missing title

Good afternoon everyone.

It is Thursday, December 11th, and the Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.03.

I'm Sarah Nelson, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Lynn.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

Three present.

I would like to, could you please take the roll one more time?

Yeah.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Lynn.

Here.

Council Member Rivera.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

For present.

Thank you very much.

We will announce Council Member Rivera's presence when she arrives.

Okay.

We will now begin with the public comment period.

Just a second here.

Oh, yeah, move the agenda.

We do have a change to the agenda.

So I move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

it's moved and seconded to adopt the agenda.

And I've been advised that the proposed domestic workers standards board appointee on agenda item eight has withdrawn their name from the appointment for consideration.

So if there is no objection, the agenda will be amended to remove item eight, appointment 3438. Okay, hearing no objection, the agenda is amended.

So if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted as amended.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted as amended.

All right, let's move into the public comment period.

Could you please tell us how many people are signed up for public comment?

We have one in-person comment and two online.

All right, let's start with the one in-person and everyone gets a big two minutes.

Thank you.

I will call on speakers in the order in which they are signed up to speak, starting with in-person commenters.

Speakers will have two minutes.

When you hear the chime, you will have ten seconds left.

If you exceed that time, your microphone may be cut off so that we can move on to the next speaker.

If you are offering remote comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

Our first in-public commenter is Caroline Malone.

I'm Carolyn Malone from 910 Marion Street, and my question for the council is, why is the Seattle Office of Civil Rights closed indefinitely?

On August 28th, I filed a complaint.

of racial discrimination in my housing and retaliation and my complaint was proceeding smoothly and abruptly the office is closed.

I don't have access to an investigator and this person in my housing is behind it all.

I don't know his name but he's closely affiliated with the Seattle Police and Seattle Police, Seattle Office of Civil Rights are city entities.

And I'm concerned that my case will, the statute of limitation will expire and my case will be rendered inactive or closed.

So I'd like to have the city the council or the incoming council.

I will come back again to see why this office is closed indefinitely as of October 30th of this year.

I don't have access to anyone.

I call, leave messages, and no one answers.

So this is quite obvious that I'm being impeded and having...

Will you stop making my stomach tremble?

This guy is a problem for me, too.

Whenever I protest in front of the police department, I have problems.

But the Seattle Office of Civil Rights is closed indefinitely, and it needs to be looked into, because my case needs to proceed.

Otherwise, I need to get an attorney.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will now move on to our remote speaker.

Our first remote speaker is Colleen McKeeler.

Colleen, go ahead and unmute yourself.

Good afternoon, City Council members.

This is Colleen McKeeler.

and we applaud the last hurrah here for Council Chair Nelson and your other esteemed council members and special welcome to Council Member Lynn.

I am here to represent Laurelhurst Community Council.

We strongly support Seattle City Council Bill 121130, which is long overdue to clarify the ethical role process of its paid consultants.

This legislation would simply prevent the double dipping by political consultants or paid by taxpayer dollars and can influence both city politics, but they can currently also conduct side businesses and advocating for in elections and legislative tax initiatives.

This bill aims to prevent the backdoor politics using that insider information, which is strictly forbidden by law by the SEC, certainly in financial transactions in both the private and public sector, and it fills in the gaps in our ethics code.

Access to insider information is as valuable as money in the political world.

This bill promotes responsible stewardship of our city's resources and its processes by requiring that transparency and accountability of its consultants.

This ensures public funds are available for scrutiny by all constituents and other elected officials.

This oversight is exactly what people expect from their government and prevents conflicts of interest.

Passing this bill will strengthen Seattle's reputation for good governance.

Seattle council members have the opportunity here to set a positive example for other cities across the region.

And we encourage you to listen to the voices of your constituents and vote in favor of council bill 121130. Thank you all for your service to the city and voting to pass this bill.

One moment before you go to the next speaker, I would like to note that council member Rivera is present.

Our next remote speaker is David Haynes.

Thank you, David Haynes.

Government accountability was supposed to be about improving the services and the policies and purging the spending priorities that ran interference for drug pushers and repeat offenders who got prioritized for housing and services that exacerbated the public safety crisis.

And it was supposed to address the landlords on the city council who are self-dealing with conflicts of interest that are unforgivable, that have sold out the working class, a multitude of younger generations and backstab the renters, making sure that nothing's going to be built back better because you all sabotaged the comprehensive plan and put restrictions on the developers and took away the incentives and then created a slush fund called the MHAP fund that only your politically connected nonprofits are getting access to after you all helped change the laws to guarantee that, which is another ethics violation when you take a look at Sharon Lee's $300,000 salary and how much money she spends buying off the activists and the organizers to lobby City Hall that they pay off, that she pays off so that City Hall will water down the integrity of the oversight of the services that are not being provided, that are being lied about and manipulated with statistics and data that they fill in the blanks on that are based on some racist priority where you still have a lens left over from the bully, Bruce Harrell, who's next year's budget is still going to be running interference for the black and brown criminals.

And there's never been an addressing of the police chief who's willing to put fences around the alleyways and downtown instead of addressing and trespassing and forcing all those people into a better path of purging their criminal behaviors and their drug addictions.

They got pushed up to Belltown and all around this neighborhood as if the downtown council gets priority on policies that are bad.

that endanger the rest of us because it's not even safe to go from one point to the next one because in between there, there's all these evil predators.

Thank you.

That was our last commenter.

Okay.

That was our last commenter.

So public comment is now closed.

And I first want to say hello to everybody in the audience who is here either to be part of the presentation or because they're just, as I would say, local public policy junkies.

So in any case, this is our last committee and committee meeting and we've got several things on the agenda.

We've got the consultant ethics legislation for a vote.

We have a piece of legislation regarding the Soto BIA to human services, not human services, HR pieces of legislation and I believe three appointments.

But of course I am going to first provide some words of recall from where we started to where we are now and I'm just going to go into the way way back machine and say that In 2021, I ran for office in part because I thought that the perspective of a small business owner would be helpful because this was 2021. The world was emerging from a pandemic and I thought that as a small business owner, I would help small businesses to recover and the whole city as a result.

Because for me it was about small businesses.

Not small businesses, but the jobs, the innovation, the tax revenue, and the sense of place that small businesses contribute to the city and make it so so unique, so vibrant, and the place that we call Seattle.

And so I thought, so that's why I wanted to be economic development chair, and I was chair of economic development for my first two years.

Do not worry, I'm not going to go into everything that we did, that that committee did the first couple years.

But I just want to note that I want you to keep in mind that for me it is about jobs primarily, because jobs are the people.

that this city is made of and too many jobs, small businesses and people are leaving this town.

So that has motivated a lot of what I've been doing in my work.

So, but just going back to what we have accomplished together as a committee.

Let's remember the, so some highlights.

Let's just get the difficult stuff out of the way first.

The pay-up reform was a piece of legislation, Council Bill 120775, that was introduced in March after the pay-up legislation that the previous council had passed went into effect.

we saw these chambers filled with people that were experiencing negative impacts from some of the unintended consequences of that bill.

Long story short, I saw and I believe that members of this committee also agreed that it was our responsibility to try to fix a law that was having negative impacts, and so that's precisely what we endeavored to do for a really long time.

The bill that was before us, it was, let's see, let me give the number just for posterity, Council Bill 120775, would have required that workers be paid the minimum wage before tips, and at that time it was at $19.97, $19.97, plus $0.35 per mile traveled, and Again, that was all before tips.

And in exchange, the network companies, the delivery companies, would remove the $5 service fee that they had attached to the bill that was making the deliveries so expensive that customers stopped ordering.

So the whole plan was right-size the minimum pay standard so that workers were still getting minimum wage plus and also get that $5 off and that would drive up consumer demand and thus the wages of the delivery drivers who were responding to calls for delivery.

It turned out to be a long and unpleasant and drawn-out process.

There was an attempt at negotiating a compromise with the sponsors of the bill.

That didn't work out.

It was taking too much time.

I put a pause on it, but I will say that it was the right thing to do to respond to the needs of our constituents, including the workers, the small businesses, and the customers.

and I stand by that.

And we've seen what has happened to delivery costs and the impacts on the workers' wages since, don't need to go into that, but sometimes you have to do hard things regardless of the actual outcome.

You start with good intentions.

Anyway, moving on to some better news, the SPD recruitment and retention ordinance, that was Council Bill 120766, that was designed, that started in about April and that was intended to get at why aren't we, what's the problem, why can't we hire more officers even though we'd implemented hiring bonuses and we were still bleeding officers and what this bill did was it, well it created in the Seattle Police Department a new recruitment and retention program which included moving a staff from the HR department to the police department, the recruiters, so that there was more interaction between them and the new recruits, encouraged the Public Safety Civil Service Commission to use an entry-level police officer exam that was used by all of their jurisdictions that didn't really turn out to be the case and most importantly it added an SDHR personnel analyst senior to help with the processing of exams and I mean not of exams but of applications so that people could get a personalized contact within 48 hours of applying of applying to SPD because that was industry standard and that hadn't been happening.

Anyway, long story short, thank you very much committee members for passing that.

It passed out of committee May 9th and it is working.

We saw the first sign of that last year when in Q4 of 2024, we had a net positive for the year of one officer.

That was a reversal of the trend since 2019 of losing more officers than we could gain.

And it's picked up steam and we've hired about 150 officers this year.

