried to sweep out all the criminals?

There seems to be a prolific problem With human traffickers that are using the Soundlink-like rail trains and they got their prostitutes in tow and within arm's distance and they're like getting dropped off in University District and the downtown area and they're getting away with it because we have these untrustworthy, dishonest, extremely lazy People in a badge, a security guard, a transit security, who are frickin' clueless about what the hell is going on in the community, and they don't really care.

It's like this guy tried to fight me because I asked him not to smoke at the bus stop at the 148 Blinklight Rail, and the security guard told me that he's only responsible for the upper platform.

He could almost look over and see the guy trying to, like, bother people, but that's not his jurisdiction, even though it's on the same part of the property.

You know, yesterday I had to run across the link, excuse me, I got off the link light rail and 10 seconds before I got to the bottom of the steps, the number 65 drives away.

So what's happening is King County Metro is not being like efficiently working with sound link light rail to make the transfer proper.

So I just stood in the middle of the Like the transfer stuff, made the bus stop.

It was like, dude, let me on the bus, man.

You should have waited like 10 seconds.

And it's like ridiculous things like that, that ruin your day every day relying on public transportation, right?

You know, when you have the junkies on the sound link light rail and they're on the front part of the car, every time they sneeze, every time they breathe, whatever toxic spews of disease that come out of them goes all the way to the back.

A disproportionate spew onto innocent people.

We need to address the public safety.

You are failing on me.

Thank you, David.

That is all of the registered speakers.

Well done.

We will now move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read item number one into the agenda?

Agenda item one, PSRC Regional Transportation Plan.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Will our presenter please join us at the table and share your presentation?

Once ready, please introduce yourself and proceed.

Well, good morning, Chair Sacca.

And members of the Transportation Committee, I'm Josh Brown, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Thanks so much for having me here today.

I appreciate the opportunity to update the committee on the work that we do at PSRC in close collaboration with the City of Seattle and other regional partners.

I do want to give a big thanks to Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Kettle.

They're the leads for The City of Seattle on our Transportation Policy Board doing a lot of heavy lifting over the past year, as Councilmember Saka spoke to at the beginning of the meeting.

So look forward to sharing some work.

And what I thought I would do today in terms of providing an update is not just dive right into our work in terms of transportation planning, but maybe taking a step back For the context of regional planning in the Puget Sound region, remind the council committee on what's in our current regional transportation plan, what we've been doing to implement the current plan, and our efforts that are underway to develop the next transportation plan for the region.

So let's go back to 1960, two years before the Space Needle dotted our beautiful skyline in the city of Seattle.

The city's population was nearly 560,000 people, about a third of the population of the entire region.

And it's interesting to go back in that period of time where our entire state was roughly the size of Iowa.

We saw over the next 30 years enormous growth in the central Puget Sound region, a near doubling of the region's population from 1960 to 1990, but a mathematical anomaly took place in that same period of time.

Our largest city, the city of Seattle, lost population.

We had a flight to the suburbs.

This phenomenon was not just something that took place in our city.

Of course, we were seeing the same flight to the suburbs occurring across the U.S.

But what took place in our region and in our state was a response to that flight to the suburbs, a lack of infrastructure, a lack of coordinated planning.

To the credit of our state leaders, The Growth Management Act was adopted in 1990. Soon thereafter, the state legislature authorized the ability to form a regional transit authority.

Councilmember Strauss, I know you're quite familiar with Sound Transit authorized in 1996. And our agency, the Puget Sound Regional Council, was reorganized in 1991. And really, that was a big pivot for us from just focusing on transportation in isolation to really having a growth management approach where we lead with land use and are thinking about ways that our economic competitiveness will be determined by our regional planning priorities.

So Vision 2050 is our North Star for the region.

The last time we adopted our regional growth strategy was in October of 2020. Think where we were as a region, as a country, as a world in October of 2020 in the throes of the pandemic.

It was a challenging time, but that was the time for us to really set the North Star as best as we could during a pretty challenging public health crisis to really think about how the region was going to grow to a region of nearly 5.8 million residents by 2050. And it's a good point to really reflect upon how our regional plans connect.

Again, Vision 2050, our land use and growth strategy for the region is our North Star.

This is very much different than from other regions.

We have MPOs across the country.

Every metropolitan area with a population of over 50,000 residents is required to have a metropolitan planning organization.

Those regions really just focus on transportation in a box.

Our transportation plan for the region, along with our regional economic strategy, are very much tied to and feed into Vision 2050. In fact, the way I would invert that, really, it's Vision 2050 that we're leading with and then utilizing our economic strategy and our transportation plan to think about how we're implementing those key priorities and planning policies in Vision 2050. So when we adopted Vision 2050 in 2020, we had some different things happening in the region.

In my career, nearly 20 years in government service, you know, we had been struggling to get voter approval to build our regional light rail transit network of expanding transit, whether it's BRT corridors or for Kitsap County, their fast ferry system.

Really, we're in a place in 2020 where we knew over the coming years we had So we really built Vision 2050 around responding and taking advantage of those planned transit investments.

And for the first time in the region, we set growth targets of how much of our jobs and employment along with population growth and housing would occur around key growth centers.

65 percent of our region's population around these key Transit corridors and stations, along with 75 percent of our employment growth.

For the first time, we set that as a goal for the region.

So let's think about some of these places where we have jobs that are identified as regional growth centers.

You know, we moved to the region, my family, in the early 1990s.

Think about what Bellevue looked like or Southlake Union in the early 1990s.

Completely different than what they are today.

That was intentional.

We set a focus on places like downtown Bellevue, Southlake Union, along with dozens of other centers in the region of places where we want to target growth.

And it's really responded.

At the same time, places like the Port of Tacoma and Payne Field, which are identified as industrial centers, along with Soto, we've done a really fantastic job in terms of preserving the industrial footprint of these incredibly critical job centers.

And we connect with transportation.

So, again, that's the linkage with the regional transportation plan with the Vision 2050 is having the vision where we want growth to go and then connecting the right transit investments to those key places that will be accommodating growth.

And if you do an overlay of where our regional growth centers are in the region, which is the map on the left, all those dots, these are the places in the region that are going to accept the highest proportion of jobs and population growth in the region.

And then if you move over to the right where we're mapping out our key transit corridors, you see how linked they are.

