Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee 9/3/2025

Good morning.

The September 3rd, 2025 Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I am Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Council Member Kettle is excused.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Sacca.

Here.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

Four present, one excused.

Thank you.

We have quorum and we have three items on the agenda today.

We have an update from the tribal governments and native communities sector of our city of Seattle government ahead of the tribal relations summit later this month.

Secondly, we have an ordinance relating to the city's efforts to expeditiously deliver Sound Transit III program, the permit review and other oversight to create positions to get the job done.

And third, we have an ordinance relating to the public works contracts amending provisions of the small works roster and contract bond processes to align with state law.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will only be voting on the third item today.

The first is simply informational ahead of the Tribal Relations Summit.

The second is a briefing for a vote at the next committee.

I see that we have no in-person public commenters checking our online signup.

IT, can you confirm that we have no online public comment registrants?

Oh, I see we have- Confirmed, there are none.

I just saw David Haynes sign up at 931. David Haynes just clicked in.

Hold on.

We'll give it just a second to promote David Haynes.

David, you're going to need to call in right now because we are about to close public comment, but I'm going to give you the 30 seconds to a minute.

Unless there's someone else in person that would like to provide public comment.

David, if you're listening, you gotta call in right now.

Still not seeing anything.

I'm going to give him until the chamber clock says 933. It's 933. I do not see David Haynes present.

One last confirmation from IT.

He is not present.

That is correct.

Thank you.

David, please do feel free to submit written public comment seeing as there are no public commenters virtually or in person.

We will close public comment and move on to the first item of business.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the first item of business into the record?

Item one, tribal governments and native communities update.

This item is for briefing and discussion.

Presenters include Francesca Miron of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations and Lydia Falta Leah of Department of Neighborhoods.

Good morning, Francesca and Lydia.

Please feel free to introduce yourself.

And while we were able to bring Council Member Juarez back to the council, we still can't get her to this committee.

So I'll follow up with her afterwards.

But if you want to introduce yourself and just jump right into the presentation, colleagues, This is ask questions along the way.

We have, as you heard, three items.

There are two.

The second item is pretty meaty.

The third item we've gone over and Presley and Mark have done a great job, so I think the third item will go quick.

But with that, over to you, Francesca and Lydia.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thank you, members of the committee.

We're pleased to be returning to you today to share some updates on the city's work since our last tribal summit in 2023. My name is Francesca Hernan.

I'm a citizen of the Shawnee Tribe and of the Cherokee Nation, and I have worked in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations for the last several months now.

Thank you for sharing with our screen tech issue.

That was a technical difficulty on my end.

Megan, they're all set to go.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

And previously worked in our Department of Neighborhoods supporting the city's Indigenous Advisory Council.

So it's nice to be before you again today.

My name is Lydia Faitalia.

I am the Civic Engagement Manager here in Department of Neighborhoods.

I have had the pleasure of working under the leadership of Director Chao for the last two years, so thank you for having us today.

We last briefed this committee in September of 2024 when we released a one-year progress update following the inaugural Tribal Nations Summit that was held in May of 2023. The items featured in that report are available on the Office of Intergovernmental Relations webpage, and they are largely reflective of the engagements with federally recognized tribes and statutorily recognized American Indian and Alaska Native service providers and advisory bodies.

This reflects the scope and structure of the summit as an exercise of the political status of tribal governments and tribal beneficiaries.

And we return to you today with some additional updates on our progress.

From the beginning of this work, it has been essential for the city to be accountable to meaningful forward action through tribal relations and urban Native engagement.

While we know that significant work remains ahead, we are taking the time to reflect on our efforts in preparation for our next engagement with tribal leadership this fall.

As a quick refresher, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations hosted the summit in 2023 with the support of the city's Indigenous Advisory Council, the mayor's office, and 17 city departments.

This was an exercise of the government-to-government relationship between the city and federally recognized tribes throughout our region.

It is modeled after best practices from federal and state governments, and these practices include the U.S.

President's Annual Tribal Nations Summit, as well as the Washington State Centennial Accord meetings that occur each year in coordination with the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs.

The city's summit has two core goals.

One, to identify action items that uphold the sovereignty and treaty rights of federally recognized tribes, to build partnerships, strengthen collaborations, and enhance diplomacy.

And two, to discuss our progress and our challenges to strengthening government-to-government relationships with tribal nations, as well as improve outcomes among the urban Native community.

This was the beginning of our journey to better honor and respect tribal sovereignty and local governance.

And now we are two years later continuing these efforts to hold ourselves accountable to these conversations and commitments by providing some follow-up to you today.

The summit resulted in 23 commitments in four core areas.

We'll share a few highlights from our progress over the last two years.

So some of this is building off what you've read in the one-year progress report, and some of it is new efforts that we've added.

And at the tribal summit, we'll be sharing some additional updates.

But you'll get an early preview today of some of the things that we've been doing to lay the groundwork for growing our relationships and partnerships in collaboration with tribal nations.

Before we dive into specific examples, we'd like to share a few key takeaways looking back on these last two years.

Across departments, we are seeing a demonstrated commitment to reflecting indigenous values, cultures, and priorities in city projects and policies.

Increasingly, we are seeing city staff understand that tribal engagement must operate in a government-to-government framework, and there are internal efforts to develop a more systematized protocol for tribal engagement that supports city and tribal priorities for early and often communication.

In the area of internal capacity building and coordination, we have marked a foundational and critical step to more effective coordination of tribal relations by forming a city tribal work group and an internal tool to help us track tribal engagement across city departments.

More city staff now have access to education and opportunities to grow.

Our understanding of tribal histories of tribal governments and priorities across their departments, and we are also aware that building staff capacity and skills to have effective tribal relations is an effort that must be planned for, budgeted, and resourced.

We are seeing more requests for tribal engagement across a variety of projects in our city, and we are seeing more collaborative and proactive approaches in several areas of cultural resource stewardship as well as a strengthened investment in our partnerships for culturally responsive services to Native people that reside in the city.

The next series of slides will feature just a few highlights of our work in these four commitment areas.

Tribal and urban Native leaders have expressed the need for clear communication with city leaders and staff.

Tribal leaders have shared the importance of early and often engagement, consultation, and collaboration on anything that may impact tribal interest.

Therefore, the city has increased the frequency and consistency of these requests with at least 10 tribal nations.

The most common consultation topics include cultural resource management, tribal treaty rights, environmental stewardship, hydroelectric projects, mass timber, early urban planning, public art and cultural placemaking, as well as economic development.

The City's Indigenous Advisory Council has briefed the City Council six times through committee work to share their vision of a culturally grounded public commission, and they've engaged with dozens of city departments on over 17 projects, plans, and policies.

We have also continued to connect city leaders with tribal and urban Native leaders for one-on-one meetings.

Recently, Seattle Police Department's Chief Barnes met with tribal and urban Native representatives of the Indigenous Advisory Council and the Chief and Deputy Chief of Police for the Suquamish Tribe to learn more about the history, priorities, and interests of tribal and urban Native communities across our region.

These engagements are important and critical steps to build trust, rapport, and accountability among our city leadership.

Sustained engagement and collaborative work is needed to continue in this path.

Next week, OIR is coordinating an opportunity for 50 city staff to access the government-to-government training from Washington State Governor's Office in Indian Affairs.

This one-day training will, one, help create city staff to engage the elected tribal leaders and urban Indian organizational leaders, and two, provide practical information and resources to support city staff that engage with tribal governments through their work.

The seven-hour course teaches attendees about the traditional and cultural framework of tribal communities, explores the legal and political status that defines the tribal nations and tribal beneficiaries, and discusses best practices for supporting tribal sovereignty and working with tribal governments.

In an effort to support more city staff to receiving training, OIR secured a grant to develop e-learnings on tribal and urban Indian engagement that would be compatible with the city's cornerstone site.

Through these activities and more, city staff increasingly have opportunities to grow our understanding of tribal histories, governments, and priorities across departments.

Tribal leaders have long expressed the desire that Coast Salish values, cultures, and histories be visible and create a sense of belonging and connection among Native people in the natural and built environment of Seattle.

The Waterfront Park's grand opening celebration will be this weekend, September 6, and the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe and the Suquamish Tribe are speaking and performing to mark this key milestone, and they have long been partners in the development of downtown.

For over 15 years, the city has worked with several Coast Salish tribal governments to bring forward the indigenous history and ongoing presence of communities to the arch, interpretive signage, wayfinding, and design elements throughout the waterfront.

Interpretive signage for Waterfront Park includes a number of signs that feature content specifically about indigenous culture and history.

The Office of the Waterfront and Civic Projects consulted with members of the Suquamish tribe and the Muckleshoot tribe, On content ranging from salmon homecoming, tribal fishing rights, and native plantings.

The Office of the Waterfront has also coordinated a working advisory group including members of both tribes as well as other local tribal representatives.

Members from the tribes have been included in the selection of several artists for artworks throughout the waterfront demonstrating our commitment to recognizing the sovereignty of tribal nations to tell their own stories.

The Office of Arts and Cultures works closely with finance and administrative services, Seattle Light, Seattle Public Utilities, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Department of Transportation, and Office of the Waterfront has civic projects to coordinate public art through the 1% Arts Program and other cultural placemaking projects.

There are currently 18 public art or cultural placemaking project that features tribal or urban Native artists.

Each opportunity is tailored to the geographic and site-specific context of the project.

Current projects range from mural artists to tiny home villages to partnership with tribal metalworking enterprise in eastern Washington to inter-tribal coordination of public art and interpretive signage at a culturally significant site in North Seattle and much more.

Arts is seeking tribal coordination outreach on at least three more public art projects in the next 12 months.

Tribal leaders have continuously noted for the city that natural resources are cultural resources, and we understand that city policy, services, and utility infrastructure have far-reaching impacts to tribal nations and the citizens who live, work, play, and exercise treaty and sovereignty in the city of Seattle and across our region.