And we're looking at a net gain of about 94 officers at the end of 2025. not nearly enough to make up for the drop in numbers that we saw from 2020 through the end of last year but we're moving in the right direction so that's good news.

Anyway, let's remember that Council's job is also oversight, and we rely on our auditor for that.

And one big audit that was presented in our committee was the audit that looked at the overlap of, well, the title is Addressing Places in Seattle Where Overdoses and Crimes are Concentrated, an Evidence-Based Approach.

and this audit drew from a two-block area in Belltown to map the overlap of fatal overdoses and crime and it said, quote, crime hotspots occur because the specific local conditions at that place enable crime to concentrate there.

And so diagnosing and disrupting the unique characteristics that contribute to crime at a hotspot is the best way to reduce it.

And basically what we're talking about is place-based policing.

in a nutshell and it was deployed in a project called Rainier Beach, a beautiful safe place to live and violent crime there dropped about 30%.

This particular audit called for interdepartmental collaboration headed by one person in the mayor's office and it was sort of spontaneous when Natalie Walton Anderson of the mayor's office just volunteered at the table to take on that role.

and the rest is history, but really what we're talking about is the fact that place-based policing got into our local vernacular.

And you've heard it used, Council Member Kettle and Vice Chair of my committee, Chair of Public Safety, and I am pleased to see that Chief Barnes and his leadership is also using that word.

and it really means because we don't have that many resources, let's deploy them in the most responsible, efficient way we possibly can to address the problems on the ground.

So the last thing I'll mention right now, this is not the end of the list, I'll kind of break it in half, but I want to note while we're still talking about 2024, remember the music zone parking, well the official name is not what I call it.

The official name is the Music Venue Zone Program.

because I think they don't want to put parking in it, but really what it did is it allowed for a music venue music venues to have a parking one to three parking spaces in front of their venue so that artists could park there for their performances because there's nothing worse than nothing gets you more stressed out than trying to find a parking place if you've got a van full of equipment and people and there's nowhere to park and you're worried about your stuff getting stolen or finding it all stolen at the end of the of the gig.

So this was a request by the music community.

It was informed by the Washington Nightlife Music Association, the Seattle Music Commission, and venues and musicians across town.

And basically it identified 33 music venues in town that met the criteria of hosting up to, no, at least three live performances a week.

And so they could apply for this permit, easy to get.

And now our musicians have a place to park right in front of the venue.

They're not gonna get ticketed and hopefully not ripped off actually.

And this has put Seattle back on the must play list of the nation.

So good news.

Anyway, I will pause right there and pick this up later.

I just wanted to say that that was 2024. We took on some big things, very varied in the subject matter, but again, it was about our economic development, it's about the people that occupy these jobs and making our city a more vibrant and prosperous and livable city.

So with that, we will move into the first item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please call the roll for item number one?

I mean, not call the roll, but please read item one into the record.

Agenda item one, council bill 121130, an ordinance related to ethics code establishing reporting and disclosure requirements for political consultants, prohibiting political consultants from concurrently performing consulting work with the city, establishing a cooling off period for political consultants, adding a new section 41672 to the Seattle Municipal Code and amending section 41630 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Alright, so this is, we discussed this last week, so this is our second discussion and hopefully a vote.

And just for reminder, this legislation is really about getting at the insider trading that blurs the line between politics and policy at City Hall.

And it's fundamentally about good governance.

It's about increasing the transparency and integrity of the processes by which we make decisions as policy makers that are supposed to be in the public's best interest.

And at the same time, it's about reducing the potential for conflicts of interest that can arise when consultants, the professionals that we rely on to give us advice, It's about reducing conflicts of interest that can influence that advice.

But fundamentally it is about increasing public trust in local government.

So that is what motivated me to bring this forward because it's something that our public expects that we are making decisions based on sound policy reasons, and this should not be controversial.

And if it weren't for the fact that the Times did a couple stories on a prominent political consultant who was doing the things that this bill would prohibit from being done, there would be no, I don't believe that there would be sort of the back and forth and the chattering classes about what is really going on.

My position is that we don't reward bad behavior by giving it a pass, especially considering how much this town clearly cares about ethics.

And we can all remember what happened over the summer when it was perceived that council was poised to roll back ethics rules.

That is not in fact what we were going to be doing.

But if this law were in place right now, we could see probably similar outcry on that and so that's what we're responding to to show that we're trying our best to put in place the ethics rules that make for sound decision making and good governance.

And it's modeled on the provisions that are in Portland's code and San Francisco's code and it's also aligns with the rules that we have for employees when they separate from city employment.

So that's just sort of an introduction reminder about what we're talking about today, and with that we've just got a couple parliamentary steps to get through before we can actually discuss the actual legislation before us.

So first, I move that the committee recommend passage of the bill.

Is there a second?

Second.

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

All right, now I move to amend Council Bill 121130 as presented on the recently distributed substitute bill version D4.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on version D4.

All right, I would like our presenters to come up to the table, please, and we can discuss what changed between the original, the substitute, and what we're gonna be talking about today.

Thank you.

And yes, go ahead and just begin at will.

Thank you everyone.

Good afternoon, Lauren Henry Central Staff.

I will be pulling up the redlined version of the latest released substitute bill to walk through the changes from the introduced version that was before us at the last committee meeting and give you all a look at what is currently pending for your consideration and vote.

Okay, great.

So pending before you is version D4, a substitute bill for Council Bill 121130. I'll walk through the reflected red line amendments in order and then provide just an overview of its effect.

So first at the title we see one clause recommended for removal.

This updates the title to reflect the proposed amendments that are later in the substitute bill that would remove various reporting requirements that were in the introduced version.

Likewise, within the findings, we see language removed that references those registration and reporting requirements that are removed within the substantive provision later.

Lauren, can I sort of explain why we did that?

Oh, absolutely, please.

Okay, this is a change.

So, colleagues, this is in response to comments made by Council Member Lynn and Rivera, some concerns about the reporting.

There were concerns about why do we have to just have a list of all the political consultants in town?

And upon reflection, what I was trying to do was not just develop a list of political, What I really wanted was so that when department heads or other people are thinking about they have a project they need a consultant to perform services on and they could go to a list of political consultants and say to themselves, probably that would not be appropriate at this point or the last time this consultant performed political consulting services like for a ballot measure, that time period has not elapsed and so therefore I'll take somebody else.

However, that list could also feel sort of like an opening of the kimono of a company of all of their clients.

It could be seen as branding, a consultant for working with a certain kind of client and that was not my intention and so that is why I decided to remove the public facing list However, that information is available.

People have to, as Lauren will explain later on in the bill, we still get at what that list was going to be able to effectuate, which was to make sure that the activities as described in later sections wouldn't happen.

So go ahead, but more based on a trust basis.

Please continue.

No problem.

Alright, so moving forward, we have the definitions sections that are largely unchanged except for changes to the two operative definitions, that is political consultant and political consulting services.

I daylit this in our last week's committee in the version that was on the agenda.

that this would be a narrowing of the regulated field of what are defined as political consultants and political consulting services.

The base introduced version would have pulled into the scope of regulation both volunteer and compensated people performing those political consulting services by including the term compensated, as you'll see both in the definition of political consultant and later in the definition of political consulting services, that narrows the regulatory field to only those who are compensated for their work in this field as opposed to volunteers.

Now we get to section three, which is the meat of the bill.

It contains the regulations for political consultant, both the registration requirements as in the introduced bill, and the prohibited conduct sections.

As you'll note in this substitute bill that is before you for consideration, the provisions regarding reporting requirements that begin in subsection B would be removed in this substitute bill.

That means that the requirement to within 15 days after contracting with the city that a political consultant registered, that would no longer be a component of the bill.

Further down in subsection C, when a political consultant who is required to register terminates the political consulting services that they were supplying to an election campaign, they were supposed to file a terminating statement with the SCEC, that component would also be removed.

and then within subsection D, this was a requirement for quarterly reporting by an elected official on the political consultants and political consulting services that they were receiving.

That component as well is recommended for removal in this substitute bill.

Finally, you'll note subsection E, this provision said that all information that the SCEC received pursuant to this section, that would be the quarterly statements, the initial reporting statement by political consultants, and the terminating statements, that all of those were to be published to the SCEC's website within five days.

That provision is also removed here.

There's an updating of the subsections then to make what was subsection F the prohibited conduct, now subsection B for prohibited conduct.

You'll note a change to B1.

This is largely a technical edit to standardize and create some consistency between the terminology that's used in B1, B3, and B4 to talk about work on a consulting contract with the city.

And then there is a new B4, this would be a fourth prohibited act that political consultants cannot perform or risk violation of the code of ethics.

This prohibited act states that political consultants cannot perform work under a consulting services contract with the city within one year after the termination of any political consulting services for a city election campaign.

That means, when coupled with number three, that we have a cooling off period of one year that works in both directions.

Someone concluding a consulting contract with the city is prohibited from performing political consulting services for one year on a city election campaign, and conversely that someone who is departing work from a political services campaign on a city election campaign be prohibited for one year from taking a city consulting contract.

Before you go on, can you please remind us what is the rule for city employees when they leave the city?

Sure, that is in our existing code.

I believe it is 4.16.100.

Let me pull that up real quick.

I was incorrect, but close.

4.16.075.

It's called prohibited conduct after leaving the city.

This is applicable to all city employees.