That is on purpose and that is by design.

So that's very much connecting how transportation and land use are very seamlessly integrated here in the Puget Sound region.

And the results speak for themselves.

We've drastically reduced sprawl since adoption of the Growth Management Act back in 1991, about 30 percent.

The growth was happening outside of the urban growth area and outside of our city limits.

Today, virtually, well, in King County, virtually all the growth is happening within the urban growth boundary.

And on a regional basis, we're up to 97 percent of growth happening within the urban growth boundary, a dramatic transformation in terms of reducing sprawl.

And we're seeing changes in the city of Seattle.

Since 1990, the city's population has absolutely boomed.

We've reversed the trend of population loss in the city of Seattle.

300,000 residents have joined the city of Seattle since 1990, a pretty dramatic figure.

And if you compare the city of Seattle to other similar cities that have strong tech economies on the waterfront, Boston and San Francisco, Obviously come up.

These are cities that can't grow out.

They have to grow up.

From 1960 to 1990, all three of these cities have very similar growth trajectories in terms of population being lost.

But really, while all three of these cities have grown since 1990, Seattle's growth is off the charts compared to Boston and San Francisco.

About 100,000 people have been added to Boston and San Francisco since 1990, 300,000 people in the city of Seattle, so three times the growth.

Think what that means in terms of being able to address the housing challenges that we have as a region.

So let's shift to transportation.

I set you up with a really strong land use focus because I think it's really important to have the notion of the conference of planning that the city's going through as we speak tied to what's important as part of this next transportation plan.

But let me first start with what a regional transportation plan is.

First, as a metropolitan planning organization and as a region, Over 50,000 residents were required under federal law every four years to adopt a regional transportation plan.

We have to adopt a regional transportation plan every four years.

It has to have the minimum of a 20-year planning horizon.

We have to have Assumptions in terms of revenue that we can forecast, whether it's current law revenue, revenue that's already on the books that we're using for transportation, or the potential to secure new revenue sources over that 20-plus planning horizon.

If we do not have a regional transportation plan for the region, we cannot unlock the door and tap into accessing all the critical federal transportation funds that the region counts on.

My agency alone distributes every two years over $600 million of transportation funding.

But, you know, think of a TIFI alone or FTA grants or other key grants that the City of Seattle competes for on a federal basis.

We have to have this regional transportation plan to unlock the door to that federal funding of all sorts.

And we have to have projects to be able to access that federal funding.

Those projects have to be identified in our regional transportation plan.

So that really gives you a sense of the close connection between the work that my staff does with all of our member governments, whether they be cities, counties, transit agencies, or other partners.

So in our current transportation plan that we adopted last time in 2022, with a planning horizon out to 2050, it's a big plan, $300 billion over 28 years.

But it's a big number.

But if you take a step back and look at what's in the plan, half of the investments in the plan, over half, 56 percent, is about maintaining what we already have.

And I know that really resonates with this committee that has a strong focus on maintaining the city's infrastructure, whether they be bridges or important asphalt overlays.

In terms of capacity improvements, we have a very transit-focused regional transportation plan.

Seventy percent of the dollars to be able to provide capacity expansion in the Puget Sound region, It's tied to transit projects of all types.

Again, very different from what you see from other regions where you'll have a much more road-centric or highway-centric plan.

And good news to report, when we adopted this plan in 2022, 84 percent of the plan was fully funded by current law revenue, so meaning over the next 28 years, we only needed to secure 16 percent of the $300 billion total.

Again, in my career in public service, that was the highest percentage of the plan being funded by our current law revenue that we've experienced in a while, and that really is a measure of The successes from Sound Transit 3 to local transit measures to action by the state to secure investments.

This would build out 36 bus rapid transit routes and corridors in the region, 10 passenger-only ferry routes, and 116 miles of light rail just as examples of key projects.

What's included in the plan?

Projects of all types, city streets, county roads, regional transit, From sound transit, local transit projects, our state ferries, highways, you know, other key projects, you know, that are needed on a regional basis.

I bring this up because there's some key elements of our transportation system that aren't included in our plan.

So the way to maybe really think about it basically is if you can think of a project that can be funded by the Federal Highway or Federal Transit Administration, that's all those projects that I just outlined, that's in our plan.

If there's projects that are related Let's say to SeaTac International Airport that are FAA-related projects.

Those aren't in our plan.

Similarly, Federal Rail Administration projects.

While we talk about airports and inner-city rail, our Amtrak Cascades service, we don't have specific requirements to have FAA and FRA-related projects and assumptions of revenue in our plan.

We obviously coordinate with our airports and with the Amtrak Cascades on priorities, but we don't have that level of detail that's needed.

And when we adopted our plan in 2022, we really had a focus on putting an exclamation point on new priorities for the region.

Safety, equity, climate, transit access, along with providing a much stronger robust inventory of our transportation system were all priorities.

These are priorities for this council committee as well and for the City of Seattle.

First was safety.

We really identified safety as a crisis in our region.

We were absolutely and continue to be headed in the wrong direction in terms of the number of serious accidents and deaths on our roadways.

We convened as an action item from our current plan.

A safety summit for the region for the first time in June of 2023, bringing together stakeholders.

One of the action items identified in our plan was the development of a regional safety action plan.

We also have over 20 jurisdictions in the region, similar to the work done by the City of Seattle, that have gone out and developed their own local safety action plans to really be specific about how we can turn the tide against serious accidents and deaths on our roadways.

This previous May, we adopted at our General Assembly meeting for the first time the Region Safety Action Plan, really providing a North Star for what we want to focus on in terms of turning the tide on deaths and accidents, serious accidents on our roadways.

We've leaned into equity.

For the $600 million of transportation funding we make available to our region, we move forward with an equity pilot that helps us think of innovative ways to improve equity as part of our project selection process.

That's going to inform future project selection processes and, I think, a big element We've learned a lot in terms of how to address equity.

We continue to lean in on climate, oftentimes in close partnership with the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency.

With an important project to note, our climate pollution reduction grant program, which has brought together many regional partners.

And then just wrapping up transit access.

You know, I led with when we adopted our transportation plan in 2022 and when we adopted Vision 2050 two years prior, we had just adopted a few years earlier Sound Transit 3, along with a number of of transit measures across the region.