So we have been committed to moving forward to a more collaborative approach and cultural resource stewardship as a key priority.

In Seattle, there are 65 miles of creek and 21 creek miles are in pipes.

When a pipe carries a creek under a roadway or other land area, we call it a creek culvert.

Seattle Public Utilities is expanding tribal engagement in culvert removal to address fish passage barriers in urban watersheds.

The city is proactively seeking early consultation and engagement with tribal governments to help prioritize creek culvert capital project improvements and related property acquisition needs that account for fish passage while striving to equitably deliver high-value service for the utility's customers, city residents, and our urban watersheds.

The utility also outreaches tribal governments to inform interpretive signage and salmon recovery and habitat restoration projects throughout the city.

The Parks and Recreation Department and the Seattle Green Partnership work with several urban Indian organizations and educators from tribal communities To lead land and habitat restoration in many of our parks and open spaces.

The latest addition to this partnership includes an intertribal and women-led nonprofit that is dedicated to self-determination, cultural sovereignty, and the authentic representation of tribal nations in educational settings.

Francesca, which organization is that?

Is that Yeehaw?

Cattail Rising is the name of the nonprofit organization, and they work with tribal communities from across the region.

Awesome.

Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you both for being here.

It's always so lovely to see you, and thanks for the work that you're doing.

It's so important.

On the parks partnership, can you talk a little bit more about how parks partners with the tribes as they're doing the work in the parks?

Because there's a lot of restoration of Wetlands.

I'm thinking that happened at Magnuson a few years ago and things of that nature.

So how did they partner throughout the city parks?

Great question.

Yes.

We'll share a little bit in the next slide too.

Following the parks tribal nations gathering, they developed an internal working group to help develop better protocols and process for leading that engagement.

When is consultation required under federal or state law because of a funding source?

And when is tribal engagement something that we're engaging in proactively to ensure that histories and cultures are represented in public spaces?

So tribes are often invited to participate in projects.

And if there's interest, the department will organize those engagements and integrate that feedback throughout the portion of the project.

So they're working on getting further upstream.

When we know a project is coming down the pipeline, how do we make sure that we're reaching out proactively to identify what those interests and priorities are and then appropriately integrate them into the work?

Terrific.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In January, Seattle Parks and Recreation was the first city department to convene a tribal nations gathering to dig deeper into issues of mutual concern to tribal nations and city.

The gathering engaged tribal leaders and staff in relationship building and dialogue with city leaders and staff on issues of cultural resources, habitat, restoration and management, park development and programming.

The gathering resulted in six commitments to improve tribal relations within the department that are addressed in coordination with an internal work group.

A progress report was shared with tribal partners and the IAC in February of 2025. The Office of Sustainability and the Environmental LEAD's ongoing coordination, a $5 million investment in indigenous-led climate initiative fund under the Green New Deal.

This effort is in partnership with Seattle Foundation and also includes coordination with two city commissions with representation from Native communities.

The funds will soon be available to tribal governments and urban Indian organizations leading sustainability projects.

Anticipated focus areas is clean energy, food sovereignty, and or cultural resource management, building efforts, Building retrofits for energy efficiency and climate mitigation and education and training resources to advance traditional ecological knowledge.

Many tribal leaders have acknowledged the critical role that urban Indian organizations play in addressing the social and economic needs of their citizens here in Seattle and the diverse range of Native people that reside in Seattle today.

Over the last two years, the Human Services Department has worked with the King County Regional Homeless Authority and two urban Native organizations to support 93 units of culturally attuned shelter.

The Office of Housing has supported Chief Seattle Club through an affordable housing project that added 120 units of culturally attuned permanent supportive housing to our local housing stock.

And in the last two years, the Human Services Department has partnered with City Light and Sound Transit to make two vacant properties available for urban Indian organizations to construct tiny home villages.

The ongoing operational funding for these villages and client services is provided by the city through our contracts with the Regional Homelessness Authority.

In 2024, the city resumed administration of homelessness prevention programs administered by four urban Indian organizations that support households at risk of experiencing homelessness.

In 2025, these organizations received a total investment of $2 million to provide emergency rental assistance, utility assistance, and housing case management.

The city provides approximately $6.9 million through the regional authority to investments in urban Indian organizations for downstream homelessness services, which include diversion, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and day centers.

Mayor's Office on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Unit provides funding to three urban Indian organizations.

Between 2023 and 2024, the percentage of American Indian Alaska Native clients receiving gender-based violence services increased from 4% to 8%.

These services include mobile flexible advocacy, shelter and housing, therapeutic services, and civil legal aid.

In 2023, the city started a specific fund focused on specialized services for marginalized population, which funded culturally specific services through urban Indian organizations.

This program provides two-spirit advocacy and services, cultural workshops, and healing activities in culturally appropriate settings.

In 2024, 93 survivors of gender-based violence participated in quarterly cultural workshops and healing activities such as sewing ribbon skirts, weaving cedar bracelets, and salve making.

In total, 108 survivors were served through this specialized investment.

And that brings us the end of our featured updates for today, and we look forward to engaging with many of you in this work in the weeks and months ahead.

So thank you for your continued interest and support of tribal and urban Native engagement across our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, questions?

Vice Chair Rivera.

Chair, not a question, but just really I want to, again, highlight Francesca and Lydia for all their hard work.

We have two really great folks at the city here who are partnering and are helping us coordinate with the tribes.

And I just wanted to lift that up and underscore that because we are really lucky to have both of you doing this work.

So really just wanted to acknowledge, we don't often acknowledge all the hard work that goes And that our staff does behind the scenes in our partnerships externally.

And so I really want to make sure that we are acknowledging your hard work and just showing gratitude.

So we're in good hands with the two of you, and I am so grateful because, as I said earlier, these partnerships with the tribes are so important and they're so critical to our city.

So thank you.

Thanks.

Any other questions, comments?

Dig through a few.

If you want to head back up to slide four, commitment areas.

Just understanding, thank you for this brief update.

We don't want to steal the show from later this month with the Tribal Nations Summit.

It was important in the last summit for me as a participant to see it broken out into areas and to give specific action items.

It was also very clear.

There was discussion to do it the following year and realizing that that would be too much talking and not enough doing.

That was something that was very clear to me.

I'm excited to come to the next Tribal Nations Summit.

I'm excited to be very focused in following up on those outcomes.

I know some of the subject areas lagged a little bit, and it's good to hear the updates that those meetings have occurred and that progress is moving forward on all of these 23 commitment areas.

Colleagues, as we move after budget in this committee, I'll likely be using the outcomes and the products created in the Tribal Nations Summit as a way to design this committee's work.

You may remember from before recess, I had met with the Suquamish Tribal Council, and there will be an invitation for them to attend the next Meeting of the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee.

However, it is right after the Tribal Nations Summit, so I don't know.

That might be a little bit too much asking of their time.

And we're still working to get the meeting with the Muckleshoot Tribal Council rescheduled.

They'll likely also have an opportunity to come here and meet with us.

If you want to tick onto slide six, one of the products of these meetings and these conversations has...

I guess the outcome here is the increased frequency and consistency of engagement.

I can say that since that first Tribal Nations Summit, I've been able to participate in government-to-government relations with four tribes.

I would call it...

Engagement with a fifth.

We didn't really have specific, but it was tribal council members to myself and others.

The slide that you have in a couple of slides, it was clear that it was still during the pandemic because everyone was spaced out.

From these regular meetings, another outcome that we have found is that there are a number of MOUs, Memorandums of Understanding, with tribes from different mayors across the years.

One of the places that this committee will dig into is reviewing those MOUs to see if they need to be updated or if there's a better way to systematize them into our bureaucracy.

I guess just Francesca and Lydia, you've been in these meetings, you've been in the government to government consultation.

Is there anything else that you'd like to dig into about the effect of tribal relations?

Anything that we're doing particularly well or that we need to improve?

That's a great question.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thank you for your continued engagement.

We know that each tribe is unique, and so taking those opportunities for our elected leaders to meet individually with each tribal nation to understand their priorities and interests has been critical to helping us understand what they would like to see from the City of Seattle.

And so we look forward to the opportunity to continue to do that with all City Council members, And more so with the mayor, too, to make sure that he has continued opportunities to engage with our tribal leadership from across the region.

I think something we have learned through this work is the city's impact is very far-reaching, particularly with our utilities.

Knowing that we have dams on the east side of the state and the Skagit River and then the Tolt, the actions of the city are far-reaching.

And so that has been an important and grounding feature of this work.

Fantastic.

If you want to tick on to slide seven, digging in more to the government-to-government relations, specifically about training.

This is probably one of the densest slide decks I've had in a long time.

I say that because each of these bullet points we could talk about for hours.

You ticked through this all in about 15 to 20 minutes.

It felt like, oh, you know, here's all this work, but let's dig into this.

Can you talk more about this training that's happening next week, why it's important, why it's special, and how is that a good thing for our city?

Yeah.

Thank you for the question.

We're very pleased about the opportunity to offer the government-to-government training to 50 city staff, and we will have representatives from about 15 city departments that will attend those sessions.

So diverse range of experiences and knowledge sets around working with tribal governments.

This training is designed and administered by the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, which is a state-level agency that helps implement the state's Centennial Accord framework, which is that agreement in understanding and recognition of tribal sovereignty as a state government.

And our former Tribal Relations Director Tim Raynon is now the Executive Director of the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs, so this has been a great collaborative partnership to work with his staff who designed and administered this training.

It is offered on a routine basis in Olympia, and we're contracting with them directly to provide the service here at City Hall for staff, and it'll come right before our next Tribal Nations Summit, which is another great opportunity to have this information fresh with our staff.

And the second phase of that work is using the grant resources we've received to develop e-learnings that staff into the future could then reference and have access to more information and knowledge.

