Select Budget Committee Session I 9/30/25

Good morning.

The September 30th, 2025 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

And can we have decorum in the...

Good morning.

Good morning.

The meeting has started.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember DiVetta.

Councilmember Sacca.

Morning, here.

Councilmember Solomon.

Here.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Present.

Councilmember Juarez.

Here.

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Councilmember Rink.

Present.

And Chair Strauss.

Present.

Eight, present.

Thank you.

Those not present will be excused until they arrive.

Good morning.

We have five presentations.

Let's start the morning.

It's great to have you all here today on time.

It's my father's birthday.

Happy birthday, dad.

We've got a quorum of folks here saying happy birthday.

With that, we have five presentations on the agenda today.

During our first session, we will have Office of Housing, Seattle Center, Office of Economic Development, and this afternoon, the Office of Arts and Culture, and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

and hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Colleagues, this brings us to our final day of department presentations and Director Eder, I'd like to confirm with you, we will be or have received the presentations from the departments that have not presented, is that correct?

Your mic's not hot today.

They've been received and they're posted for council staff online.

Fantastic.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, our next time coming together here on the dais is next Tuesday, October 7th, for our public hearing day.

As we're taking a note out of Councilmember Hollingsworth's book, we will start at 1 p.m.

with remote testimony.

5 p.m.

in person testimony.

We'll be sending out guidance that you all can share out with your newsletters and your residents shortly.

Then we will be moving into a meeting on the 8th where we may consider budget legislation that needs to go out of sync with all other 25 pieces of legislation.

followed by the week after, October 15th, the central staff presentations on their policy considerations.

Colleagues, I share this reminder of where we are in the budget process with you today because it is a good reminder that as we've seen these presentations from departments, amendment ideas have hopefully generated.

If you have not met with stakeholders in Council Member Waters' rule is that her stakeholders have to get her budget requests before August.

For the rest of us, This is our last week and next week will be the last time that we've got breathing room to check in with stakeholders about what budget requests are out there.

So that's an orientation of where we are.

The next time we will be here receiving presentations will be from central staff regarding their policy considerations.

I want to just take a moment to check to see if there's any questions.

I see Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Do I do this now to ask to be excused on Tuesday?

Can I be excused?

That is a good question for the clerk.

If it's from the Tuesday public hearing, you just need to make a request to the chair.

And you are so excused.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Council Member Waters.

And happy birthday to your dad.

Yeah.

Happy birthday, dad.

It's a good day.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to, will the clerk please read the first item into the record?

Office of Housing for briefing and discussion.

And we are joined by Director Michael Winkler Chin, Kelly Larson, Rebecca Guerra, and as always, Director Dan Eder and Director Ben Noble.

With that, I'm going to pass it over to you.

Take it away and we'll hold questions until the end and go from there.

I think in the interest of time, I'm going to turn it directly over to the Office of Housing who's going to begin their prepared presentation.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

We're pleased to be here this morning.

I'm Maiko with the Office of Housing, and here with me is Kelly Larson, our Director of Policy and Planning, and joining us remotely is Becky Guerra, our Director of Finance and Administration, who has been working with the City of Seattle for 18 years, so she's leading us through this process.

So first slide, please.

Okay, thank you very much.

So Mayor Bruce Harrell's budget prioritizes affordable housing investments.

In 2026, these resources are needed to achieve the Seattle Housing Levy unit production goals, support a stable affordable housing sector and workforce, and affirmatively further fair housing and advance our city's equity goals.

The city is making record investments in affordable housing as shown in this chart of adopted and proposed revenues from 2015 through 2026. Affordable housing has long been a priority for the city of Seattle.

Over the last decade, there's been a 550% increase in the Office of Housing's budget with the greatest escalation occurring in the last three years, primarily due to dedicated payroll expense tax revenues and the successful renewal of the Seattle housing levy.

Together with the mandatory housing affordability program and a variety of other sources, the city uses these resources for bold, effective and proven solutions to meet the scale and urgency of our housing.

Mayor Harrell's proposed budget includes investments of over $349 million for affordable housing.

This includes $344 million in the Office of Housing's budget, and then $5 million in Finance General.

As you see on the chart, we continue to operate without the general fund.

We have a proposed $137 million in payroll expense tax revenues.

And the other fund's row represents primarily the voter-approved seven-year housing levy, the mandatory housing affordability program, and then various federal, state, and local grants.

There is one change of significance in the 2026 proposed budget.

$5 million payroll expense tax will remain as a housing investment, but shift from OHS budget into finance general.

This funding is proposed to be used for an initial investment in the Northgate Commons project.

And shifting the finance general would allow for a direct intergovernmental transaction from the city to the Seattle Housing Authority for this project.

All other changes from the 2026 endorsed to the 2026 proposed are technical and minor.

But as a reminder, the 2026 endorsed budget included a council add to restore $3.4 million of payroll expense tax in homeownership capital.

This is maintained as originally intended in the 2026 proposed.

If it's okay, if I jump in, I just want to tie back to the overview presentation that I made on Thursday.

I referenced $349.5 million for the record level of investment in affordable housing.

My figure included that $5 million that you're hearing about here.

The Seattle Office of Housing's vision is that all people have a safe and affordable home.

The 2026 budget ensures that the Office of Housing will continue its core functions and services to achieve this vision.

First, you see the multifamily rental housing program, which is the largest part of our budget.

The Office of Housing supports the preservation and production of affordable rental housing through long-term loans to multifamily developers in Seattle.

All buildings that receive OH funding are monitored by our asset management team to ensure ongoing quality, health, and safety for those investments for 55 plus years.

This includes oversight of key operational and financial metrics.

Next, home ownership and home improvement programs.

The Office of Housing assists first-time home buyers in achieving their dream through our home ownership program.

And for existing income-qualified homeowners, we provide loans and grants for them to improve and maintain their homes through the Homewise Weatherization Program and Home Repair Program.

Finally, we have OH's leadership and administration services, which includes planning and policy, financing, and contracting units.

These staff and operating costs are needed for managing affordable housing programs such as mandatory housing affordability, MHA, and the multifamily tax exemption, MFTE, and for housing policy work led by the Office of Housing.

Okay, so I'd like to take a moment to address questions that my office receives about OH cash balance.

And I'm sharing this illustration that we used in a recent presentation to the Council's Committee on Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development.

This helps to explain the OH process for projects from the time the Office of Housing makes a funding award to when we legally commit funding in loan closings and onto project construction and the drawing down of funds.

What's important to note is that it can take three, four or more years from the time a project receives a funding award to the time it starts construction and billing.

OH tracks projects and all associated funding, not just the city funding, but other public and private financing as projects move through this process.

Okay, and this is a relatively new slide to the Office of Housing's slide deck.

This is, from our perspective, the stages of the housing development cycle, and it's a very high-level overview, showing how different phases of the process overlap from year to year.

We start with ANOFA, the Notification of Funding Availability, and then projects then are built, projects then open, and as they lease up, welcome new residents home and achieve final stage as all financing is closed out and converted to a permanent mortgage.

And this is our standard practice.

It's designed to be predictable and to achieve the most bang for our buck.

Every year we issue new funds for competition.

Projects require about six years to achieve full closeout and then we begin the cycle all over again.

and at any point in time, we're collecting new revenue, we're administering prior funds and all stages of the development process are underway at once.

So if you look at the 2025 column circled in red, you can see that the OH staff and our community partners are very busy.

We're working on every stage of this housing funding and development cycle at once, moving projects forward to the grand openings we all love to celebrate.

At Council's request, we provided a list of the current OH-funded projects along with data points for each of the projects, including project name and location, number of apartments and homes to be built, the amount of city commitment and the total project cost, anticipated timeline for when the project will spend city funds, and anticipated completion of the project.

This slide shows the developers and units that are currently in initial award phases working to secure funding from other public and private sources before OH legally obligates these funds.

OH policies enable the director to reduce or revoke funding under certain circumstances related to substantial project changes or delays.

Though this is very rare, it has occurred twice in the last few years.

You can see that OH has awarded funding that will create more than a thousand new rental homes and 143 permanently affordable for sale homes.

OH has awarded these funds, but developers are not able to spend city funds at this stage in our process.

This means our project sponsors are carrying all of that financial risk, having already expended hundreds of thousands of dollars for each project in pre-development costs, such as earnest money deposits, architectural and engineering fees, surveys, appraisals, and environmental review.

OH generally is the first investor in projects.

Developers can move to the next step of design and permitting with confidence once city financing is secured.

projects would not be as viable in the eyes of other funders and investors without this early investment from the City of Seattle.

OH staff are tenacious in working with other public funders to prioritize Seattle's projects as there are limited resources from other sources which we do not control.

So this slide shows projects with awards and city funding that have been encumbered or legally obligated through formal loan agreements.

This marks the time when project developers and owners secure all project financing so they can begin construction.

The organizations shown on this slide are delivering projects across the city, creating more than 3,700 rental apartment homes and 300 permanently affordable for sale homes.

These developments are in various stages that range from permitting to construction and leasing up with residents moving in before the final development phase that OH calls project closeout.

Drawing down all city funds is difficult, especially with multiple funders and investors involved.

OH staff provide ongoing support to our development partners, ensuring that all expenditures are properly documented and meet funder requirements.

With the mayor's priority in housing and corresponding growth of the Office of Housing budget, our services are maintained and the budget changes are technical in nature with minimal impact to external stakeholders.

The Office of Housing will continue to do our work as we have since our inception almost 40 years ago, but adjusting to the needs of the times to meet the moment.

We will continue to affirmatively further fair housing and advance the city's equity goals through the redevelopment of Lake City Community Center with Mercy Housing, the Mount Baker property with El Central De La Raza, the South Park Henderson Street site and Fort Lawton, and through the creation of Reparations Housing Fund to support the community's most impacted and at risk of displacement to remain rooted in place.

We will continue to achieve the Seattle Housing Levy unit production goals.

Creating new affordable homes is central to our city's success.

At the same time, we must pay attention to maintaining our assets and make investments to meet affordable housing needs across the city.

We will support our housing sector and workforce, consistent with what was approved by the levy, providing inflationary adjustments for providers receiving operating, maintenance, and services funding.

and we cannot ignore the serious challenges that affordable housing providers are facing in operating and maintaining stable properties and promoting a healthy and safe environment for their residents and their workforce.

The Office of Housing never does its work in isolation.

We'd like to acknowledge and thank Councilmembers Juarez and Solomon, our Housing and Human Services Committee Chairs, for your leadership and partnership with the Office of Housing to seek sustainable housing solutions.

Thanks for your interest in our office, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Director.

And Councilmember Juarez, would you like to kick us off?

If not, I've got a couple comments that I can share.

Fantastic.

Council Member Juarez is chair of the committee overseeing the department.

You are recognized.

Thank you.

I would like to defer to Council Member Salomon if he has anything and I can follow up after you.

Council Member Salomon.

I'm sorry.

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you've been kind of doing this since I've been gone.

So I was going to let you speak first, perhaps if that's okay, chair, and then I can follow up.

Yep.

Council Member Salomon.

All right.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I just appreciate the partnership that I've had with the Office of Housing and looking at the various things, you know, getting Lake City across the line was really key for me.

I was hoping that we could do more with regard to Fort Laudan in the time that I'm here.

But again, got a little bit of time on the calendar, so let's see what we can get done.

So with those opening remarks, just expressing my appreciation in working with you, I will now defer to the committee chair of Juarez on that.

Thank you, Councilman Solomon.

Thank you, Chair.

Two things.

First of all, I love slide seven.

I was looking at this morning and saying, this is how you do it.

This is a great PowerPoint because you've answered all the questions of where they're at in the development cycle, which if I'm a visual learner, I think I've said that before.

So when I can actually see what you've done from notice of the award to final that's phenomenal great to see but I have two questions teed up one was going back to when we talked about and I think I'm looking at my pages here on the the shifting of the funds on page four for Northgate Commons you have shifting five million so what is that is that shifting to that's not FAS on page four Those funds are moved to, I believe it is to FAS.

Okay, you have Finance General on the slide, so that's what I just assumed it was FAS.

Yeah, look at four.

It says shifted to Finance General.

I believe I misspoke.

So Finance General is where it sits.

We are planning on spending it.

It is not in a reserve.

It is appropriated in Finance General so that it can be spent on the Northgate Commons project.

So finance general is where?

I'm sorry, I've never...

It's essentially a separate checking account that is administered effectively by the budget office and finance.

So it's a place from which we can write checks that is not any given department.

Thank you, Dr. Noble, for breaking it down for me.

That's where the checkbook is, basically.

Thank you.

So when I saw that term, I went, you know, what the hell is finance...

I said, what the heck is finance general?

Got it.

The other question I had was on the...

the Lake City Community Center on page 10. The Lake City Community Center, yes, we want to move and turn dirt as soon as we can.

And if we can just have a little bit more information where we're at there and also on Fort Lawton.

which I've been getting a lot of, I'm sure Councilmember Strauss is getting this too, calls from particular organizations and the Daybreak Star folks, or Daybreak Star, United Indians folks.

If I can just have a little bit more information about that for the record, that would be great.

Starting with maybe Lake City, where we're at, and then Fort Lawton.

Well-timed.

If I can remember our meeting with parks yesterday, we were talking about the legislative schedule ahead for 2026 on Lake City.

There are a number of pieces that have to occur, including going to King County Council.

There's a bunch of paperwork that we have to move forward.

We are going to bring forward to you a detailed schedule once we confirm that with our parks colleagues so that you can sort of see the path ahead.

There's big work that has to happen and folks are trying to hit the most ambitious of timelines to attempt to close by the end of next year so that we can open, begin construction and open as soon as possible.

So we will come back to you with a very detailed schedule in the coming month or two for next year.

So you're not looking at quarter one for anything in particular, and you're looking at quarter four for next year about actually moving dirt.

So I'm just trying to get in base, just basics with me.

I'm sorry.

Dirt, 2027. Next year is a lot of work on the legislative side.

I'm hoping to bring it forward in the middle of the year, but all the groundwork is being laid starting now.

So who at King County Council?

That's a detail that is a parks lead point, so I'm not sure.

They have to go for it on a...

I can't remember this.

I'm sorry.

It's related to the parks piece and the land transfer and the lease, and there's so many complicated details on this project.

The reason why I'm asking is because we get so many people from the North End who want to know when it's going to happen because we've been working on this since 2015. so we would gladly partner with you and councilmember Dabowski who represents the overlaps with D5 so we can have some we're just not able to answer some basic questions so if we could have that detailed and then you can partner with us in our office I'm only here for like 14 more months I'm really trying to get this stuff done as much as I can before I leave the second question I had so can we talk about Fort Lawton a little bit

Okay, where we are with Fort Lawton right now is that we are going through the environmental impact statement process at this time.

So we have a response from the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development that they have accepted are our supportive housing portion of the plan and that was the most important thing because then everything else gets to fall in line behind that.

We are working through the environmental impact statement.

We have selected the developers to work on the project.

Some of that was selected many, many years ago.

And Council Member Juarez, I'm trying to remember when, some of this may be repetitive for the other members of Council, but just trying to acknowledge that you weren't here for a little bit of time during that, so.

18 months to be exact.

18 months is nothing post-pandemic, it's all a blur to me.

So the developers on the project are Habitat for Humanity to do what the federal government calls self-help housing, what we call permanently affordable home ownership.

under the current zoning, they could do up to 200 units there.

The Catholic Housing Services will be providing multifamily rental.

And Kelly, I think that's about up to 200 units.

And the supportive housing, we had to go through a shift there.

And through an RFP process, we have selected Chief Seattle Club to do up to 100 units of housing there for their community.

And so right now we're just working through the environmental process at this time.

I have one more question, Mr. Chair.

My last question is the Northgate Commons with Seattle Housing Authority.

Where are we at on that?

Because we've been working on that in the blueprint under Mayor Durkan since 2023, 2022 when we bought the property.

Can you give us an update on that?

I'm trying to move that project forward.

The SHA has been great, but I want to find out what's going on with you folks.

I would say that the dollars that are being committed out of this budget really helps move them forward in this process, and from what I understand from the Housing Authority, they have done their pre-planning work, they've gotten all that, they've checked on the utilities, and the utilities are, there doesn't have to be a lot of site work or utility work there, and so I think this commitment is the one that helps move them forward in this.

The actual details of the timing, I'll have to get back to you on that.

That'd be perfect.

If you could do those two things with Northgate Commons, Lake City Community Center, and Fort Lawton.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And welcome, Director Winkler-Chin, plus Ms. Guerrera and Larson.

Thank you for coming.

And of course, as Chair Strauss said, our champions here, Director Eder and Director Noble, for sitting through these days in chairs that are not as good as ours.

And so I really want to thank you for your endurance, Director Eder and Director Noble.

I just wanted to first say thank you.

I do have the SLI response.

I'm digesting it, so thank you.

I appreciate it.

And this is the, for the viewing public, this is the housing investment plan.

This was the SLI OH-001SA.

And I really appreciate it, because this has been a learning experience.

I've had more interaction with OH and HSD in the last three months.

But it's great, and as I mentioned yesterday with Director Kim, to learn the different pieces.

And so I like this.

Obviously this, I was co-sponsored, but this was driven by Council Member Moore, so I'm looking at this and want to engage with you in terms of the other pieces, because it's important, because this is a very complicated topic, particularly because You know, you have, as we've talked about last week, I think, on the sidebars from the tribal summit, you know, we have permanent support housing.

We have KCRHA, and they're doing their thing, and then we have and now Social Housing PDA are going to be doing their thing and then there's Seattle Housing Authority and there's all these different pieces and then like how do they come together and does anybody keep the big picture and all these kinds of questions.

So that's kind of driving my thoughts and my interest on this.

And then eventually it's about helping those that are in need.

I just want to say thank you and I recognize we're talking some big dollar amounts and so that brings a lot of attention and so thank you for the briefing that hits these points and obviously with the attention with Director Kim yesterday too the accountability pieces are going to be so important and I trust that we have robust processes there, because as I was noted yesterday, I'm the one who keeps talking about the King County audit, and it's just about doing that right.

Regarding multifamily housing, rental housing, as you talked about, and these pieces, it's interesting too, because funding sources also impact each of these things.

That's kind of goes to the strategy too, like MHA, it brings in revenue, that varies, but also influences development too.

And so it's an interesting dynamic and something that I want to dig into over time.

But related to the multifamily housing pieces, I saw like in the slide that has developing plans, which is slide six.

In those plans, when you're engaging with the providers, I'm gonna be mentioning Director Kim on a regular basis, I think, during this briefing.

We were talking about good neighbor agreements and how I was looking at it as a way to foster communication and collaboration, not as a punitive piece, but it's really important to have a strong relationship with neighborhood and community for the long term.

As you develop plans, is that part of any consideration?

Is that part of the discussions that you have with the different Bellwether, Catholic Housing, El Centro de la Raza, all these different groups, Plymouth Housing.