So really thinking about how we get the most out of these transit investments, I think what we've discovered with our data and analysis is oftentimes the best way to get people to ride more transit may not be the frequency of transit, but getting better access to those last mile connections.

And of course, the easiest way to have really great access to transit is to build a lot of housing and jobs.

In very close proximity to our transit centers and corridors.

But the second way is to really think about those last mile connections, whether they be improved sidewalks, biking options, or other modes to be able to get people to access our transit centers.

Let me skip ahead and jump into where we're at right now.

So again, every four years, I know it feels like we're always planning at PSRC.

That's the federal government's fault for making us update these plans every four years.

So we are in the middle of our analysis and draft plan development for our next transportation plan.

So we'll adopt our next transportation plan in 2026. The planning horizon continues to be out to 2050. How is this plan going to be different?

What are some key elements?

Well, I mentioned a really critical one from our member governments just a moment ago, and that is the adoption of conference of plans.

So we're working with all of our local governments as city and county conference of plans are being updated, taking all those projects that are being identified in your conference of plans, along with updated forecasts in terms of costs and revenues, and incorporating that into our next A transportation plan.

I think that's probably one of the biggest, most fundamental ways.

Think of this next regional transportation plan as one of the first dominoes identifying how we implement our collective comprehensive plans in the region.

Really important work going on across the region as we develop this.

We've asked our board and we've asked Councilmember Sock and Councilmember Kettle Who serve on the Transportation Policy Board to give us feedback on priorities.

You'll see that a lot of the priorities that we heard from our board members on are the same priorities that we've been leaning into.

Safety, climate, transit, equity.

Ferries has popped up much higher than it was four years ago, and we've been doing a lot of proactive work at PSRC.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Is our revenue assumptions are really a critical piece for how we implement this plan.

And I wanted to especially flag this for the city.

News that's not positive to report is we've actually lost traction a little bit in terms of our forecasts for current law revenues versus our funding gap.

You'll recall that when we adopted our plan, In 2022, we only had a 16 percent funding gap.

Well, that funding gap now is 21 percent.

We all are familiar with the cost escalation from projects of all types.

That's being reflected in our plan.

You know, the other challenge that we have is thinking about how do we fill that gap.

We had some very aggressive assumptions in our 2022 transportation plan in terms of The level and the flexibility for a potential road user charge in the region.

We had assumptions that were significantly higher in terms of revenue levels and what state legislative leaders so far have showed an appetite for.

I think the other element of the road user charge, just to be, you know, very clear about it, is we're seeing much more reticence from state legislative leaders in terms of providing flexibility for that road user charge To either go to local projects, whether it be city streets or county roads, and really critically for us in the Puget Sound region to transit.

So that's going to be a key area and topic of consideration for our board as we develop this next transportation plan.

What our revenue assumptions are and, you know, what we should be prioritizing together to move forward.

A couple things that I would just note when we look at these funding gaps.

First, I want to be clear about one thing.

The way that we analyze and incorporate assumptions for sound transit in our plan, this is a 2050 regional transit plan.

So Councilmember Strauss, I'm thinking about you in particular.

We're keenly aware of the financial pressures that Sound Transit is under to deliver the program.

Our assumption so far is that we'd be able to complete the Sound Transit program by 2050. Obviously, a lot of the projects have much sooner time horizons that have enormous pressure, but as we work with Sound Transit, if there needs to be potential variations in terms of our assumptions, we'll work together on what that might look like.

But the key thing I wanted to note is, for the first time, By far, the largest revenue gap in our transportation plan.

It is not state highways.

It is not actually our transit system.

It's actually city streets and roadways.

And I think that story that I shared at the beginning of the enormous amount of growth that we've seen in the city of Seattle and the fact that cities across the Puget Sound region are growing up and not growing out What this means is that our cities in particular have enormous pressures to think about how you reimagine and rebuild your transportation system in a way that works for a much more urban environment.

You know, one example to think of is the Spring District in Bellevue.

We've all been on East Link.

The Spring District pop up right along our light rail corridor.

But, you know, think about what was there just a few years ago.

It was a warehouse district.

We had a Coca-Cola distribution plan for the region base there.

We had a large Safeway warehouse.

You have to, for the City of Bellevue, no different than a lot of the work that the City of Seattle or City of Linwood or Tacoma are doing as we speak, along with safety and equity and climate, all your priorities, you're having to reimagine a neighborhood like that.

And convert what had been two-lane roads for trucks.

Think about how you rebuild that entire transportation system to work for people and neighborhoods.

That's expensive, and that's what we're seeing reflect in our assumptions.

So with that, I know I covered a lot.

I threw a lot at you.

I wanted to be able to keep enough time open for questions and conversation.

I'm happy to go back to any of the earlier slides, but just really grateful for this opportunity to brief the committee, really grateful for the work and the involvement by members of the council along with your staff, and look forward to any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Executive Director Brown, really appreciate this presentation here.

Very insightful.

Colleagues, I'm going to open it up to questions, comments from you all in just a moment.

Again, just want to say thank our guest presenter today.

I'll note that Executive Director Brown is a former elected official, having served, I think, Kitsap County Commissioner for a few terms.

So we're really excited to have him at the helm there of PSRC.

In any event, colleagues, I welcome any questions, comments from any of you all.

And I note that, pardon in advance, Council Member Kettle, I know this was way more than a refresher for you and I, but important stuff.

Colleagues, questions, comments?

All right, go ahead.

Council Member Kettle never disappoints.

Go ahead, floor's yours.

Michael Brown, All right, thank you chair soccer director brown really want to thank you for joining us today, I think it's really important.

Michael Brown, For the communities to get baseline and your presentation went a long way to do that and.

And conversely, I think it's good to, you know, hear public comment.

Clearly, Sound Transit, KC Metro, you know, partnerships and some of those issues that come up, you know, and you probably hear from different areas, but it's always good for us as elected leaders or Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Committees, commissions, whatever.

We all have a number of them.

And I really like the Puget Sound Regional Council because it is organized, it is disciplined, and it's focused on a product.

It's got a very strong staff.

And so thank you to your staff as well.

And it gets from A to B with some major dollars, some major plans.

And so I just wanted to thank you for that.

And it's really an It's a kind of a benchmark.

Yesterday in our council meeting, we were, I was talking related to the budget.

I was talking about the need for Seattle housing plan.