I want to contrast this with the people within the scope of impact in the current bill, which is more geared towards consultants, contract consultants.

but for all city employees, 4.16.075 is applicable and involves the prohibited conduct after leaving the city.

There are six different prohibited piece of conduct.

One is that they can't disclose or use confidential information that's gained by virtue of their city work, that they can't for a period of two years after leaving the city.

assist any person on a matter in which they participated while working with the city that they can't for a period of one year after leaving the city communicate on behalf of any person on a matter involving the city with an employee of the agency with which they were previously employed.

That gets an anti-lobbying type provision.

for that one year period of time.

And then again, for a period of one year after leaving city office or employment, participate as a competitor in any competitive selection process for a contract in which they would have been involved in determining the project or the scope of work during their city employment.

There's two others involving being an expert on something that you would have worked on during your work within one year.

And then the final is just a prohibition that the prohibitions in subsection B and C that I just read out wouldn't apply to former city officers or employees.

that are acting as agents of a government agency.

So essentially, if your next work after the city was working within a government context, these type of insider dealing provisions are not applicable to you.

So that's how the rules work for city employees that are departing their city employment.

And that is also, I believe, one of the cities does do that we're modeling on.

I think that Portland, remind me if it's Portland or San Francisco that does that, but here's the thing.

What we're really talking about is limiting the unfair advantage that political consultants have if they're doing a city contract that they will then confer upon a political on a candidate or a ballot measure for which they are doing political consulting services.

And so you used the word background or backroom dealing or wheeling and dealing, and that is basically what we're talking about.

The advantages that you get from being an insider in one realm should not tilt the playing field against the other professionals that could be vying for the same contract.

on the outside and vice versa.

It's just about fairness is why I think that other cities and why we do this with employees as well.

Continue, please.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

No, no problem.

There's just a few more changes that I want to walk through for committee members.

In subsection D, this is a new section to the bill, and it involves when a consultant is accepting a city consulting contract.

It requires that that contract have a declaration in it that the consultant is not in violations of the provisions of this section 4.16.072, namely that they're not a political consultant that is engaging in any of the prohibited conduct under this bill.

So that's a new provision and applicable to a consultant contract that the consultant would sign with the city.

We see deleted language in subsections H, I, and J1.

Similar to my opening statements about the change in title, these were prohibitions and violations that were predicated on the reporting requirements.

And so since this bill is removing the reporting requirements, it would also remove these perhaps interlinked prohibitions and violations.

and then finally in subsection, it's now subsection 2, so E2, you'll see an updated cross-reference with no other change, just noting that what was previously F2, the idea of serving concurrently as a political consultant and a city contracting consultant, that updated cross-reference has gone from F2 to B2 with no other change.

and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much.

And just, I did want to, could you please log, could you please log, make a pan list, council member?

Okay.

Here's the thing.

The getting rid of the whole big long list of political consultants is then accounted for in the the requirement to just basically check this box to say you're not doing what we are saying you shouldn't be doing, you can't be doing political and basic contracting services at the same time.

and there must be a cooling off period between when you do one contract to a different contract and vice versa.

So that's when I was talking about we are trusting that the consultant is truthfully marking down a box to say that they are in compliance instead of making them appear on a list that the department heads or whoever is contracting with consultants would need to confer.

So that is the meaning around that.

So just wanted to explain.

Go ahead.

If I might.

Welcome in person, Council Member Rivera.

If I might, though, one additional piece of information that I promised to Councilmember Lynn was to answer questions about what the differences are between the robust reporting at the state and local level and the reporting here.

You were right.

There's several different RCWs that contain specific reporting requirements for anyone from elected officials to those campaigning to to political action committees, to lobbyists.

They're mostly contained in RCW 42.17A, though a 2025, I think, amendment to those sections are relocating them to RCW 29B.55.

So you can find them there starting January 1st, 2026. And then the lobbying requirements are RCW 29B also.

While it's true that the majority of the reporting requirements might be cobbled together from various sources, the two unique benefits that I might find to a report are the specificity of reporting documents specific to political consultants and the centralization of that information if they were posted to the SEC website.

So those are the only two, I think, tangible benefits that you might find with this bill even though they duplicate in some measure the reporting requirements that you can find elsewhere.

This just makes me ask, I was under the impression that you were thinking, the nature of your questions last time led me to believe that you thought that the reporting requirements in the original bill might have been too rigorous, but now I'm hearing about your curiosity about the state processes, I'm just wondering, are you inclined to think that this is not rigorous enough?

or if that was a change that you would be interested in seeing made?

Thank you, President Nelson.

Yeah, my concern was that, I was concerned that it might be duplicative.

I do see the benefit of having the information consolidated in one spot, but I was just concerned about, since we already require filing that it was unnecessary and I just don't want to require more filing if not needed.

I am generally interested, I think one thing that I would be interested in is understanding how many contracts we have with consultants at the city, how many different departments, and I know that's a little bit outside the proposed scope of this legislation, but that's, for me, I'm still just in full transparency, still trying to understand the full scope of contracting that we do with consultants at the city to make sure that I have a full understanding of what we're regulating.

But in any case, generally supportive of removing the reporting requirement because I did think it was duplicative.

Right, and thank you for helping to explain your thinking on this and I will tell you that I requested a statement of legislative intent response that included all the contracts that our departments have through the end of September of 2024. That was when we were deliberating budget items last year.

And guess what they said?

They said, there is no way we can get you that information within six months.

and so they asked if I could trim it down to the three departments that have the most external service provider contracts and just HSD alone was the second with the most and it had 115. So it would be great to know all the contracts the whole city has with everybody and maybe there's duplicative work going on in those contracts and who knows, et cetera.

And I do think that that is, you know, living large here, in the future perhaps we could develop a system where that would be not too onerous to do.

But when we're talking about some of the prohibitions, they apply only to the people that go in between what's normal, service provider contracts and political contracting, which is basically, it is limited to political consultants that work on ballot initiatives, incumbents of city office and candidates for city office.

So it narrows it down quite a bit, but I think the whole shebang would be good to know.

Go ahead.

Or are there any other?

I can't wait.

I'm happy to take any other questions.

Any questions from my colleagues?

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President.

Apologies.

I was in Chamber's Leader.

I had another meeting, but I was online the whole time.

Thank you, Lauren Henry, for being here.

Thank you, Council President, for your thoughts around this.

I would say Insider information is probably the better term since I think the insider trader term is used in the finance industry and that's an actual law that is probably not but I see where you were going with it in that it's insider information you would have if you have a contract, both a contract with the city and then an external contract with an elected official, a campaign or a ballot measure, etc.

I understand that to be your intent.

Full disclosure, again, as I said last time, my spouse is a political consultant in town.

He does not, nor has he ever had contracts with the City of Seattle, which is the intent of this legislation.

So I want to really clarify that and why I'm able to speak about that is because this legislation is particular to consultants who have contracts with the city.

And I believe our colleague, Council Member Lynn and I had similar, just concerns in general about making sure that the laws that we pass are narrowly tailored to address the thing that we are most concerned about.

And so I think, I believe this is why, although there are many consultants that have contracts with the city.

You really honed in on the political consultants who would have both a contract with the city and then an outside contract with a political campaign whereby then having that information that they obtained from the contract with the city might be advantageous in their other work.

So I understand that to be very narrowly defined.

So you're not trying to have this law apply to every person or organization that has a contract with the city, because those are different levels of involvement.

So I'm just trying to clarify that I am reading this legislation accurately.

Yes, that's right.

The scope of the bill is intentionally narrowed to city election campaigns because that is the scope of the city's regulatory authority here.

and also contract with the city.

You have to have both.

It's not just an election campaign.

You have to have both, right?

That's the prohibition.

You can't do both at the same time, correct?

That's right.

So that's in subsection B2, and then there's the additional B3, and then new B4, which are the cooling off periods, meaning stay in that lane, then have a one-year buffer, then you may enter into a different lane, city consulting versus political consulting.

Thank you for that clarification and then just to further clarify because I know the reporting pieces were extricated from the bill but it does have where you have to attest that you're not doing both because if you have a contract with the city my understanding is you have to fill out a form with FAS and then in that form you would check the box where you're attesting you don't have an outside it's almost like attesting you don't have a conflict of interest that you are not holding, you won't be holding the contract with the city along with an external political contract, correct?

Yes, so this would be a new component in the substitute bill.

It's in subsection D.

It would come, as you said, when a consultant is signing a city consulting contract, the operative language says that the consultants must declare in that contract that they are not in violation of the provisions.

So not doing concurrent work, but also not violating the cooling off period in stepping into a city contract before that one year period has expired.

Thank you.

So there is the, also sounds like it's on the enforcement side.

We're getting that attestation makes it legal.

and then that way if they violated, you're able to tell because they've checked the box and then if they wind up having...

I'm surmising that having the requirement of an attestation in the contract would serve as important evidence for SCEC in their investigation of any alleged violations.

Thank you, Laura.

Thank you, Council President.

Yeah, basically it would be that if there was somebody within the city, outside the city that recognized that somebody was performing consulting services for some department and happened to remember that that person had been a consultant on a previous ballot measure or campaign measure, then they could call up Wayne Barnett or somebody at the SEC and say, I believe that this is happening.

and then Wayne would look to see if that box was checked or not, and so then follow up.

So it's basically, like I said, it's an honor system that is complaint driven, whose enforcement is complaint driven.