When you're going through these projects, is that part of the discussion early on in terms of when you take these online and you have people coming on to have a relationship with the community in a good neighbor sense?

And again, not a punitive thing.

Is this something that's part of the discussions?

I can start this.

Okay, so this slide actually shows it from the developer's standpoint.

If we're going back to this, it's the developer's standpoint.

So when the developers come to us to ask us to invest in their projects, they will tell us kind of like, hey, this is what we've done.

We, of course, as part of our application packet, they are required to go out and do some level of community notification.

And Kelly, I think that's a technical part that you could touch on.

But as part of the review of that, we look and make sure that the planning does include community notification and partners are required to keep people informed through the development process because construction projects can be quite disruptive.

to the surrounding neighborhood and that people actually, we always hope that the development becomes part of the community because they're there to serve the community.

So there is a requirement, we review those plans and during the notification of funding availability process and that's how we, that is part of the review process for new projects.

Kelly, do you have anything to add to that?

Do you want anything to add?

It's all accurate.

We have strong policy guidance to encourage and support community engagement for our providers when they're going into community.

It's required as part of applying for funding.

and then it is also important to acknowledge that it works better for the residents, for the staff and for the owners of the housing to engage with community long term and they understand that.

So from SPD to fire to neighbors and businesses, it works for everybody better when there is strong community engagement.

So we have this expectation up front and providers take this on on their own as well to make sure that their housing projects and their residents and staff are as successful in the neighborhood as possible.

That's a great answer.

And one reason why I'm bringing this up, because as I mentioned, whatever, yesterday, I've been getting a lot of emails.

I got letters related to last year's SLI related to good neighbor agreements.

And I want to say, at least for myself, again, this is just exactly what you're saying.

And to further this point, yesterday we had Chief Scoggins talking about, because they have their high response locations.

I mean, it's incredible if you look at the data.

And so they're having this engagement.

Everybody take a deep breath.

And again, this is about having the communication and saying, hey, what little things could be done to have big impacts?

And that is where this comes from.

And I'm partly saying this out loud because I did get so many emails and so many letters, and I've gotten sidebars where it's a little pointed.

This is about having that relationship.

And so thank you for that response.

And it piggybacks nicely with what Chief Scoggins said yesterday.

Next, I just wanted to note on your home ownership and sustainability point.

I really appreciate that work.

I would say, you know, Low income in today's Seattle world may not be enough.

And there's a lot of elderly folks whose homes, but they don't necessarily qualify.

But because it costs, I mean, you can basically almost buy a very, I was going to name the brand, but a very expensive car for how much it costs to paint a house or to have a swap out of, oh, your heating system went out.

and I know that there's programs out there to help those that are low income, but the problem is even if you're middle income, because of the affordability challenges, people get crunched and I've been hearing that on a regular basis, so I'm just saying that out loud, so I appreciate these pieces.

I also wanted to say on the awarded funding side, I do understand and acknowledge the awards and then the contract, the encumberment process and all that, I get it, I'm on board.

At the same time, going back to earlier big dollar amounts, based on your slide number seven, as Council Member Juarez talked about, for those awarded in 2020, they should be going final-ish in 26. But if we're in 29, and we're still nowhere to be seen, I mean, at some point, then we may get to that point.

But I appreciate this graphic and the point, and I understand fully the contract encumbered point.

And so thank you for walking through that.

In the last part, I want to say, kind of coming back to the slide response in the housing investment plan, I think the big thing here is, you know, having a strategy, you know, because I've been, as I dig into this, like the 60% AMI world, you know, it's very different from the zero to 30. And, you know, we're having these mismatches.

And then when you throw these different pots of money in different organizations, again, I just wanted to work in partnership with you in terms of strategy and from my role I can engage these other organizations and I'm happy to do so by the way as you saw yesterday with the talk about two tiny home villages to help out because ultimately it's about you know, show a functioning government and this plays into the public safety piece too, which is obviously my main mission area.

So thank you, Director.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilmember, if I could respond directly to the question on the housing investment plan related to permanent supportive housing and KCRHA.

The funding that goes through the federal continuum of care which the KCRHA administers for PSH is actually administered by King County and I do want to point out that the Office of Housing has invested in every single one of those projects.

So we've made capital awards and in some cases operating awards that pair with the federal COC dollars that are administered through King County for the permanent supportive housing in that entire fund source.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm learning that.

I've had discussions with the deputy executive at the county, multiple council members at the county level and so forth.

So yeah, I appreciate that.

Again, it's a learning process and obviously I come from a different lens, different perspective, but I just want to look forward to engaging with OH.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I've got Council Member Rivera, Council Member Rink, Council Member Nelson, and myself in the queue.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, and thank you for being here.

And just for the record, I was online before I entered chambers, so I heard the presentation.

Thank you for that.

I also want to thank you for this response to the slides because that is really important to get the information that we're looking for and often we'll put in a slide that's our ability to get information and I found the slide responses to be very helpful both related to the good neighbor agreements and to the vacancies and so I have some questions about that I wanna clarify that on your slides where you put a number of homes, so when it says rental housing, a bellwether housing 58, that's 58 units of housing, not 58 projects, right?

I'm just like, I mean, I imagine so, otherwise it would have been more expensive, but I just wanted to, I don't like to assume.

So thank you for that.

is this overall in the last however many years or is this just, well let me back up and just say I did ask in the tracker I asked for information about from 2015 your slide that goes back to 2015, how much housing every year have we added both on the rental and the home ownership and I know you guys are working on that so I wanna thank you in advance for that.

I'll just wait to get that information then so as not to take up more time.

On the good neighbor agreements, I agree with my colleague about this is not meant to be punitive.

My interest is that we don't want to be in a situation where our housing providers are in conflict with the neighbors, surrounding neighbors.

I don't think that's a way to set up all our residents for success.

and I think that we've seen a lot of issues come up and a lot public safety related and I'm not saying that the folks in the housing are creating the problems for whatever reason the problems are occurring nearby and then without that communication point with the surrounding neighbors, it just leaves a void.

and it is an unfortunate void.

So my interest in the good neighbor agreement is just how do we ensure that we're fostering relationships with all the residents there regardless of where they're living.

And with the good neighbor agreements, I understand that as the project is being built, the expectation is and the policy is that they are gonna work with the neighbors to let them know the project's going up and so forth.

but there's no requirement in the contract to keep some level of engagement happening and I think that's unfortunate because I understand we leave it up to the housing providers but they're all doing different things and I don't know what is happening and I don't actually see it happening on the ground and I have spoken with some housing providers that also feel like we restrict our dollars to the actual building of the housing, but their ability to be able to use some of this funding for things like more case managers or security would be helpful to the residents there that then would then in turn be helpful to the neighborhood in general.

So I think that when you're talking about affordable and safe housing, It goes beyond just the construction of the housing.

It goes into the development, I mean the communication and relationship with the neighbors.

It goes into making sure that the residents who are living there have a safe place that they're living in.

And so how do we make sure that that all is fostered as part of this investment?

Because I don't see it as just we're giving you dollars to create housing.

We need to make it safe for the people that are living there.

And we need to make sure that the neighbors are welcoming folks that are newly coming in, regardless of whether they're market rate or low income or PSH or whatever the case may be.

Just know that's where my interest in this good neighbor agreement piece is coming from.

And I think there's a lot of room in my conversation with the housing providers on things, support they could have to make sure that those relationships are being fostered better in those communities and in those neighborhoods.

So I would like to see something, some change.

to help housing providers do some of these things that have become challenging for them so that we are helping them also be able to maintain and provide that affordable safe space for folks.

So that was not a question, that's a comment, but that's what when I think about the good neighbor agreements, how can we better support our housing providers to then support their residents.

And how do we foster engagement with those communities beyond just letting folks know a project is going up so that everybody's set up for success?

I would like to see that.

And so that neighbors are taking care of each other versus at odds with each other.

That's unfortunate and that does not have to be.

And I'm telling you, this is someone who grew up in low income housing.

where we all took care of each other.

It was an apartment building and we all took care of each other.

Everybody watched out for each other's kids.

When you walked home from school, and not just like my building, all of the apartments from the 10 blocks I had to walk to school.

If you stepped out of line, your mom knew it by the time you got home because someone saw you and called.

Something's happening and we took care of each other.

So in the same way, that we should be fostering, like how do we get these communities and neighbors to take care of each other?

Anyway, so I'll leave it at that.

And Chair, I'm sorry I have one more question related to the vacancy slide.

Part of the vacancy, so I understand there isn't, there seems to be a need, or you indicated in here, some technical support to create some type of database because I know the state one, it's just we don't get things in real time, it makes it challenging and I saw that you noted something about a $2 million to create something and I'm thinking that You know, there used to be in the innovation and performance office, there was a program, a partnership with some private partners, where they would help the city departments create something like a database if they needed it.

And I don't know if that program still exists.

But the point being, we live in one of the tech capitals of the United States, and can't we do a private-public partnership to create such a thing for the city?

so you don't have to rely on the bigger system.

Because I also am sensitive and mindful to the fact that, you know, when vacancies happen, we need to be able to utilize those vacancies, obviously.

And how quickly can we help folks, connect folks?

And I just, from experience, I have a constituent who was getting evicted and my office was calling.

here, there, and everywhere to try to find a spot for this person.

All the while, they're all stressed out because they're about to get evicted and all the things.

So it seems like there is a void in the system, and what do we do to solve for that?

And I'm interested in hearing that.

And if it's a database that it's needed, then I don't see why we can't accomplish that.

And if it's two million, whether we do a private-public partnership so that someone's donating that creation of the database or whether we can use some of the housing funds to create the thing that's actually supporting the housing that we are creating.

Would love to see that happen so we're in a better space.

And whether that's KCRHA, I don't know, but that's the point.

It seems a little bit we don't know who's doing what and who's the best to be doing what needs to be done.

Thank you.

Kelly or Director White?

I appreciate these two lines of questioning address a similar need, I believe, which is really capacity, staffing, and services in affordable housing.

For the longest time, affordable housing was really funded to be just that.

housing that is affordable to people who have low incomes.

Much of the affordable housing, which is the majority of what we invest in at the Office of Housing, has minimal staffing.

So this is sort of the dilemma that we face.

We could develop a database.

The issue is the staff capacity at every single housing provider across the city having the capacity to update data on a regular basis into that system.

particularly for the small operators.

So what we have done this year for the vacancy rate reporting is to focus on the six largest providers who have more capacity to provide this type of reporting, particularly the supportive housing providers who are accustomed to inputting data into HMIS, the Homeless Management Information System, on a regular basis.

So they have a different type of reporting capacity.

SHA is one of our top providers.

They also have a different type of capacity.

So when we were responding to the SLI, the largest concern really is around capacity for those providers.

Connected to that, some of the questions that you raised around good neighbor agreements are also sort of connected to this staffing concern.

I believe you were also at the Bellwether luncheon, though, and we heard those stories in the videos with, you know, the grandmother, Grandma Taryn, who had the playground named after her, and the connections that they had formed in that community.

There are many stories like that across the city.

We often are focused on challenges.

There are a lot of good stories happening in affordable housing and supportive housing every day.

So a lot of that community does exist throughout the sector, but there are needs for more investment, absolutely.

In the last several years, we've increased our investments in resident services, we've increased our investments in the workforce stabilization for the permanent supportive housing providers, and we've also made one-time investments in operating stabilization.

We're currently examining what type of future investments can be made to better stabilize operators and providers in this very challenging time that we're in.

So we are hoping to have some announcements to make in the near future about more investments that will help to support some of these efforts.

I don't know that we can do all things, but we appreciate hearing from electeds, from our partners and community, from neighbors, to help inform these investments.

And we're committed to doing that.

Thank you, Kelly.

I know we have a lot of great projects.

Housing development, I mean.

like Bellwether and Roosevelt, they've done a good job working with the neighbors, but then I have some other housing places that just, they need help.

And they're my constituents as well, and I wanna make sure we're providing the help that they need.

So this isn't for me to say that all the housing that we invest in is not doing well.

Some of them though are not, and I'm focused on how do we help them.

so please know that that's where this is coming from.

I often go to the how can we solve, I'm solutions oriented so I might go to that problem that I see in my district first and how do I solve for that.

I know that's not all the housing that we provide but it is a challenge and it has been a challenge just not not just in my district, particularly with public safety and with the folks living in those units who are feeling unsafe.

Those are our constituents too and it's our job to help them ensure that where they're living is safe.

So thank you and I look forward to engaging on how we help our folks along in regards to the safety issues and then the vacancy piece, because that's really important.

Being able to rapidly rehouse someone is important, and it shouldn't be as challenging as I have experienced, because that person is facing homelessness.

Anyway, so thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Director Kelly, anything to share in response?

Thank you.

Moving on, we have Council Member Rink followed by Nelson, Saka, and then myself.

Council Member Rink?

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Winkler-Chin.

Thank you, Kelly, Becky, for being here today.

I also see Deputy Director Akita in the audience as well.

Thank you all for being here, and thank you for your work in the Office of Housing.

As we are confronting a tremendous housing crisis, I think we should be really proud that the City of Seattle has taken steps to be building more housing, creating more affordable home ownership opportunity, and continuing our work to try and address displacement in our community.

And I bring those things up to say it can't be understated how important the work of Office of Housing is.

And so I have a couple of questions and I wanna thank my colleague, Council Member Juarez, for asking that clarifying piece around the Northgate project.

I have a couple of additional clarifying pieces, just so I'm following correctly, because I had a similar read.

When I read this slide, I was under the impression that this was a fund transfer to FAS, and it sounds like I'm misunderstanding that it goes to finance general.

Can I just understand a little bit more, why is this change happening?

Is there any impact to a competitive bidding process that is going on with this?

Could you unpack this change a little bit more?

I don't know if Director Eder wants to answer that.

There's nothing nefarious, if you will.

It's just a question of the way the contracting works.

It makes sense for it to go out of finance general.

I don't actually have more detail than that, but that's...

We're talking about the Northgate Commons project?

Correct.

Yeah.

I just didn't want to answer it, because I'm sorry I hadn't been tracking what the question was.

OHS policies require that we do competitive bids, and this was a decision that was made outside of the competitive bid process.

So we're proposing to move the money to Finance General so that we can spend the money on the project that the city leaders have decided is the best allocation of the scarce resources.

It's the last money that allows the project to move forward I don't know the number of units but it's a big housing project and we have proposed that this be the last dollars in effectively to make the project financing work.

Thank you for that, Director Eder.

Thanks for kind of clarifying that point.

I was a little bit confused there.

And I know we've had a little bit of discussion just now on good neighbor agreements, and it's my understanding that many parties are involved in not only transactions associated with different projects, but also ongoing operations.

I think we all have an interest in making sure that we are setting up programs, projects for success, but OH having an interest in making sure that properties operate sustainably from a financial perspective, but also from a community neighborhood perspective.

And I know you spoke to some of these pieces around workforce development and staffing, but can you please help us understand some of the additional existing measures in place that ensure both residents and community is tended to?

I'll start with that.

So I think Kelly had just mentioned some of the dollars that we've seen going into affordable housing in the more recent years.

The lower the income the unit is, the more support it needs just to meet its basic cost of the electricity, the insurance, all the other costs associated with just operating a unit.

We've also seen more recently, especially in the permanent supportive housing space, the fact that the properties needed more resources to help fund staff.

So a few years ago, I think when we were doing the levy planning, we realized that people working at some of our supportive housing could make much more.

I think it was the Seattle Aquarium Barista was making $7 more an hour.

And so in order to keep people, and it's really those relationships on site that keep the place operating well, that they needed more resources to make sure that the people there were feeling supported.

And PSH in particular is a 24 seven operation.

We did a stabilization grant process last year.

I think that was $14 million to really think about how could we respond in that moment to some of the changing dynamics to meet that need, but also as we start looking more long-term at our housing and how we do our investments.

I think the technical term is underwriting.

but what that is is once the building's built, what do we need to make it operate?

What are our budget assumptions going forward and how is that all working?

And to be honest, as we've seen over 20 or 30 years, the units that we invested in at that time, the underwriting assumptions have changed over time.

and so right now in our most recent notification of funding availability, we did what we call the stabilization loan, which is just really looking at, okay, the projects are in a very different place now than perhaps when they operated.

What are your operating assumptions and how can we sustain bringing those dollars to you to help adjust for that going forward?

For us, If housing is the place that everybody deserves, we also view it as kind of the baseline for what it is that people should be able to participate in their communities.

And we want the buildings and the people who live there to fully engage with their communities.

And so how do we support that?

And that is through the building operation.

So I understand that people really think of our dollars going in at the Capitol, but in the presumption of the Capitol is really how does it maintain its operating expenses?

Because if you are If you think that you're coming in at a certain dollar amount, you should have dollars to pay your mortgage.

If it's not performing that way, you're not going to have your dollars to pay the mortgage and to adjust appropriately.

That might have gotten way more technical, council member, than what you were hoping for, so I apologize.

No, I think it's important to have that information just on the record and I'm kind of also drawing a dotted line between this discussion we're having also about staffing and the discussion we had yesterday when the Human Services Department was at the table and we were talking about wage equity for human services workers.

Sometimes it really comes down to our ability to deploy a program as it's intended to be designed and intended to be deployed is dependent on that staffing.

And as we have noted, our human services workers are underpaid as found study after study.

but I want to pivot for a second into just broadly our economy because I want to understand how our broader economic impacts such as interest rates, tariffs, high cost of labor and other issues impacting OH projects.

Should we expect to see less affordable housing coming in, less affordable housing in the coming years and what should we consider to remedy this at the city level?

So I think that's a two-part question.

How has the general economic, how does the economy and its various things impact affordable housing?

It makes it more expensive to build.

So interest rates are a little bit higher than what I think we had modeled in the levy.

The cost of materials and the cost of labor are probably higher, Kelly, than what we anticipated in the levy.

At least 15%.

Yeah, at least 15%.

And there is a desire, and I think a need, to do larger size units.

So we always do this unit count in the levy modeling, but we were clear in this last levy that we were going to do larger units.

So of course the cost per unit goes up.

And you may see in future rounds of when we do our work, we are also starting to talk about the number of bedrooms produced because a unit could be a studio, a unit could be a five bedroom unit, right?

So the costs are going up as we all see from just day to day living.

So we are striving hard to reach the priority of meeting our levy goals and that then means and I think it's in the housing investment plan that we will have to make sure that more resources go towards the creation of affordable housing.

But our primary goal is to meet our levy goals.

Our goal is to meet the goal.

Certainly, thank you for that.

If I heard you correctly, you're saying that the cost of materials has gone up 15% above what we originally modeled in the levy.

Yes, so for the housing investment plan, we did an update of the housing levy model and our modeling of the use of payroll expense tax to catch up to current conditions.

The cost of construction alone has increased 15%.

Interest rates are much higher than we had anticipated in our housing levy model.

The tax credit pricing has dropped.