And part of the reason why I've been asking for the Seattle housing investment plan is because of the experience of watching the PSRC, you know, this, this transportation plan every four years in terms of the PSRC angle, but then also what we did here locally Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

I suspect not, but the bottom line is the combination sets a great example and something that I like to replicate in other areas.

And so I just wanted to say thank you for leading by example, Director Brown.

Thank you, Chair.

Absolutely.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Rankin, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here, Executive Director Brown.

I know when I was with the Sound Cities Association years ago and we were working on 2050, it was certainly a time, and it's always impressive to see the way PSRC brings together and really champions regional collaboration.

So I want to commend you for your work and thank you for it, and thank you again for being here in committee today.

I have just a couple of questions, maybe putting on my hat as sustainability chair, a question about expanding on the climate element as outlined.

I know in 2022, we adopted an RTP that does not necessarily meet our climate goals, and we're now in an environment where the federal government is Attacking things that are really bedrock to even that plan that we adopted.

So this climate element is deeply important.

What is currently happening now with those elements?

Yeah, excellent question.

Climate continues to be one of our fundamental priorities for the region.

And a challenge when we develop our transportation plan Is thinking about which levers we have to be able to control and make an impact on climate.

We're doing some things exceptionally well as a region compared to national peers.

Number one with land use, planning a compact built environment.

We know we have a pretty suburban built environment in the region today.

But think of the region today, four and a half million people, and by 2050, 5.8 million.

Those residents are going to be in our urban core.

The City of Seattle, the last five years alone, in terms of absolute population growth, has grown faster with more people than Pierce County and Snohomish County combined.

Let me repeat that.

Two counties that are 1.8 million people, so nearly twice Well, twice the population in the city of Seattle are growing slower than the city alone.

So that's the best thing we can do for climate is a compact environment.

And the second best thing we can do is make sure we have really great transit and biking and walking options so people don't have to jump in their cars.

The areas where it gets a little bit more challenging for us Is we've looked at the road user charge as a potential lever to be able to encourage folks to lean into transit and non-motorized options.

So far, what we've seen is the legislature has been much more reticent to be able to provide a robust road user charge that can allow us to really change travel behaviors.

So we then have to look at what else can we do in the toolbox of options.

And what we discovered after we adopted our previous transportation plan through a lot of analysis and working with experts is that that last-mile connectivity transit access Is really a next key lever that we can really drive together.

So I think sometimes when we're building big, expensive transit projects, we go to the celebration for the Redmond opening.

We're all going to be at the Federal Way opening.

We're all at the Linwood opening.

Those are amazing, exceptional projects.

But we should probably be thinking about how to celebrate that last mile sidewalk project or that bike lane to get people to those connections.

You know, that probably doesn't bring out hundreds or thousands of people to the ribbon cutting, but those projects are really critical.

So I think we're trying to identify ways to be able, you know, to highlight some of those key actions that our member governments can make.

I think the last thing that I would just say is these regional plans, we update as the councils will wear every four years.

So we're going to have a snapshot of where we're at.

And I think it gives us an opportunity to understand, are we making progress to our climate goals or are we falling behind?

And I think that's the best opportunity in this next transportation plan, is really understanding, again, using the data and analysis to inform us, are we keeping pace with where we want to go in the coming years, or are we falling behind?

And if we're falling behind, then we need to develop collective action to be able to address it.

The limitation we have with our plan is we're not the implementers.

We're a planning agency.

I think where we can help you and our other elected officials in the region that are passionate about climate is identifying that progress, identifying levers that we can bring to bear, and trying to develop consensus on what do we do next.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So just to repeat back to you hearing, when you say compact environment, I'm hearing more housing in the city of Seattle.

Absolutely.

Fabulous.

Transit, that last-mile connectivity.

More housing anywhere we're building transit, I would say.

And, you know, think of a community like Linwood.

When I started at PSRC as executive director, Linwood really struggled to see housing being built in their center.

Of course, this was years from when Linwood Link opened.

We're really seeing a transformation there, and it's going to continue to transform.

So it's not just within the city.

It's in some of our suburban communities that have done a great job stepping up to growth.

In a plan, coordinated way around these transit investments.

Absolutely.

Thank you for that.

And as a follow-up to this, understanding that one of the things you noted was that what we will see for the 2026 update is largely incorporation of comprehensive plans.

My understanding, and I'm wondering, you know, are you anticipating this 2026 plan to be kind of a major update?

Would you define it that way?

Absolutely.

So the clear direction we received from our board after we adopted the plan in 2022 was to commence with a major update.

So what we're going to see is a new baseline of projects and priorities that come from our local governments, that come directly from your conference of plans.

That's one element.

The other element that I would point to is we have the opportunity to really have a clean slate approach to the capacity projects from Washington State and from our highway system that have been lingering in our plan for a long time.

So what we recently presented to the board, not to get ahead of Councilmember Sock and Kettle, who are there voicing their opinions, but we presented three options to the board as part of cleaning up the capacity list for projects in the region.

Number one is if a project doesn't have any funding currently dedicated to any phase of the project, removing those projects.

Number two, if a project is not to commence until After 2040, removing those projects as well.

And then the third option was to remove capacity projects that score low in terms of our project prioritization process.

So the board will be going through the process over the next few months to give us staff direction in terms of which one of those options we move forward with.

And one option would be to do all three.

So hypothetically, council member, an action And a direction that the Transportation Policy Board could give to my staff would be to say, for city projects and county projects and transit projects, let's provide more flexibility to keep those projects in our capacity list, because cities, counties, transit agencies, they've updated their plans.

These are their priorities.

Our highway investment list, our highway capacity list, remove all three sets of those projects.

So if a highway project is not underway, if there's no funding currently associated with a project, if it's not to even begin until after 2040, and if it scores low, In relation to Vision 2050, remove it completely from our list.

So I think that's a really big opportunity for this plan to make it a major update.

It's going to depend on the guidance from the Transportation Policy Board in terms of how bold the Policy Board wants to be, but we're opening it up And giving every opportunity to our board members to give clear direction on what you want this plan to look like.

And not simply keeping projects in the plan that have been there for a long time because they've just been in the plan for a long time, but really having a clean slate approach.

Thank you for that.

And my last question is if we could go back just two slides to this fabulous table highlighting available revenues and proposed expenditures.