Yes, like so many of our other laws.

And we are good, for the most part, honest, compassionate, and sensible people in Seattle.

Councilmember Lent.

Yeah, I did just want to say that I'm still doing my due diligence, still trying to make up my mind, so I just want to put on the record that I will be abstaining when we get to the vote, but I have not taken a position yet, so I just wanted to explain what that meant for me.

Thank you very much for letting me, you know, being transparent about what you're going to do today.

I have on numerous occasions asked what more information do you need or if I can help in any way show you like uncover all the research that I have done on this and make it available to similar code that exists in other cities.

So at your disposal for that.

Okay, if there are, I'm not seeing any other hands raised unless, is yours?

We will be doing some parliamentary things probably before we vote.

We're right now just trying to get at the meat of the discussion that continues.

OK.

Lauren, are there any other steps that we have to take to ensure that the substitute version D4 is before us before we give an opportunity for speechifying at the end?

No, you've moved it and seconded it to place it before the body.

And so discussions and then votes would happen now.

All right.

Now is the opportunity to, yes.

looking for hands raised.

We are going to the vote now.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

I just want to take the opportunity to just make a couple few remarks.

I will note, full disclosure, I'm well aware of the different factors of this topic to include those areas that were struck with this version of the bill.

obviously and on a more lighter note, full disclosure, I do not have a JD.

I did marry an attorney, so I'm trying to get one through osmosis, but we do have, as you can tell, we have two law school graduates here in committee.

But from my perspective, you know, I think it's important to in terms of this topic is to keep it simple, to keep it narrow, to keep it transparent.

And as my understanding of the bill, and it's important, is to avoid a dual-headed circumstances and or appearances.

I also believe that this should go, this is a topic really for full counsel in a lot of ways, not just the committee.

as I've noted a lot of times, because I do believe that we should be working items through committee ahead of anything that we do in terms of vote or budget and the like, because we do have this back and forth.

We've had a lot of iterations.

We've had a lot of conversations.

between council members, with you, council president, also with Ms. Henry.

Thank you, by the way, Ms. Henry, for your support in all of this.

And so I think that's very important.

And to further, in terms of Ms. Henry's point of view, I really want to thank the city attorney's office who gave an excellent presentation on this topic that I cannot speak to in details.

My counsel at the table was worried that I was going to go over the line, but I didn't.

I was just expressing my appreciation to the city attorney's office.

Remember, I'm osmosis.

I'm working toward it.

And, you know, I'll just also close, too, because it is to reflect upon this.

We're doing a lot of work in my committee, public safety, in terms of revamping our strategy, our plan, and so forth, but on a more on my office and myself as well is that we're looking, because we're at that break point now.

The term of the council's ending, we're gonna start again.

And so I'm looking at my good governance pledge that I release at the beginning of this term of the council.

And I look at number three on my list of five and it says my role as a council member is to serve the public interest.

And so these are the things that I'm thinking about looking at this bill.

and I do believe full council is the place to really go through and make the final determination.

So thank you, council president.

Any other comments?

Rest assured this will be coming before full council before the end of the term, yes.

And I repeat again that it came at the end of the year simply because we had budget that took up a lot of our time and we weren't allowed really to do anything that wasn't budget related if at all possible and so that is why it came at the end of the year and before and to get out of the sensitive time of the, you know, the electoral process as well.

So we had a narrow moment in time to do this before the council recess.

All right, I have no further comments except for to say that this is scheduled to come next week for full council.

And just getting back to my words before, sometimes we just gotta do what we have to do when the public sentiment is pushing us in that direction.

Sometimes you have to take on things that are hard but that are ultimately going to bear fruit in terms of public trust and cleaner processes, just clear rules so that people know what's legal and what isn't or what is ethical and what isn't as it's written in our code.

So without further ado, let's see.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill?

No, no, no.

Let's just see here.

Help me out here.

The substitute version D4.

Hearing no further comments or questions, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the substitute version D4.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Lynn.

Abstain.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

No.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Three in favor, one opposed, one abstention.

The motion carries and the substitute is adopted.

Are there further comments on the amended bill?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill.

Councilmember Rivera.

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Councilmember Lin.

Abstain.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

No.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Three in favor, one opposed, one abstention.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the City Council.

All right, moving on to the, thank you everybody for your careful consideration and we can then move on to the, will the clerk please read item two into the record.

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 121073, an ordinance related to the Soto Parking Business Improvement Area, changing the assessment rate and exemptions, amending Ordinance 125678 as previously amended by Ordinance 126191 for public hearing, briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Before you left the room, I wanted to say you stepped up at a time when there was so much work going on amongst other central staffers working on finishing things up at the end of the year.

And I so appreciate not just your work ethic, but the fact that you bring expert knowledge to this subject matter.

So thank you so much for stepping up and helping out.

I appreciate it.

Thanks.

Hi, everyone.

Good to see you again.

Alright, let's see.

It's been a while since we've had this piece of legislation before us, but before reminding my colleagues and the public what this legislation done, first a word about business improvement areas in general, of which the Soto Parking and Business Improvement Area is one of 11 in the city of Seattle.

I say this every time some legislation regarding a BIA comes up, whether it's a renewal or a modification, but I'll say it again because I feel that it is so important.

BIAs, business improvement areas, are public neighborhood business districts in which at least 60% of the property owners or business owners have agreed to assess themselves a fee that goes into a pot of money to fund a whole range of services.

And those services can include trash pickup, graffiti removal, additional security, events, parades, etc., beautification.

the lights across the street that make it pretty and strung up trees for holiday season.

My whole point is that the businesses and property owners are taxing themselves for the benefit of the common good.

And that's pretty unique and that bears repeating every single time.

So they don't exist to, the word itself, business improvement area, these entities do not exist to improve individual businesses' performance or profits or whatever.

because they're really about improvement of the area in which they're located, and indeed not just the neighborhood but the whole city.

Benefits, whether they're government buildings, non-profits, or businesses, residents, anything.

And so we're really talking about the role of of BIAs in improving the city and making Seattle such a great place to live.

So I think business improvement area is a really dry and outdated notion or nomenclature to describe what business improvement areas actually do.

I think they should be called something like I don't know, enhanced services districts or something like that.

And I know that there has been conversation about changing it.

So just all remember, it's about the service and about what they provide for the city.

We can't imagine the city without BIAs and what they do.

So thank you very much for to OED for managing this whole program, because as I said, it's a public program, and thank you very much for Aaron coming here representing the members of the SOTO BIA.

So with that, you may introduce yourselves and begin talking.

Thanks.

Hi, Casey Rogers here, Office of Economic Development and Council President.

Thank you so much for that great overview of the BIA program.

Hello, Jasmine Marwaja, Council Central Staff.

and Erin Goodman, Executive Director, SOTO-BIA.

I can go ahead and start, but I was curious about whether the public hearing commenters would be before our presentation or should we do our presentation first and get into the public hearing?

It is in my script that we, as chair of the committee, I will open the public hearing on Council Bill 121073. The hearing is an opportunity to hear from rate payers on the proposed changes to the Soto Parking and Business Improvement Area.

Do we have anybody signed up to speak today?

Chair, we have six in person and one remote.

Okay.

They are probably people that already know enough about this legislation that they probably don't need to hear the overview, I would imagine.

So let's go ahead and open the public hearing and then we will proceed with the more, with the nuts and bolts of what we're doing here, a reminder of what we did last time.

So each speaker will be provided two minutes and I will hand this over to you to present the instructions and then we'll start the public hearing.

Speakers would be called in the order in which they've signed up.

Speakers will be given two minutes.

There will be a chime at 10 seconds remaining with your time.

After the elapsed of your time, your microphone may be cut off so we can get off to other speakers.

We will start with our in-person commenters and then move online.

Our first in-person commenter is Terry Hauser.

That is fine.

I'm seeing back and forth here at the table.

Are you considering, what are you guys talking about?

Okay.

You may yield your time, yes.

But we have to go in line of the people that...

Go ahead and call the next person.

to Jodi.

OK.

So Jodi is also listed.

So I'll go to Jeff next.

And then, so Jeff Sholand.

See, we don't, if you're wanting We can't just sort of multiply the amount of time that Jody would get based on the number of people that are yielding their time.

If you just would rather that she speak instead of you two, that is perfectly fine, but we can't move the minutes around.

Is that all right with you?

Go ahead and, what are the rules of, why don't we go ahead and have you, why don't you say two minutes and if it's possible to give your comments to someone else, what?

Why don't you all three come up and you can speak please.

Why don't you just all come up, be on camera?

Okay, go ahead.

Okay.

Why don't you go ahead and take three minutes for everybody?

That would be good.

Well, I have six minutes of material.

Is there any, do my committee mates have any, would you object to having six minutes of public comment?

It's all their time, however they want to use it.

Let's go, go ahead.

Hi, my name is Jody Opitz.

I started my primary business 35 years ago in the industrial zone.

I now own five companies.

One of those is an LLC that simply holds commercial real estate and is considered a passive income classification.

All my other companies are the source of all income and do the heavy lifting of day-to-day work.

They are classified differently.

I begin with that distinction because my commercial leases, aka triple net leases, are the mechanism that makes my operating companies inside the building responsible for paying all the taxes tied to the property.

This is the nuance that the previous council members did not grasp when the original BIA was originally formed.