A number of factors have changed that really impacted the modeling.

The number one impact was the cost of construction.

I believe number two is interest rates.

We believe that it's still going to take some time for those to settle, but there will be some settling in future years of the levy, but it did require an update to the model.

The consequence of that increased cost is that we require more PET to meet the levy goals.

and that is what was presented in the Housing Investment Plan.

You can see that and we're happy to talk with you more about that later.

I think it may be worth me venturing into this part of the conversation and just remind everyone that we are one of the funding sources, but not the only funding source for these affordable housing projects that are being done by developers.

And I'm proud and pleased that we continue to be a major part of the puzzle, but we are not the only part.

Understood, thank you for that.

Good reminder, Director Eater, we have a lot of other public funders that often provide money for a number of these projects.

For OH, when it comes to one-time capital funding and ongoing operations funding, how has OH been working to balance these two needs, and how much of a priority will Workforce Stabilization Fund be in the coming budget cycle for OH?

The Office of Housing has taken the stance during these interesting times to really focus on keeping what's open and operating, open and operating, versus the building of new.

We've also started to look more at doing more of what we call preservation, and that's defined as reinvesting in pre-existing product, our pre-existing investments that are doing well.

and meet the operator's goals and our goals as an investor.

So that's kind of how we're prioritizing that.

We had modeled in the workforce, in all of our operating supports, I think we've modeled, oh Kelly, what is it?

Increases every year.

Yes, certainly.

Yes, because we understand that costs rarely go down, costs typically just go up.

And so we had actually done that as part of the levy modeling.

It's been a historic practice for the Office of Housing over the last 40 years of operating and maintenance funds to allow an annual escalator on those funds.

So we support and acknowledge that cost increase every year, and we have built that in to our budget assumptions.

Operating expenses are high priority.

The Permanent Supportive Housing Workforce Stabilization Fund is a very high priority.

It is funding workers today.

So it's an incredibly high priority for the budget.

Good to hear, thank you.

And my last question for today, I'm sure we'll have follow-up discussions.

I was excited to see the announcement related to the reparations fund, and I'm wondering if you could elaborate more on the fund, its goals, and maybe a question for Director Eder.

Is this funding for the fund coming from other program, or which fund sources, and any overlap with existing programs?

Anything you could unpack for us today?

I don't have a ready answer for you, but I can follow up with you.

Thank you.

So I think what the Office of Housing would say, or what I am going to say, is that we continue to work with our colleagues to promote investments that meet the intent of this policy.

So I believe there's three parts of this.

First is the Office of Civil Rights doing an analysis.

The second is the Office of Planning and Community Development to do their study as well, and we will work with them as they're going through their early stage planning around these investments.

I just wanna remind people that we have, at the Office of Housing, been doing some work in this area anyway, like before this intent.

We've done our community, oh, Kelly, what do we call that, the community?

Well, we have the community self-determination fund, but also the community preference policies that we've done.

And honestly, for me, it's more of an intentional focus on this area.

And we've been talking about race and social justice for quite a few years.

This is actually movement towards that intent.

It's not new funds, but it's an intentional focus on doing that work.

What Director Winkler-Chin said, I agree with.

I apologize.

I thought you were asking about the topic that you were apparently finished on rather than moving on to the reparations fund.

But I fully agree with what Director Winkler-Chin just said.

Okay.

Thank you all for that clarification, and thank you for the time and being before committee today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

We have Councilmember Nelson, Saka, and then myself.

This is a really good conversation.

Councilmember Nelson.

Council President Nelson.

Hi everybody, good morning.

So I was going to ask a question about slides eight and nine, but then I got sidetracked in my mind when the conversation turned towards the good neighbor policy and how we track vacancy rates.

So I think that was in response to either Councilmember Rivera or Kettle.

But anyway, Kelly, when you were explaining why it's hard to track real-time vacancy rates and enforce good neighbor policies, I think that was the section of the conversation we were in.

You said that our partners have minimal staff.

And that sort of raised a red flag for me because we've all been embracing this Housing First model that comes with wraparound services.

That is the key to really helping these very vulnerable people get back on their feet and address whatever behavioral health issues they might have, physical health issues, et cetera.

Can you tell me if that's not happening, then is there any way to...

Anyway, can you please respond to that?

Thank you, Council President.

The comment that I made was really focused on the smallest organizations in our portfolio, which are many, and affordable housing providers exclusively.

Permanent supportive housing providers have a unique and robust staffing model, which the Office of Housing helps to invest in with such things as the operating maintenance and services funds, as well as permanent supportive workforce stabilization.

So any comment that I have made about that is only related to smaller organizations, lower capacity, affordable housing providers in the OH portfolio.

Okay, thank you very much.

You mentioned workforce stabilization and that was also on my mind too.

that is not really a service that the residents get.

It's a wage equity, I think it's a 2% bump on top of the automatic contract adjustment every year.

And ostensibly, I remember this conversation, it's to reduce turnover so that staff stay in the jobs and provide for continuity.

And I'm just, every year I've asked, is there, do we know that it's working?

Is turnover going down?

And I'll tell you something, this is anecdotal, but what I hear is that it's not necessarily the wages or the low wages that unfortunately, yes, I acknowledge are are low because of the sector.

But are we sure that it's the wage that is producing turnover?

Because I have heard that it's safety within these buildings.

And there have been articles in the paper that talk about the vacancy rates being linked to some difficulty with some tenants inside.

I mean, Sharon Lee has been out being pretty open about that.

So have we studied whether or not it is working?

Have there been any surveys of actual workers to say, what do you need to keep you in your job?

And if they say safety, then how can we help?

Thank you, Director Eder.

Council President, the 2% market adjustment that you're referring to is happening for Human Services Department contractors.

The folks from OH have some contractors who have increases that are happening that are based on inflation, as you just heard.

but not a market increase.

I don't know that we can solve all of the problems in one fell swoop, but the HSD contractor market increase is a small step that we can do.

It costs millions of dollars.

It's not small in dollars, but it's small in the big picture.

And it's what the city has control over, the mayor's proposed budget.

followed the city law to provide the inflationary increase, but then also recognized that there is turnover and a number of low-wage jobs that could use a little help.

So this is our way of doing what we can in the near term to help stabilize the workers and the contractors who are doing this work.

Thank you.

I don't care about the cost of this 2% at all.

I wasn't ever going to focus on it.

I am just concerned about the workers, their well-being at the workplace, and also the people that are inside, the tenants that are living inside, whether it be a permanent supportive housing, facility or low income.

And so clearly, and that is related to the good neighbor policy, but we really do have to make sure that we are equipping our partners or that our partners have the resources to make sure that they're not only delivering a roof overhead, but also the services that are necessary to help people not necessarily get well, but you know, get them on their feet.

They might be living there for many years or forever.

The point is we're supposed to be actually helping them, you know, have better lives.

Okay.

I'm going to skip that other question about slides eight and nine.

Can you please explain to me, do nonprofit housing providers receive a developer's fee like private developers do?

And if so, what is the percentage of the project?

Council President Nelson, I wanted to address one thing though that you had asked previously.

You had said that anecdotally you've heard that the workforce stabilization funds are not getting the positions filled and we...

No, I didn't say that.

I wanted to make sure that it was having a positive impact.

And it is having a positive impact.

We do track this and it has achieved reduced turnover and reduced openings in those positions.

The other thing that helps keep people safely housed is resident services.

And that's targeted more at our non PSH housing projects.

It improves the environment for residents and staff to stay there and feel making this apartment more of their home.

They then get to connect it to other neighborhood programs and amenities as well.

And there's many factors at play in the environments in and around our housing.

Council member, now you had a question about the developer fee and people who develop affordable housing do collect a developer fee.

It's a percentage.

I think our percentage is, Kelly help me here, I think it's 10% and I think it can get paid out over The developer fee helps pay for the developer's expenses in building the housing and it typically gets paid out for the 10 years after a housing project is built, depending on whether your project cash flows.

It is a fairly complicated policy with an initial fee upfront, but most of the fee deferred in order to encourage good development process and operating process.

So those funds are released over time as the project is completed and moves forward.

So it's 10% per year and they can take it every year or they can take it toward the end or something?

Is that what you're saying?

Actually, it's 10% of the total development costs and you earn that fund.

You earn those dollars typically over a 10-year period.

So you get chunks along the way as the project is developing, but you loan back I've seen upwards of over 50% of what you earn in developer fee to be paid back over the 10 years and it helps finance the building.

Okay, is that, because I was trying to help community roots housing last year or whatever, it had something to do with the developer fee, but, and then is that 10% similar to private developers basically works the same way?

Council member, I don't really know the private development process because I haven't worked on that with that set of funders, so I'm unable to respond to that, yeah.

I'm just always hoping that private developers will build affordable housing, that's it.

Council member, just to be clear, we do have private developers who do develop affordable housing.

They just work under our rules versus others.

Got it, thank you.

That's it.

Thank you, Council President Nelson.

Anything else to share at this time?

Council Member Saka, followed by Council Member Hollingsworth and Council Member Solomon.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Winkler-Chin, Ms. Guerrero, joining us online, and then Ms. Larson as well.

Appreciate your presentation today on the proposed budget.

In the interest of time, in brevity, I'll Pair down my scope of questions to two and then either read the rest of the record or follow up via the SharePoint.

So two questions about one pertaining to the Dumar substation, affordable home ownership project in District 1 and other potential home ownership opportunities or affordable home ownership opportunities or projects in District 1. And the other question is about federal dollars withholding impacts.

But first, let me just state that I appreciate not just the fact that you all are here today, but the work that you all do every day to help us bring about truly affordable housing for all.

I also appreciate some of your department slides this year, including some of the recent ones.

That is our principal power here at on this floor, in this body, is the appropriate resources and as part of that we request reports and information.

And so I'll say that some of the department responses to certain SLIs are more directly on point than others and more kind of helpful, I think, to the original goal, purpose, and intent of the SLI and vision of the SLI than others.

But from my perspective, at least, some of the ones that I've seen of yours this year in particular have been very on point.

So thank you for that information and more to come.

First question, you know, we talked a little bit about some of the impacts of the macroeconomic situation and what that means or portends for your department.

Love to learn a little bit more about the threat of withheld federal dollars across a number of departments, specifically yours.

So can you speak to the threat of withheld federal dollars as it relates to your department in particular?

And then, you know, what's the mitigation approach or strategy for that?

I'm happy to speak to this a bit.

We are fortunate that federal funds represent a very small portion of our budget.

We have the Home Investment Partnership, which represents about $3 million of our $350 million budget.

We have the Community Development Block Grant.

We have about $160,000, so very small amounts there.

Where it does impact our work is are weatherization and home repair programs.

Those do rely on federal and state grants.

And as of yet, there has not been any withholding or change in those, but I would not be shocked if that changes in the near future.

Where it does impact our work and I'll let others speak to is the indirect way that our housing providers experience the loss of federal funds and how we then strategize about how to support them in those lawsuits.

A closely related topic is rental assistance and the mayor's proposed budget adds $4 million of ongoing funding to help backfill the expected or threatened reductions at HUD, the Housing and Urban Development, federal housing programs.

So that's not part of OH's budget, but it is related to housing.

It's in the Human Services Department.

I appreciate the question.

This is an area that we are watching very closely and we're working really closely with our partners at KCRHA, King County DCHS, and my colleague in HSD to have very regular conversations about what's happening with the federal environment.

The primary concerns we have related to permanent supportive housing are the COC funds, the continuum of care that come through HUD, through KCRHA, as well as what might happen at the housing authorities.

Those are really, they rely on all these federal funds help to build the foundation of permanent supportive housing across the city.

So we're watching that very closely.

We do have a backstop, as Director Eder just mentioned, and we'll have to watch for the years ahead.

That backstop is the $9.35 million that we are holding also in HSD to backfill a portion of the Continuum of Care federal dollars.

Thank you for the additional clarity there, appreciate that.

Moving on to the D1 specific project.

So in 2024 last year, my understanding is that an affordable ownership project for 21 affordable homes at the former Dumar substation was funded in part through OH.

Can you share an update on this project and are there any other affordable home ownership or rental projects in the pipeline?

Just share the general scope and nature of any other potential affordable home ownership or rental projects in the pipeline for District 1, especially West Seattle.

in the Duwamish Valley, so South Park in Georgetown.

I'm mindful that there are quite a few habitat projects underway in South Park, is my understanding, but can you talk a little bit more about some of the D1-specific investments along with the update on the Dumar substation?

Thanks for the question, Councilmember.

We're going to have to get back to you on the specifics of the Dumar substation.

I believe that we have selected a developer, but that's about all that comes to mind right now, so we'll have to get back to you on the specifics on that.

As for D1 specific home ownership projects, you are correct with Habitat having I think at least two projects in South Park that are home ownership.

We also have for rental housing, we have a CMAR doing a project right now and we have a Henderson Street.

The Office of Housing owns property on Henderson Street, and we will be doing an RFQ shortly, sometime in early 2026, to select a developer for that site.

We are anticipating between, I think, 85 and 100 family-sized units, meaning two-, three-, and four-bedroom units in Henderson, so we will have that coming up.

West Seattle is a priority neighborhood for us and we're looking for possible future opportunity sites.

And of course, we always have an eye looking forward to some of the sound transit investment sites.

Fingers crossed.

Got it.

Thank you for the additional clarity there.

Thank you, Chair.

No further questions.

I do note that my Q&A exchange was on the shorter end, if not the shortest so far.

So mark it.

Thank you.

Mark down, mark down.

Councilmember Honsworth, how are you?

Mr. Chair, it's good to see you too.

I'll be fast, and I mean that, and you know that because I've timed other council members to make sure.

Why are you looking at me?

Because I timed you yesterday when you said five minutes.

I got you, Councilmember Saka.

You said it.

Thank you, director.

And I just have quick comments.

I don't actually have any questions.

The first one is I really appreciate the slide eight and nine that shows the housing projects that come on.

We often talk about the historic investments of Seattle and also this shows the historic outcomes and I think that's what people really wanna know and see.

So I really appreciate that.

And I know that on your website you always have data and information and maps and reports.

Super, super helpful to go through and just kinda understand where the money's going and then also to piggyback on what Council Member Juarez was saying to see where we were in the timeline of projects.

just because we fund something this year doesn't mean it comes online.

There are a ton of external factors that you all don't have, that you all are not in control of, whether it's financing, construction costs, weather, you know, permits.

There's so many different components in this.

So when something does come online, it's really great to see knowing that that project started years ago with the investment.

So knowing that we are kind of in our infancy stages of these historic investments and we'll be able to see some of these projects come online, you know, within the next couple years.

So that's really, really helpful to see the timeline.

The second thing I just wanted to highlight, and I know the mayor's office is gonna send down their proposal and looking forward to working with them on the reparations fund.

Really happy to see that.

I know it's four years, $80 million.

There is data, and I know some people had asked, well, where's the data?

There's already data out there.

King County did a report about the billions of dollars that was extracted from black community that they were lost based on housing redlining, and I always tell the story where there's, my grandma went to go buy a house on McGilva Boulevard, which those houses are worth millions of dollars, and the realtor told her, I can sell it to you, but you can't live in it.

And those were the responses that people had when they tried to go north of Madison to buy homes in places.

The second thing is also the information from Representative Jamila Taylor, the bill that was at the state.

the language that's in there, the information, I always say the seed that was planted, but also the proof of concept that you can have these positive outcomes.

And I've known people that have been able to purchase homes.

Unfortunately, particularly because of money, they have been able to purchase homes outside of Seattle because Seattle's very expensive, but that's another story.

And then also, a lot of people don't know the Community Reinvestment Fund that was given because of cannabis tax dollars, $200 million.

A lot of people got money to be able to build on their properties in Seattle.

That money, that was only one time.

and I just went to a groundbreaking for Myron Curry.

Shout out Myron Curry, lives in the Central District, who's able to build two ADUs on his house, keep his family home, and then got money from the state to be able to do that in other places.

And so I just wanted to just highlight that there is a proof of concept that works.

This money is gonna help add to that.

I think it's imperative and really important because I've heard people talk about the rising taxes, obviously home ownership opportunities and being able to have that, the technical assistance.

I have seen people lose their family homes because they don't even know what probate is. family member dies, don't even know how to transfer it over, and they need the technical assistance to figure out how to navigate that and what that even means.

And also funding for repairs, ADA, as a lot of older people are trying to figure out how they're gonna age in place.

and last but not least, the addition, and I'm reading off a paper because I'm trying to be as fast as possible because I know we're over time.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And then also last but not least, the addition of adding a home multifamily home to their lot, whether it's creating a duplex or a triplex or adding ADUs, there is opportunity for us.

And there's stuff that we can't do as a city, I get it, but there is investments that we can make for other nonprofits, community groups, to find additional funding, maybe it's private dollars, to be able to support some of the efforts that people are wanting to do.

and so looking forward to that, there's already a blueprint out there.

I would love to see this extended beyond four years.

I know it's just a start, but looking forward to figuring out and want to highlight your department has already been doing a lot of that work as well.

It's just the main piece is people having, and I always say this word, transparent access to the resources.

It's not just a tweet online.

It's not just, hey, come down to City Hall.

We literally have to do it by the womb.

The word of mouth going out into communities, going into churches, community centers, like knocking on people's door by door and telling about these funding and then providing opportunities for them to be able to do that.

One example is that there's a nonprofit that provides a person for tax relief to show a lot of the seniors in our city how to get tax relief through King County.

And they literally go in someone's home, because a lot of the seniors, it's hard for them to use, and no knock on our seniors on the council.

Shout out, DJ5 elders.

But the technology piece is a barrier, right?

And it's very hard.

and just being able to do that and just that simple investment of saying, hey, we're gonna pay for a full-time person to go sit at your house to show you how to be able to do your taxes and file for that relief, I think is huge.

So just wanted to just highlight those things and I don't have any more comments.

Can we touch on a little bit on that, council members?

So I wanted to acknowledge that we had received what we're calling a pro-housing grant from the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, and that's to further support legacy homeowners and to explore preservation of older rental and conversion to homeownership.

You had mentioned Myron, and Myron Myron had worked with his grandfather in getting some of our weatherization dollars into his grandfather's home.

And now with the addition of the ADUs, that's just great, right?

So it just kind of builds upon itself, which is great.

I was at Housing Washington yesterday where there's over, it's the State Affordable Housing Conference.

and you can be sure that the Black Home Initiative was very direct with me, like, hey, Michael, this is the thing.

So we had already been a part of that, but Michael Brown in particular was very pointed as he can be about looking forward to working with us in this space.

So really looking forward to leaning in on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, those were all my comments.

And I'll mark the time, but I do just wanna say, We keep time only because we talk too much, right?

And I talk too much, yes.

As do a couple of our other friends up here, Council Member Waters, you clocked in at eight minutes this morning and had direct questions to each that was full of information.