Thank you for providing this.

This provides a lot of clarity and I have some follow-ups.

Do you have a breakdown or understanding of where the gap money could come from?

And do we know of that what's viable and what happens if we don't get it?

Yeah, great question.

So if you look at the new revenue table right now, you see all zeros.

So if you would have looked at our current transportation plan, the largest new revenue source that was assumed was a road user charge.

So just a little background for the committee and for the public watching this meeting.

What we heard from legislative leaders this past session is that they were Some legislative leaders were comfortable pursuing a road user charge that was a gas tax replacement, roughly 2.4 cents per mile, and that would be limited for roadway and highway purposes.

So none of those funds could go to transit purposes.

What we had assumed in our plan was, number one, a much higher rate, an off-peak rate of 5 cents per mile, and a peak rate of 10 cents per mile, which would have created billions more in terms of funding for the region.

The second assumption that we had in our current plan is a flexible use of those revenues, being able to plug the hole for our transit partners, being able to fund non-motorized investments.

Being able to do a lot of things that the state is so far very reticent to move forward with.

So what we need to work together on as part of developing this plan is do we keep our assumptions from 2022 that currently seem pretty politically challenging from what we're hearing from legislative leaders, or do we pivot in a different direction?

What the data absolutely shows is the biggest need in terms of percentage and dollar amounts Is funding for our city streets and roadway improvements in our urban cores to accommodate growth.

And number two, transit service.

So what would be really helpful is strong coordination with the City of Seattle in terms of thinking of what type of revenue tools would work for the city and how do we go about it.

Councilmember, just a follow-up, and perhaps planting a seed on one potential, would be thinking of if the state continues to move down this path of limiting the road user charge at 2.4 cents per mile and only for roadway purposes, two policy questions come up that we could incorporate into our plan.

Number one, a requirement that those funds just don't go to state projects, that there's a split with local government.

Number two, the potential that for state investments, that those funds be dedicated to preservation, maintenance, and safety.

Those are a couple policy options.

And then beyond that, if that is the baseline that the state is looking to move forward with 2.4 cents per mile on a statewide basis, I think we have the opportunity as a region to think about, do we ask for some regional or local options beyond that 2.4 cents per mile?

Remember, we've done this for other needs in the central Puget Sound region.

We've asked for authority to go beyond the baseline, because certainly the growth we're experiencing in our region is completely different than what we're seeing in other parts of Washington State.

So we could ask for some type of road user charge add-on, however that may be incorporated, that could then go to purposes identified in our plan of priority.

And I think where I would really kind of steer You know, for conversation would be the enormous need for city streets and local transit.

But we need to collaborate and work together on what those new revenue tools could be.

It's not unusual that state legislative leaders do not have as aggressive of an appetite at times as what our needs are in the central Puget Sound region.

That's why we've asked for authorization for all of our transit packages and going beyond what other parts of the state are willing to fund.

You know, we're probably back at that place again where we need some different tools than what would work for the state as a whole.

I hope that's helpful.

Yes.

Thank you, Executive Director Brown.

That was tremendously instructive.

Really appreciate it.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Thank you, Councilmember Rankin.

Very insightful dialogue there.

I note that during one of our earlier council briefings, I shared with my colleagues our conversation with State Senator Marco Lias.

I asked about new revenue options, particularly with respect to this upcoming session next year, the short session.

And understandably so, as you sort of alluded to, there is There appears to be somewhat limited appetite for new revenue and the things that potentially could be on the table we learned include tweaks around the edges to the transportation benefit district.

So I'm gonna be working, already works are already underway with our Seattle Department of Transportation.

OIR to look at options to inform our policy approach for this coming legislative session as a city.

But that work continues.

So final question.

Well, I'll see pause for a moment.

If any other colleagues have any comments, questions, go ahead.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Director, great to see you again today.

I don't really have many questions for you, but I just really appreciate how you've tied the growth that our region has experienced through transit to where we are today.

As we're taking up the comp plan and other items about creating density in our city, it is important to remember where we've come from.

Having grown up in the city, I remember the 1990s of what felt like you knew every...

You're not that old.

You felt like you knew every single person in the city because you saw them at some point along the day, right?

I mean, throughout the year you would run into people and, you know, whether or not you actually had a relationship with them, it really felt like we were a small town.

And that's not the case today.

Just looking at those numbers that you had between the city of Seattle and the city of San Francisco, Maybe we can pull those slides back up, actually.

Sorry.

Just showing the amount of growth that we have had between 1960 and 1990, which was that we lost population, as did San Francisco, but they were already at 7,500.

And then in the last 15, 20 years, 30 years, I guess it is, they only grew another 100,000, so that's not a lot of growth for them.

Probably explains why San Francisco has gotten so much more expensive.

Seattle has also become more expensive, less so to that degree because the amount of density that we've included in our city.

So looking at those numbers, it shows us the growing pains that we've experienced.

And I don't know if these numbers are still accurate, but a few years ago, it cost an average of $2,000 to move in the city of Seattle from paying for first, last, and all of the other expenses that are associated with moving.

However, in Chicago, it was only $500 average to move.

And it gets back to what you were saying about Linwood, the connectivity of transit to other places that we can build housing.

The reason Chicago, you're able to have an average moving cost of only $500 is because As the entire city is connected with transit, so that as one neighborhood is becoming more expensive to live in, there's still another neighborhood that you can still get to your work, you can get to your job, you can see your family, you can see your friends, that is still an affordable place to live.

So while Seattle absolutely needs to take on more density so that we don't become what San Francisco is, we also need to expand our reach so that we can become more like Chicago in the way that We're able to navigate throughout this community, throughout this region, Still maintain our livelihoods no matter where we are in our life and remain connected.

It's very different than the 1990s.

There's absolutely some things that I love and there's some things that I miss, but the only constant life is change and if you're not growing, you're shrinking.

So I think we've got a good problem on our hands, but it's one for us to solve because without your work connecting land use, transit, And our region across multiple jurisdictions, I think we'd be in a lot of trouble.

And I guess that's where I'll leave it with.

And if you want to share anything back, the PSRC is really important because you are connecting communities that are We're not required to work together unless by you, right?

Each municipality has its own rules, and I think that that's contributed to some of the challenges that we have, and it's really good to have an organization such as yourself bringing us together.