I'm going to go one layer deeper.

Can you talk a little bit more about the Centennial Accord and how that set up the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs and how that then rolls into us?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In Washington State, we're one of maybe two states in the country that clearly have articulated our government to government relationship with federally recognized tribes.

The 29 tribes in Washington are signatory to the Centennial Accord with the state government, as well as a few tribes that are physically located today outside of the state of Washington but do have interest here in the state.

And Centennial Accord, you know, we really describe it as the framework by which that government-to-government relationship occurs.

So there are state revised codes that help direct departments or agencies within the state government on how to implement Centennial Accord as a theory, as a concept.

And that often involves including tribal liaisons within agencies that help coordinate engagement with tribal governments and staff education and training opportunities.

So those are some key features as well as outlining a variety of principles that underpinned how governments engage through these inter-jurisdictional questions and how we better honor treaty rights and sovereignty as state government.

So it really helps guide our city's framework and work as well, thinking that we are a municipality within a state that really clearly articulates and recognizes this work.

Excellent.

I'm going to repeat back what I think that I heard just to make sure that I got it correct.

So what it sounds like is the Centennial Accord really is a government-to-government agreement between the 29 tribes, a few others out of state, and the state government.

From there, that influences work at state agencies, state departments, how the legislature works, all of that.

Was that 1989?

What a good year.

And so that's been going on for some time.

I just make that connection because here in the city of Seattle, we have the Tribal Nations Summit that we've only had one of.

It is not technically a full government to government agreement with tribes in the city of Seattle.

It could be heading that direction.

We'll see how the next one goes.

I tease this out because the job that Tim has in the Governor's Office of Indian Affairs is one that has had habit and routine for nearly 40 years.

For us to have that opportunity where it's only offered in Olympia for us to contract it up here to the city of Seattle, it's a really big deal.

Sorry, it took me a long time to get to that point.

Is there any other color to add to that or did I get anything wrong?

That's great.

Thank you for the question.

All right.

Let me tick on to my next question and on eight.

I don't know that I have a question for you here.

I just wanted to highlight on this slide that the tribes were really given a seat at the table of decision making.

And that's maybe been different than how other cities have done it, or how our city has done it in the past.

It's really, and I might actually call Angela.

Angela, could you step up for just a moment, if that's all right?

We were glad to hear Director Brady would be joining committee today, so I think she will speak to this even more so than we have today.

And that's something that I'll just highlight from this presentation.

I know that getting this presentation together has taken a lot of work because you are coordinating between 39 different departments.

You have subject matter experts such as Angela.

You've got 39 of them across.

You know, you've got 50 of these folks coming to the training the next week, and it's your job to coordinate departments that don't report to you.

The hardest job in the world.

But Angela, if you could just speak, just the green button on any mic, speak to how having tribal council members and tribal members at the decision-making table influence, impacted, changed the waterfront, and then maybe if you could give us a little spiel about what's happening this Saturday.

Oh, that's a great segue.

Yeah, I mean, I think we're really proud as a city and as an office to have worked together with Muckleshoot and Suquamish specifically so closely over the last 15 years.

We've tried to go above and beyond the government-to-government relationship and really bring them in And under the tent to help us create some really special, meaningful spaces on the waterfront that honor their history.

And I feel like we've done that, and we've heard some really great feedback from the tribes as well on that.

We have a really big day happening on Saturday, September 6th.

We have a grand opening celebration for the waterfront program.

We're doing a ribbon cutting that starts at 10 a.m.

And a whole series of all-day celebrations that start at 11 a.m.

on Saturday.

So really looking forward to celebrating all of the work we've done, gosh, across all city departments, working with the state, working with the tribes, working with civic leaders.

It's taken a lot to get here, and we're really excited to celebrate it with you all.

Thanks for all your great work.

And the art piece that we see there, it feels almost, and maybe if either anyone at the table wants to explain it a little bit deeper, from a layperson standpoint, walking down the waterfront, it feels like the bones of a longhouse.

And if I look at it, it makes me realize and remember that there are countless, maybe 30 or 40 longhouses here in the city of Seattle that were all burned down.

Larger, this would have been a small one, if that's correct.

Maybe if you want to tell us a little bit more.

This is a, yeah, you're seeing on the top picture here a work by Oscar Tuazon.

And it is a three-block artwork project that, you're right, represents the Longhouse Forum.

And we worked together with both the Muckleshoot and the Suquamish tribes.

You'll see there the- Hang on just a second.

I'm seeing some shared, never mind.

Keep going.

Yeah, it's still there.

Yep.

You're seeing up there, in the picture, you're seeing the carving provided by the Muckleshoot tribe, which exists at the southern end of this specific piece.

And there's another beautiful carving at the northern end that is provided by Randy Purser from the Suquamish tribe.

Which is also equally stunning.

And Oscar, to his own, the artist, his idea and notion is that over time, this piece will evolve by adding traditional carvings from other tribes, Coastalist tribes and other local tribes over time, which is a beautiful kind of, it reflects an evolution of a beautiful art project on the waterfront.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you.

Just wanted to make that note.

If the longhouses hadn't been burned down, they'd probably still be standing today.

Some of them...

Can you remind me from our trip to the Suquamish?

Old Man House was...

Hundreds of feet, yeah, along the shore.

Yeah, 300 feet long by...

The longest in the region.

Yeah, the largest enclosed structure for a very long time, I think, until it burned down.

With that, moving on to, you know, thank you for making sure, thank you, Angela, for coming up here.

Thanks for calling me out here.

Yep, absolutely.

We'll have you back for the next presentation.

On slide nine, if you have got any more information about the tribal partnerships at Boundary Dam, this is another example of how far our city's resources, or how far our city impact.

Do you have off the top of your head which tribes we're partnering with there, or do you need to get back to us?

The Kalispell Tribe of Indians is located closest to the Boundary Dam, and one of their tribal enterprises is a metalworking studio.

And so the arts department and the utility is coordinating with the tribal enterprise, their business arm, to commission some metalwork.

That would be gates at the dam.

Wonderful.

That's amazing.

And last one on slide 10, it's not something that you brought up necessarily, but just talking about one of the challenges and opportunities that our city and our state faces regarding information provided to tribal nations when earth work is being done.

So for instance, any time that a new building is built, Small or large, oftentimes SEPA has to be completed, State Environmental Protection Act.

It is a very long and arduous process, oftentimes creating unnecessary delay.

However, it is the only way that tribal nations are able to receive notification that construction or earthwork will occur at all.

And the tribal nations are the ones that hold the registries of where they're culturally Cultural artifacts are, we have to figure out a new process for this.

Tribal nations must be able to receive this information on more projects than are currently provided by SEPA, and we need to make sure that SEPA is not creating unnecessary delay in places.

This is a really important step and something that I would love to dig into more.

Maybe we can explore that with the memorandums of understanding.

Yes.

Thank you for naming that challenge.

Colleagues, those are all of my questions, statements, comments.

Are there any other questions, statements, or comments from colleagues?

Seeing none, I'm going to give Francesca and Lydia you the last word.

Anything that you'd like to share closing out?

Thank you for your time today, and we look forward to hosting you all soon.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss and committee for all of your good work in Indian country and tribal nations.

It's really good to see things moving forward and just bring community in.

So thank you for having us today.

Absolutely.

Thanks so much.

Well, with that, will the clerk please read the short title of the second item of business into the record?

Item number two, an ordinance amending Ordinance 127156, which adopted the 2025 budget, including the 2025 through 2030 capital improvement program, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels from the various funds in the budget to support the city's efforts to expeditiously deliver sound transit three programming permit review And other oversight, creating exempt and non-exempt positions and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, all by a vote of three-fourths of the City Council.

This item is for briefing and discussion.

Presenters include Angela Brady, Director, and Kyle Butler of the Office of the Waterfront Civic Projects and Sound Transit, Sarah Maxana of the Department of Transportation, and Calvin Chow of our Council Central Staff.

Wonderful.

Welcome.

Great to see you all.

Angela, great to see you again.

And if you'd like to introduce yourself, colleagues, this is an appropriations bill from funding that we Previously set aside for this purpose.

So we set it aside in the budget previously for this purpose, and now we are being very specific with how we are allocating those funds.

With that, over to you, Director Brady or Sarah or Kyle, Calvin, whoever wants to start.

You're all great.

I think we already got introductions, so we could probably skip that part.

Thank you so much, council members, for having us here today.

Do we have our slide deck up?

Or am I just not seeing it?

Fantastic.

There we go.

OK, so we're here today to talk about necessary staffing enhancements to get the city ready for the next phase of the ST3 program's design and project delivery.

This will position the city to do our part to expedite the construction of the ST3 link extensions from West Seattle through the heart of downtown and into Ballard.

With city staff and consultants that will do planning, engineering, and policy work, along with the processing of countless permits and plan review work necessary to advance these important transit projects.

This legislation is especially timely, given Sound Transit's news last week regarding significant cost increase concerns across the ST3 program.

We'd like to thank Councilmember Strauss and Council President Nelson for joining the mayor and other electives and community leaders yesterday at a press conference that we held to advocate for staying the course, to continue to advance Seattle projects forward while also delivering the regional transit spine connections from Tacoma to Everett.

Delaying advancement of these important capital projects would only cost taxpayers more money.

That said, we understand the cost challenges ahead, and we are certainly ready to partner with Sound Transit in efforts to find creative ways to save both time and money on these critical projects and the investments in our city.

We'll have some difficult decisions to make as part of evaluating cost-saving strategies for our projects, and we need a strong team to be able to make educated recommendations and decisions.

This legislation will allow us to staff up with the talent we need to be able to effectively do this work.

Next slide.

In 2016, over 70% of Seattle voters said yes to ST3.

ST3 is one of the largest infrastructure investment programs in Seattle's history, and the Seattle projects expand light rail to both West Seattle and Ballard.