This is why the industrial community is asking this council to take steps necessary to disband the SOTO BIA entirely.

Under RCW 35.87A, a business improvement area is meant to be initiated by the same class of entities who both benefit from the BIA and pay the tax.

That did not happen in the industrial zone.

Not one petition was signed by a non-developer or an owner-operator like myself.

The petitions that formed the district were signed by property holding LLCs owned specifically by developers.

One individual, Henry Liebman through the American Life LLCs, signed roughly 25% of all petitions.

This was the first drift from the RCW intent.

Sure, I write the check from Opitz Properties LLC to the BIA, but the source of those funds come from my operational businesses.

Do not be fooled by the term rate payer.

This is a nuance.

Follow the money.

The source of funding for the BIA comes from the hardworking, blue-collar, job-creating, industrial tenants.

This is the second drift.

Industrial tenants are already responsible for maintaining their properties.

Any of the BIA's cleaning efforts are the equivalent of offering a penny of service for every dollar collected.

It is important not to confuse visibility with value.

Do not be fooled.

This is the third drift.

The Soto BIA rents its office space in a building owned by American Life, the same ownership group that signed 25% of the formation petition.

This is a troubling fact.

The optics are undeniable, conflict of interest and self-dealing.

This is the fourth drift I found using the King County Tax Assessor website on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, yesterday, I read the Soto BIA website.

The Soto BIA staff is very different from neighboring BIAs.

Soto employees come from backgrounds in public policy, real estate, urban planning, governance, and even city council internships.

These are pedigrees aligned with reshaping development, influencing zoning, and supporting large-scale property interests.

This is a striking departure from the BIA model envisioned in the RCW.

This is a fifth drift.

Reporting on BIAs nationwide is now emerging.

Once formed, they often become more aligned with city departments and major property owners.

I am not assigning motive, I'm identifying a governance pattern.

A BIA cannot represent two masters.

I know this drift firsthand.

For the past seven years, I've been investigating long-standing issues in the industrial zone.

These issues are complex and historically rooted.

When I brought these findings forward to developed owned property holders and the BIA, I was met with virtual silence.

What I uncovered is extremely serious and affects a specific group of industrial stakeholders who have been left out in the cold without advocacy.

This is the sixth drift.

The industrial community is united on this front.

The Soto BIA does not need to be fixed or amended.

It needs to be disbanded.

The issues raised here falls into areas typically reviewed by oversight bodies, such as the State Auditor and the Attorney General.

I am not here to escalate this.

I am here to ask this council to address it first.

Disestablishment is the cleanest and most appropriate remedy under RCW 35.87A.180.

I want to leave each council member with a packet.

Industrial land is one of Seattle's most fragile and irreplaceable assets.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, reporting shocked everyone when it revealed the industrial zone financially outperformed all other districts in Seattle.

This may have put a target on our backs.

My investigation has revealed nearly 20% have left the area pre-COVID due to what can now be asserted as an ultra-virus policy.

Policy that contradicted legislation passed by ordinance from this governing body in both 1910 and 1979. A policy that was both implemented and enforced by city officials beginning in 2008. This is what has kneecapped us for nearly two decades and left us vulnerable on many fronts.

The industrial zone community needs your help so it can begin to recover.

We may have been pruned back to the brink, but left alone, we will respond in turn.

It's time to get the industrial zone back on track.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Leanne.

Hi, I am a tenant and business owner in Soto.

We've been here since 2010, and I do not believe I have had any direct benefit from the Soto BIA.

We've reached out to them for different problems that were going on, and we handled them on our own by ignoring it and letting the chaos build behind our business for the past 10 years.

and I think that's it.

Any other times, I will give to Jodi.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Ryan Wassowitz.

Thank you very much for coming and making comment.

Council members, Seattle's in a moment of political and civic realignment, a moment when people across the city are asking for transparency, accountability, and public processes that serve communities rather than special interests.

When it is governed by structures that drift away from their intended purpose or kneecapped by bad policy, people notice, they care, and they expect their elected leaders to protect what makes this city work.

I am asking you to restore the industrial zone to its intended role to ensure that its governance reflects the businesses who operate here and to send a clear message that Seattle supports transparency, fairness, and the integrity of its land use systems.

Disestablishing the Soto BIA is the first step towards that realignment.

We can rebuild the industrial zone from the ground up by hardworking individuals by removing government interference and special interest agendas.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Bridget Leonard.

I'll yield my time to any of the other speakers.

I think we're done.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Online speakers.

That is all of our in-person speakers.

We'll now move to remote speakers.

We have two registered but only one present.

The current present speaker is David Haynes.

All right, thank you, David Haines.

I would like to point out that part of the problem that we're dealing with is from the abuse of the King County property assessor and John Wilson and his unrelenting stalking and oppressive abuse of the working class and the property values that have been devalued on the working class side of it.

And it's really cheated this whole community.

Nobody on the city council made an effort to kick out John Wilson.

And he's part of the problem, I think, from 2022 and 2024 that it brings us here today.

But I'm serious.

There's a justified reason to renegotiate a lot of the double, triple, quadruple remortgage debt that won't let a small business thrive because they have the debt service of police state economy of property values that get taken out on the working class values.

And we're supposed to have a true democracy of legislation that disciplines the greed so that it actually benefits.

But, you know, parsing out like favors that originate from somebody like John Wilson is revolting.

So I wish that the council would realize that because we have an immoral financial system and the potentiality of a true democracy, that you can use legislation to renegotiate the property values and help people write off some debt that the banks should be willing to, so then we can stimulate savings and begin that 21st century housing build-out.

But John Wilson and his personal life that's been allowed to continue to abuse the whole of King County with all his predatory inflations of the property values that are just shaking people down.

You know, when you take a look at the dilapidated, inflated, small pieces of real estate that are ill-suited and unsustainable for the business plan of small businesses, having to shortchange all the companies, we gotta renegotiate the rates on the property assessor and write off some of the debt.

But get rid of people like John Wilson that you all never should have allowed to continue

David Hain, I do want to say that I do appreciate you keying into important issues.

The breadth of your comment is extraordinary and I will note that oftentimes when we have ballot measures before us to throw onto the ballot, I do often I caution council to be aware of the fact that we are putting before the voters a measure that will increase their taxes and the assessor simply it's his job to he often presents a pie chart that shows everything that we are approving or that voters approve and so therefore I think that maybe this calls for perhaps better education to the voting public about the not just the incremental increase when we are increasing or usually doubling or tripling a ballot measure levy lid lift instead of just talking about the increment, talk about the total price of that measure for homeowners and they can see the big picture a little bit more clearly.

All right, is that our last speaker?

That is our last speaker.

Thank you very much.

Sure, you're welcome to give comment.

Our next in-person speaker is Kelsey Levi.

Yes, hi.

My name is Kelsey Levi and I own and operate a business called Lawless Forge at 45 South Spokane Street in Soto.

The letter my neighbors and I received from the Soto BIA shows the city is proposing massive assessed value increases, often 50 to 100% or more.

based primarily on a handful of institutional investor transactions that do not reflect the market for locally owned, owner-occupied industrial buildings.

These are not speculative investment sales.

These are working warehouses, manufacturing spaces, and small businesses, facilities that generate family wage jobs, and sales tax revenue for the city.

A sudden tax increase of this magnitude will force rent hikes, layoffs, or closures.

exactly the opposite of what the city says it wants in SOTO.

The assessor's own guidelines say valuations should reflect the highest and best use only if it is reasonably probable, not speculative.

Turning working industrial buildings into theoretical future apartments or tech campuses is not reasonably probable in the near term.

I urge the Council to direct the assessor to separate locally owned, occupied industrial properties from institutional investment sales when setting 2025 values.

and support legislation that phases in large commercial assessment increases over several years so small businesses are not crushed overnight.

We are not asking for special treatment, just fair treatment and time to adjust.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

That is our last in-person or remote speaker.

All right.

Public comment period is now closed.

and perhaps we will receive some information that puts our comments, the comments that we heard today, in context.

All right, since this bill had a public hearing today, we must suspend the rules in order to vote it out of committee on the same day.

If there is no objection, the rules will be suspended to allow for a vote on the same day as a public hearing.

Seeing no objection, the rules are suspended.

All right, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121073. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 121073. All right, and I move to amend Council Bill 121073 as presented on Amendment 1. Is there a second?

it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on amendment one.

Jasmine, will you please, have you introduced yourself already?

Okay, good.

Would you please provide an overview of the amendment then as sponsor I will address it.

So you'd like me to speak to the amendment only, not the bill overall?

Whatever you think would be easiest.

Why don't I give some context about the bill overall, and then I'll end with the amendment.

So again, my name is Jasmine Marwaha.

I'm your counsel central staff.

And just to put some context here to the discussion, the Council Bill 121073 was developed at the request of the Soto BIA based on their experience over the last few years administering the BIA and it's intended to streamline Soto BIA operations and maintain consistent services in the face of potentially changing ownership of properties.

The current rates for the Soto BIA are based on a property's total taxable value, which means that tax-exempt properties are exempted from the assessment rate, and nonprofit properties and certain government properties are assessed differently.

The bill would change the basis of assessments from total taxable value to total appraised value so that those tax-exempt properties could be brought in, particularly properties owned by nonprofits and, again, certain government-owned properties.