Not a question, very long statement, but if you'd like to add anything to that, welcome your opinions.

No, I just appreciate your support, and I think we have a lot to be proud of, but you're absolutely right, more work to do together.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, council member Strauss.

I will note, this is a great slide because, and thank you council member Strauss for your comments there.

I'll pile on with my own two cents.

I note that, so, 816,000 per the latest U.S.

Census estimates for the city's population, which my understanding reflects a fairly sizable bump from a trend perspective over the last couple reporting years, and also my understanding is that if current trends Hold over the next few years, we are expected to exceed and eclipse the city of San Francisco and overall population, which would in and of itself be a very amazing thing.

City of San Francisco, I lived there for law school.

A lot of people don't understand.

It's actually the most, well, after the city of New York, it's the second densest city in America.

And it's a seven by seven, like 49 square miles.

It's on a peninsula.

There's nowhere else to grow out.

So it's very, very dense.

Here in Seattle, the landmass is almost double, I think 84 square miles, something along those lines.

But through HB 1110, Compliance legislation and our own comp plan process that we're going through right now, we're going to get more dense and our population will, again, if current trends hold, policy trends hold, will likely exceed the city of San Francisco, which, again, I think would be very remarkable.

All right.

Most of my other questions were answered and in the interest of time, and I also know how to get ahold of you, Executive Director Brown.

So before we close out, let me just ask about, so we understand, and I think Council Member Strauss teed up in a good manner, good way, There's a tight integration between growth management, land use policy, and transportation policy, and tightly integrated there.

Can you talk about some of the recent work to land a housing research center at the University of Washington?

Executive board primarily has been driving on that, but also one of the subservient boards that I don't sit on.

But can you talk a little bit more?

That's pretty cool, pretty exciting.

Absolutely.

Thanks for bringing it up.

You know, I've been involved with our agency as both board member and executive director.

Now this is my 19th year, and if I go back to when I started There was a perspective from our board that housing was a local government issue, best handled just jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and that there was really strong direction back then for PSRC not to really be involved regionally.

We've seen, because of the affordability crisis, That's a complete 180. Our board is absolutely focused on ways that through our regional planning work and our data that we can support collective efforts to confront this housing challenge.

So one of the things that we've done in the last few sessions is provide data and analysis to the legislature.

It's been referenced a few housing bills that have come up over the past few sessions, and we've had legislators reach out to us to try to understand as they've developed and drafted housing legislation, what would it mean for the region?

Well, we've tried to be responsive, but what we discovered along the way is, number one, our data and analysis is only for the central Puget Sound region, so for King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties.

So we couldn't provide any definitive data for how these housing bills, what the impact would be in the Tri-Cities or Spokane or Bellingham.

The second is we realized it was very difficult to be responsive in a short timeline to the needs of legislators who have a bill and then next week there's a committee hearing.

So we're not really organized or structured at PSRC to respond quite that quickly.

So we began to look at, are there better models across the country?

And one of the things that we came across was the fact that in a number of states, there are housing research centers that are nested at major universities.

So two good examples would be the Turner Center at UC Berkeley, which is only about a decade old.

It's actually, you know, relatively new in the case of many of these centers.

Or the Furman Center at NYU that do really great work to provide housing analysis, research, and data to inform policymakers and the public on both what trends are and where there could be opportunities to address housing affordability.

So we've been working with partners.

We've reached out to the University of Washington.

They love the idea of hosting the center at UW.

So we had a convening last year bringing together many parties and partners to talk about this issue, get input, get insights.

We had a legislative request for a modest amount of funding, which this was the most challenging year to try to get funding for something new in Olympia this year, as we all know.

So we came up a little short in terms of securing direct funding from the state, but UW's leadership is off to the races to establish this center.

It will actually be known as the Housing Future Center at UW.

It'll be nested at the College of Build Environments with strong collaboration with the Evans School of Public Policy.

And we're off raising money and developing partnerships to make this center a reality.

So more to come on it.

I think along with really great research and analysis and data, I think the other opportunity that the Housing Future Center is focused on is helping to create that next generation of housing leaders, whether they work in the nonprofit space or they work in government Or they're in the private sector, that next generation of folks who really are passionate about housing as being the core of their careers, which is different than real estate.

And, you know, having that housing focus is, you know, brings online a lot of different dimensions.

So good work to come.

And I hope if I'm here giving you a presentation a year from now, we'll have some even better updates on the launch of this center.

Excellent.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Appreciate it.

It's certainly a world-class leading university in the University of Washington, and I think it makes a lot of sense to house a world-class leading housing center there.

More to come in any event.

Unless my fellow committee members have any final questions, comments, I wanna thank you again, Mr. Brown, for your presentation today, your continued collaboration.

Love the partnership on the regional level and more to come.

Thank you for your time.

Awesome.

We will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 121026, an ordinance vacating the alley in Block 14, Josh C. Kinnear's addition to the City of Seattle and the North Rainier Hub Urban Village neighborhood, and accepting a property use and development agreement on the petition of Grand Street Commons LLC, now Grand Street Commons MBH LLLP, Clerk File 314459.

All right.

Thank you.

And it looks like our presenters have joined us at the table.

Once ready, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

And colleagues, you'll recall that this is the second time being before committee for this presentation.

I would love for our presenters to give us a quick refresher of this subject matter.

But in any event, please go ahead and introduce yourselves.

Liz Schwitson, Council Central Staff.

Beverly Barnett, Seattle Department of Transportation.

So good morning.

This is an ordinance that would grant the final approval to Grand Street Commons for an alley vacation in the North Rainier-Judkins Park neighborhood.

The alley vacation was first approved a number of years ago.

The project has been built.

They have met all of the conditions the council placed on the vacation and are ready to close out the project.

Very briefly, the alley to be vacated is located between Rainier Avenue South and 23rd Avenue South, just south of Grand Street.

It facilitated the development of a low-income housing project with 206 residential units as part of a three-block project that in total included 775 units with almost half of those units affordable.

The project includes a number of different public benefits, and Beverly's going to walk through them really briefly.

Yeah, good morning.

Every street and alley vacation is required to provide public benefits, and the Council's street vacation policies articulate the kinds of things the City Council would like to see, And it's intended to be a balance between what the public achieves and what the development achieves.

So we look at the scale of the project after the vacation and how much the vacation contributes to the development potential of the site.