As a reminder, the program adds 4.1 miles of light rail service from downtown to West Seattle's Alaska Junction neighborhood.

That includes four new stations between Soto and the Alaska Junction.

The Ballard Link extension adds 7.7 miles of light rail service from downtown Seattle to Ballard and includes nine new stations between Chinatown International District and Market Street.

Our office includes a talented staff from across the city.

We are an interdepartmental One Seattle effort that partners with Sound Transit to help deliver these important transit investments to Seattle communities.

Next slide.

So this legislation supports the expansion of the One Seattle City team to meet our growing workload, especially as West Seattle Link Extension work ramps up as we head into the design phase for that project.

Our goal is to enhance and create a talented city team who will work to help advance sound transit projects, Through design and review processes more efficiently to pave the way for these projects to get delivered as quickly as possible for our city.

We will do this with staff who bring expertise across design, engineering, permitting, planning, policy, and field construction work.

All of these disciplines are represented with today's legislative proposal.

Specifically, this legislation moves Finance General Reserve for ST3 to our operating budget, and it is sized to the expected spending for quarter four of 2025. It adds 50 full-time employee hiring pockets across six city departments, and we will provide a bit more detail on these necessary positions a little bit later in this presentation.

I'd like to note here that out of the total 50 FTEs that we're asking you to authorize with this legislation, 41 and a half of those will be funded mostly through partnership or permit funding from Sound Transit, and the remainder will be funded with city dollars to match.

And having these pockets approved now will give us the ability to start hiring as soon as possible to help streamline our negotiations for reimbursement funding packages with Sound Transit.

And at this point, I'd like to hand things off to Sarah Maxana to discuss the city's roles on the SD3 program.

Good morning.

I want to just give a quick overview of what we think of as the constellation of roles that the city staff, city department leadership, and city elected leadership play in regards to sound transit programs and sound transit investments in our city.

We have governing roles, specifically board member Strauss and board member Mayor Harrell.

who provide leadership at the Sound Transit Board level.

We have discrete regulatory and partnering roles that are defined by statute and by local code, as well as partnering agreement that we've signed with Sound Transit back in 2018 for the ST3 investments.

We have funding roles.

There are places where the board has determined that there are elements of the project that could trigger the need for third party or outside funding that the city may choose to engage in.

We have delivery roles.

There are specific elements of the surrounding station area, access projects, for example, that the city is going to undertake, and we will have staff working hand in hand.

Hand in hand with Sound Transit in delivering those capital projects.

And finally, there are some advocacy roles that we have as well as we're working in partnership with Sound Transit to ensure that city policies and the interests of our community members, such as through our racial equity toolkit, are carried out through the project.

And it's important to note that a couple of these roles in particular They fluctuate over time depending on where the investments are, and right now we are approaching a juncture where we are about to really move this West Seattle Link Extension project into the permitting phase, and these regulatory roles and partnering roles are really going to be taking center stage, and we have an obligation to fulfill those roles by statute, and much of our legislation today is focused on positions that will help us carry out those roles.

Our ST3 city team, as we call ourselves, is an interdepartmental effort that's really been in place since about 2019. It has focused on key disciplines across departments, including engagement, engineering, permitting, real property and right of way, planning, environmental, funding and finance, and equity.

And these have been standing interdepartmental teams that we've had in place for the last six years.

That have carried out bodies of work in partnership with community and in partnership with Sound Transit to move the planning of the projects forward as we've been in the environmental and planning phases.

We have a project management team that is centralized under the Office of the Waterfront Civic Projects and Sound Transit that serves as both an umbrella and a safety net for All of those working groups, in some cases, the office also has the leadership for those working groups in that centralized team, manages work that spans those multiple groups, coordinates issue elevation and policy direction and resolution up through our departments and to our city leadership, and handles issues that do not fall squarely into one of the existing working groups.

I want to highlight that a couple of these work groups, similarly to that last slide where there are different roles that we play at different phases of the project, as we are entering the planning, final design, permitting, and construction phases of projects, the permitting group, the real property and right-of-way, the engineering group are going to be playing key roles, and much of our legislation today focuses on those positions.

This slide provides a snapshot.

I want to just emphasize up front that this is a snapshot just of the next couple of years, a slide that we have from Sound Transit that depicts the anticipated schedule and key deliverables associated with West Seattle Link Extension.

The most important thing to call out here is in the environmental review line at the top.

The West Seattle Link Extension Project received its FTA Record of Decision earlier this year, and this means that the project is almost shovel-ready.

We're right on the cusp of moving into final design permitting and then construction for this project.

Station planning has been going on for a number of years and will continue into the future.

Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

Final design, permitting, and construction.

I'll get into that in a moment in the next slide.

But that it's only showing the next couple of years.

West Seattle Link Extension on its current schedule is anticipated to start service in 2032. And Ballard Link Extension, which is Twice the size and twice the length, twice the number of stations, and just extremely complex project is not reflected on this slide at all.

And when we look at the anticipated schedules for both of those projects, we're really looking at a 15-, 16-year horizon according to the current environmental review schedules.

It's important to note that because as we're talking about the positions later on in this presentation, we are trying to get ready as much as possible for the volume of permit activity that is ahead.

But we anticipate that much of that activity is going to continue for the next 5, 10, 15 years should the projects continue on this schedule.

So as you note in the legislation, the positions that we've put forward do not currently have sunset provisions in them.

However, we will be adding sunset provisions as appropriate once we have funding agreements with Sound Transit and a real clear and committed understanding to the schedules.

This slide is what we call the Mountain of Permits.

This is a slide from Sound Transit as well.

It depicts the design packages that are expected for West Seattle Link Extension in the coming years.

What it shows on the bottom, you see those colored lines.

Those each represent for the four segments of the West Seattle Link Extension Project, SOTO, Duwamish, Delridge, Avalon, and Alaska sections.

Each one is going to have anywhere from a couple to dozens of design packages, and each design package is focused on a specific geography within that segment, and each one will have anywhere from a handful to maybe a dozen or a couple dozen permits within them.

Those permits are going to range in complexity depending on The complexity of the project at that point, what type of impacts it has, what type of property, public or private, it is impacting, and that will determine the complexity of that design package.

The background, that mountain that is about to accelerate in 2026 is showing the cumulative amount or the volume of work that's anticipated with all of those Design packages that are hitting staff at the city at the same time.

A couple things to note about this is that we are, as you can see from that acceleration from Q4 to Q1 of 2026, we're anticipating this huge volume of permit activity for West Seattle Link Extension in the One of the most important things to note, though, about this graph is that this is only showing West Seattle Link Extension.

Ballard Link Extension, you see there's a line there at Q1 of 2027. That's when Sound Transit is anticipating on the current schedule to start submitting permits for Ballard Link Extension, which is, again, twice the length, twice the number of stations, and much more complex in many ways than West Seattle Link Extension.

And so that permit volume is not reflected on this graph at all.

So one thing to take away from this is just that we are kind of buckling ourselves up for just a heck of a lot of work coming up here in the next year.

And Sarah, before you move on to the next slide, Sound Transit Board has already approved putting forward many permits.

I don't know if this is the full amount because I know that there are more for the board to approve.

So Sound Transit has not slowed down in that sense.

This graph clearly describes a phrase that I often use, which is bow wake.

For those that spend a lot of time on the sea, you know that the first real big wake off of the bow of your ship or your vessel, your boat, is one of the bigger ones.

This clearly describes that.

And I think this graph demonstrates visually for us the importance of hiring up the staff.

In my remarks in just a minute, I'll talk about the reorg, The legislation that we passed earlier this year in Council Member Saka's committee to streamline, or was that in land, it doesn't matter.

We've had so much of the Sound Transit legislation, it's making us happy.

And so beyond just that streamlining of the permitting, now we have to have people to do that work.

Is there anything, if this is not even inclusive of Ballard, What else should we expect?

Should we expect another bow wake in the future?

Should everything stay on track?

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

That what we're expecting for Ballard is a higher volume of design packages, a higher volume of permit activity.

Thank you for the opportunity to clarify that or mention or acknowledge the board action that the board, the Sound Transit Board, has moved forward into final design for West Seattle.

So while there are going to be some future board actions related to construction, The final design which includes these permit packages is moving forward and so we are preparing ourselves for all of that work.

And we'll talk a little bit more about the You know, what happened last week at the board meeting, don't want to distract from here, just to say that work that Sound Transit is doing for West Seattle is the work that is exploring and finding these efficiencies.

Right now, just as one example, and then we can keep moving, I guess two, is that the footings for the columns are oftentimes in the past.

They possibly have been overbuilt.

Making them built structurally sound with less concrete saves a lot of money because concrete is one of the fastest rising cost drivers in the capital program.

A second example here is the ability to precast the guideways.

Rather than setting up all of the scaffolding, all of the wood, and then pouring the concrete and then taking it all down.

Those are just two examples of the work that's going on for the West Seattle project and why we need the staff here at the city to evaluate, to ensure that things are done well and that the cost estimates are correct.

Anything else you'd like to add there, Sarah or Angela or Kyle?

I'm going to hand things over to Kyle in just a moment, but I just want to underscore that statement and that intent to be ready for this volume, to be ready for that review that is upon us.

There is always an amount of time that it takes to get the position authority to move through the city process, to recruit positions, to get people onboarded and into those areas.

into those positions and by moving forward this legislation today and allowing us to move forward on the funding agreements with Sound Transit and getting these positions recruited and filled ensures that we are not going to be adding any delay, unnecessary delay, to that permitting process.

If I could just add one more thing to just to bring it to highlighting that the eight and a half positions that are authorized sort of outright as opposed to the other 41 that are more contingent I mean, this is very much in the place that we have to have people to understand where the project is evolving and make sure that we can really represent the city's interests in the evolution of the sound transit design.