So it is possible, so not all government properties will be taxed or will be assessed and the bill provides for an additional process, stakeholder process over the next few months.

to have more conversations with different governmental entities to assess whether there needs to be an assessment of those properties and what the appropriate assessment would be based on the benefits that those properties would receive.

That stakeholder process is expected to be completed by July 1st and Council is expected to receive a proposal for potentially additional assessments for government owned properties at that time.

And finally, the bill would also establish a fixed cutoff date for pulling assessment data by which the assessment is based on.

That change is requested by the Soto BIA because there have been, like, delays in the King County assessor's assessments and the data release, and it's created some significant administrative burden for the BIA.

So by establishing a fixed date by which assessment data is pulled, there would mitigate the need for back billing or going back to the property owners.

And then that brings us to the technical amendment.

which is because this bill will go into effect after the beginning of the year and FAS is billing now, so do property owners.

The technical amendment would have the bill go into effect in the middle of 2026 so that the first billing installment of 2026 is not impacted and it wouldn't unnecessarily confuse rate payers.

So the technical amendment allows for FAS as well to adjust its billing processes and to implement the new assessment formula for the second billing installment.

So that's in a nutshell the bill as well as the amendment before you.

Thank you for explaining that.

You alluded to this, but I just want to make clear, and then, Erin, you're probably going to spill it out in a way that makes sense even more.

But basically, what's happening in Soto, there's a lot of change going on in Soto.

Just for one example, we have Sound Transit and Light Rail.

the purchasing of property by a government agency, Sound Transit, means that it is, whereas they might have been using a property for operations, that then, because it's under the purview of a government agency, then that is not being, that is, that piece of property still receives the benefits, the cleaning, the security, the everything else, but they are not paying into the pot to implement those service provisions.

So that's my basic understanding of why this is very needed because of the change from private to public use of a property and ultimately eventually ownership.

So could you please then, That's what I think is happening, and what that has done is it has deprived the BIA of essential funds to continue its work to benefit the whole neighborhood.

So with that, would you like to, Erin, as the...

And I should note that this legislation is the product of collaboration between the director of the Soto BIA, but also between central staff and informed by the Office of Economic Development.

Correct.

So, good afternoon.

Some of this will be a repeat of the presentation I gave in September.

We do have a new council member, and I did have the opportunity to brief Councilmember Lynn yesterday.

And I will address some of the comments made because I think it's really important to understand that this amendment impacts seven properties.

and I think that and actually due to the decrease in property values from 2025 to 2026, most property owners will actually see a decrease in their overall assessment in their July billing from their January billing.

We're talking slight, but they will see a decrease we had several calls to our office with people wanting to understand and when we explained it to them Most people were very supportive.

I know several of you got letters.

I will follow up with Jody.

I've known her for many years.

So I will start.

So the Soto BIA, I'm Erin Goodman.

I'm the executive director.

I've been the director since 2014. And as you mentioned, Council President, the BIA is a collaborative mechanism that allows property owners to invest in projects and services that enhance the Soto District and create a better environment for employees, tenants, customers, and visitors.

Basically, this is a way to equitably bring money back into a neighborhood through this vehicle to enhance the neighborhood for the benefit of all.

and I'm gonna go off my script for a second to address one of the topics.

For the past 10 years, we have been a strong advocate for the industrial businesses in our neighborhood.

for freight, for freight movement, and as many of you will know, there was a very topical issue in SOTO, related to SOTO in these chambers earlier this year, and you may remember that we were not here.

we were neutral because that was such an important issue that we knew that we could not take a side for either side.

And we, our original authorizing ordinance required that we represent the businesses that are in Soto today.

and so that is what we do and it is really our North Star.

And so as most of those businesses continue to be industrial, that is who we advocate for.

And so I think that's a really important statement to make as we go through and talk about things, that is a lot of what we are advocating for.

So what do we do?

We focus on improving transportation, public safety, maintaining a clean and welcoming environment, enhancing economic vitality, and fostering a cohesive and inclusive working district.

and these enhanced services go beyond what the City of Seattle provides and provide a benefit to the private businesses, the government entities, property owners, tenants, and employees in the district, as well as the hundreds of thousands of visitors to its commercial, industrial, sports, and entertainment venues.

Just a little look at what we've done this year.

You know, our clean team has removed over 600 tons of debris from city streets.

We've provided over 3,500 supplemental patrol hours.

They have done 295 blocks of pressure washing.

We opened the park which is a small part of our green space plan which was specifically a green space plan designed for an industrial area.

The concept that Soto is industrial and how can you have green space in an industrial area We consistently do outreach to our businesses and we see businesses continually come and go and so one of the things that is important to us is to do literal boots on the ground outreach.

And we do events where we...

We don't do events for external partners.

It's not come to our neighborhood.

It's events for our people.

and we've had over 400 people come to our events and we really try to make sure that we do different types of events because we've learned over the years that different types of events attract different people.

We have networking events, we have safety focus events, and just an example, early in my tenure we did OSHA certification events that folks could send their employees on how to safely pick up needles found on their property.

We have partnered with King County Public Health to host RAD Academy.

We've done a series of de-escalation trainings We worked with a company called Restorical that helps property owners research old insurance policies that might have been in effect on a property to help fund environmental cleanup on that property.

So we try to find different ways to engage, and we do still see different businesses and different folks coming to different kinds of events.

Next slide.

However, as you alluded to, several factors are putting our ability to sustain these services at risk, and we are seeking this amendment to streamline operation, resolve these ongoing billing challenges, and align our assessment practices with those of other BIAs in Seattle and really to promote greater equity among all of our rate payers.

As you mentioned, the amendment is in two parts.

The first part would transition our assessment from taxable value to total appraised value, and this would address the lack of an escalation cause for those properties that are government-owned but commercially tenanted.

There are four basic types of properties in Soto.

there is commercially owned with a commercial business in it, there is commercially owned with a government tenant in it, there is government owned with a commercial business in it, and government owned with some version of government in it.

All three of these pay into the BIA.

It is only this one that doesn't.

But when we went, we did not originally assess government-owned with a commercial business.

And when we went into the renewal in 2018, Office of Economic Development felt very strongly that government-owned properties with a commercial tenant were receiving benefit and that they should pay.

and so we worked with them to come up with a lot square foot rate that was comparable to a very similar commercially owned property.

However, when we got to the first renewal rate, we realized that there was no escalation clause.

There was nothing that that moved that up over time, maybe a CPI index or a cost.

And so what has happened is, year over year, this has created a widening disparity between these two comparable properties.

And this amendment would ensure that properties are assessed consistently and equitably.

Again, when we renewed in 2018, we didn't have any tax-exempt nonprofit properties, so there was no need to address them in that ordinance.

Since then, two nonprofit organizations have either opened in Soto or acquired properties that they previously leased.

In 2025, both properties were retroactively designated as tax exempt by the Assessor's Office, which required the FAS to issue refunds for several years of assessments previously collected under their taxable status.

Both nonprofits are actively engaged with the Soto BIA, and we actively partner with them to support their operations.

One of these organizations has had a seat on our board for the past seven years.

Next slide, please.

So adopting the total appraised value assessment formula would provide a fair and consistent method for including these nonprofit properties in the assessment framework.

It would allow the BIA to recognize the value that these organizations receive from BIA services while ensuring all ratepayers contribute equitably to the health and vitality of the district.

Our current authorizing ordinance requires the BIA to update its assessment list every two years using the data from King County.

However, in both 2022 and 2024, significant delays in the assessor's data release forced the BIA to bill based on income paid information, resulting in To be clear, it's kind of a convoluted process.

We compile the list from the King County data, and then we give it to FAS.

And FAS is the one that actually sends out the bills, resulting in the need for FAS to back bill or issue refunds to correct under assessments or over payments.

Additionally, the Soto BAs also observe fluctuations in the commercial property values in a given tax year after assessment invoicing has been sent, which has also resulted in the need to back bill or issue refunds.

To address these challenges, another part of this amendment is proposing adding language to establish a fixed capture date for each update year, that we would pull the assessment data on that date, and the values recorded on that date would serve as the basis for the following billing year, regardless of any subsequent changes.

Therefore, we would pick up any new evaluation changes on that date the next year instead of, having to make adjustments throughout the year.

This would reduce administrative complexity, prevent unexpected charges to property owners, and create greater predictability and fairness in the assessment process for both the BIA and its ratepayers.

Slide, please.

Okay, so these changes are the necessary first step, but more still needs to be done to ensure the SOTO BIA will be able to continue to serve the SOTO community for years to come.

The second part of the amendment directs the City's Office of Economic Development to conduct a study of the remaining issues and determine the appropriate next steps.

Those issues are as follows.

Except for the few that are commercially tenanted, when a property is sold to a government entity, whether its intended use is for actual government services or not, it is no longer accessible.

Since 2019, government purchases of previously commercially owned properties have removed roughly $15,000 from the Soto BIA's budget annually.

The pace of these types of purchases has increased, and in just the past couple of months, two formerly rate-paying properties were purchased by government entities, resulting in an additional loss of $9,000 to our annual assessment.

While this is not a massive sum in the government budget world, it is significant to our budget.

And further planned megaprojects in SOTO over the next 10 years will exponentially increase the rate of government purchases and properties in SOTO.

Additionally, while government-owned, government-tenanted properties will remain exempt under the amendment before you, many of these properties still receive the benefit of BIA services like pressure washing, garbage removal, etc., which undermines both fairness to their neighbors and the Soto community and to our long-term sustainability.