So with this public benefit, I think this chart that we went over last time is really clear.

The Council always looks at the physical environment around the project, and we really focus on looking at achieving public spaces that speak to the community and the general public, not just the tenants or residents of the development.

And this included great public spaces.

The right-of-way was improved with The developer worked on a community-based art program that the art panels reflect the history of the community.

Also, I think another unusual element is the Cultural space agency partnership.

So within the building, there is a space provided for art showings, community-focused events, community-based activities, and I think those are unusual.

I think the balance on this public benefit is Very much on the public side.

I think everything that has been provided is really accessible to the public, really is very warm and inviting, and it's an area where there's a lot of development.

It's close to light rail, close to significant transit, and these spaces, I think, are really welcoming.

So overall, our task here is to ensure that the developer has complied and provided everything, and I think in many ways they kind of went the extra mile in making the public benefit really appear to be community-based and functions as community amenities.

So we think everything is done.

It's ready to go.

And I think overall is a very good example of real partnership between the city housing, the support of the Seattle City Council in granting the vacation, and their work with us on public benefit and art programs.

And the design commission was very engaged with them through all of this.

So it's a good mix of everything, I think.

So adoption of Council Bill 121026 would facilitate the transfer of ownership of the alley to Mount Baker Housing, who's the owner of the building on the block, and would approve a property use and development agreement that ensures the long-term maintenance of the plaza and other public benefit features.

All right.

Thank you.

I will first see if any of my colleagues have any questions or comments.

On this item, Council Member Strauss, go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

Beverly, always great to see you, but Lish, you have literally been doing everything for the last two weeks.

Thank you for continuing your work on everything under the sun.

Chair, I feel very comfortable with this project, having seen it before.

I think it's done great things.

This looks great to me.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Lish for all of his work.

Thank you.

I too know Lisha's work, and it's been more than two weeks.

This process for comp plan and transportation, I know you're referring to the final stretch, the extended stretch effort, the last couple weeks in particular, but yeah, definitely appreciate The efforts of Lish, our central staff, all of our central staff, including Cal, who's coming up in a moment for the next few agenda items.

So, all right, hearing and seeing no further questions or comments.

Move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121026. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121026. Are there any further comments?

Hearing and seeing none on the screen.

Nope.

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass Council Bill 121026.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Rink.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Saka.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

All right.

The motion carries.

Congratulations on this big milestone and the committee recommendation that the council pass Council Bill 121026 will be sent to the August 12th, 2025 City Council meeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now move on to agenda item numbers three through eight of business.

Will the clerk please read items three through eight into the record?

The short titles, please.

And bear with me, Ollie, as I read through these.

Agenda items three through eight.

Agenda item three.

Council Bill 121016, an ordinance relating to the Northeast 130th Street and Northeast 125th Street Mobility and Safety Project, authorizing the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation to acquire, accept, and record, on behalf of the City of Seattle, a deed for street purposes from Judas Strader Enriquez, situated in Track 60, Country Home Platte, Division 1. Agenda Item 4, Council Bill 121017, an ordinance accepting various deeds for alley or street purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right of ways, placing the real property conveyed by said deed under the jurisdiction of the Seattle Department of Transportation and ratifying and confirming prior acts.

Agenda Item 5, Council Bill 121018, an ordinance accepting 25 limited purpose easements for public sidewalks, alley turnaround, and signal pole purposes, placing the real property conveyed by such easements under the jurisdiction of the Seattle Department of Transportation and ratifying confirming prior acts.

Agenda Item 6, Council Bill 121019, an ordinance accepting various deeds for street or alley purposes, laying off, opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right-of-way Placing the real property conveyed by said deeds under the jurisdiction of the Seattle Department of Transportation and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Agenda Item 7, Council Bill 121020, an ordinance accepting 25 limited purpose easements for public sidewalk, alley turnaround, street turnaround, and signal pole purposes.

Placing the real property conveyed by such easements under the jurisdiction of the Seattle Department of Transportation and ratifying and confirming Certain prior acts.

Agenda Item 8, Council Bill 121-021.

An ordinance accepting various deeds for street or alley purposes, laying off opening, widening, extending, and establishing portions of right-of-way, placing the real property conveyed by said deeds under the jurisdiction of the Seattle Department of Transportation, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

All right.

Well, let me...

Pour some water for our committee clerk.

You might be out of breath after that one.

All right.

Thank you for bearing with us, and thank you, presenters, for joining us at the table.

Please do introduce yourselves, and whence ready, begin your presentations.

Thank you, Council Member Bissaka.

Bill LaBoard, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Denny Nguyen, Seattle Department of Transportation.

And Calvin Chow with Council Central Staff.

Sorry.

There we go.

So I'm going to talk about this big package of property legislation in two groups.

The first group is Council Bills 121017 through 121021. These are five packages of dedication ordinances.

The background here is that under the city charter, well, First, private development often is required under the land use code to set aside property to the city for purposes of sidewalks, streets, or alleys.

And then the charter grants the city council with the responsibility to approve those property transactions and all property and right-of-way decisions executed by the city.

And these transactions from private development are acquired from property owners by SDOT, and once the property rights are recorded, SDOT creates and proposes a council bill to accept the deeds and easements as required under Article IV, Section 14 of the city charter, which as you know is the This is part of the charter that defines the responsibilities of the city council, and the subsection addresses ordinances related to property transactions and right-of-way decisions.

Just to underscore that, this is very much ministerial legislation.

The charter requires council action to accept property.

So these are slivers of property that are tied to regular development, private development.

About 125 separate parcels are infected here.

The deeds have already been recorded.

So this is the formal counsel action to accept those properties.

And as Cal noted, we package the bills into 25 property transactions per bill, and that's really for sake of efficiency.

Sometimes it takes a year or sometimes two to build up that many property transactions, but we try to package them together to save council time so that you're not going through 125 bills rather than five bills that the clerk has to read through.

And once the council approves and the ordinance is in effect, we can update the city's GIS layers, ensuring correct property decisions and right-of-way boundaries that are important for both private property transactions and city permitting systems.

The sixth bill is a little different.

It's actually related to an acquisition of property for a specific capital project.

This is a 130th, 125th safety project that Denny will talk a little bit more about in a second.