So that is immediate.

That's the fourth quarter work.

That's why there's also budget authority that's necessary to support those positions, but also consultants and other program expenses just this year to help make sure that this project keeps moving forward.

So I just wanted to really focus on the positions that are straight authorized.

Thank you, Kyle.

Thank you.

And I'm going to hand things over to Kyle.

Thanks, Sarah.

So speaking of the bulk of the work here, with 41 and a half of these positions, they're related to reimbursable efforts, permit efforts that reflect working in partnership with Sound Transit on design coordination, engineering plan reviews, permitting, field work with the utilities in particular, and also efforts for cost savings and validation as we Look to the news that Sound Transit had last week for rising costs.

So over 80% of the positions in this legislation would be, as Cal mentioned, effectively contingent upon us reaching agreements with Sound Transit, like the ones we have now with our current staff that are working on the smaller volume that we've had so far, but adding work orders, work authorizations, task order.

What are we using?

Task order is the term we're using.

So task orders with Sound Transit expanding the team.

And historically, they've been reimbursing us on those types of efforts, an average of about 70% of the cost of that staff.

So that's what we've assumed in the budget that you're going to see on the next slide.

And we felt it was really important to come ask you earlier on.

That's why we're here off cycle, not during the regular budget process, to get everything started.

So we can negotiate with Sound Transit, show that the city has authorized the positions.

Once we can reach those deals on the task orders, we can move forward in hiring.

The balance of the positions, eight and a half of these positions, we'll talk about a little later, but they are oriented towards getting the city's ducks in a row, making sure we are organized on our engineering, On our plan review policy, just getting prepared for all of the big conversations that are going to come, along with having some consultant resources help as we ramp up.

That bow wake is coming very soon, and as you know, with city hiring, it does take a few months to get people on board, get them oriented.

All of that on top of the negotiations will have to do with sound transit.

All right, next slide.

So the staff and resource plan, I'd like to note we put a call out across the whole city on what departments thought they might need with what we know so far of the sound transit plan and work scope.

We got back requests adding up to over 100 Different roles that people thought, hey, these might be useful.

And a lot of them were, but we did sharpen our pencils on that and bring it down to the 50 that you see here.

And half of those are utility, directly related to utilities for engineering and field work.

So the request you see today is for Q4 2025. There's also a budget request in the 26 budget as well that's very similar.

This is scaled to just the fourth quarter.

We are requesting that a portion of The reserves that had been set aside in the 25 budget from the STBD sales tax money be moved into our office for these roles, and we also have assumptions about reimbursable revenues and partnership revenues, particularly from those sound transit Agreements that we'll need to negotiate after we've had the positions, if you should choose, to approve them once those are ready.

So we have to put an assumption into the budget as we do the request so we can get moving quickly.

But we have that protection layered in to say we do need to get the deals in place for the task orders before we hire.

The consultant work that is in the budget here is mostly focused on the short-term ramp-up needs.

So this is scheduling, kind of really making sure the city has our own understanding of our scheduling we need to do to meet what's coming from sound transit, also understanding the sound transit work, environmental studies, transportation mitigation studies, Third-party funding strategies, big hot topic, and non-motorized access projects, racial equity analysis, and short-term staff augmentation.

Next slide.

Thank you.

We describe here the various roles, those city-funded positions that are set to start right away.

We could post, if this is approved, would be adding up to eight and a half positions.

They're focused on engineering, planning, policy, and management roles that will help prepare us for advocacy as we continue conversations with Sound Transit.

Yeah, we've hit on the other 41 roles.

You can see here are the majority of them in SCL, SPU, and SDOT, and our office, Office of Waterfront Civic Projects and Sound Transit, focused on Engineering, plan review, capital coordination, field work, potentially going to be some utility relocations, and you'll see field crews are in the details in the legislation.

And then some smaller items from SDCI bringing on a dedicated review manager, and they would be utilizing some of their existing contingency or contingent positions as they get permits coming in.

So they anticipate about seven contingent positions under their existing authority would be used.

And then DON looking at historic preservation review, especially in the downtown.

Yeah, I think that's it for that.

Thank you.

So next steps would be, of course, for us to come back in two weeks.

And if the committee decides to advance that to full council and it passes, we would get going with negotiations on task orders with Sound Transit.

Advance those rapidly and be recruiting positions by late 2025, trying to align with that bow wake.

And yeah, we're ready for any questions from the committee.

Thank you.

Calvin Chow from Council Central staff, anything that you'd like to add or anything that we should be thinking about here?

No, I think I already said most of my piece and we're happy to answer any questions.

Fantastic.

And just on this slide, this last slide of your presentation, also recognizing Chris Gregorich, who is here in the audience.

Hello, Chris.

Thank you for all of your work.

I'll make just, again, one overarching comment, and then I'll open it up to my colleagues for questions, comments, and I'll get back to my questions at the end.

This last slide really demonstrates the importance of the first step that we took as a city, which is reorganizing where our sound transit, you call it the ST3 team, I just call it the sound transit team, where Re-orging to have a professional engineer, Angela Brady is a professional engineer, somebody that is able to fact check what we are receiving, is able to speak the language of Terry Mestis, Deputy CEO of Sound Transit, is able to, and Angela has already worked on the waterfront, which was a mega project with the Bertha Boring machine and then the rebuilding of the surface.

So that's really important to have that institutional knowledge of how to work with an agency larger than Sound Transit, the state DOT and Bertha.

From there, we already talked about the permitting and today's step of really hiring the staff to get the job done.

This last slide really helped speak to the importance of that reorganization.

I know that Marshall Foster, the last director of the waterfront, who's now at Seattle Center, That role of the Office of Waterfront punched above its belt, punched above its weight, right?

Just because your team, Angela, you included, were able to get into the nitty gritty details with the state, with those engineers who were at the time operating the largest tunnel boring machine in the world.

Last fact here, any millimeter larger than on the boring head of the tunnel boring machine makes the pressure on the bearing exponentially higher.

And so to have the largest tunnel boring machine in the world meant that we had never had it tested.

It's not to say that that's not why the problems happen, but that's the importance of the work that Angela brought to that project.

And I'm really excited to have you here bringing that to this project as well.

Colleagues, I'll open it up for questions and comments, and then I've got a couple other statements at the end.

And if I see Council Member Saka, and I realize I did not give you the update from Sound Transit because we didn't have Monday briefing.

I've got that in just a second or at Monday briefing as well.

But over to you, Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

And I'll say thank you all for joining us today, sharing your perspective on this proposed piece of legislation.

I will also say that the Sound Transit III light rail expansion is one of the most consequential infrastructure investments in the city's history.

And it connects communities, helps reduce carbon emissions, and ultimately delivering on a vision voters overwhelmingly supported.

As chair of the Transportation Committee in our city, I'm proud to support the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions, which will bring lasting, durable benefits to our city and our region, especially for working families and transit-dependent residents.

I think we've made real progress as a city and, again, as a region.

But as a city, thanks to the leadership of this council, Councilmember Strauss, there were some bits Some land use bits passed to help streamline the broader effort in the land use committee.

There were some transit way agreements that came through our transportation committee that I chair.

City effort, city efforts.

So, thanks to the leadership of this council, in partnership with the mayor, we streamlined permitting timelines, added critical staffing capacity through the Office of the Waterfront, and passed legislation to keep projects on track while maintaining community input and environmental standards.

Still, challenges remain.

Indeed, we face new challenges.

Rising construction costs, up to 25 percent.

Over initial projections.

Requires urgent, immediate action.

That's why I strongly support the mayor's call for cost control, value engineering, and independent review to ensure we deliver these projects responsibly.

But deliver them we must.

Let's be clear.

Delaying transit even further, kicking the can down the road even further, is not an option.

So every day without reliable light rail is truly a missed opportunity.

It's a missed opportunity for equity, mobility, and climate resilience.

So I'm proud of the bold steps Seattle is taking so far to meet this moment.

And I remain personally committed to working with our regional partners to ensure the sale and transit light rail extension projects are delivered efficiently, equitably, and with urgency that our communities deserve, and not deserve, they're demanding.

Today, this council is considering legislation to further resource our efforts to double down and transform our words into actions.

And to ultimately deliver the ST3 expansion efficiently and equitably.

This bill would authorize additional budget and staffing across city departments, ratify prior actions, et cetera, the like.

But ultimately, this proposal reflects our shared commitment to deliver this transformative infrastructure with the urgency and attention it deserves.

As chair of our Transportation Committee, I'm proud to back this legislation and need to continue working with partners across the region to ensure ST3 is built smarter, faster, and with greater accountability.

I'm heartened to learn that part of the package, the permitting package for West Seattle Includes, still contemplates those three stops at Avalon, Delridge and Alaska Junction.

Don't pair those back.

Don't cut corners to pair those back.

Look at those other things, engineering efficiencies.

This is to the Sound Transit Board.

We need all three of those stops.

Every last one.

Don't pair those back.

Find other ways to address the need.

But if you only have three of something and you take one away, it completely guts the value proposition of the original thing.

We want more people to take transit.

Taking one of three away is not gonna get it done.

And I would say that even though Ballard has, as I understand it, I'm less familiar especially with the Ballard, I don't sit on the board, but we just heard that it has twice the number of stops And twice as complex in many material respects.

Same principles would apply there, but the challenge would be even more glaring for West Seattle.

So don't pair that back.

Don't pair that scope back in terms of the number of stations.

I wish I would have been able to join the presser yesterday, but it happened during a long-planned, regularly-scheduled transportation committee that I chair.

We'll be speaking with the mayor's office offline about our continued collaboration.

Would have loved to be there, but this is more along the lines of the comments I would have made had I been given the opportunity to be there.

But I'm glad it was done.

I support the mayor's call for this.

The Sound Transit Board is...

We have two members on the Sound Transit Board as a city, the mayor and one other member.