The OED study will look at these properties and the benefits they receive to determine solutions to address this inequity.

Creating a more consistent framework would ensure all properties that benefit from BIA services contribute fairly regardless of ownership status.

I look forward to working with them and returning to this chamber in July with additional refinements that further promote equity among all Soto properties.

maintain essential services and support the sustainability of the SOTO BIA.

Thank you.

And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Do my colleagues have any questions?

Go ahead.

Chair, I was just curious, we have OED represented, Mr. Rogers.

Is there anything that you want to add?

I just noticed that, you know, the central staff memo and others, OED features in this, but I just thought I'd give you the opportunity to speak.

Yeah, no, thank you so much for that.

Taking my vice chair prerogative there.

I appreciate that.

I think everything's been covered.

This was more led by Jasmine, and we collaborated with her on this.

So I think everything was covered from my perspective.

but I appreciate that.

And does your work, I mean to go to, does your work then, the outreach and so forth in terms of like the questions or the issues presented, you know, to work through those?

Yeah, so specifically the, there's a piece in this legislation that will direct us as OED to convene a group and kind of research the government assessments, continue researching the government assessments issue, if you will, and then come back here next, I believe it's July 1st.

So yeah, that's what, as part of this legislation, that's what we're tasked with.

Well, I can, I'll further I think it's important to, you know, the question of how different BIAs are, you know, the differences is the uniformity of BIAs and the like, that seemed to come up as a point or a question that is, you know, reading the memo again and or the presentation and the points raised in terms of, you know, the uniformity of BIAs across the city.

Can you speak to that topic?

Yeah, are you referring to the, I think with this specifically, it's kind of aligning the total taxable value versus the total assessed value with sort of our standard practice with the other BIA assessments.

And so that's what this- We're the only one that uses total taxable value.

The others use total appraised if they use value.

Some use B&O, some use night rooms, and that decision was made before I was at the BIA.

So the BIEs across the city, there is this variation between the TTV and the TAV.

The others that assess on value all use TAV, if they use value.

Some use BNO, some use total night stays, but if they use value, they're on TAV.

So it's a mixed bag, basically, so there's no real uniformity on that front.

Okay.

Yeah, each BIA has a unique assessment formula for the BIA itself, but the specific kind of reference to the value, we're changing to align with the other BIAs that assess based on the value of the property.

I guess the last thing I would say just to sum up is, I have a lot of interaction with a lot of BIAs, a lot of times through public safety considerations, obviously Soto with Ms. Goodman, but also in the other districts, I'm thinking about Mr. Blakely, Blakely, sorry, get the N in there, and U District, but there's across the board and there's the DSA.

So I recognize the work, but I also recognize when you say garbage pickup or the public safety pieces, these are really functions of City Hall.

And I think we should, as a city, appreciate the fact that we do have this augmentation, if you will, of essentially government services.

And these are being done by the BIA, which is to the betterment of these areas.

And I know this particularly from the public safety perspective.

And I think that's something that should be acknowledged.

It's kind of hinted at, or it's kind of just walked past sometimes.

And essentially, Government services, or traditionally government services, are not getting a complete job done.

And this is where the BIAs, by the way, it's not just BIAs, it's other groups too.

The community councils, obviously in District 7, we have a strong community council system.

the work that they do.

Uptown Alliance with their Tidy Uptown group, which is a subset of Uptown Alliance that does a similar work.

It's not a BIA, but it does a very similar function, and a function that one would consider to be a government, essential government, if you will, to service.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

And I think that's something and you know and this is my way and I did this in our public safety committee when we updated our You know the process of updating our mission vision the strategic framework plan and in there as part of the vision is get a point where businesses don't have to have private security and and I said then and I say every time I meet a business that does have private security, thank you for the service that you're providing because it helps with that community, that neighborhood.

And so along similar lines, I do want to thank not just the SOTO BIA but all the BIAs for the work that they're doing when it improves the community and neighborhoods in which they operate.

So thank you, Council President.

Thank you very much.

To that point, BIAs are described as providing supplemental services, but often I always say actually they're essential when you really think about what they do and what would happen if they weren't there.

We do have five more items on the agenda, but Jasmine, I did see that you, it seemed like you were about to say something there, so could you clarify?

Yes, thank you.

I would say there are 11 BIAs and there are 11 different ways in which properties are assessed and I think more than the taxable value versus appraised value, one of the most relevant issues for consideration with SOTO and this bill is how are government properties assessed.

and different BIAs have different ways of assessing government properties and it really is almost a case-by-case analysis of how much do these properties benefit from the BIA services and needing to be careful about assessing based on the benefit that they receive.

and so that's why that six month period where OED can really do a deep dive is going to be very important for us to assess government properties appropriately like they are in different BIAs.

But each BIA is different in terms of how they treat government properties.

Understood.

Anything else you want to add to that?

Okay.

Can you identify for our viewing public where is the amendment that we are speaking to right now?

Go ahead.

Yeah, so I believe you had already moved for Amendment 1 to be considered.

Yes.

And so that is, again, a technical amendment that allows for the effective date of these changes to be in mid-2026 to allow for FAS to adjust its billing cycle and to just sort of make things a little bit easier.

Okay, because originally we were going to do this all in one fell swoop.

then it was decided that it was too much in one piece of legislation.

We have to make sure that we are addressing the first six months or so of the new year and making sure that there is an operating budget but that the study will proceed hopefully sooner rather than later.

It'd be great if it could get up and going this year but in any case we don't want to shock the government agencies that are now on the hook for this new assessment, but we don't want to continue to deprive the BIA with the funds that everybody in the neighborhood depends on.

So, did you have a further question?

I don't have a question Council President.

I will say since we're about to take this vote I think that I want to thank Erin Goodman and OED and Jasmine from our central staff for being here and presenting this.

In general I've been very supportive of the BIA in part because of what our colleague Councilmember Kettle just said.

I mean they're taking up work that the city would otherwise be doing really in truth.

This is not a The benefit is back to community.

It's just that, you know, there are more needs of the, you know, all the clean up and even way finding sometimes for folks that find themselves in that area.

And even, I mean, you all know in the U District, Don Blakeney and his team does such a great job connecting our own house populations with services.

so it spans the gamut on providing assistance to the businesses there and at the same time providing a community-wide assistance and that's what the money is used for.

It goes back to community in that way.

So I am supportive of BIAs in general and it sounds like in this case we are treating BIAs that are similarly situated differently, if you will, in its assessment.

And it sounds like uses of property have changed that would necessitate us updating this legislation, in essence, which is what we're doing.

So that all makes sense to me.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, if there aren't any further comments or questions, I will go ahead and call for the vote on this.

Let's see, I moved everything that I was supposed to move, I believe.

There are no more questions or comments before I do take the vote.

Thank you so much, Casey, and your whole OED team.

Thank you so much for Jasmine for responding to this very unique need.

And also thank you very much, Erin, for really advocating, championing, and mobilizing for your members.

You didn't have to do this, but they were about to suffer really high, high, high rates because there were properties taken off the revenue market, let's just say.

So thanks for pushing it.

I appreciate it.

Is there any further business?

Okay.

Go ahead.

What?

Yes, we are going to call the vote on the amendment, please.

Councilmember Rivera.

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Councilmember Lin.

Aye.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

The amendment is adopted.

Are there further questions on the amended bill?

Seeing none, seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Kettle.

Aye.

Council member Lynn.

Aye.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill passed as amended will be sent to city council.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We'll see you next week.

Maybe, maybe not.

Okay.

Will the clerk please read items three and four into the record.

Council Bill 121141, an ordinance relating to city employee employment exempting positions from the civil service system returning positions to the civil service position.

And Council Bill 121142, an ordinance related to city employment and establishing the deferred compensation analyst classification title series and corresponding rates of pay for the city of Seattle or employees retirement city system.

Both items are for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much.

I want to thank you all for entertaining these in committee.

Basically, historically, we typically have HR bills skip committee, but many of these warrant discussion and consideration for the public, something only a committee meeting can provide.

That said, because our next full council meeting is so packed, this helps everyone so that you don't have to do the homework and then ask questions when it's before us at full council.

That's why we're doing it today.

These are fairly pro forma.

They are procedural, so Amanda of Central Staff, please introduce yourself and you may proceed.

Amanda Allen with Central Staff.

Today I'm going to walk you through a couple of SDHR, Seattle Department of Human Resources pieces of legislation.

Okay, great.

So there are two pieces of legislation for your consideration.

The first creates a new classification series, and the other changes the civil service status of a handful of positions.

And we will start out with the deferred compensation piece of legislation.

I'm just trying to figure out how to share this a little more to the rescue again.

Perfect.

Okay, the reason why SDHR is sending over this legislation is because they are responsible for managing overall classification and compensation structures for the city.

Any changes have to be adopted by council.

In 2025, the deferred compensation unit that was within SDHR was moved over to the Seattle City Employees Retirement System, otherwise known as SERS Department.

The classification of two of those positions that were moved over is a classification that may only be used within SDHR.

and as a result of these positions being moved over outside of SDHR, a new classification is needed.

The new classification more tightly is defined to deferred compensation human services and human resource services.

And that being said, the new pay structure is a mirror of the classification that they had had within SDHR.

So they used to be personnel analysts.