But the reason that I share this is because Council Member Hollingsworth, I wanna just pause and come back to what you just said, because you were going really fast, trying to make time, but this is a good conversation to have.

that you said your grandmother was allowed to purchase a piece of property but not allowed to live in it, is that correct?

That is correct, off of McGilva Boulevard.

And so that, if your family had been able to buy that piece of property, that would have been millions of dollars in money that could have been created just generationally by doing nothing.

Correct.

and that is an opportunity that is afforded to so many people in our city, generationally.

And that family that ended up buying that house may still be a multi-generational Seattle family that we know so many of.

I highlight that because as we're talking about reparations and especially the descendants of slaves and the legal reasons why that's allowed to be able to financially support is because of this exact experience that you're describing right now.

I only share that because on the Jewish side of my family, there are portions of my family that actually had to hide the fact that they were Jewish.

to be able to purchase the homes that they wanted to.

And so I just wanted to take that pause because you shared something really important with us just now.

Thank you Mr. Chair and I'm glad you made the connection with Jewish because the Central District used to be a Jewish community and Langston Hughes was a synagogue and now it's so there's a lot of history and integration there and the layers and so I appreciate you bringing that up.

Thank you and Director Eder you said that the Langston Hughes funding will be discussed in arts and culture?

I think that's what was said earlier this week.

With that, Council Member Solomon, I'm gonna give you last word.

Apparently I'm already eating into my time.

I'm gonna break this 10 minutes, unfortunately.

Just wanna read this 10 year look back for the record and Director Noble, I've got a question about the structural budget deficit.

So as we look back to 2019, Between 2019 and 25, the budget for Office of Housing increased by $275 million, which is a 396% increase.

The main drivers of growth were in 2022, jumpstart payroll expense tax, as well as mandatory housing affordability and the levy.

Voters then approved an updated levy in 2023. and it goes into talk a little bit more about mandatory housing affordability.

In the slides that we have today, Director Noble, we see that we have no general fund in this department.

How would that increase, decrease, or have no change to our structural budget deficit projections for 27?

So in terms of structural deficit, we've described it as a sum of the PET and the general fund.

So to the extent that the PET can be used to relieve a deficit on the general fund side, so the current estimate of $140 million for 2027 is a general fund deficit.

There's not a shortfall in PET, but one of the ways you could make that up would be to increase the transfer from PET.

So it is not directly contributing to deficit funding for housing, but it could actually be a potential solution.

It would require less funding for housing.

Thank you.

Just noting again in 2019, there was $56 million and today we have, and I want to make sure I've got this correct Director Eder, $344 million.

Is that inclusive of the 5 million for Northgate Commons?

I've gotten the six year look back.

The 344 is just in the Office of Housing and then 5 million above that.

The 349.5 million, this is 344.5 million rounded.

That's combining the 344 and the 5.

Thank you.

Just wanted to sit on that.

And so colleagues, I bring us through this history of how did we go from $56 million to $349 million in the office of housing.

And that's because the original housing levy was passed as our city was becoming more expensive.

And I will say that the city is in general was slow to react.

and that is what made the urgency and focus on housing dollars so intense over the last number of years, saying that we will create new tax revenue for housing because of the situation we found ourselves in.

So in 2019, we had $56 million In 2020, we started collecting mandatory housing affordability dollars.

In 2022, we started collecting jumpstart funds.

And then in 2023, we renewed the levy at a higher level.

And so this is how in six years, we changed 396% with an increase of $279 million.

This for me, directly and on the record, this is a change from a startup size company to a corporation.

This is, we're not dealing with small amounts of money anymore.

And the questions from Council Member Juarez are ones that I have as well.

Thank you for asking those.

They are descriptive of how the small amounts of communication along the way of the projects and having it readily accessible and easy for members of the public to digest is the work that needs to be improved because you're doing good work.

But if people don't know the information along the way of the project, it doesn't matter, frankly.

Because can you please go to slide number seven?

because, and I say this, the whole public is losing if we don't understand where things are along.

This is a really helpful slide.

Many of us have been asking for this for a number of years.

Colleagues, I share this slide with you because if somebody received a NOFA in 2020, it might open this year.

And I say might because This is describing it as open, but with one delay, with one certificate of occupancy delay from our permitting departments, it doesn't.

And I know this colleagues because in my first weeks of office in 2020, I started working with an organization and they received a NOFA in 2020 and they still have not opened.

This says to me that with our affordable housing dollars, the projects last longer than our council terms.

It requires us to be two term council members to see this through.

And I'm making this a very direct point.

That is why we need better information more readily available and able to share with constituents.

Because when I'm hearing questions in the public about why do we not have enough affordable housing?

It's because it takes five years and there's a five year gap.

we are five years to 10 years behind and while we're on track to get into a better place, people don't know it because we aren't sharing the information readily.

And so I really appreciate the ship shape report that you are putting together and that this helped produce.

On slide six here, what would be helpful, I know in the next two slides you have numbers of units per building and rental housing, 1,041 new homes, et cetera, et cetera.

It would be helpful for me to know in these different colored brackets how many units are in each bracket.

I don't need that right now.

What that doesn't tell me is how many more years it's gonna take for each of those projects to come online.

And that's the helpful part of your colored bracket.

I believe that information was sent over in the cash balance sheet.

That's the detailed information on projects.

But to your point, we are trying to get to public reporting of this information and that is a goal for the office in the next year.

Kelly, you do amazing work.

You do amazing work.

I don't think our city realizes how much this department hangs in the work that you do.

But the answer that you just provided is exemplary of the problem that we're experiencing.

That I'm looking for a very clear, you've got a great PowerPoint presentation here and I'm looking for just basic numbers and I'm being asked to go look at a cash balance sheet that's somewhere buried in a budget.

So this is the help that I'm asking for today.

Because when we look at the Seattle Times report that we just had last month about affordable housing units being almost on par with market rate units, the fact that we've overbuilt studios and one bedrooms.

We have in the past used metrics that look at unit count and not family sized units.

How are we getting out of this?

And are we changing these metrics?

I heard earlier in this presentation we are, but again, that's one of the first times that I'm hearing it.

And if I'm not hearing it and digesting it and the Seattle Times isn't reporting it, this is the situation that we find ourselves in.

Council Member, we will make sure to highlight we have provided the information as part of the budget submittal, but we will highlight where that is because we provided stacks and stacks of information.

I don't blame you for not having read literally every single one of the, I don't know, thousand pages of information we provided yet, but I know you're heading there.

We will highlight where that information is and supplement it with whatever information we are able to if it is not sufficient.

Thank you.

Just wanna look at, and the one real direct question is here about that Seattle Times article from last month.

We've talked about high vacancy rates and affordable housing.

So what is the plan to readjust both instead of doing unit counts to do size of unit?

And then how are we making adjustments so that we're not in this situation as we expend our new dollars?

So Chair Strauss, thank you so much for the myriad of questions.

My brain's kind of firing all over the place.

First of all, I'd like to thank City Council for giving us an FTE to work in Kelly's planning and policy shop who does data.

So one, we have somebody who actually can manage data.

Two, we are still working towards getting our database up and we should have a new database by April of next year.

So we are getting off Microsoft Access.

So that's the first thing.

The second thing is as we were doing our levy planning back in 2022 and embedded in 2023 were conversations that we had with our stakeholders about what units are leasing and what are the units that are available.

And I think we've all heard through other conversations that the city is having, such as the comprehensive plan, a desire for family-sized units.

And so that is a priority.

If you were to go and look at our notification of funding availability, we have priorities in place, one of which is family-sized units, one is also towards the lower income units, and that's what our levy modeling has done.

And when the projects are coming in to apply to us, as we're looking at it, we are making sure that we prioritize family size units because those are not being provided by the market in the same way and lower AMI units as well.

So that is the adjustments that we're making looking forward.

as well as our stabilization grant or stabilization NOFA that I also mentioned earlier.

It's the readjustment of those projects that we already have in place to adjust to the realities of the current time that we're in.

So we are becoming much more data-driven in our work, working with our other government partners to try to figure out what is happening in the rental market.

What is being provided by the private market rate developers.

What are the things that that we need to do and what is our unique role?

How do we invest our dollars wisely to create what is needed to help provide a range of households in Seattle?

Because as I said earlier at the start of this presentation, we want everybody to have safe and affordable housing regardless and and that should be available throughout the city.

That's what Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing means.

means throughout the city.

So then people have choice and option.

Because when I was younger, I might have wanted to live in that neighborhood.

As I get a little bit older, maybe a different housing style, type, and location.

And people should have choice.

Amen.

Thank you for all the work.

And so it sounds like, and I'm going to put this on the record right now, you'll have a better dashboard by April.

So I'm giving it April 15th, tax day, putting it on the record.

That's when we expect to see something new.

Better than the Ides of March, yes.

Yes, and I'll just end with, before passing it over to Council Member Salomon and Council Member Waters if she wants again, which is just to say thank you.

We recognize the importance of your work, which is why we funded it at such a high level.

Thank you for everything you do and the intensity that you're receiving from us is just because we want more of it now and faster.

And until we are having that felt change in our community, we really need more information.

So thank you for everything you're doing.

Council Member Salomon and if Council Member Juarez doesn't want anything, colleagues, I clocked in at 15 minutes.

Sorry about that.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Some of the questions I had you've already answered regarding federal funding that Council Member Sanka asked about and then the conversation you just had with Chair Strauss regarding the number and type of units.

and vacancy rates, so thank you for addressing that.

One of the concerns that I have, and I think it's referred to on page...

Getting to the buckets of funding, page five, multi-family rental housing, One of the concerns I have is some of my housing providers in D2 are selling off assets to meet operational costs.

And I know that there's provisions of the mayor's budget for rental assistance.

I also know that some of our housing providers are looking to the city for basically funding to help offset their operational losses.

Is that in your budget is, you know, including this 302 million to help offset some of those costs for those housing providers?

Yes, it is.

We have a collection of agency support funding that is, that includes operational stabilization, workforce stabilization, resident services, and operation maintenance and services subsidies.

Okay, great.

And one of the things we've also heard from housing providers is when they're doing a unit turn and if they have a unit that has been damaged by the previous tenant, that's an added expense.

And is there funding set aside for repair, rehab of those units that have basically been destroyed by a previous tenant?

Is that in this bucket as well?

or do you have a bucket for that?

There are several buckets for that, Councilmember.

There is the State Urgent Repair Fund that they have established in the past few years.

All OH properties are required to have a replacement reserve and an operating reserve at the property.

The replacement reserve level I think right now is $350 per unit per annum and you build that up, but also at the front end when you develop the building you put dollars into reserve funds for that.

We have also, for some of the longer-term issues that you mentioned about operating costs, that's why we set up the stabilization NOFA to help them readjust their properties to the real realities of what it's like to operate right now.

And then if you were in the permanent supportive housing world, you do have your operation maintenance and support dollars and some stabilization dollars there.

Thank you very much.

and that clock's at two minutes and 52 seconds.

So I appreciate you.

Council member, does my time talking back to you get included in that time or is that separate from that?

Oh, my apologies.

I'll just start talking faster then.

I think that was technically three.

That was technically three.

Good on you, Councilmember Solomon.

Any other...

Can I add one thing?

I think I forgot to mention...

Real quick.

Are you responding to Councilmember Solomon?

Actually, I'm responding back to a question that you had asked earlier, Councilmember Solomon.

Then hang tight, because I am...

Councilmember Solomon just closed us out, and so I'm going to turn it over...

Oh, never mind.

I'm turning it over to you for final comments, and then we're going to switch presentations.

This is the last word.

I'm done.

Thank you.

No, really?

Okay.

Thank you.

Well, with that colleagues, we have wrapped up Office of Housing at 1120 AM.

We are now gonna switch presentation.

So if folks wanna start switching now and we'll have the clerk read the item number two into the record and colleagues, if you need to use the restroom, now's a great time.

Agenda item two, Seattle Center for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Friends, this is counting into Mark Solomon's time.

I'm kidding, it's not.

Hey, I'd just like to get to the point, man.

We are bringing up Seattle Center.

Seattle Center is the next department to speak with us right now.

We have Council Member Joy Hollingsworth as the chair of the committee overseeing the department.

And we have Marshall Foster.

and I'm gonna say it wrong, Mr. Winston.

I'll let you introduce yourself so I don't mispronounce your name.

With that, we still have Director Noble and Director Eder.

Director Foster, floor is yours.

Good morning, Chair Strauss, Council Members, great to be with you.

Thank you for the invitation to share our proposed 2026 budget with you today, the Mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

I should have introduced myself first, Marshall Foster, Director of Seattle Center, and I'm here today with Dematris Winston, our Deputy Director and Director of Finance and Administration.

So first off, very quick overview of Seattle Center where we are.

I think you all know us.

I hope you've enjoyed all the many things we offer our community.

In a nutshell, our mission is to create exceptional events, experiences, and environments that inspire the human spirit and build strong communities.

I'm very happy to be part of an organization that is in the business of inspiring the human spirit.

74-acre public campus, part of Seattle since the World's Fair in 1962, 40 acres of parks and green spaces that serve not only the city as a whole, but also our immediate neighborhoods of Uptown, Belltown, Southlake Union, and Queen Anne, among others.

One thing a lot of people don't know, we are back to record-level attendance and participation at Seattle Center.

11.5 million annual visitors, which puts us right back where we were prior to the pandemic, and it makes us the largest attendance for any cultural destination in the state of Washington.

From an economic perspective, I think we've all talked a lot over the last few years about the importance of culture, art, the experience of downtown to our downtown recovery.

What we're finding is that Seattle Center is a huge economic engine for the arts in our city, and it's also a huge part of what's driving our downtown recovery, bringing people back for incredible sporting events, incredible performances, public festivals.

You can see there some of the numbers in terms of our economic benefits that we see from all the activities on our campus.

What really makes us unique and I think what is in many ways the soul of Seattle Center are the cultural partners, the 35 independent organizations that call Seattle Center home.

From the big ones like obviously the Seattle Kraken and the Seattle Storm to the small ones like Skate Like a Girl, which create incredible programming across the spectrum, public, free, diverse in terms of how people enjoy our campus and the way we serve our community.

Another thing which is not widely known is that we are largely self-funded.

So Seattle Center does receive some general fund, but about 70% of our total expenses are covered with revenue that we generate on campus.

And we can of course talk more about that.

Commercial events, rentals, parking, armory, revenue from our vendors in the armory are a few of the sources.

and then of course we are a very large operating department.

We have about 230 full-time staff.

We also have a very large intermittent staff of seasonal and temporary employees.

And as I think you know, I'll talk more about, we recently took over the operations of Waterfront Park on behalf of the city.

And so that's been a big growth area for us.

You know, just to focus on a couple of key priorities, this isn't everything we do, but this is a huge focal point for our department right now, is as we've been coming out of the pandemic, is really building on successes.

So you see there the image of obviously a huge thing for us is that we are now underway with the redevelopment of Memorial Stadium.

and I have to give a shout out to council member Juarez who was our partner in crime on a lot of that when we were doing those agreements.

Expanding into partnerships, something that has meant a lot to the department in Seattle Center is our history with partnering.

You know, whether it's with the Space Needle historically, with what we did with Climate Pledge Arena.

More recently, we're growing on that.

We're focused on the Pacific Science Center, which is a non-profit, separately-managed organization, kind of building a deeper partnership with them to help support their incredible activities and to make their portion of our campus fully accessible to the public.

The beautiful courtyards and arches there will be made publicly accessible actually later in October for the first time since the World's Fair.

And then lastly, shaping our future.

Something that we'll just touch on, but we're happy to come back and talk more with the council is we've realized over the past two years, this is really a critical moment to step back and look at the next 10 years of Seattle Center and what are our needs.

I mentioned a few times how the world has changed since the pandemic.

We believe our role in supporting our cultural partners on campus needs to be deeper.

and we need to explore more ways we support those organizations.

We need to find a strategy to reinvest in the physical campus.

Seattle Center as a whole needs a reinvestment.

And then we need to work with you, with the Herald administration, our city partners to continue to strengthen our financial sustainability as a department.

So that's just a high-level kind of summary of some of the major things we're facing.

I'm gonna hand it over now to Dematris, who's gonna walk you through the specifics of the proposed 2026 budget.

Thank you, Marshall.

Good morning, Chair Strauss and council members.

For the record again, Dematris Winston, Deputy Director at Seattle Center, also Director of Finance and Admin.

I'm gonna provide a brief overview of our 2026 budget for you.

And I'll just start off by saying that we have three different budgets at Seattle Center.

We have a campus budget, We have a McCall Hall budget and a waterfront budget.

All those budgets, you know, put together and you see on the slide there, the total about $59 million there on our operating side.

And so you'll see on the proposed 2026 budget off to your right there, we have about $17.5 million of general fund funding proposed in the 26 budget and about $41 million of other funds, which majority of that is earned revenue.

Director Foster mentioned how we earned that revenue, facility fees, parking fees, long-term leases, sponsorships, concessions, and also monorail fares.

Our budget is comprised of the earned revenue, but also parks district funding.

payroll expense tax, Friends of the Waterfront for the Waterfront operations, and then the add tax through the Office of Arts and Culture.

Next slide.

And so this first slide, budget realignment, it's a general fund reduction of about $500,000 in expenditures that'll shift from the general fund budget onto our campus operating fund, which is our earned revenue portion of our budget.

We don't expect any service level reduction here.

Next slide.

Okay, this first slide, significant additions.

And so this is an increase in our budget for pedestrian safety barriers.

This is a part of the city's effort to separate people and vehicles for public safety.

And so this one-time investment replaces aging safety barriers and installs new barriers in critical areas across the campus for everyday visitors or visitors at large events like the FIFA World Cup celebration upcoming next year.

This next is also an addition.

Earlier this year, we had a failure of our fire system, and that failure resulted in operating costs, a pretty significant operating cost to us.

And so this is part of the city's overall effort to keep our buildings safe, keep people safe.

And so this investment replaces the fiber optics that runs our fire system.

So this is a pretty big investment for us, not just from a cost standpoint, but just a risk avoidance and a safety standpoint.

next slide okay so this is our waterfronts budget right here and so this is increase in one time spending authority derived from savings or unspent resources from last year in 2024 so that about 1.65 million dollars will be used in 26 and we fully anticipate spending out all of our carry forward between now and the renewal of the MPD fund next slide

and get that back on.

So I know one question there was interest in was to just say a little bit more about how the waterfront operation is going and some of the context there.

So I'll just spend a moment on that context as I think You know, council members, we have a deep public partnership on the waterfront.

It's fascinating, it's very unique.

Seattle Center is working essentially daily in partnership with a non-profit organization called Friends of Waterfront Park.

The essential roles here, Seattle Center manages the waterfront on behalf of the city.

We provide operations, which is groundskeeping, maintenance, cleaning, all the things that make the waterfront look great, all the landscape maintenance, as well as public safety.

And we do the public safety through a four-tiered strategy, which includes what we call our emergency services unit, ESU, which has been with Seattle Center on our campus there since our inception.