So we have two capable representatives from a city's perspective.

I think this is a time now more than ever, given that the next major expansions of the broader regional Sound Transit Project are coming through one city.

I think it's time cities have potentially, in unique cases like this, have three members, three members to have representation on the committee or on the board.

But in any event, That's all.

Don't pair.

To anyone who's listening, don't pair back to West Seattle, especially, or any of them in Seattle.

Let's find other ways.

We're doing our parts here in Seattle, as evidenced by this legislation.

There's more to come.

But proud to be able to support this.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

Council President Nelson, you have your hand up?

Oh, I thought that your hand was up.

Well, I'm now serving as vice chair, so I won't call on myself.

I'll call on you and then I'll go after you.

That's okay.

Just a sec here.

So thank you very much for the press conference.

That was very informative yesterday, and I was proud to stand with the mayor, city staff, other electeds, labor as well.

I want to note that I did volunteer for mass transit now, and so I have been a supporter of Sound Transit 3 for a very, very long time.

And I understand, I understood back then that it was that the West Seattle and the Ballard segments were absolutely critical for generating the votes and then later the dollars for not just those segments but also continued work on the spine.

And so it sounded like what I was hearing was some disappointment that The conversations at the Sound Transit board meetings, which I was not listening to when they were happening, but I've heard about since then, it seems like people are thinking that that sounds like a little bit of a bait and switch to consider the potential of not funding those, of putting off those Seattle projects in favor of the spine.

So anyway, I just want to put that on the table.

All of that said, I do not believe there's any possible way to hire 15 FTEs across six departments within the fourth quarter.

And so I struggle to understand why this process isn't, why this position authority or this pocket authority isn't being approved during our regular budget session, which starts in Couple weeks or three weeks.

And also, more importantly, for me, to mitigate risk, why aren't we negotiating the reimbursement agreements and the deliverable targets first before going forward with putting anything, before inking any of these positions and then being positioned to move the money.

I understand that the money is there, but it seems like we're It seems like we're accelerating certain processes over others.

I'll start, and then I'll let these two fill in.

So I think you mentioned 15 positions.

We would be hiring 8.5 positions, just to be clear, in 2025. So that is the amount of funding that we are requesting for this year.

Yes.

I was just looking at the budget, the pocket authority, because that's, you know, usually we approve.

So maybe I can...

Okay.

So from my perspective, you know, the most immediate is the eight-and-a-half positions and the additional consultant work and sort of program support to engage with Sound Transit as they're going through the enterprise project, as they're trying to figure out what they're going to do.

I think this is an opportunity to also take along the rest of the positions that are necessary to negotiate with Sound Transit with the backstop that we don't intend to hire these positions until we have those assurances in hand that there is an agreement in place to fund them.

I think it is a choice to the Council to decide not to do that now, to have it come up.

It could be deferred to the budget.

In some ways, at this point where we are in September, I'm not sure that makes that much of a difference if you're going to make that decision.

I don't know that the information in front of you is going to change very much.

It's still a negotiation that has to happen with Sound Transit over the next several months.

I don't think there will be any new information when the budget drops, so in terms of timing, It would be a difference in timing, and that is a choice that you have, but I'm not sure that you'll have much more information to make that decision then.

So I think a large part of what the staff here are asking is please give them the position authority so that they can demonstrate to Sound Transit that they are a good partner, that the city is a good partner, we have the authority to enter into these agreements, and then it can become more of an administrative piece.

They don't have to come back to council To get that authority at a later date can hopefully speed up the hiring process to meet deadlines, and it doesn't end up becoming an additional legislative step later.

That is the proposal.

Obviously, it is your choice to decide whether you want to pull some of that out.

Kate?

Yeah, it's about us showing the city's sense of urgency on the issue and We're pre-authorizing the positions.

There is explicit language in the legislation saying we won't fill those.

They've been marked.

We won't fill them until the agreements are in place.

But it's a choice.

It's a chicken or egg kind of a thing.

So which do we want to do first?

Do we want to go negotiate and say we still need to go to council and ask for these positions?

We feel it's a stronger position to show that we have Common asked for the authorization, and now we're You know, ready on the administrative level with Director Brady having the authority to sign and start hiring.

It just puts us in a position to show our seriousness on the issue and our urgency.

Lord George.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

I will acknowledge that these are important details that I have not had time to digest because this is brand new legislation the second day back from recess.

You dropped everything to go to the press conference yesterday, and I understand that you're operating under a sense of urgency, so thank you.

I was very intrigued by some discussion.

I think Chair Strauss did mention that there had been discussion about the potential of lowering the costs of certain Does there have to be two tunnels or can there be one?

What would that cost, et cetera?

That brought to mind the fact that one of the drivers of cost, one of the largest drivers of cost is consultants and largely related to the massive draft and final environmental impact statements that are required by state and federal law.

So, recently the Supreme Court made the National Environmental Protection Act, NEPA, requirements significantly less onerous than what large projects like sound You can get me this answer offline if you would like, but has Sound Transit ever considered asking the state to exempt mass transit projects from the State Environmental Protection Act, which continue to drive these high costs and delays because we are very much interested in mitigating risk, which makes sense.

We might need to take your, thank you for that question, and we might need to take you up on your offer to get back to you with additional information because the question is about whether or not Sound Transit has approached the state about that change, so we'd be happy to follow up with that.

I know that we have, through our Liza Rankin.

Tanya Woo.

Liza Rankin.

There's no one from Sound Transit here, so I think, you know, we have to be careful not to speak for the organization that's actually responsible for doing this project.

They are going through some tough choices.

We all saw the board meeting last week.

We know that they are going to have to contain costs or figure out what type of scope changes.

The discussion that you have raised concerns about, you know, the stations in West Seattle and the other ideas cost, there is a huge It's a variety of issues that they're going to have to address.

It's not just our project.

It's all the capital projects that they're working on.

It's their operational side because, you know, when Sound Transit first started, their original proposal was to build 21 miles.

They couldn't afford that.

They had to pare it back to 14 and sort of build it in phases.

They're addressing the same type of issue now, but they also are operating the system that they have had for, you know, 15 years now or however long it is.

So it's a lot of moving parts.

I think I just want to bring it back to, at its heart, what the staff here are asking for is capacity to help make sure the city's interests are engaged in that discussion.

I think a lot of this other stuff is we're all waiting to see where sound transit goes and what the decisions get made at the board level so we can respond.

But I think the fundamental piece here that I want to make sure is focus is that we do need staff to help Make sure that the city's interests are represented and addressed in this discussion.

I get what you're, I understand what you're saying.

And basically it sounds like we're trying to build the plane while we're flying it in a way.

And we need to make sure that our, that our interests, the city of Seattle's interests are protected.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Rivera, I know you skipped yourself.

Do you want to go now?

I did.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here.

And I'm going to, Calvin, thank you for bringing it back to what we're being asked for today.

And I'm going to say that the questions are legitimate, and perhaps in the future there could be a Sound Transit representative at the table, Chair, to answer some of these questions because they're important.

And we're being asked to make decisions and these questions that we have are important to get answered as we're making these decisions.

So I'll agree and I understand this is about these 8.5 positions.

All of these concerns are part of the whole.

And the entire conversation.

And we don't have many opportunities up here.

Notwithstanding, thank you for your participation on the board and the mayor's participation on the board.

The rest of us don't have a lot of opportunities to ask these questions of sound transit.

And you all are our representatives at the city who are engaging with Sound Transit.

So I think these questions are more than appropriate, and I appreciate you going back to Sound Transit and getting answers.

They're important.

I'm not going to vote on something that I am not completely briefed on, and that I know all the pieces that are part of this project, whether we're the ones delivering it or not.

So I will say that.

I do have some questions.

And then I want to say also, like everyone else, I very much care about the Sound Transit 3 and the connections.

I'm a big proponent of public transportation, haven't used it my entire life.

And I've said this only about a million times, but I did not have a driver's license until I was 30 years old.

Public transportation has been a really critical piece in my life, and I want to make sure that we have a robust transportation system in Seattle.

So I'm going to continue to say that because oftentimes when we have questions about the sound transit projects, somehow it gets relayed to constituents that somehow we're being obstructionists or we don't care.

And I just want to make it very clear to the public that I do care, that I do support it, and I have to do my due diligence as someone who is representing the district that I represent, that I need to do my due diligence.

And I'm not a rubber stamper.

I've said this many times.

So I'm going to ask some questions.

Because I do think my first question is actually, you know, why we put money in last year's budget, we reserved funding for this very purpose, but it is now September, we're staring budget in the face, and only now are we being asked to give budget authority for these not only 8.5 FTE pockets that we actually reserved money for, but then the 41.5 that we anticipate we're going to get funding from Sound Transit to fund.

And I do feel like in terms of delays, I don't, every time I feel like Sound Transit has come up here.

There's a lot of talk about delays and then somehow there's been this impression that we're the ones creating the delays and if we don't do this now that we're going to delay.

There's that word keeps getting thrown around a lot.

But we are not the ones delaying anything here because Sound Transit is not these projects, Light Rail, that's not our project.

I understand we have to give the permitting and we're going to do our due diligence.

But as Council President said, we're just getting this today.

This is the first briefing about this today.

And we now almost a year ago reserved money for this purpose.

So I'm not really sure why it took this long.

Do you have a response to that?

Yeah, thank you.

If I could, for just a quick moment, go back to the Mountain of Permits slide.

A year ago, when we were first putting together the Staff and Resource Plan and reaching out to departments about what resources they anticipated needing in 2025 and put that funding reserve in the 2025 budget, this Mountain of Permits was pushed up about six to nine months.

We were anticipating that volume to hit At the end of Q1 in 2025, in April, really, of 2025. And it is delays to the record of decision and delays that happened on the Sound Transit slide that has pushed this out further.