This involves, instead of 25 transactions per bill, this is one transaction, and it's a very small sliver of 70 square feet.

But it is something the city, when it acquires, needs to lay off as right-of-way and then record the deed as such, and that's what this bill would approve.

And I'm going to hand it over to Denny to talk a little bit about the project.

Awesome.

Thank you, Bill.

So the Northeast 130th and Northeast 125th safety mobility project is improving Northeast 130th and Northeast 125th A corridor into a multimodal connection for the Sound Transit Link Pinehurst Station at 130th Street.

We are approaching construction and are expected to open, or sorry, the light rail station is under construction currently and is expected to open next year in 2026. The project area is on Northeast 130th at First Avenue, going all the way to Fifth Avenue, and then we travel down Roosevelt Way Northeast from 130th to 10th Avenue, and then we get onto 125th, traveling all the way down to Lake City Way.

For the property acquisition details, on the aerial view that you can see on the right in the yellow box, the red triangle is the 72 square feet of acquisition that the project is obtaining for the project.

The city paid $6,500 for this property.

Some of the project elements for this project specifically to the acquisition is a shared use path that is a new street design for 1 30th that will help build a connection for the Sound Transit to the Sound Transit light rail.

There are also improved crossings, new street designs on 1 25th, traffic calming elements, curb protected bike lanes, Upgraded and new bus stops and a roundabout at 125th and Roosevelt Way.

And I mentioned the shared use path already.

And just to be clear, the transaction is only for that red triangle, that 72 square feet.

That's it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Laborde, Mr. Nguyen, Mr. Chao.

Mr. Chao, from a central staff perspective, can you reiterate the policy implications, if any, for us to consider here?

So, Councilmember, for the private development parcels, there is no policy choice, really.

That is just the outcome of private development activity.

In this particular case, while there is a much larger project in play, we are talking about a small back-of-sidewalk acquisition to help make some improvements at this corner intersection.

If the Council did not approve this, did not accept this acquisition, it may necessitate some redesign of the project for this particular location, but it is not really driving any broad policy choices for the project.

Thank you.

All right.

Yeah, this is...

About as routine business that comes before this committee, that could potentially come before this committee as possible.

And there's precedent for having this go to full council.

And there's also precedent for having it going more recently through committee.

But it is very important work.

And by charter, we are required to go through this process.

So here we are.

All right, colleagues.

Final questions, comments?

Looks like Councilmember Kettle.

Go ahead.

Floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Laborde and Gwen on your presentation.

I appreciate it.

And obviously, as Chair noted, this is, you know, we're moving forward and it's good to see the different pieces.

And one of the slides, the bullet noted that, you know, the Regarding, you know, the reasons why in a more general sense, it was like probably the third or fourth.

There it is.

Stop there, please.

Thank you.

These property dedications are used to widen the street or alley.

Can I ask a more general question, Mr. Laborde, regarding alleys?

Because this is one thing that I've been focusing on usually because I want to ensure that fire engines, ladder trucks can safely make it through our alleys.

And this kind of comes up within the comprehensive Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Can you speak to SDOTS?

What are you looking to do?

Big picture or is it like individual spot things or is there kind of a grander strategy in terms of a broader improvement of valleys to assist in logistics, SPU collects, public safety access?

I was just curious.

Thank you.

It's driven more than anything else by the land use code.

So it's really the development requirements for that particular private development.

Major replatting, like I think about some of the Hope Six projects where the older streets were completely refigured into newer streets and alleys were created where they might not have been in the past.

That was really driven by the MOP and or the underlying land use requirements.

So, Councilmember, I think there's, you know, in a lot of cases, these are smaller developments that are really, you know, dealt with through the permitting process, through Street Improvement Plan review, and so a lot of times it does be, it falls on the planner to sort of interpret the code for whatever the development proposal is to fit with the existing characteristics.

I think there are other situations where we are talking about, you know, major You know, renovations, larger sort of master project pieces, that typically would come through as separate legislation.

So that's not really necessarily what we're talking about here with these easements, but we do come across that type of legislation.

You know, potentially if we're doing a large, I understand there's some consideration for a large redevelopment housing around the Northgate light rail station at some time.

That's the type of legislation opportunity where you would see sort of major alleyway or major right-of-way policy implementation.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chow.

Sorry for not giving you a shout out when I called out the other names.

I apologize.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

And it's interesting, you know, given that a lot of times we're doing alley vacations, but I am one who's definitely in support of strengthening generally alleys and their ability to help serve our Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Awesome.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I'll take a quick check here to see if any of my other colleagues have any final questions or comments.

Hearing and seeing none.

I wanna explain a few things.

First, the structure of this anticipated vote.

We will likely vote on these bill in two tranches or packages, if you will.

The first item, or excuse me, the item number three first, followed by items four through eight.

Colleagues, because this particular deed was cited as a separate transaction from the other property legislation that we heard this morning, we'll be voting on this piece separately.

So again, items three through eight were already read into the record at one time.

So we will now move and vote.

On item three, first, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121016. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121016. Are there any further comments?

Hearing and seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to pass Council Bill 121016. Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Rink.

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice Chair Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Saka.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

All right.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass council bill 121016 will be sent to the August 12th, 2025 city council meeting.

Do any of my fellow committee members have any final questions or comments on council bills 121017 through 121021?

Hearing and seeing none.

On these bills, I am proposing that items four through eight be voted on together for expediency with one vote.

A member may choose to remove an item to vote on it separately.

Would any committee member like to remove an item for a separate vote?

Hearing and seeing no motions to do such.

So hearing no items removed, we will now proceed with voting on items four through eight.

I move that the committee recommend passage of council bills 121017 through 121021. Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend passage of council bills 121017 through 121021. Are there any final comments?

Hearing and seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll and recommended on the recommendation to pass council bills 1-2-1-0-1-7 through 1-2-1-0-2-1.

Council member Kettle.

Aye.

Council member Rink.

Yes.

Council member Strauss.

Yes.

Vice chair Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Saka.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

All right.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the council pass council bills 121017 through 121021 will be sent to the August 12th, 2025 city council meeting.

Awesome.

We have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

Our next committee meeting will be on September 2nd at 9.30 AM.

Is there any final business to come before the committee before we adjourn today?

Hearing and seeing none.

No further business come before the committee.

We are adjourned.

It is 10 59 AM.