We've brought that same approach to the waterfront.

And I'll tell you a little bit more about how we've been doing.

We have a six-year agreement with Friends of Waterfront Park, which will take us through the year in 2028. That was very intentional.

That timeframe lines up with the anticipated renewal cycle for the Metropolitan Park District.

So a lion's share of our funding for the waterfront maintenance comes from the Metropolitan Park District, and that's why we have that alignment.

We have a critical thing called a performance standard, which we developed.

You probably remember we did a local improvement district to create the waterfront and to help fund it.

And as part of our commitments to the downtown community in that agreement, we committed to a level of quality in the maintenance and the programming of the waterfront park.

This performance standard is how we ensure we're meeting our commitments, and it is overseen by the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee, which is a public oversight committee which was created as part of that at Local Improvement District, and the membership there is appointed by the mayor and the city council.

So all those pieces are in place.

They've been working quite well.

Here's just a little summary of where we are.

You can see some of our incredible team.

We've built that team out.

We started in 2023. They've been operating since July of 2023. So we're a little over two years into the work.

You can see just a few highlights from 24. Park inspections, 14 full inspections over 24 with that oversight committee.

1,200 graffiti tags removed, over 300 work orders completed.

and this one's especially interesting.

Our security team, our public safety team with ESU, almost 25,000 public interactions Essentially all of those, nearly all of them, 93% are helping people get information, helping them get to the market, helping them find the programming on the waterfront.

A much smaller proportion are actually dealing with any kind of behavior issues or not following park rules.

So they're really there as ambassadors who can also help people follow our park rules.

what's next now that the park is fully open I hope many of you I know many of you were able to join us at the grand opening recently we anticipate ramping up to full staffing of 38 FTE that's between all of our maintenance and operations that's our public safety team with ESU that's also our management of the waterfront operation We are, thanks to support from the Department of Transportation, going to be adding two additional gardeners, which will help us expand our scope to also support some of the SDOT owned assets on the waterfront with, I think we've become known for doing very high quality work to keep that waterfront looking great.

So we'll be helping them with that as well.

And then the last thing I wanted to call out is this budget also advances funding for the acquisition and improvement of a waterfront operations and tribal heritage center.

This would be in a building that the city acquired a few years ago at the foot of the Pike Street Hill Climb.

It's the building called the Backend Building.

It's historic and you're probably familiar with it.

We've been underway with that project.

This would allow us to continue to have full funding to advance that project.

in partnership with the Muckleshoot Tribe.

And just a quick picture of our incredible team.

We're very proud of how they brought Seattle Center's values, Seattle Center's experience and know-how down to the waterfront.

It's the first time we've frankly been tasked with moving beyond our 74-acre campus in our existence.

And so we're very proud that it's been going pretty well.

All right, thank you.

I think that concludes our presentation and we're happy to answer questions.

Thank you, in record time.

Joking.

Council Member Hollingsworth is chair of the committee overseeing the department.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And I will talk slower this time.

I know I talked fast.

before, so I'll be able to pace myself.

Thank you, Director Foster and Deputy Director Winston.

I'm gonna joke about how I love your new background is Seattle.

Last time you came, Deputy Director Winston had a Tacoma background and we gave him a little heat for it, just a little bit.

so I'm glad to see your background in Seattle today.

No knock, I just had to throw that in there.

I appreciate all the work that you all do.

It's really been a privilege to be able to steward some of the work that you all do through committee, but also a lot of the projects that had been here with your previous partner in crime, Council Member Juarez or Council Member Strauss when he was on council.

He is on council, but you know what I meant.

Like beforehand, you know, some of the work that the previous council members the work that they did and to see Memorial Stadium through and that project and how excited we are about those pieces and the waterfront operations and the work that you all have done there with just the operating piece.

And then also too, been really proud of the partnerships that you all have formed with obviously making sure that the people on your campus have been supported during, you know, troubling financial issues often with the pandemic and then just getting people back to those pre-pandemic levels of participation.

But also the new partnership or the extending of the partnership with the Seattle Science Center, Pacific Science Center, and had a chance to go down there and tour that and just to see the potential possibilities and what that looks like.

And then also the King County Clinic that you all host every year.

Just those projects are really, really Exciting.

I don't have any questions at this moment, just because we talk so often and we have our monthly meetings and so forth, and I know that I will have some questions offline and we'll put them in the tracker, but I just wanted to set the stage with that piece regarding the Seattle Center.

I know other people will have questions, but I appreciate also to, last but not least, the forethought of thinking about other revenue sources for the Seattle Center and not just a general fund piece, but thinking about other ways to diversify the revenue with events, the contract we passed this year with Verizon, bringing technology pieces to the center or other opportunities that you have seen and have stated in our committee.

But just that piece I think is really important to figure out how we're going to continue to get better at the Seattle Center.

So I will stop there.

I will yield my time, Council Member Strauss, because I know my colleagues have questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, followed by Saka and Juarez.

Councilmember Kettle, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I feel under the gun right now.

But we've been working through these issues.

I just wanted to say thank you for your engagement.

One thing that people don't recognize or may not appreciate is the different efforts, like Councilmember Hollingsworth was speaking to this a bit, the financing, different things to change things up, to allow monies to be available.

These efforts over the last couple of years, I think, have been illuminating the highlights, A, being creative, but also looking to address the maintenance issues that we have on the campus, and that is very important, and I think that's something It's good, we have to focus on those for the long term.

And tied to that is the Pacific Science Center, which is independent, but still part of the family, if you will.

And so thank you for your work with Mr. Dordry on that, because it's so important as we move forward.

and Memorial Stadium, Memorial Wall, I'm definitely following that.

Although my biggest thank you, I should add, is adding Seattle Storm after mentioning Seattle Kraken.

Because I remember this time last year, I was like, hello, it was Storm, and I recognized the contracting pieces.

But still, thank you very much for that.

Go Storm.

I had to beat Council Member Juarez to that point.

Speaking of sports, FIFA World Cup, are we ready?

We are in the process of becoming ready.

Deep work has been underway for, I'm gonna say, what do you want, nine months now?

On planning for that.

Thank you for the support to get some additional staff capacity to do that.

The fundamentals of the event we're 100% ready for.

There are some critical investments, one of which Dematris described, the pedestrian safety barriers.

Public safety is absolutely paramount.

And unfortunately, the world's gotten more complicated in the last few years.

So we're very focused on keeping the campus safe and secure.

We're focused on keeping all the resources to staff an event of that scale well.

We know it's gonna be, in all likelihood, the largest event we will have had on the campus since the World's Fair, in terms of all the viewing that they are anticipating with the fan celebration.

There are some things which are changing and we're watching, like international travel, visitation to Seattle, we're seeing that.

drop off as are most of the major attractions in the city.

And so how will that affect, you know, visitation is a question.

But yeah, we're doing absolutely everything we need with our local organizing committee partners to be ready for that World Cup fan celebration.

And by the way, this is vital.

This is vital.

We're in a new world right now.

This morning, the president's talking about, you know, using dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.

this morning.

I wrote a statement on that.

That's one of the things I was working on this morning.

I'm shocked.

And so it's even more imperative that we do things right here in the city.

And I was gonna bring up, it's funny because you spoke to these issues, I was gonna bring up the Seattle Center Emergency Services Unit, which I know about, I already knew about the the bollards and the like from many sources that I have throughout the district that surround Seattle Center.

But they're also there when I was at the downtown school dealing with issues, public safety issues, and they were represented.

So I think that's important.

We have to ensure that they're ready and what's needed.

If there's anything that's needed for them, and I'm sure you obviously can work with the chief of police and fire chief Scoggins and the rest, but we have to ensure that the emergency services unit is is right there.

And thank you for, by the way, the fire alarm system too.

That kind of goes to maintenance that I originally talked about.

We have to take care of job one, so thank you.

On the waterfront, you also beat me to it because the security piece is there too.

The public safety pieces are there too.

You spoke to graffiti.

I had questions here and you pretty much spoke to them.

So I appreciate your effort because it's basically leading by example.

I know we have the graffiti team and so forth, but that's really helpful.

Also is pedestrian safety.

I know we have a beautiful bike lane that needs to be tweaked a little bit from a safety perspective.

That's a different topic, but differentiating the bike lane from the waterfront itself, ensuring that e-scooters, that we're safe, maybe geo-fencing that area, all those issues are there, so we need to ensure that we're safe from a pedestrian safety perspective.

Is there anything to add to that, the graffiti, the pedestrian safety pieces?

I will mention, since you brought up the scooters, Lime and Bird and those companies, we did have a good focused effort with SDOT's help for the grand opening to get a more complete plan in place.

The waterfront is, I don't want to say overwhelmed, but they have been enormously successful with the scooter programs in Seattle, and the waterfront is a huge destination for them.

and so we were able to get their support to really ramp up their active staffing in real time to relocate the scooters, all those types of things.

We've been providing dedicated corrals now for them to keep the public pathways open, to keep our ADA pathways open.

And so I just want to recognize they've been making a good effort on that.

and also SDOT has leaned in to help us make sure that we're getting the attention we need down there.

We are implementing a geofence.

We are implementing what they call a slow zone to sort of bring those things, bring the scooters down to a slow pace on the promenade.

And really what we want to do is see them in the bike lane, in the cycle track that we have along the waterfront.

Thank you, and it is a beautiful bike lane, so I think that's very good.

You mentioned the grand opening.

I have to apologize for not attending even though it's in my district.

My other schedule's dominated by soccer and basketball games and I was not able to and whatever else I get scheduled for during nights and weekends.

So I apologize for not being there.

My last quick question, partnership with the Pike Place Market PDA, this is still on the waterfront area, you know, engaging with them, has that been, have you done any of that or is there anything Oh yeah, and Rachel is fabulous.

I'm sure you all have met Rachel, the new ED.

They have a long, long history as a core partner on the waterfront.

They've been at the table.

They're part of that oversight committee I mentioned.

Actually, they have a permanent seat on that oversight committee, as does the Historic Waterfront Association, the Seattle Aquarium, and the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

So yes, they are very actively involved and our security and grounds teams are literally talking and working day to day on how people flow in between the Overlook Walk and the market.

It's interesting that the market has told us how much it has changed the flow of Pike Place Market.

That new huge shift of people arriving from the West is very new and it's changing how people experience the market.

It also highlights, by the way, the connections with the waterfront.

Pioneer Square towards the stadiums, new connections.

We just talked about the Overlook Walk, but then there's also the Bell Street Project, the Market to Mohai, all these kinds of connections.

So I appreciate your support in whatever way that comes out of the waterfront side of your portfolio.

My last question, Chair, hopefully I'm staying short, is the Tribal Heritage Center.

My understanding, if I remember right, it's focused, a lot of this is regarding earthquake retrofitting, emergency preparedness kind of angle to this.

How is the building itself, and so you mentioned some funding, but is there anything specific related to that building across from the aquarium that we need to be up and running?

Yeah, I'll give you the high level, and this is part of FAS's budget in terms of the details of what's being requested.

We're very appreciative that FAS took on this project on behalf of the waterfront to get this operation center open.

I think the fundamentals are that in our development of the schematic design, we've come to the conclusion we need to make a more comprehensive investment in the building.

The initial hope had been to do more of a light upgrade, TIs, obviously supporting our tribal partners in getting in there.

We're still on a great path, but we need to put a little more resource into it, and it's going to take a little longer.

We're going to start construction after the World Cup, so that incurs some escalation and those types of things.

The extra costs are going to be supported with long-term debt that we paid back with a slice of the anticipated real estate excise tax.

Thank you, Director Eder.

Highlighting another importance I was alluding to earlier about financing and how that can, if you do that right, that could be a major budget plus, so thank you.

Chair, what's up?

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Saka followed by Juarez, Rivera, and Solomon.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Fosser, Mr. Winston as well for being here.

Appreciate your overview, budget presentation, and more importantly, the work that you all do every day in the Seattle Center and then now on our waterfront as well.

And special shout out to your work to implement certain slow zones in the center for the for the Lime bikes and scooters.

My office recently worked directly with the operators of those scooters ourselves because a lot of the danger with kids going super fast on these scooters and high points and cars everywhere and they're riding with toddlers on them too.

And so we worked directly with them to implement some slow zones in certain areas of high point.

I strongly support those scooters and deployment and use for help facilitate last mile connections, but we shouldn't have a one-size-fits-all approach, completely unregulated, completely unallowed to go, the max speed, full throttle.

So shout out to that work to keep people safe and connected.

Two quick questions that are really in my capacity as chair of our city's transportation committee and the intersection and overlay that that department has with your work.

First and foremost, at the outset of this presentation, it was noted that Among other sort of revenue sources, your department receives a portion of the Seattle monorail proceeds.

And in Seattle we operate, well we own two lines of transit, the streetcar and the monorail.

And King County Metro, we contract with King County Metro to operate those on our behalf.

but just curious to better understand, can you talk more about the revenue share arrangement that you have for monorail?

What specific percentage of the monorail fares does your department receive?

Yes, so I'm glad you asked.

The monorail is a really fascinating part of who we are.

If you'd ever asked me that someday I'd be helping oversee a monorail system, I would have said you're crazy.

The Seattle Monorail is owned by Seattle Center and it's operated by Seattle Monorail Services.

Just to give you a sense, they are moving about 2.4 million passengers a year.

They are back up beyond where they were prior to COVID.

And they operate with zero public subsidy.

And they're the only form of transit in our region that does that.

Very unique because they are focused on an event client.

people coming to, obviously, Climate Pledge Arena, coming to events at the Armory.

The arrangement we have with them is a concession agreement, and this was created a number of years ago where, essentially, they take all responsibility for maintenance and operation and upkeep of the monorail system.

We have a regulated pricing structure with them that's written into that concession agreement, and the department doesn't take a portion of each fare, but we receive a certain concession payment every year.

That concession payment is part of, as Councilmember Kettle mentioned, this kind of making money on the one hand to fund public programming.

We use those concession fees to fund things like Festall, fund Winterfest, other free public programs that happen on the campus.

Thank you.

Is that concession payment a flat fee?

Is it pegged to a specific threshold or target?

It varies depending on how much attendance and how much revenue they're generating.

So it's a percentage of their total revenue.

Percentage of total, okay, thank you for the initial overview.

Would appreciate follow up on what that, what those specifics look like.

Happy to.

Thank you, thank you.

Awesome, and then second question pertains to slide nine, the waterfront operation slide.

Specifically that second kind of category of things.

What's next?

You note the two FTEs, gardeners from SDOT for landscaping purposes.

Can you talk a little bit more about that arrangement and sort of the rationale behind SDOT landscapers sitting within your department?

Yes, so what this would do is basically provide some SDOP maintenance funding for us to take responsibility for some of the scope of the waterfront, which is currently under their responsibility.

So basically, you know, we have the benefit with the Seattle Center Waterfront Ops team of having a dedicated on-site team that thinks about nothing but the maintenance and upkeep of the waterfront.

They're based on the waterfront.

They report to work each day there.

They're focused on that.

SDOT is managing a system across the entire city.

And so in our conversations with Director Emery, with her maintenance team, with the mayor's office, we concluded that the best way to help them meet the commitments that they had as part of that waterfront that larger maintenance commitment that I alluded to in the presentation.

Instead of pulling their team to try to come in and give that extra focus on the waterfront, provide a portion of funding to Seattle Center.

We did a cost estimate of what Seattle Center's costs were versus SDOT's.

We actually found it was a little less expensive for Seattle Center to do that work than it would be for SDOT.

So we then basically are in the process.

We haven't worked out all the details.

We're in the process of negotiating an MOU between our two departments for them to provide that funding.

To be clear, these would be Seattle Center employees represented doing this work, would not be SDOT employees, so it would be Seattle Center staff doing that work.

Thank you, so Seattle Center employees who are implementing, carrying out responsibilities that lie within SDOT.

Yes, so things like, really what a lot of this has to do with our trees and the ground covers that you see.

You've probably seen those large planters along the sidewalks.

It's easier and a little more cost-effective for us to do that because we're already down there with gardeners and laborers doing all the portions on the west side.

Yes, yes.

I have my own thoughts on that, and I arguably could have shared those first.

but what I'm about to say is mostly consistent with what the thinking that went behind this is and I'm actually glad that these workers sit within your department for a number of reasons.

One, as you noted earlier, your department has a lot of expertise already in-house with this specific type of work.

Two, you noted, I wasn't even aware of before, but you noted that there's cost savings associated with your department doing it versus SDOT, so to our broader effort and initiative on this floor in the broader city to streamline and consolidate services and avoid duplicative services, duplication of efforts, that kind of thing.

I think it makes sense from all that perspective.

But importantly, as chair of the department that oversees SDOT, SDOT is, in my mind, and should always be principally an engineering and safety organization.

SDOT is and should always be an engineering and safety organization.

And what I mean by that is, well, we have roughly 27% of the available space for vegetation and tree canopy is in public rights away.

And so we need to balance the need to add tree canopy while also maintaining safe, efficient routes of travel for people.

But at the same time SDOT used to actually be named the Department of Engineering up until about 30 years ago when they were jointly, it was one organization.

The Department of Engineering with SDOT's current role in remit and SPU's current role in remit, all housed into one called the Seattle Department of Engineering.

That went away, there was a split, I think a court case involved in that in any event.

They have always been an engineering organization and I always want them to be an engineering organization and a safety organization.

And the more FTEs and resources we add to allow them to maintain and plan for all the vegetation and growth, I think it ultimately detracts from what I believe should be their core mission.

of engineering and safety.

So all this to say, thank you for thinking about that.

And I would encourage you and other departments to find creative ways to work with S-DOT in particular to make sure these functions are appropriately housed.

In this case, I don't think it would be in S-DOT.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Shaka.

Councilmember Rivera.

Colleagues, there are snacks in the green room.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here and for this presentation.

I'll start with the waterfront, and I always feel when we talk about the waterfront that I need to give a shout-out to Maggie Walker, Friends of the Waterfront, and the late Charlie Royer for all the work.

leading up to this amazing project opening.

It's just made our city all the more amazing.

And I know it is, I named those three, but it is a whole, whole team and host of people that contributed to making it happen and now to operating it.

I just want to really shout out those folks and also just the gratitude for everyone who's been working on it and who continues to maintain it.

It's just going to be a treasure for many years to come.

It's just so amazing.

For those of us that live here and for our visitors, because I've heard a lot of talk from visitors about how amazing the waterfront is, and for those of us that have been here all these years, and knew what the waterfront looked like before, I'm still stunned when I look at it at how beautiful it is.

So anyway, I could go on and on about the waterfront.

So thank you for your stewardship of the waterfront.

I will say also on the monorail, I get asked on a regular basis, believe it or not, is it safe?

So I will ask the question to you in terms of your partnership agreement with this or the company that runs it.

You know I assume there's like some maintenance things in in the arrangement Yes, I mean fundamentally my answer to you would be yes.