And so we are still, as you noted, this is not our project, and so we are constantly chasing Sound Transit's schedule and subject to their schedule to support it.

But that is the single largest reason why we didn't come earlier to ask for the positions, was we knew that that work was moving further back into the year.

We weren't going to need the positions.

We were still working with Sound Transit to understand which design packages were coming when and really wanted to make sure that we were putting in place a request to you that reflected our best knowledge of the work that was coming.

Is there anything to add?

I think the other factor would be the mayor's reorganization, bringing the ST3 team under the Office of the Waterfront, now expanded to include Sound Transit, which happened in February.

And so we got up to speed and dug into all of the requests and the positions and sorting through all of those and getting the package together for you today.

So that did take some time, and it also happened to align with the adjustments happening with Sound Transit.

Thank you for that answer and just it still stands that we're being asked what seems to me at the 11th hour for something that you need in the fourth quarter, which actually starts a month from now.

So I just, I want that stated for the record because we often get asked to do things and people want it done right away.

And we need to be able to do our due diligence as we are approving these things.

So just wanted to note that for the record.

And then the other question also continuing on these positions, the 41.5 that's what does, it's match funded.

So does that mean, and I understand that those 41.5 we won't hire until the negotiation is completed and we have these partnerships, partnership agreements in place.

But does that mean that maybe it might result in less than 41.5 FTEs if the negotiation comes out a different way?

Are we expected to pay some of this 41.5 FTE, you know, positions?

Are they fully covered by Sound Transit?

Who is paying for this?

The plan, it does vary by department and position, but the plan assumes roughly one-third would be city match covered of those costs, about 25 percent to one-third.

And, yeah, it does depend on where we arrive with the negotiations with Sound Transit on their match percent on those roles, and we would We should probably work out just whatever our best proposal is for what we can afford within what we've requested here to fill as many of the positions as we can without having to come back and ask for more budget authorization.

But the target that we've put out there is about two-thirds to 70 percent of sound transit providing funding.

And then when it comes to utility-type roles, that's on the higher end of that, with costs being mostly

Will there be an upcoming briefing or slide deck or council meeting where we get...

I'd like to know who's paying for these various pieces, and I feel like we're getting information piecemeal.

Like you just talked about water mains and who's going to pay for relocation of those.

I'd like to know.

Who's going to pay for relocation of those?

So I'd like to know when we're going to get this information.

I think, Council Member, I think what Kyle was trying to say is we're hiring positions that will support field work on those relocations.

Who pays for those relocations?

That's sound transit.

There's no question about that.

But the city, it's the city's job as the asset owners to support sound transit in that field work, and that's part of what you're seeing in this legislation.

Sorry, the way it was posed, I was unclear.

So thank you for providing that clarity.

And then for the third that we're going to pay, or 25 percent for those 41.5 positions, is that coming in?

Is the mayor adding those to the budget for this fall?

Is that?

In 2026, yes.

Right.

But that's part of our budget process here coming up in a couple of weeks.

That's right.

And then, so thank you for clarifying that we're expected to pay a third, 25%, or a third of those 41.5 positions.

They're not all going to be paid for by Sound Transit.

Yeah, that's based on our historic experience with our existing task orders for the staff that we do have right now.

Yeah.

There are certain...

Tasks maybe Sarah can speak to that these roles perform that are more focused on looking out for one of the city's interests in terms of stationary access or something along those lines that are kind of outside of the envelope but within the area of a station that might be proposed.

Yeah, I could speak a little bit more to that.

We do, as Kyle mentioned, we have a history of administrative task orders, negotiating administrative task orders.

We have five that have been in place, and we're negotiating six and seven right now with Sound Transit, and that covers specific scopes of work that include staff.

There's a focus on permitting activity and engineering activity that are really supporting the design and getting the project permit ready.

It's a Something that we negotiate usually once a year, every maybe year and a half, for those positions.

As Kyle mentioned, some of the positions are funded nearly 100 percent.

Some might only be funded for certain tasks, so it might be city staff that's otherwise doing other activities, city work, but then there's a portion of their time that is covered by the administrative task order.

But what we're also anticipating is going to increase in 2026 Is that many of these positions or portions of these positions will be funded through permit fees.

And so that's going to be a new source of revenue that's going to be coming into the city as we move into permitting.

And those dollars will go to fund the permitting staff, which are many of the positions that we have laid out in this legislation.

So, Sarah, what I'm hearing is some of these positions, it will depend what the work is on what they will be doing.

So TBD that way.

And then my last point, if I may, Chair, is I noticed the legislation doesn't—these are all technically temporary positions.

They're long-term, so they can't be hired as temps the way we do at the city, because at the City of Seattle, if you're going to hire a temporary employee, you can't do so for more than two years, and obviously this is a longer project.

But these 50 positions are intended to support this project, and at the end of the project, these positions will sunset.

And my concern is that is not included in this legislation now.

And while I understand that's what the intent is, in the absence of being included in the legislation, once you hire these positions, and I speak from experience here, once you hire these positions, folks, Who are hired for these positions may not, we need to make sure that they understand that they're getting hired in long-term temp positions.

So at the completion of the project, whenever that is, we no longer will be extending their employment, that they're clear when they get hired that that's the case.

Because otherwise, I think it is, well, It's wrong to hire someone and not tell them, right?

And then we will be faced with whatever, eight years from now, ten years, whatever it turns out to be.

That we will have to sunset abrogate the positions and then these folks will feel like, well, nobody told me this was, I'm going to lose a job.

We don't, that is really a critical piece of this.

And some of us may not be here 10 years from now.

So to remember that these were to be sunset whenever the project is completed.

So that this legislation needs to make it very clear.

And when these folks get hired, they need to be very clear.

That these positions are temp positions, though they are long-term.

And I don't see that in the legislation here, and that is critical.

And I know you mentioned it, Sarah, but it's not the same as us discussing it here and it being in the legislation for folks, you know, who will come after us to know what the intent was, and that's what we have funding for.

And so that's a critical piece of this, because I have seen employees When they get hired, not be clear.

And then the expectation was that the position would continue.

And then we run into a huge problem.

And that's not fair to the folks who will get hired, right?

And council member, I think, you know, it's because we don't know the project duration, we can't put it into sort of the hard line ordinance, but that's certainly something that we could reference in the recitals to make clear of the expectations, you know, These people are being hired to help move this project.

At some point, this project is expected to be completed.

So there is a natural...

So I'd be happy to work with your office on some language that explains this and make sure it's documented in the legislation.

And, Calvin, we don't have to put a date, but we can put it as these positions will sunset at the completion of this project.

And that can be in the language of the legislation.

I'm happy to engage with law and make sure we can come up with some language that passes the certainty of interpretation.

Yes, but it needs to be, I mean, I feel really strongly about this because I have seen employees who, where this has really come back to not be good for the employee or for the city.

We're in a situation then when we don't have a position, continued work for these employees.

That's not, like I said, fair.

And if I could add, that's a really important point.

Thank you for bringing it up, Council Member Rivera.

I think one of the successful, well, first of all, part of the request that we have in here for you today to consider includes consultant support in addition to city staff.

And one of the ways we've managed staffing over the 15 years that I've worked on the waterfront is that, you know, we have these ebbs and flows, right?

You have times when you're really ramping up in work.

And then you have times that you get a little bit slower and work.

And the way we've managed our way through that is to have a relatively small, tight-knit city team and utilize consultants when the workload gets really, really big and we can't hire quite enough people to get there.

And that way, you know, you can actually shrink your team a little bit over time.

Gives you more flexibility to manage your team over time.

And so part of the request that you're seeing here does include dollars for consultant costs.

So we're going to be very careful about our hiring and the timing of our hiring.

And I know Sound Transit cares about that as well.

We talked about they had a little bit of delay this year with the record of decision for West Seattle.

We anticipate they will have some further delays in the future.

And so we're asking for the authority to hire this many positions, but they really depend on the schedules that we get from Sound Transit so that we have that flexibility built in.

Thank you, and I understand that, Director Brady, and also this is not particular to the waterfront or to the team sitting at the table.

This is just me and I've seen this across the city in our various departments, and it has been an issue in the past.

So that's why I raise it.

It's not particular to what you all are doing, and I understand that.

Pocket authority doesn't mean you have a funding for it and that you will hire for it.

If you found some funding, it just gives you the flexibility of not having to come back to us and asking for that budget authority.

I also have seen when SDHR is helping on the hiring side, they don't necessarily tell the employees.

Sometimes the right hand, left hand Is tricky and no one shares that, hey, these are temp positions long term, but temp.

And then we set up a false expectation.

And that's what I have seen at the city.

And this is why I'm belaboring the point, if you will.

But thank you for saying that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And Council President, is that a new hand or old hand?

We have 15 minutes left in committee.

Is it possible?

Over to you, Council President.

But we have another item and I haven't provided remarks yet.

I just—I want to—I think what I hear Councilmember Rivera saying, and I agree, that we shouldn't be put in the position of being blamed for delay when there—there are a lot of things that are slowing—slowing things down already.

And page 7 says— of your slide deck, the mountain of permits, says note that Ballard permit tables are totals are not included in this chart because they're not yet known due to the early stage of design.

So here we are, you know, again talking about legislation to approve these pocket to approve these pockets and then move the already existing budget authority forward, et cetera.

When, Kyle, you mentioned, and Chris Daniels of Como was getting at this yesterday a little bit, that we are trying to demonstrate Urgency.

And so, again, it comes down to, for me, we need to pay attention to the details.

And this should be more than an exercise of convincing the whole Sound Transit Board of what Seattle is really interested in seeing, which, of course, I've already stated my commitment to.

So that's what I will note.

And Angela, you two have really hard jobs.

You're opening a waterfront and now doing all of this.

So thank you very much for your work.

Thank you.

I'll be briefing my remarks just to state, and I'll give a deeper update on Monday morning briefing.