The idea is that they'll become deferred compensation analysts and receive the same pay.

So unless there are any questions on that, that's really all I have to say about that creation of the new classification series.

OK.

Colleagues, yes, is there any questions as vice chair?

Oh, now as chair comes back, I just wanted to.

It was my impression that you were going to discuss both bills together, and then you were going to vote both on them separately, but at the end.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Yes, let's have both briefed and then with our clerk, we can have them voted separately, of course.

The second ordinance is an ordinance to adjust the civil service status of about five positions within the city.

So including oversight of classification and compensation, There's also civil service status.

Positions in the city hold either an exempt status, exempt from the civil service rules, or a non-exempt status.

And any time a position becomes exempt, it must be decided or approved by the city council.

The civil service rules dictate that there must be a competitive process for hiring rather than being appointed.

They also dictate how employees are disciplined and the process for personnel actions.

And so exemptions.

make it so that the appointing authority has more discretion.

There are certain criteria for when a position may become exempt, and usually it has to do in large part about having a confidential relationship with the appointing authority, having a large degree of fiduciary responsibility, also being involved in political considerations.

so we wouldn't have a painter for example who would be exempt but you might have a manager or someone who reports to a director being exempt.

So the very first changes are within SDHR, they had a strategic advisor three, general government, which is civil service protected title, move over to exempt status as a manager three.

Those pay zones are identical, so there's no fiscal impact, but it does change the types of responsibilities for which this position can be responsible.

and then there are four positions that are returning to civil service.

This spans the city attorney's office, another position with SDHR, and two positions within City Light.

So due to reclassification and job changes, again, positions that had been exempt will go back to civil service.

When thinking about these changes, there is an underlying financial implication, more due to the reclassification and less to do with the civil service status.

But the overall, if you're looking at the midpoints of the classifications and comparing the old classification to the new one, The city on the whole probably will have about a $50,000 savings.

Any savings that departments achieved, they're expected to retain those savings and redeploy them to higher uses.

So this legislation doesn't come with any financial impacts directly.

And I think that's it.

Questions?

Are there any questions?

Okay, back in the day we used to do this kind of legislation, the quarterly legislation just was sent straight to full council.

Early on I insisted that we work it through committee because sometimes the the very minor financial changes that these reclassifications would effectuate ended up adding up over the course of the year and that was a process that fell outside the budget process and it still is our duty to make sure that we are overseeing how our money is spent, that's why it's in committee.

Okay, if there are no further questions, let's call the roll on items five and six separately, please.

Go ahead, please.

Pardon me?

Right, okay, so let's see here.

Items five, no, we are going ahead and, excuse me please, clerk.

Yeah, 121141. No final questions or comments, so will the clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Lynn?

Aye.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the bill with the committee's recommendation will be sent to the City Council.

We'll now vote on item four.

I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121-142.

Second.

Thank you.

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

Further questions or comments?

Seeing none, clerk, would you please call the roll.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Lynn?

Aye.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Chair Nelson?

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it and the final vote will come before full council next week.

I want to say, Amanda, thank you so much for working this so quickly and efficiently and and usually HR would be here to do the presentation by themselves but they're busy with transition so I really appreciate you stepping up and it's great to have you as part of the department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Finally, let's move on to the last couple items which are appointments items five and six.

Please read into the record.

Agenda items number five and six.

Appointment 3107 and 3108. Re-appointment of Thomas J. Kelly and Lisa Rieger as members of the Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee for a term of December 31, 2027. For briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, we do not have the appointment liaison with us today, but they sent me some notes to read about Mr. Kelly and Ms. Rieger about their qualifications for the appointment.

Tom Kelly has worked at the city for 28 years as an auto mechanic in fleet management, currently a senior auto mechanic and SPD mechanic lead.

He has been on the JATC for 10 years, a youth volunteer for 25 years, and USAA softball umpire for 15 years.

and he's a resident of SeaTac.

Lisa Rieger has worked for the City of Seattle for 4.5 years as the Fleet Management Deputy Director in Operations, coming to the city after a 30 year career.

In addition to the JATC, she is an Automative Advisory Board member for Shoreline Community College, Meadowdale High School, and Seattle Skills, and she's a resident of Seattle.

so we have all received their appointment packets and if you have any questions I would really like it if you could maybe ask them to be answered offline to the staff that oversee this committee.

I don't hear any questions, so we'll vote on both of the appointments together.

I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 3107 and 3108. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointments 3107 and 08. Any final comments?

All right, hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Kettle.

Aye.

Council member Lynn.

Aye.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the appointments with the committee's recommendation will be sent to the city council.

and then finally item seven, please read into the record.

Agenda item seven, appointment 3437, reappointment of Jonathan Skimmer as a member of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission for a term to December 31st, 2028 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Okay, so this is an appointment to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

This is an extremely important commission.

The SEC, they make decisions on any, they oversee all elections.

They are the ones that decide whether or not there was a violation of elections regulations by a campaign.

They also enforce the whistleblower law and the lobby law.

So they have a lot of power and they also recommend the director of the, they recommend they hire, they're responsible for choosing their executive director who is now Wayne Barnett.

So this is a very important position and has everything to do with ensuring that we, that we abide by our code of ethics.

So, by way of description, Jonathan Shermer is a construction lawyer with Lane Powell in Seattle.

He's a graduate of Seattle University Law School and a graduate from Montana State University with a degree in political science.

He has extensive experience in federal contracting issues at the U.S.

Court of Federal Claims and high-stakes bid protest actions at the Government Accountability Office.

He regularly advises bidders and public owners on procurement issues.

Jonathan is currently the Vice Chair of the SEC and has been a member of the Commission since 2024. In fact, I did the research and asked around and I was one of the ones I recommended him for.

I nominated him and then oversaw his confirmation last year.

So clearly I am in support of his continued participation on the SEC and I invite any questions or concerns.

All right.

Hearing none, I move that the committee recommend confirmation of appointment 3437. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 3437. Any further comments?

Seeing none, clerk, would you please call the roll.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Kettle.

Aye.

Council member Lynn.

Aye.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the appointment with the committee's recommendation will be sent to the city council.

So due to the timing of today's meeting I'm going to request that the rules be suspended to send the agenda items 1 through 7 on the On to the December 16th City Council meeting because it's our last of the year If there's no objection the council rules will be suspended to send agenda items 1 through 7 to the December 16th City Council meeting Hearing no objection, the rules are suspended and the agenda items will be sent to the December 16th City Council meeting.

And then I'll finally say that, of course, reminder that item eight was removed from the agenda.

That concludes our business and I have some other business because I just wanted to just remind people, just finish my little list of the extraordinary things that we were able to accomplish because every now and then we do have to congratulate ourselves for the work that we do.

Because sometimes, you know, we take a lot of heat and sometimes you don't get a lot of appreciation and it's to you that I express my appreciation for getting all these things done.

I am scrolling back up to the top of my screen here because I left off with talking about the top of 2025. We don't really have to revisit how fun the stadium housing legislation was, but that was really legislation that was addressing what has become over the course of the past year.

I would say the issue of the year.

If Time Magazine did a version on that, I would say that affordability is at the top.

And so that legislation was backed by labor.

The stadium authorities Pioneer Squirtle neighborhood, the CID, and the housing, affordable housing community to address the shrinking amount of housing and also commercial spaces available for low-income people in Seattle and also small businesses.

It allows for the construction of housing in the stadium district and it would also provide for smaller worker spaces.

Legislation passed on March 16th.

There is a challenge right now that is playing out on appeal.

but I want to thank my colleagues for going through that kind of hellish process that went on for a long time with very strong feelings.

I wanted to also note that I already talked about the music venue parking program and then we launched, everybody, we launched permitting reform process on February 13th when we had a roundtable discussion with a bunch of architects who really pointed out how certain problems in our permitting nightmare situation were squelching economic activity, hurting small businesses and just a major hassle for everybody involved.

So that ended up resulting in a couple of bills that really did, that will and are making a difference and I hope that that work continues.

Kiosk got a minor I'll give it a minor honorable mention.

That happened in May and June.

That was a multi-year process, and I do think that it'll be an asset for downtown, especially considering we'll have crowds of people that need to know where they're going, and it also provides information that'll help our small businesses.

And then finally, the last thing I'll mention is that we put recovery at the center of the city's agenda.

when we unanimously approved resolution 32174 which staked a claim of 25% of what we anticipated to be an increase to the sales tax that was authorized by the legislature this past session.

And in fact, the mayor sent it down with the budget legislation and there is $2.85 million in the budget for recovery services, recovery housing, and really this is, I won't say it again, this is such an important policy area that needs even more work on it.

So I hope that the people that are, that the stewards of our human service department will recognize that this is an important resource for them to spend to help the people that we see struggling on our streets.

Alright, with that, thank you colleagues very much.

You stuck with me.

You know, we did some hard things and there was a wide variety of policy areas that we took on.

But it takes a committee of devoted public servants and I just want to say thank you so much for your support and hard work all year.

Thank you, Eric, for manning the desk.

You can get Harry there sometimes, I recognize, and your diligence, making sure that everything was ready for us on the committee.

And shout out to Taman and Steven as well, who had to do that job.

And also Jeremy, my chief of staff, who keeps the whole thing running behind the scenes.

Couldn't do it without you guys.

All right, I'll have more thank yous later.

If there is no further business to come before us, it is 4.18 and this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.