The monorail is safe.

It is vintage.

No question It is very carefully maintained Seattle monorail services at our you know request maintains a robust capital maintenance program and We oversee that on a quarterly basis.

We're very involved in ensuring that they do what they need to do, but I have to be really honest, they are an incredibly good steward.

The team, their passion for the monorail is amazing.

They are usually three steps ahead with what needs to get dealt with, whether it's the vehicles, and they do require, I mean, I'm not gonna pretend they don't require a lot of maintenance, they do.

It's really almost, it's an art, the maintenance of those vehicles.

The guideway systems, ADA accessibility to the system, which was obviously built in 1962. So there's a lot of things to deal with, but they're very on top of it.

We do also, you know, we don't have time to get into it too much today, but we have some major new capital reinvestment happening in the Seattle Center Station to really lift that whole station up.

Much higher quality experience.

We're super excited about what that's gonna do for the monorail, as well as we're starting to plant some seeds for the future of Westlake.

and a bigger transformation there, which would really improve the connection to light rail.

Light rail is already changing the monorail in incredible ways.

We're seeing ridership just spike because you can ride the light rail and you can transfer Westlake onto the monorail.

So look for more from us on the monorail, but it is very safe.

Thank you.

Ridership at the monorail is up 5% this year.

Awesome.

I know I take it to...

Oh, sorry, go ahead, Ben.

Personal anecdote, my bike route to work passes underneath the monorail every morning and just the other day there was an unusual little car on the tracks that was clearly doing some inspection or some repair.

So there they were out there doing that maintenance.

I've seen it too, Ben.

Thank you, Director Noble.

And I write it when I go to the Kraken game.

I'm a big Kraken fan.

And also concerts at Seattle Center.

And when my kids were little, we rode the monorail just for fun, because it's really cool.

Kids love the monorail.

So thank you for that.

And then my other question is about you spoke briefly about the organizations, the tenants at the Seattle Center and the organizations you have partnerships with there and then there are businesses and restaurants and such and just how all that's going given the changes and impacts, you know, there are a lot of impacts to a lot of the food vendors because everything's getting more expensive and some of it unfortunately due to our federal situation, but so what are you seeing in terms of that?

Well, similar, great question first off, and it's very top of mind for Dematris and I and our team.

Similar to the questions you were asking about the cost of building housing, you know, yeah, we're seeing a macroeconomic trend that as things are costing more, people are being much more careful about how they spend their money.

and as a result, people's willingness to spend discretionary income is dropping.

So people are not spending at the Space Needle.

They're not spending on the festivals in the same way.

Bumbershoot had a hard year.

A lot of our festival business had a hard year.

Armory vendors are off a little bit this year.

Waterfront Park is exploding as a free public experience where you can get out and enjoy.

Attendance on the campus grounds is spiking, you know around the fountain and those types of things So what we're seeing is people are out to enjoy the city, but they want to have they're looking for free experiences a little more That's leading us to lean into Festall lean into Winterfest Which is our big free public, you know holiday experience that we do in the Armory and New Year's Eve and the like So we keep adapting to that and obviously, you know, we don't like seeing the numbers go down but that's part of what we do is we try to stay very nimble and, you know, frankly help those partners succeed.

Like we're starting to do things now where we're looking at some promotions, we're looking at some discounts, we're looking at bundling parking with a ticket to an event at McCaw.

Things that kind of help for, especially for families and others who might be looking carefully at if they've got the discretionary income, we make it just a little easier to still come enjoy Seattle Center.

And of course the holidays are coming up, which is a big time for you all.

So it remains to be seen and we can keep talking about the impacts that we will see.

But I have concerns about the long-term impact, the sustainability of the campus and all the various tenants and partners there because we want to make sure it continues to thrive.

It is another gem of our city and I just want to make sure that our cultural institutions, our arts institutions, the theater, the ballet, and then also the children's museum and all the vendors there and the small businesses that are there continue to thrive.

want to keep talking about this particular piece.

It's important.

If I might add one more to what you're saying.

So another kind of huge driver that we're running into that it's important to be aware of is as Seattle Center has different equipment and systems fail, which unfortunately is happening more and more often given the age of our campus, It creates outages, it creates loss of revenue, not only for the department, but potentially for partners.

And that is becoming a much more pronounced issue.

So DeMontris described the fire panel investment, that's an emergency investment because our fire panel system failed earlier this year.

We've had multiple power outages on the campus, which were last minute to avoid imminent failure situations.

I could continue, I could just go on a list of different systems.

So we will be talking to you more about how does the city start to organize to deal with this more comprehensively.

You know, this is a major asset.

We have had it for 63 years.

We're at a point where we're gonna have to make some larger scale reinvestments in it, which I realize is hard because we have a lot of things we need to do as a city, but this is becoming urgent, so.

and it's driving costs for our partners as well.

And it's continuing to develop over time.

And we have some really great partners there.

So I didn't mention the Children's Theater.

I don't want to leave anyone out.

And of course, Climate Plage Arena.

And we have great partners there, especially also with One Roof.

So there's a lot of amazing things happening there that we want to continue long term.

So thank you.

Thank you for your stewardship, both of you and your entire team at Seattle Center.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera, Councilmember Solomon and Nelson, noting we are at 12.05.

Thank you very much, Chair.

I could wax nostalgically about my experiences at Sales Center, from seeing the old vampires stroll around the campus in the old days when they had nightmare theater going on, to the bubble later, to everything.

Yeah, like I said, I go wax nostalgic.

And I miss the fun forest.

Just gonna say that too.

Bring it back, man.

I want the wild mouse back, okay?

First of all, I do want to also acknowledge and thank you for the investments in the tribal center on the waterfront.

I know that was very important to the Muckleshoots when I spoke to them months ago about I was at the opening for the waterfront.

One of the things I noticed was the public restroom set up that's in front of Pier 5758, right in front of there.

Beautiful design.

I would love to see that replicated in other parts of the city.

As you know, we have a lack of public restroom facilities.

And if we can have more facilities like that that provide for people meeting their basic human needs, yet also is designed in such a way that it doesn't lead to unintended or unwanted behaviors, that'd be great.

So, two quick questions, actually.

First one is, do you still have the SPD substation in the armory, the basement of the armory?

Is that still there?

Yes, we do.

Okay, cool, thanks.

And I also want to acknowledge You know, slides nine and ten, looking at your security team, Brian Elcinitas, a.k.a. Moose, is still with you.

So when you see Moose, tell him I said hey.

Oh, yes, there's only one Moose.

He's amazing.

He's on the waterfront now, actually.

Oh, cool, yeah.

Like I said, oh, man, we could tell some stories about Moose, but that's time for another conversation.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Solomon.

Council President Nelson.

Allow me to gush.

I just wanted to join in.

First of all, thank you very much for the presentation.

You know, the waterfront is spectacular and I find myself sometimes focused on what is not working until that I forget to look up and recognize the amazing things going on around me and the waterfront stands out in its beauty and also the work and collaboration that it represents across many years.

And thank you, Councilmember Rivera for calling out Maggie Walker and her persistence.

I'm all about just giving people their credit.

The Emergency Service Unit is phenomenal.

I've had guests here last weekend and they said they were on the waterfront, ran into somebody and had a great interaction.

Shout out to the now famous Jamie Smith, who is the leader down there and just whatever has gone into their training.

So they're so both welcoming, reassuring and help people stay safe and feel safe.

We should get replicated many times fold for all the security that is not part of our police department out there, but I'm not saying anybody else is lacking.

Here's the thing.

I'm starting to hear hints of a new funding model for the Seattle Center, so just a request to talk to us sooner rather than later on that.

And to the point about the monorail, yes, I was able to get a tour right after I was elected.

My office went on a tour of the monorail, and I actually got to drive it.

and didn't break it.

But anyway, the real limiting factor there is the equipment.

Some of their parts, they don't make them anymore.

So I'm not sure how to get a...

I don't know what the fix for that is, but we have to make sure that they have the resources to do so to get it fixed and get ahold of those parts so that this is a treasure for a long time going into the future.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

I can just real quick.

I just wanted to mention, thank you, Council President.

A couple of comments.

One, we'd be happy to come back.

We're actually anticipating coming back in the early part of 26 to talk about our new strategic plan and 10-year vision, which does talk about revenue.

It does talk about kind of funding models for the department.

Nothing urgent, but we will be happy to discuss that more at that time.

and then yes you're right the monorail one of the critical challenges is having replacement parts because they just don't make them anymore for a monorail so we actually have a whole program with them to identify the specific most frequently failing elements and starting to get those fabricated and build up some some inventory ahead which sounds obvious to do, but it's remarkably hard to get the funding and, frankly, the expertise, the craftsmanship to be able to build those parts from scratch.

But we are working on that with the monorail operator.

I'm starting to hear an incubator project maybe for a small local business, a craft, you know, metal shop, et cetera.

So anyway, to be continued.

Thank you for seeing to that.

Thank you, Council President Nelson.

I will round us out and turn it back to Council Member Hollingsworth if there are further questions.

I'll just note, because you have three different budget pages in the appendix, you have got the McCall Fund, you've got the Seattle Center Fund, and the Waterfront Fund.

I'm gonna probably reserve most of my questions for SharePoint so that I don't confuse us all in what does this mean, what does that mean?

I will just say, that at Sound Transit, as a board member of Sound Transit, the agency is adjusting their budgeting practices to more clearly identify the preventative maintenance and regular maintenance that's required.

As I'm looking through the Seattle Center budget page, which is only one of three.

I'm not seeing this as clearly called out and just speaking to what I heard about the fire and the ongoing maintenance, what I'm reading is just a campus budget line.

Is that a correct reading?

Maybe Director Noble or Director Eder?

I would suggest that potentially the CIP document, the capital improvement document, will have more detail.

than the operational budget book, but I need to go look myself to see whether it provides the kind of information you're looking for.

Probably shouldn't have taught me to read the appendix.

Just reading here, confirming you're making about $10 million off of parking, and that is our publicly owned parking garages.

Is that correct?

and then we're making about 13.9 million off of event rentals, et cetera.

Is that correct?

Yes.

But that does not include any funding to support the vibrancy.

That is literally just keeping the heat on, windows repaired, doors opening.

You're not adding any programming to that.

Some of that revenue goes back into public programming and then back office functions and operations and maintenance.

But if you're asking if there's enough to grow the programming, no.

Okay.

Thank you.

With that, I just also want to share with you gratitude for getting the back-end building funding moving a little faster.

There was great appreciation at the Tribal Nations Summit last week, two weeks ago.

I just want to thank you for that.

With that, Council Member Hollingsworth, if you've got additional items to close us out.

Mr. Chair, I do not.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Last word, Director Foster, Mr. Winston.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

With that, colleagues, we are at 1214 p.m.

and want to ask, I think we could get through Office of Economic Development in 45 minutes to an hour if we wanna push right now.

Thumbs up or thumbs down?

I'm seeing one, two, three, four.

We are gonna keep moving.

If you need to use the restroom, please take a break right now.

We've got snacks in the green room.

Clerk, will you please read the third item into the record?

Agent item three, Office of Economic Development for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

So colleagues, I'm going to be a little bit more timely.

I'm going to give us until 1.15.

That's 60 minutes.

But again, we are in control of our own destiny.

So if we want to get out at 1, that choice.

just a little bit here.

As you'll see in this six-year look back, the Office of Economic Development had a very large budget increase over the last six years.

We'll get to the details in just a minute.

As Council President noted yesterday, as a sponsor of the 0.1% sales tax for public safety, she had a large hand in directing how that funding was used.

As Council Member Rink shared earlier this week, having being in partnership with the B&O Shield proposal gave her a lot of influence into how that money is spent.

Similarly, as one of the original four co-sponsors of the Jumpstart Tax, my priority was Office of Economic Development.

And so when we came to that table, that is the history of how we got to where we are today with such a fast-growing budget.

Filibuster is over.

We are joined by Director Mark McIntyre and Joe Regis, as well as always, Director Noble, Director Eder.

With that, over to you, Director McIntyre.

And please take us away.

We'll hold questions until the end of your presentation.

Thank you, Council Member.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for having us.

I'm Mark McIntire, Director of the Office of Economic Development, joined by Joe Regis, our Finance Director.

And we're here to talk to you about OED's proposed 2026 budget.

As a reminder, our core purpose is leading projects and making investments that open up access to economic opportunities that reduce the racial wealth gap and encourage innovation and growth.

This is all consistent with the resolution that Council passed with the Future of Seattle Economy Framework.

And we do this work really trying to strike a balance between actions that help our local economy and actions that help us make us globally competitive.

We've always got to kind of try to find that balance.

Meanwhile, we're always trying to keep in mind some of the city's priorities, particularly right now thinking about affordability.

But as we talk to our staff, really it's all about results out in the economy.

It's not necessarily what's happening in the city.

It's what are the results for the businesses and workers in Seattle.

We've been filling vacant storefronts.

We've been positioning ourselves on AI and the clean energy sectors.

And we've been focused on revitalizing our neighborhood business districts.

So throughout Seattle, in each of your districts, you can see the positive effects of OED's work.

And that's exactly what this moment calls for.

Right now, we are facing tremendous economic uncertainty.

Money is really expensive.

Global trade is messy.

Costs are going up across the board.

Consumer behavior is changing.

And through it all, AI is disrupting pretty much every industry.

But we like to think that in that turmoil, there's plenty of opportunity that still exists.

But to take advantage of it, we've got to really have a keen understanding of what the key economic problems are and then work towards shared goals with the private and philanthropic sectors.

We've also got to be really clear about what the city's role is.

We can't do everything.

We can't peanut butter our resources.

We've got to be really smart and strategic about the investments that we make, which leads to our priorities for this 2026 budget.

So we're still going to use the future of Seattle economy framework that you guys codified.

We really need to focus on immediate support for small businesses.

We just announced a package of investments that we've made and some policy changes that you all passed into law, so thank you for your support, as always, for our small businesses.

And then we've got some acute issues related to grocery stores and pharmacies.

These are necessary for our residents, but they're also anchors for our neighborhood business districts, and right now it's really hard for them to sustainably operate in Seattle.

Later on, as we talk about it, I'm going to talk to you about this new theory of change that we're proposing.

And then, again, through it all, we're trying to think about not just what's in front of us, but what's up ahead and around the corner.

We have tremendous opportunity with AI and then another real opportunity with clean energy, and those two have a Venn diagram approach.

One of the things I'm excited about is we're going to do a continued assessment of our business landscape and our economic positioning.

so that we're really smart and on top of what we're doing, but also what some of our competitors are doing, learn from them, adapt, and stay nimble.

As Councilmember Strauss just mentioned, we wanted to give you some context about where OED has been over the last number of years.

You can see here in 2022 when those JumpStart funds started coming into play.

To me, a lot of this is trying to meet the moment.

The need is great in our economy.

The city has a clear role to play and we've tried to structure ourselves to be very responsible stewards of those public dollars while also trying to push the envelope of the role that the city can play to make sure that we're actually benefiting the businesses and workers across the city.

So then if you look at what we're proposing for 2026 related against the endorsed budget, there's a 30 percent increase.

We're maintaining our FTE count and so a lot of our baseline activities will stay consistent with what they were this year and then what I'm about to walk through are the changes which includes a significant number of adds to our budget for some new initiatives.

First though I'm going to turn it over to Joe to talk a little bit about a budget realignment piece.

Yeah, thank you.

OED just had one significant budget reduction that we wanted to highlight here.

Joe, green light means go.

And you've got to get really close.

Mick Jagger.

Apologies about that.

There you are.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OED just had one significant budget reduction that we want to highlight here, and that's the abandonment of the remaining $500,000 in community development block grant funding.

that was in OED's 2026 proposed budget.

This is described here as a budget realignment and not a net budget reduction because essentially we're just redirecting those funds back to HSD.

We believe they'll have a better programmatic fit there.

I'll hand it back to Director Mike Gattire.

Thank you, Joe.

So this new one is called SAIL, stabilize, activate, invest locally.

I'm pretty excited about this, so bear with me here.

You'll see the problem statement on the screen, and it's something that I know that each of you deal with as you are out and about in community, that we have these persistent interconnected problems related to public safety, economic development, and neighborhood vibrancy, and yet the city has attempted to address these through a fragmented approach, which really hasn't resulted in the sustainable positive change we want to see, despite the level of investment that we've put on the table.

and then Little Saigon is kind of emblematic of this issue where the city has over 25 FTEs working in and around Chinatown and National District in Little Saigon but we've consistently faced some similar vexing problems in Little Saigon.

We've had multiple initiatives set up to try to address this and they've all been running kind of parallel together but frankly it's not working.

It's not delivering the change we want and so what we need is we need a new theory of change.

and so that's what the SAIL initiative proposes is that instead of working department by department, we need to take a city-wide approach where we are working towards shared outcomes and that those shared outcomes can move across a progression towards more sustainable change.

So first we must stabilize an area before we can activate it, which will lead to future investment.

And you can see here that what this is trying to do is actually merge together some of those parallel initiatives, so the DAT, the Downtown Activation Teams, the DAP, the Downtown Activation Plan, the FUDEP initiative, all trying to come together, looking at what's common across those, and then working in a coordinated fashion to try to deliver those city services and deliver those results.

We are operating with a hypothesis methodology, so that's how we're gonna reach our shared goals, If we can drive down certain behaviors, we will see then positive behaviors by taking these certain actions.

We've only had a couple meetings to get started, but already the results are really encouraging just to see the departments not just sharing information and coordinating, but actually aligned around common goals can be pretty powerful.

And that's what leads us to this budget proposal is adding $4 million to OED's budget.

A lot of the operations will still continue through those other departments.

This money would go towards some of these new initiatives or new actions coming out of the SAIL initiative that we would be determining.

Relatedly, OED will have an additional $200,000.

This was originally through the FUDEP initiative, but because that's being merged into this new SAIL effort, that would be OED having some additional resources to specifically support businesses in the Little Saigon neighborhood.

In 2026, we will start by focusing on the Little Saigon neighborhood and then be adding additional neighborhoods as we go, likely including Lake City as the second neighborhood that the sales sub-cabinet would focus on.

The second big addition to OED's budget is the Back to Business program.

So this is the evolution of the storefront repair program that you all know and love, but with some new programmatic elements.

So we still have the storefront repair fund, so when a business has damage to their storefront, they can apply to the city to get funding up to $3,000 reimbursed for that damage.

But what we're adding is a proactive security fund and then neighborhood business district improvements.

I want to give a shout-out to Councilmember Solomon, who's been a partner on this.

He's been a SEPTED champion for a long, long time, and that's where a lot of the thinking is for those proactive investments, is investments that we can make to either individual businesses or business districts that will make it safer and more welcoming for customers and workers.

So we're really excited about this.

We launched it in July.

We've had 85 businesses already take advantage of it.

We've been working with our business districts, especially those who've already had some sort of SEPTED analysis.

This funding will actually help them make some of those built environment changes.