The highlights here are that Sound Transit does have the funding to deliver all of the programs in the short term.

Sound Transit has enough cash on hand to continue its work.

It is that...

In the out years, there is a funding delta, and that is because we have started calculating the costs in the year of expenditure rather than $20, $25.

What this shows is that time costs money, inflation, et cetera.

And so without changes to operations and capital delivery, costs will overrun by the time we reach the Ballard segment.

Sound Transit is now working to achieve cost savings.

They've already hired national experts.

They've begun improving capital and service delivery by refining and updating practices and processes, but savings and efficiencies cannot save $30 billion.

That's a really fundamental fact of this.

So we as the city today, while we're not voting, we're taking the briefing, we are taking that next step to reduce cost and speed delivery of light rail within our city boundaries.

Please do put a note somewhere on our budget worksheets that this should be considered third-party funding.

Whenever we get to that discussion, we need to be tallying up all of the dollars that we have already spent for sound transit, And just really noting the fact that it is critical that we complete the spine.

When we talk about housing costs in the city, the average cost to move is $500 in Chicago and it's $2,000 here.

That's because Chicago is connected by a train network so that neighborhoods all across that metropolitan Whether they're rising in costs or lowering costs, people stay connected to their friends, family, and work.

That's the importance of connecting to Everett.

That's the importance of connecting to Tacoma is so that we even out our entire regional market.

I am committed to delivering the entire sound transit plan and as delays have already occurred in the phasing projects, As delays have already occurred, we've already discussed that, the 2021 alignment, and phasing projects are now under consideration, we must plan for the future.

If you could go back to your second slide, a decade ago, getting to 15th in market, this one, getting to Ballard, which is 15th in market, this was visionary a decade ago.

And today it's an unmet need.

If we were to build the minimum operable segments, it would be Delridge and Smith Cove.

It would be such an unintended consequence to send every single person from the West Seattle Peninsula into Delridge.

It's already hard to access.

The dad from Delridge knows how to get in and out real easily, but for everyone else, and to send the entire peninsula of people there is completely unacceptable.

Same with stopping at Smith Cove.

There's no cruise ship passenger that will tote their luggage for that mile and a half to two miles from the light rail to the cruise ship.

Just going on to say that since we are already in delay, If we begin that phasing conversation, in 2001, Sound Transit was facing similar overruns as Cal mentioned.

They started phasing the projects, and that brought the UW Stadium Station in ahead of schedule and under budget.

That same thing can be true here, but if we are going to start phasing, then we have to start looking to the future That Ballard Line should also reconnect back up to Northgate or 145th or the Deborah Juarez Station at 130th.

And that Alaska Junction Station should keep going down to White Center, Burien, connect to the airport.

So that at the junction, you could either go downtown or to the airport.

In Ballard, you could either go to Northgate or downtown.

We are making this investment to ensure Sound Transit is able and delivers light rail in our city as fast and as cost effectively as possible.

And we couldn't do any of this work without the workers building and operating our system.

With that, we have 11 minutes left in committee, and we still have another item ahead of us.

Any final comments, questions, concerns?

Seeing none, we will have this item back in committee next time.

And colleagues, please take briefings to dig deeper.

Thank you, team.

Just please let me know if you want to involve...

I'll follow up with your offices about potential amendments or ideas that we've discussed in committee today.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, and please join everyone on the waterfront this Saturday at 10 a.m.

With that, Presley and Mark, come on up.

Clerk, will you please read item number three, the short title, and to the record?

Item number three, an ordinance relating to public works contracts, amending provisions of the small works roster and contractor bond processes to align with state law and amending section 20.40.02 and 20.48.010 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

This item is for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Presenters include Presley Palmer, Mark Nakawaga of the Department of Finance and Administrative Services.

Thank you, Clerk, Presley, and Mark.

Please feel free to introduce yourself.

FAS is the backbone of this city.

We couldn't get anything done without you.

With that, you've been here to our committee before.

You've presented this piece of legislation that aligns us with state code that has changed since we initially adopted this legislation.

Looking at the presentation from last time, really if you wanted to just tell us about slide four and five again to give us a brief reminder, I feel very comfortable in voting.

Just want to make sure in case any of my colleagues need a refresher.

Megan, can you help?

I think we're still stuck on the last one.

While we're getting the slide going,

You're going to want to switch seats.

I'm Preston Palmer.

I'm the division director for purchasing and contracting with FAS.

And with me I have Mark Nakagora.

I'm the deputy division director, and I primarily oversee the public works contracting for the city.

Yeah, and as we get the slides set up, again, we're here again, and we want to thank you for having us again.

We're here to give you a brief, basically a brief overview of what we've done, and I'm going to start with slide four, you said?

Slide four and five, yeah.

It really just gets to the meat of it.

And I think this would be more complicated if it were not just bringing us in alignment with state code.

Okay, no worries.

And I think the slides may not even be the ones that I had adjusted, so that's okay.

So on slide four, where we're at on the screen here, we're just going into the benefits.

But before we go with that, I just want to really quickly say what a SmallWorks roster is for, you know, and I think you all may know, but it really simply is just a roster, a list of pre-qualified firms that we, with various categories that we can exclusively invite to Bid on projects under $350,000.

So that's really what that is, and it kind of gives us that ability to do this without a broad advertisement, and it kind of gives us that thing to be more intentional on how we pick these firms within this group of the roster.

That's really what the Small Works roster is, and we're really excited to move that direction.

But slide four here is basically showing the benefits of a Small Works roster.

So within those benefits, you can see the prime contracting opportunities for small businesses, which kind of aligns with what the mayor's executive order did to say, how do we get more prime opportunities for small business?

How do we get them to be the primes?

We do kind of have that.

To kind of piggyback with our JOC program, our job order contract program, which is there are subcontractors underneath that.

So that's one of the great benefits of this.

We see that as a great opportunity.

Another thing that the Small Works roster does within the benefits, it has up to $150,000 threshold that allows us to go and direct select.

So there's a lot of opportunities that we're hoping to find in that area where we can just go and get someone within that roster to do a job under $150,000 and be really intentional on how we do that.

The other things that it does is it's going to give us the roster is going to be the state roster, which we'll go off of.

So what this will allow us to do is not have to build our own roster, but go on the state roster, which is used by over 650 state agencies.

So now it's going to bring consistency for us, for our Liza Rankin.

I think I'm looking at a different slide deck when I said slide four.

Yeah, that's kind of where I went to.

I've got a different one up on the screen here.

If you want to bring up technical legislative changes and the technical updates to the SMC.

I believe it's in your slide deck there.

That right there?

And the one previous to that.

Okay.

Nope, just slide three and then I'll turn it over to you and then colleagues if they have questions.

Yes.

Perfect.

So this slide right here is really where our ask comes from for you all to support us in these technical, basically our minor technical updates that we need to have made to the Seattle Municipal Code.

And basically what they do is We had state law changed in 2023, and with that change, we have to update our Seattle Missima code to match that change.

And basically what we're looking here is some of the changes that happened here, and I don't think they're showing on this slide here, but the thresholds were put into place.

The $350,000 threshold where we can, under $350,000, we can go and only compete with the roster.

We have the $150,000, which I mentioned earlier, which under $150,000 we can direct select.

It does give us that opportunity to use the statewide roster, which is very important, so we don't have to create our own program.

So this will all be managed by the state on that.

It does put obligations on us to make sure that we adhere to everything.

We rotate folks through that process.

So that's a very important thing.

But that's really what our ask is for you.

We've already worked with law to kind of come up with the language on what we need to do here.

But our ask is to move forward with this change so that we can move forward and put our program in place.

And that's kind of where we're at.

Our current Seattle Municipal Code refers to an RCW that doesn't exist.

So the new Small Works roster actually has a new RCW.

So to come in alignment, this kind of buttons all the pieces.

Well, I think we could have inferred that, but now this would completely give us authorization to do so.

Wonderful.

And I'm going to ask for questions from the colleagues.

Colleagues, if you do have questions, we'll need to spend some time after 1130 if you want to take a, if you don't have, I'll leave it up to you to decide.

But I'm ready to go.

Vice Chair Rivera, I see you have a hand.

Thank you, Chair.

Just to clarify, this is, we are bringing ourselves into alignment with the state, which we don't have a choice on.

We get voluntold to do things by the state every so often, and this is one of them.

So I just want to make it very clear that that's what we're being asked to do today.

Yeah, we're bringing ourselves in alignment with the state.

And if we were not in alignment, in 2012, we had a small works roster.

Of course, it referred to a different RCW, but we had that.

We can do that, but that would require us to build our own roster and do all this stuff internally.

So there's a lot of things that we need to do to bring ourselves in line with this.

Said another way, we don't have to do this, but it would be a lot more work on our own backs.

We can just tap into the state program and use their resources to do our work.

The stick roster also provides a lot of advantages to small businesses also because then they only have to register once and they could have, you know, all, you know, access to all public organizations, you know, municipalities and such, so.

Not being volunteered, sorry.

Correction on that on my part.

But it's something that we can do to streamline our process is just to tap into the states.

We have an offer to engage in a statewide consortium, but we don't have to do it.

Exactly.

Thanks for the clarification.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Well, with that last question here, are there any final comments before we vote on this bill?

And I will just say my final comment here is Mark and Presley.

You were the first ones in chambers this morning.

You've sat with us through this entire presentation.

Thank you for all your good work.

Seeing no other comments, I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 121046. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Aye.

That is four in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you.

The motion passes and the committee recommends the Council Bill 121046 pass and will be sent to the Tuesday, September 9th City Council meeting.

Unless there's any further business, this does conclude the Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025 Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting.

This committee meeting will meet next on Wednesday, September 17th.

It is 1129 AM.

Thank you for getting us under the buzzer.

Any further business?

Hearing, seeing none, we are adjourned.

Thank you.