And SEPTED is the Crime Prevention through Environmental Design.

Thank you, Director.

Once we've had Councilmember Salomon here, none of us can forget that.

Yes.

Back to you, Director.

Relatedly, as I mentioned earlier, we've got an acute problem with grocery stores.

And what we intend to have here is a dedicated fund that would run similar to the back-to-business fund, so on the same principles and kind of theory, but a fund dedicated for grocery stores.

We are already setting up meetings with a number of grocery stores of different types, sizes, and locations to understand really more the nature of their safety and security issues.

But the intent here is, again, to make it more safe and welcoming for customers to get food access.

Relatedly, we're proposing to have an additional fund to help think about how are we actually helping support those grocery stores and food businesses.

How can we help them scale?

How can we make sure that we're addressing acute issues in food deserts?

We still want to figure out what it is that we can do as a city to make it easier and more affordable to operate a grocery store in Seattle and make sure that we're providing food access as well as culturally appropriate grocery items to different communities.

and then as I mentioned, we wanna get smarter about what is happening in our current economy and where we think it's going.

So we are gonna work on a, essentially, you can think of it as futures of Seattle economy 2.0.

So we did that study in 2022. and that established the framework that we've been operating since then.

But a lot has changed since 2022 and so this is a great time for us to actually figure out what are we doing next and to bring some experts in locally as well as look around the country and around the world to try to see what ideas we might want to adapt for ourselves.

So we're pretty excited about this being kind of that next phase for our strategies.

This next item is continuing, $500,000 to continue investing in the waterfront shuttle.

So this is not actually a new thing.

This money was previously going through SDOT.

It would now go through OED to the waterfront.

Obviously this is a big part of our downtown activation, especially as we think about World Cup and the waterfront.

You guys were just talking with Center about how important that is and what a jewel that is for the city.

This waterfront shuttle would continue that service for that.

Correct, that is one-time funding, the waterfront shuttle.

And then the next one-time addition is support for a community workforce training center operated by Uplift Northwest.

We do a lot of work with Uplift Northwest on a variety of different topics, one of which is around the CID.

I'm thinking about some of the graffiti abatement work, those buildings that are privately owned, and because it's a historic district, requires special attention, and Uplift has been a great partner in thinking about how we do graffiti abatement there, while also providing job training opportunities.

So it's a great organization.

They are attempting to build a new training center, so they've got a capital campaign going on, and this would be a city investment in that campaign to help build it.

And with that, I want to just quickly touch on the citywide workforce development.

This is something we've talked about previously during prior budget presentations.

It's something we've been working on kind of behind the scenes with about 12 other departments, really thinking about where should the city be prioritizing its workforce dollars.

Previously, we had split almost 50-50 between internal investments, so those are workforce investments supporting city lines of business, or external investments, those are supporting kind of other industry sectors or other businesses outside of city lines of business.

What we're proposing is that the city should be shifting most of its workforce dollars towards internal focus.

You can see here that some of that would be going towards systems change, such as establishing standard data and evaluation methods across different departments, as well as organizing our youth employment services, because those are really scattered right now.

It's great work that we do, but we haven't really created a pipeline.

and then second would be investing in our city jobs.

We have great city jobs.

We should be really proud of them, especially in our utilities, which is crucial work for our economy to function.

They perform a very unique service in terms of city light and our public utilities.

They have tremendous workforce needs.

they require a certain level of skill building and some of those skills are highly transferable both within the public sector but also with the private sector.

So these are automation proof jobs providing a very high quality service to the city of Seattle that's necessary for our economy and we think we should be investing more heavily in those careers.

And then the external dollars would largely be put towards external partnerships across the region to help drive those internal lines of business.

We can talk more about that at a separate meeting.

I just did wanna highlight that we do actually have a citywide workforce plan.

We think that it is the smart way to go for the city, and by us having clarity around our role, it's gonna help some of the other players in the regional workforce development system make their choices alongside of us and in alignment with our plan.

With that, I will pause for questions.

Thank you, Director McIntyre.

Council President Nelson is chair of the committee overseeing the department.

You are recognized.

Thank you so much for your presentation.

I remember in previous years when I was a little bit nervous about council perhaps wanting to reduce OED's budget, I would always start out with a kind of a lecture or basically say we don't cut the budget of the department whose function is to help grow our budget or our revenue by helping small businesses start and thrive and grow in our city and so I always do though want to remind people that that is a very unique function of OED is that you are helping not just our tax base or our revenue or keep our programs going or our government running but you're also helping People generate wealth and that's especially important because so many people, especially immigrant people, get their foot in the door of the American economy through a small business franchise, etc.

So thank you very much for all of your work.

Direct business support for small businesses especially.

Of course I am going to be, or I am very supportive of the expanded and rebranded storefront repair fund to the back to business fund.

Just as a reminder for folks, when I started as the economic development chair, as a small business owner myself, I thought my job would be all about helping small businesses access capital or figure out the permitting system, et cetera.

But no, when I started in January, 2022, what was worrying and preoccupying small business owners, entrepreneurs, anybody who had a brick and mortar, basically nonprofits as well, was the impact of crime.

And so at my second committee meeting in February of 2022, brought people together at the suggestion of our collection of BIA directors and had them all around this table talking about how the public safety situation had been impacting their staff, customers, and their own livelihoods.

And so it was very serious.

And they put together, they didn't just fetch, they came out with a list of recommendations What did they call it to begin with?

They had a...

They wanted us to develop a...

Just a second, I'm looking for it.

Broken window and damaged storefront fund.

And they said, when neighborhood business districts are seeing major increases in vandalism, broken storefront windows and doors, as well as late night smash and grab burglaries, the city should pay a role in funding repairs.

that is in fact what we did over the last couple of years.

I sent the recommendations to the mayor's office, voila, six months later it was functioning.

And then when it ran out last year, I put more money back in the budget.

And so glad to be able to see it expanded and rebranded.

Council President, I'm noticing the clerk is asking you to speak into the microphone.

Oh, there we go.

Thank you.

So in any case, go forth and continue that work and proactive security is exactly what's needed.

How many of those businesses have asked for bollards in front of their storefronts and et cetera?

So until we can get a hand, until we can drastically reduce or eliminate the public safety and security problems that are the function of a still rebounding staffing crisis at SPD and also every is never going to have no crime.

Until we can do that, then I think it's the least we can do.

So thank you very much for that.

I will also...

What?

Oh, okay.

I thought you were saying amen.

And then the one other thing I'll touch on here is the cluster.

Of course, let me just say that and ask the question.

If you didn't say it, I wanted to know.

Expanding the downtown activation team and that work to other neighborhoods.

Absolutely, because all neighborhoods deserve some love, but we should definitely be targeting neighborhoods that are undergoing, that need the most help right now.

So I know that it's, Lake City is one of the three.

Can you remind me what the other ones are?

And then I'll go back to my comments.

Well, so the DAT team still operates in the multiple locations downtown.

So that includes Third and Pike and Pine, Pioneer Square area and then Little Saigon.

But the key thing is they can't operate in a vacuum.

After they've stabilized an area, we need to have a plan for investing in the activation and future investment.

And so that's really how we're linking those two together.

data is going away, it's just becoming part of this new initiative that will have an expanded purview and more departments involved in the investments.

So Little Saigon and then we're going to stay focused on Little Saigon because honestly we need to deliver for Little Saigon.

We've over-promised and under-delivered for too many years in Little Saigon.

This is the time for us to actually follow through there and then ideally moving to Lake City and then we'll have a process for evaluating what neighborhood would come after that.

Thank you, yes.

Little Saigon, let it not suffer from, you know, vainglorious Seattle neglect is Westmeet's phrase.

So anyway, go on.

Joe, did you have something else to share?

No.

Council President, you still have the floor.

I know I thought that Dan is talking to Markham.

I mean, Markham, excuse me.

Yeah.

Did you want...

I stopped myself because I didn't know if you wanted to say anything while I was talking.

No, I think we were just confirming what I was saying there.

Okay, great.

All right, lastly, the growing a couple sectors here, AI and clean energy, I think you call it in here, green energy?

Yes.

Absolutely, 100%.

I have been saying that we've got a cluster of startup, small modular, reactors going on here.

We've got the lab in South Lake Union and we've got R&D around fusion.

This is a growing area and we definitely have to remove, we have to go through an exercise of removing regulatory barriers so that we will be able to take advantage of the technology once it is perfected in those sectors.

So that's a good climate protection maneuver and then AI.

Of course, there are barriers, I suppose, but I do want to tell people that until you get outside of Seattle and see what other cities are doing, municipalities, the actual government entity with AI, it's hard to understand how, not how far back we are, but how we have withheld our uptake and use of it, and there are a lot of really great things that other cities are doing, and so I'm excited to see that OED is taking the leadership on that.

So thank you very much.

Yeah, that's an exciting one.

We have 23% of AI engineers here in the city of Seattle.

That's second only to the Bay Area.

One of the potential things that we see is a lot of those engineers have ideas for their own companies.

So that's part of the reason we set up the AI house in cooperation with AI2 incubator down at Pier 70 is they are helping those AI engineers think about what their business formation potential could be.

So it's starting new businesses, it's thinking of new technologies, new way to apply it in a unique and innovative public-private partnership.

All right.

Those are all my comments.

I think that all my colleagues, I think it was last year, no, it might have been the year before, we endorsed the future of Seattle economy and just take my comments today in the spirit of continued endorsement of what you're doing over there.

Thank you.

Thanks, Council President.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Salomon.

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you for the shout-out regarding the storefront improvement plan, the back to business, the funding that's going to be available for those small businesses.

to make those security improvements before they suffer a loss.

One of the questions I asked of Department of Transportation was related to bollards and planter boxes, if those businesses would need to get a variance to install bollards and planter boxes on the right-of-way.

So again, throwing that out there for you as well.

I did also ask them about funding to help offset the costs of installing planners or bollards.

And this fund would help those small businesses with that funding because a properly installed bollard, depending on how much you want to, depending on how you put it, could be a couple grand just for one.

So many businesses can't absorb that that initial outlay.

So it's good to know that that program is there and that funding is available for them.

I appreciate the reimagining the approach regarding Little Saigon because, again, what we have been doing, it's working.

So let's stop doing what we've been doing that doesn't work and try something different.

And I appreciate the, you know, that emphasis as well as realizing that if it's in order for the efforts to be sustainable, they can't necessarily just be government-driven.

They have to be community-led.

So again, and I'm grateful that you put those pieces in place and are thinking along those lines.

So that's really all I wanted to comment on.

Really didn't have any questions for you.

Just wanted to again thank you all for the work you're doing.

Thank you for doing the Back to Business program because it's something that I see as an investment.

It's a public safety investment without spending more public safety dollars.

So thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Salomon.

Anything to share?

I just want to clarify my remarks on Little Saigon because my point isn't to throw shade on the actions that are happening in Little Saigon.

There is some great work happening there.

My point is that when you add it up, it doesn't actually result in the sustainable change.

So it's happening in a coordinated fashion where we're sharing information.

It's not happening in an aligned fashion where we're working towards shared goals.

And that's the difference between this initiative and kind of current state.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That is, just to say it again, the coordinated and altogether fashion is what we will be working on to put all of the pieces together that have already been budgeted for and implemented.

Correct.

Thank you.

So we're going to take it up a notch is another way to say it.

Yes.

We're going to align around the shared goals, not just share information.

Fantastic.

Councilmember Saka, you are recognized.

Thank you Chair and thank you Director McIntyre, Mr. Regis as well for your presentation today.

Appreciate the work that everyone at OED does on a daily basis.

This is vitally important work and couldn't be more thankful that this office and this capability exists.

Question on...

and actually special shout out to OED teammate Eduardo Rojas who my office is working very closely with my office and more importantly directly impacted constituent the Menashe Jewelers in West Seattle who as many of us may recall in August was the victim of a brazen smash-and-grab robbery.

It actually made national headlines because it was so brazen, it happened in broad daylight, it was a sophisticated, coordinated effort, and the victim was a small local business.

But anyways, thank you to Eduardo for working so closely and helping to connect this small business with appropriate resources.

And I'm glad to see the Back to Business program expansion and the latest iteration of it from the legacy storefront repair fund because ever since I've been in office now for just under two years, Allowing an investment to focus more on prevention and more on proactive efforts is exactly what I've been advocating for.

And absolutely, we need to have some investment opportunity to allow small businesses to better respond when something has already happened.

But a better approach or an approach that works I think in synergy with that is to focus heavily on prevention as well and being proactive and less reactive.

And so I've been advocating for that.

Good to see this latest iteration of that come to life.

And I never thought the whole construct of bollards would be so top of mind.

A few of my colleagues have mentioned it already because bollards are important.

and they're very important especially for prevention and I'm also not only have I been advocating for this kind of investment for a long time but in just full transparency my office is taking steps to write some legislation looking at Director Noble to better address this as well and because my district suffers a lot of smash and grab type incidents and this made this expansion that I've been advocating for a long time for, I guess allowed more flexibility in the timing of that.

So in any event, this is really important work.

Just want to make clear or clarify rather, it's certainly consistent with my intent and goals of the program as it currently exists, Does it allow for insulation of bollards on both public right-of-way, maybe not, but also private property as well, the back-to-business program?

This is why we have both of the new funds, both of the security fund and then the district fund, is we want to have options for how we're installing some of these built environment improvements and thinking about what's actually going to to be preventative, right?

So it might happen with an individual business or it might happen more as like a district-wide or neighborhood or street approach.

We are, as Council Member Solomon mentioned, gonna work with SDOT.

Like this isn't something that's gonna operate outside of the city's current guidelines, but it will help defray the cost for that installation on either public or private property.

Thank you.

Moving on to my next question regarding the stabilize, activate, and invest locally fund.

SAIL.

Great acronym.

I see that the executive is proposing this fund to invest in place-based approaches to holistically support neighborhoods in our city.

I note that Lake City and Little Saigon have been identified, but just also curious, I know there are other areas of need, including in my own district that I think that would be good candidates for this, like Pioneer Square, for example, but are there other neighborhoods that are being contemplated for this investment?

Yes, but I do want to be clear.

I don't want to over-promise and under-deliver.

And again, we've got to actually prove this concept, this new way of operating in Little Saigon and show that we can make the change that we say we want to see before we start promising to other neighborhoods that this is coming.

So that's essentially what we're asking for, is some time to actually get this spun up, working.

demonstrate the progress and then have clear criteria for how we're selecting the next neighborhoods.

Thank you.

My understanding, Councilmember, is that the downtown activation team efforts are already in at least portions of Pioneer Square, so I think you're asking about an expansion to other areas in Pioneer Square, and that's something which could be part of the $4 million investment.

but as Director McIntyre mentioned, we're going to focus first on those two named neighborhoods.

Sure, thank you and appreciate the candor about being mindful of not to over promise and under deliver.

That is always my strongest preference and I'd rather under promise and over deliver and I'd rather have you all do the same and just be realistic.

Appreciate the candor there and happy to support that in any way I can.

Final question pertains to startup support of our broader startup ecosystem.

So the department necessarily in my view focuses heavily on our small businesses who essentially serve as the backbone of our economy.

We need more of them.

We need to make sure that they are vibrant and thriving enterprises and you know today's small businesses become tomorrow's medium-sized businesses which become large businesses and sometimes you know multinational corporations but there are also a lot of startups that aren't necessarily business to consumer like a lot of the traditional small businesses but operate more of the business-to-business market.

And we're also worthy of some investment and support from the city to make sure that they grow to become medium-sized businesses and heck, maybe larger businesses.

So what kind of startup support for the broader startup ecosystem does your office provide?

And I'm mindful of a particular initiative.

I know the department previously, like eight years ago, because I was a coach and I was a startup mentor coach for some previous activity in my role as a tech lawyer.

So I know there's some history for that.

But anyway, just curious to understand the department's current activities and investments towards supporting startups here in Seattle.

Sure.

This is why we do a lot of our industry-level work looking at sectors and what can the city do to support certain industry sectors.

And that's why I called out artificial intelligence and clean energy as two of the ones that are going to cut across a lot of those sectors.

Pretty much the future economic prosperity is going to be linked to a region's ability to generate plentiful affordable clean energy, and then how they are shaping affordable energy, or excuse me, artificial intelligence.

So that's part of the reason we're marking those two as opportunities where we're really well positioned globally, and think that there's huge opportunity to both benefit our local residents, but also to develop the technologies and sell those to the world.

However, the city isn't necessarily the one that knows exactly how to support those business.

You know this as a, and the person who's worked with those startups, it's complex, it moves very, very quickly, and you need some special time and attention.

That's why we've looked at partnership as the way to support those startups.

So the AI house that I mentioned really focused on artificial intelligence.

They've already scaled up some companies that are looking at moving on from the AI house, and that's where we can come in and try to hopefully help them find space in downtown Seattle or one of the other neighborhoods.

And then I'd also mention our partnership with UW's Co-Motion, so that's their arm that basically takes their research and technology and bridges it to a commercial application and worked with them to set up the climate innovation hub also in downtown in the UW metro tract because they actually have the dedicated support and sophisticated staff to help those startups grow, expand, scale, and hopefully stay here in Seattle in the region.

I'd also mention that it's beyond those two sectors, we have a robust support for our maritime manufacturing and logistics businesses in our industrial maritime lands.

John Persack does an excellent job supporting those businesses that are both starting up, like in our mass timber work, but also those ones that are very mature that, again, form that kind of foundational infrastructure for a lot of our businesses to survive and thrive here in the city.

Thank you, Director, and again, appreciate the work you all do every day.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sokka.

Colleagues, we have one, two, three, four, five, counting Council presidents, six people left to speak.

If we all speak for five minutes, we'll be here until about 1.20.

So I'm gonna call on Councilmember Kettle and then Hollingsworth, which I'm hoping will take us to about 1 p.m., that we can either choose as a group to just read questions into the record, or we can bring OED back at 2 p.m., but just want to set us up for that gut check in about 10 to 15 minutes from now.

Council Member Kettle, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, Director McIntyre of the team.

Thank you for being here.

I'm not gonna ask any questions so I can be timely.

I just wanted to highlight, I really appreciate a couple main points.

Seattle's business ecosystem from the summary.

Politicians often talk about small businesses.

I don't consider myself a politician.

So I think big, small, medium, and everything needs to be, the ecosystem needs to be the focus.

And I noted on the priorities, bullet the future of the Seattle economy framework, had more grocery stores and pharmacies, and then also had assessing business landscape.

I note that because with all the changes at the state level in terms of taxes, what we've done, preparing to do, like, what is the state?

This goes to be, and we need to understand it.

It's like, what's happening right now with Starbucks and D7?

I mean, it's nothing compared to groceries and pharmacies, but we're starting to have a Starbucks desert.

And I only bring it up because what does that tell us?

Is that the canary in the coal mine for broader business issues?

And I think we need to think about that.

We can't just be boresighted on one piece.

So I really appreciate your bullets there and that look that you do because I think it's important.

The downtown pieces, the downtown activation plan, the downtown activation team, plus the little Saigon, first I would say greater downtown.

You know, downtown in D7 context is south of Uptown and South Lake Union and then with the CID and Pioneer Squared.

So the greater downtown really captures an ability to flex.

And that's kind of like the lesson learned that I see with the downtown activation plan and the team is that on the public safety side, things shift.

and the team and the plan needs to shift with it.

And having that flexibility is key.

I just note that.

Really like the sale piece.

Thank you.

And also, on this point, I just wanted to also say thank you to the businesses that have private security.

That's really important, as obviously we're doing a lot now with the mayor, the executive restoration framework plan.

the strategic framework plan on our side.

We're moving forward, but we're kind of in this bridging.

We've done a lot of work, but it's gonna take time to come about.

And private security is so important in that bridging moment.

So I just wanted to take the opportunity to give a shout out and your support to this, which is a nice lead into the back to business, the storefront.

If I had a question, it'd be like, how can we expand the understanding of it to more parts of the city, you know, really to understand that.

I guess that's part of our job, too, in terms of getting the word out.

And then I love the waterfront shuttle.

We also need a First Avenue shuttle or transit service, something that we've been talking about.

But if we could do anything on that front, that would be great.

And I love Uplift Northwest.

They do great work.

Thank you for that shout-out.

And Workforce Development Task Force, great news.

Okay, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle, Council Member Hollingsworth.

And I'll be fast before one o'clock.

The one thing I just wanted to highlight super quick is really appreciate the neighborhood groceries investment, slide number 14, a prime example of that, not that investment, but a model, and they wouldn't mind me using them as a model, PCC opened up downtown, they had a larger footprint, they closed, their footprint was about 10,000 square feet.

They came back, now they take up 5,000 square feet.

They're not a full grocery store, but they do the basics, the milk, the eggs, the cheese, the bread.

And when I was talking to their CEO, they said that they wanna take this model and expand it to help them come back, which I've heard nothing but great things about.

the operational cost of that really helped with the sustainability of it.

And I think that's a model that can be throughout the city.

And last thing I'll highlight is that grocery stores do spend up to $360,000 for one store for their greeters.

Those are the people that often check receipts or just greet people.

They often pay for the bus stops to be cleaned twice a day and the trash mitigation.

So they spend a lot that go into operational costs.

that then get passed down unfortunately to the consumer because of the operations.

So I know there's gonna be some mitigation and I know that investment will be well received for a lot of the groceries that are in our city.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth in literally one minute, but do you have anything that you wanna respond to on that?

Nope.

Nope, thank you.

Council Member Rink and then Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

First of all, thank you, Director McIntyre, for being here today.

I have a couple of questions primarily pertaining to the SAIL fund, unpacking that a little bit more.

Understanding that these funds are supporting activities executed across multiple departments, correct?

What type of stakeholder and local nonprofit conversations have you had to ensure that there's community alignment with those proposed investments?

Good question.

I mean, I think this is again is part of the reason we're starting with Little Saigon is the community has been very clear with what they'd like.

I don't know that we need more plans from the community.

I think they've been pretty clear with what they'd like the city to deliver.

It's now on us to actually do that.

So that gives us a really good grounding where we've had a lot of the outreach.

We've built the relationships.

We're going to be of course, closely working with Friends of Little Saigon, the CIDBIA and other organizations that are on the ground working there so that, again, we stay aligned around those shared goals.

But I don't think this is a moment where we need to do further outreach to understand.

I do think we need to have measurements of progress and have everyone understand what those are and agree to those so that as we're tracking what happens with the action, we can identify, are we seeing the results we wanna see or not?

And if we're not, to Council Member Kettle's point, we gotta be flexible and adapt and change course.

So I think it's more about us having clear measurements, communicating what we are doing, what we aren't doing, and then seeing if that works or not.

So that would be my answer on Little Saigon.

Certainly, I appreciate that and certainly want to make sure that we're making progress.

And understanding that there's a bit of interplay between the FODEP initiative and what's outlined in SAIL, could you detail what technical assistance or activation of vacant spaces in Little Saigon that are discussed in the FODEP program?

I know community leaders have been talking about the activation of the Viet Wa parking lot as well as the BM apartment building.

Will these investments work with folks with the CID small business and relief team?

Yeah, I mean, we're looking at those same opportunities.

But honestly, again, until we have stability in the neighborhood, and that includes the perception of stability for workers and businesses themselves, we could spend a lot of money on activation that would fail.

And that would be poor stewardship of our public dollars.

So that's why, again, we want to have this system that we're working towards across different departments where we can really focus on getting an area stable and then making those activation investments which can then lead to further investment.

So we are looking at those and planning those.

We want to do it in sequence so that we're not kind of getting ahead of ourselves and again promising things that then flop.

That's not what we needed this moment in Little Saigon.

but the properties that you mentioned are the exact same ones that we're looking at where there is opportunity and we've certainly made prior investments into some of those businesses and want to continue looking for them but we got to do it in sequence.

Just to add on to that, I think the Office of Economic Development is the right place for this money to sit.

I want to assure you that it also has the attention of the Mayor's Office and CBO and we'll all be working cooperatively with the City Council to make sure that we spend these limited dollars to the maximum effect.

Understood.

And knowing that we want to be outcomes-focused, and I understand the approach that you just laid out, I think it prompts a question to me in how are we evaluating, when have we reached stability to the point where then we're moving towards activation?

What does that look like?

And that's, I'm so glad you asked.

That's a great question.

That's why we look at this as a Venn diagram, right?

Venn diagrams are like my favorite thing.

So, because there's almost never like a clear, this stops and this starts.

And so that gets to your point about the activation.

And that's why we want to be in those conversations with SPD, with FHIR, with SDOT, as they're doing the stability work, we need to understand how things are changing so that we can be opportunistic and forward thinking about what types of activations make sense that we can start weaving in there as they continue the stability work that then leads to that kind of sustained progress where we can really get into the deep activation work So we're still working that out with the innovation and performance team, but what are those metrics and measurements that we're going to use that are both leading and lagging to give us that information about when we start switching investments over?

But that's why the alignment is so important.

We all need to be in the same room kind of working this through and working it in real time so that we can sit in that middle portion on the Venn diagram and start trying new things that are going to lead to that sustained change.

Thanks for breaking that down for me.

And I have another question related to this partnership with the AI house and under your future businesses section as well, AI being stated as a priority in the 2026 budget, noting that AI has accelerated the usage of power and water while also deepening, creating a deeper divide in digital equity concerns.

Could you walk us through what this partnership and prioritization means for our city?

Yeah, I mean, that's part of the reason that the partnership was so important with AI2 Incubators and Ada Developers Academy.

So there's a workforce component to this as well.

We're really trying, as it says it in our core purpose, we're making leading projects and making investments that are going to open economic access to economic opportunities, reduce the racial wealth gap and encourage innovation and growth.

Both AI and clean energy clearly present those opportunities.

It's what we do to actually take advantage of them.

If we let them happen to us, I think the potential for negative effects greatly outweighs than if we're more active in trying to actually shape our economic future there, which is why we've made those investments.

I think that it's us planting a flag that Seattle wants to shape the future of artificial intelligence and find the positive effects while trying to mitigate some of the negative impacts.

That's why we're early in on this.

It's important that we actually learn and understand what and what the risks and opportunities are and then position ourselves to take advantage of them.

Understood.

I'm sure if I may have one last question that's related to grocery stores.

Grocery stores being a hot topic, it has been, as someone who has personally experienced losing my grocery store a few years back, the one on QFC, 15th, rest in peace, it can be really challenging for a neighborhood.

it's kind of a traumatizing experience to see things rolling slowly off the shelves and so my heart is also with Lake City who is going through this reality right now and we don't want to see more grocery stores closing and I know we're taking a myriad of efforts to try and address this and I'm also mindful that there's a grocery store that's trying to stand up in Wedgwood area that's midstream and in project and just went through design review last night and I bring this example up because I've followed some of the discussion about this, you know, discussion about some of the particulars for curb cuts and so on and I bring up the example of design review because I know our small businesses and any business needs to jump through a lot of hoops sometimes on the city end to be able to stand up and so I would hate if we're standing in the way of getting a new grocery store in the city and so I'm wondering from an OED perspective, how are you all working on that front?

I know there's funding here for supporting the activation and stand up of more neighborhood grocers, which I think is great, but from the front of OED, do you all do work in terms of helping businesses navigate our own bureaucracy, working through permits and so on, and any advice that you'd give on this front would be helpful?

Yeah, great question.

That QFCM 15th, that's actually where I had my first job.

I was a bag boy there.

Oh, really?

Yeah, so I got a lot of love for that place.

I was also sad to see it go.

What you described is exactly the work, right?

Like the funding is nice, of course, and that will be useful and we will deploy that to try to incentivize how we can start a new grocery stores.

But the work that you're describing about how do we make it easier and more affordable to operate a business in Seattle is exactly what OED wants to do.

That was...

the reason that we worked with you all on that permit reform legislation to make it easier and cheaper for businesses to get into vacant storefronts.

what you're describing around how to navigate.

We both wanna have a good customer service for those businesses so that we can expedite that as much as possible, but we also wanna think about potential policy changes or ways that we can eliminate barriers for businesses to do business.

So I think what you're describing is the work ahead, is understanding what are those roadblocks?

Are they really necessary?

And if not, let's figure out how to streamline them, get rid of them, make it easier to operate.

Thank you, Director, and thank you for being here today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rink, Council Member Rivera, myself, and then Nelson.

We're at 1.07, hoping we can get out by 1.15, that's seven minutes.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for all the work that you do in support of our small businesses across the city, including in the district that I'm honored to represent D4.

And I've had a series of neighborhood walks, neighborhood business, public safety walks, in the district and you all have always participated and I very much appreciate that, Director McIntyre.

I will say also, Council Member Rank, you raised the project in Wedgwood.

It's a development project that includes housing and then also a grocery store to take up the place where QFC was there and folks lost that grocery store.

a while ago now.

So there's been a little bit of a food desert there in that neighborhood.

And so yesterday was a public hearing that the design review board, this is their third and last touch point with community.

So it's a really important project because of that grocery store function.

The folks in Wedgwood support the majority of the folks.

I won't say everyone, but the majority of the folks support the the project because of the grocery store function there.

But there are other small businesses that are currently in that area.

And this particular developer has worked with those small businesses who are going to get displaced as well.

And I really appreciate that developer for doing that work with those small businesses.

to try to see if there is opportunity to bring them back and things of that nature.

So that's another piece to this puzzle that's on the private side, not necessarily on the public side, and equally important, right?

So I will say I very much appreciate The continued attention to downtown, it's the commercial and economic driver of any city, so that's important.

And then Little Saigon, I have, you know, even before COVID, the area was struggling, all of the ID, and then of course COVID made things a million times worse, and I drove by there earlier in the week.

by Little Saigon and it is heartbreaking what's happening and I have felt like what can we do as a city?

We're not doing enough.

We need to do something and it's for the folks that are unhoused there and for the folks that clearly have some either addiction and or mental health issues and then of course for the small businesses that are in that area as well.

So I'm glad to see that there's a It's a big push and effort and I agree with you Director McIntyre we need to stabilize the situation and then be able then to go in and provide the support to small businesses because if we don't stabilize to your point whatever we do there is not going to work in terms of providing that you know activation, particularly activation on the small business side.

I will say in addition to downtown and Little Saigon obviously and Lake City I know is named here too, there are neighborhoods, commercial areas in the neighborhoods like Wedgwood that are suffering from a lot of public safety issues like break-ins and such and the university district.

And so I would love to see, you know, as part of OED's work, what are we gonna do for the other neighborhoods?

And Council Member Hollingsworth, you said earlier this week or maybe last week about as we're doing work downtown, some of the issues are spreading into the commercial areas of all our districts.

So how can we make sure we're helping all our districts at the same time.

It's a tall order and I'm here with my partners to help figure out how we can make sure that we're also giving attention to the small businesses in the district.

So I'll leave that there.

I appreciate the FODEP activation and I know that our partners at the Department of Neighborhoods have been very instrumental with that as well, partnering with you.

So thank you for partnering.

On the business district investment, would love to know what kind of communications you're gonna be doing to districts so that they know this is available, this back to business program, because sometimes I think it's a matter of communications, they don't know about it and then, you know, so I wanna make sure that I'm helping do my part to bring to get the word out and also just what is OED going to do to make sure the communications is robust across the district so that folks know these supports are available to them.

Same with the neighborhood grocers investment, really appreciate that.

I've talked about Magnuson Park, there's a food desert for folks living at the park there and I keep talking about what can we do to support them and so with this neighborhood grocers investment, does that mean you'll be doing outreach to folks that might want to start?

I don't know how this looks.

And you don't have to say today, I know we're running out of time, but that is a question that I have.

What will this look like?

Who are we engaging that might want to start a bodega or something of that nature there?

support the waterfront shuttle and I know they had it running this summer and so the continuation of that I know is something that friends of the waterfront and other folks involved in the project would like to see, so thank you for that.

Love Uplift Northwest.

Earlier this year, maybe it was the end of last year, talked to the mayor's office about Uplift Northwest and getting help.

What can we do to help them get that workforce center open because this provides, you know, helps folks with jobs, which is what we need.

And so how can we get that done?

So thank you to OED and mayor's office for, you know, making sure that was in the budget.

So that is everything.

The last thing I'll say is I just want to thank my colleague, council member, Well, Council President Nelson for her great leadership with OED because I know you are constantly engaged with OED on all of these efforts.

This is something I know that you really care about and we've shared a lot of conversations.

So thank you for your continued leadership with all throughout the city with all the small businesses that are feeling the heat, particularly post pandemic.

And we know if we want our city to be vibrant, we need to also support our small businesses.

So thank you for what you do.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Anything you'd like to share in response?

No, thank you.

Thank you.

I will try to be brief, looking at this, noting my own time.

Just using the six-year look back that central staff has provided, I reported some of this during the filibuster at the beginning, but this Office of Economic Development in no mistake, in very intentional ways, grew by $20 million in the last six years.

That's a 192% increase.

Your slide said it better than my words can.

But when I've heard colleagues share their concern that we're gonna be cutting economic development money, we did the opposite.

We put a lot more money into it.

And the importance here is that economic development is not about giving businesses money.

it's about creating vibrancy, supporting community and place making.

That's the work that I see you doing and your work cuts across and stitches together departments and different sectors.

So one of the conversations we had in the Tribal Nations Summit last week was about doing an economic development forum, a tribal economic forum here and Council Member Juarez put it to, she is tapped me as the deputy here so I'll be helping her.

recognizing we made that commitment last week for next year.

That was way after the mayor asked you to submit your budgets and all of that.

Looking at you, Director Eder and get Director Mark McIntyre out of the hot water.

Have we budgeted for this?

Do we need a budget for it?

I just don't want to set us up in the same way that you described with Little Saigon where we make a commitment and under deliver.

Do we have budget or do we need to budget for that economic forum next year?

We don't have a budget line item for that because, again, this is something that we're developing right now.

I'm pretty confident with current resources we can make it happen.

Fantastic.

I just really appreciate that.

I'll ask a couple more questions in SharePoint in the interest of time just to say that that free waterfront shuttle, it gives us better transit access to the water.

Without it, we could have better transit access to the Mt. Cy Trailhead than we do the waterfront.

And in the last presentation, we asked so many questions about why there's so many scooters.

It's because we don't have transit there.

With that, Council President, last word at 116.

Can I have that question?

Okay.

So thank you very much.

I just have a couple of little tie-up things, but I'll note that Along what Councilmember Rivera and many people were saying, small businesses are the ones that create the jobs in this town.

I mean, the vast majority, I don't know the actual percentage, I think it's more than 78%, but it depends on how you define small business.

But still, that's where the jobs are, that's where the innovation comes from, and it's the fabric of our communities.

And so it is, I think, nothing short of a public benefit, a public service, to invest in them.

And through this funding proposal, this ad that you have, it is not, I think that is completely within, it's good governance to make sure that the institutions of our neighborhoods are healthy and because the people that depend on those jobs, we want to keep them in Seattle.

So just a couple questions.

One from my neighbor here.

Yeah, slide 14. How do small and new bodegas and businesses access this funding?

Because we just, you know, allowed for a whole bunch more of them in our comp plan.

I put forward that amendment to allow for bodegas in the middle of the block, but go ahead, you can answer that question.

Yeah, we're working with OPCD who drafted the land use changes to allow for more bodegas, and then we're also working with the Office of Sustainability Environment, which manages the food access plan.

So again, cross department, departmental work to try to figure out what's the plan here.

And as I mentioned, we're also speaking with a lot of current grocers to understand what their needs are, and that'll help shape how we're going to deploy those funds.

So we're going to spend the rest of the year kind of figuring that out so that we can be ready at the top of the year with how we're going to deploy them.

Okay.

I've heard a lot of talk about bollards.

Oscar Velasco, who is the owner of Dockside Cannabis, first brought this up at my small business roundtable in 2022, February.

to be able to put bollards in front of his shop.

Estat said no and suggested instead some planters that you could move that aren't permanent.

I just want to warn that when I floated that with people in Pioneer Square, that was a big, well, a lot of concern about that because that requires maintenance and so, you know, anything that you put a plant in is going to have to be kept up and so just want to make sure that we're thinking as broadly as possible when we're talking about what security measures are best for really busy small business owners.

And then the last thing I'll say is that there has been also talk about we want to involve the community absolutely, and the CID is, and especially Little Saigon, has been really focused on generating this 15-point plan that was released last week, and so they're already activated.

Friends of Little Saigon, the Many of the different organizations, Lehigh, et cetera, the 15-point plan is the product of many months of work.

And so I think that it's a great time to harness that energy and align with and adopt maybe some of their goals as well.

So that's all I wanted to say.

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And with that last word at the committee table, Director McIntyre, anything to wrap up?

Just deeply appreciate your continued commitment to economic development and our partnership, so thank you.

Thank you.

With that, that brings us to the end of item three.

Colleagues, we are about to go into a recess for lunch.

I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna take a gut check from colleagues.

We have spent four hours on three departments.

We have two more departments to go and we can either come back at two and have three hours for those departments or we can come back at 2.30 and have two and a half hours for those two departments.

I wanna warn you, one of them, one of the departments is SDCI.

If it's gonna take as long as it takes to get a permit in this city to get through their presentation, we're gonna be here until midnight.

So just flagging that.

How are folks feeling?

2.30 or 2?

2.30.

I'm going to give 2.30 for the thumbs up, 2 for the thumbs down.

Can I get a...

2.30?

Which one?

2.30 for thumbs up, 2 o'clock for thumbs down.

I am seeing almost unanimous consent.

We are...

Be more marathoners here.

This September 30th, Robert's birthday committee meeting will go into recess until 2.30 p.m.

Thank you, colleagues.