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Good afternoon.

Today is March the 2nd, 2026. The council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.04.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Foster?

Here.

Councilmember Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Councilmember Lynn?

Here.

Councilmember Rink?

Present.

Councilmember Rivera?

Present.

Councilmember Saka?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Here.

And Council President Hollingsworth?

Here.

Now I am present.

Awesome.

On to the President.

Oh, excuse me.

If there's no objection, the minutes of February 23rd, 2026 will be adopted.

Seeing and hearing none from your beautiful faces, the minutes are, you are beautiful, the minutes are adopted.

Now onto the president's report.

We have no briefings or executive sessions today.

Our next OIR presentation will be 3-9, so March the 9th, so that is next week.

On tomorrow's city council agenda, we have 10. 10 items on the introduction and referral calendar.

We have payment of the bills.

We also have an ordinance relating to land use and zoning.

We also have appointments and reappointments as well.

We have, those are a ton of appointments and reappointments.

We also have some ordinances that are coming out of land use and sustainability, and we also have a resolution reaffirming our data and privacy protections from Council Member Foster.

On tomorrow's City Council agenda, we have two items on the consent calendar.

So we have our bills in minutes, and then we have two items that are coming up for a vote.

Resolution 32193, a resolution relating to law enforcement officers' professionalism and standards reaffirming Seattle's values related to professional law enforcement conduct condemning recent actions of the federal law enforcement agents.

And then we also have a resolution, 32191, a resolution identifying the opportunity to develop a regional transportation hub adjacent to Westlake Park in District 7. Signing of letters and proclamations.

Councilmember Strauss has a proclamation for signature today, proclaiming March 9th to be Taproot Theatre Company Day.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, today I have a proclamation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Taproot Theatre Company in Greenwood.

It is called the Taproot Theatre Company, rather than just Taproot Theater, because when it was founded in 1976, it was founded by six friends who were a touring company, and that's why it is a Taproot Theater company and not just a Taproot Theater, even though they do have two theaters within their very small footprint scrunched up along 85th Street Northwest.

So, Today, the theater is nationally recognized and critically acclaimed here right in Seattle and serves upwards of 115,000 people annually.

There is not a bad seat in the theater.

It is so, because everything is such a tight footprint, it feels like you're sitting on stage.

So if you haven't been to a show at the Taproot Theater Company Theater, I suggest you find tickets soon.

And so we will be presenting this proclamation to them on their 50th anniversary.

Please join me in celebrating this great community asset and their extraordinary service to our community.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Council members, are there any questions or further discussion?

Awesome.

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation recognizing Taproot Theater Company Day.

Council Member Foster?

Yes.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Lynn?

Yes.

Council Member Rink?

Yes.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Sokka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Aye.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Nine signatures will be affixed.

Awesome.

Sounds good.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Looking forward to that proclamation.

We're now gonna move on to our second proclamation.

Council Member Rink has a proclamation recognizing March 2026 to be Women's History Month in Seattle.

And if you're black and female, like myself and Council Member Foster, you're running it back to back.

Black History Month, Women's History.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues for bringing forward our Women's History Month proclamation this time.

Thank you all to the offices that provided input on that proclamation.

I'll be actually holding my remarks for tomorrow when we have folks from the Women's Commission.

And my understanding is we have a representative from Seattle Torrent as well coming to help receive the proclamation.

But really excited to take this moment to honor and recognize, of course, the incredible women's history here in Seattle and across our country.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you Councilmember Rink.

Are there any further discussions about women's history?

Councilmember Juarez.

Can you tell us what hockey player's coming?

What hockey player's coming?

I don't know, I can follow up on that.

Well you gotta find that out.

I definitely will follow up.

All right, we need to know what hockey player it is.

I know.

And Council Member Riles, I do also want to share, as you likely saw, we're also honoring Esther Lucero.

But I heard.

Yes.

And I hope you don't mind, but I jumped the gun on that and told her Friday.

So thank you so much.

Thank you for doing that.

I know I wasn't supposed to do that, but I couldn't help myself.

So thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Well, I just wanted to also recognize the fact that our Council's made up of five women, so we're representing it here on the City Council in Seattle.

And then I also wanted to thank Councilmember Rink for adding a Nobel Prize winner, Mary Brunkow, for her achievements in science to the proclamation, and she'll be here tomorrow as well.

Awesome.

Is there any further discussion about the women's history throughout the devs?

All right, not for you, Deb.

Right now we're gonna dub.

All right, so there's no additional feedback.

Clerk, will you please call the roll for signing of the proclamation?

Councilmember Foster?

Yes.

Councilmember Juarez?

Aye.

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Lynn?

Aye.

Councilmember Rink?

Yes.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Saka?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Council President Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Nine signatures will be affixed.

Awesome.

We love women.

Thank you.

And we're now going to move on to the next agenda item.

So our next discussion will be preview of City Council actions and Council regional committees, and we're gonna just jump to the right today.

So, and we'll pass it to the right.

Council Member Strauss, you are recognized.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, I'll try to be brief.

The budget director, Allie Panucci, is swearing in is in 20 minutes, so I will be leaving, unfortunately, to attend that.

In the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee, we will meet on March 3rd at 9.30 a.m., so that is tomorrow.

We have two items on the agenda.

These are both presentations, no votes.

The first presentation is with CBO, Office of City Finance, and central staff.

The topic is our levy capacity update.

and so if you are not on the committee, I strongly recommend that you receive this briefing in private or you go back and watch Seattle Channel in your free time, your decision.

Because this is a presentation on the city's current levy capacities.

We are pretty close to our legal levy capacity limit.

There is still some buffer and so this is a presentation that gets us all on the same page ahead of the library's levy, ahead of I know in the steps committee, you've been talking about the Seattle Center.

I know that there's conversation on Pike Place.

For the purposes of tomorrow's presentations, we are not going to speak about levees specifically or the potential for them, save for a bit about the library's levy, just because we have the understanding of if it was passed at the current rate, if it was expanded, if it was reduced.

That will be the only levy that we really talk about.

And so if you do have Seattle Center specific questions or Pike Place Market questions specific, there will be great opportunities for future briefings.

This one is specifically tailored to give us all a foundational understanding of where to move forward from.

That is already one of the, I believe, seven levies that we have.

in existence, right?

So this is not a forward-looking as far as what the levies are forward-looking.

This is a foundational presentation about what is our legal capacity at this time across all levies.

presentation will be the 2019 to 2026 budget review.

This review shows how and why expenditures have changed over the past seven years.

This was the five-year look back in 2024. It was the six-year look back in 2025. It is now the seven-year look back in 2026. This, along with a report summarizing the council changes to the 2026 proposed budget, gives us a better understanding of what did we receive from the mayor?

What was the endorsed budget?

What did they change?

What did we change?

How is that impacting everything over the course of seven years?

I'm really excited about this.

This is the fastest that central staff has been able to turn this work around for us.

And while we might not have sent this report out to everyone, it will be coming shortly.

And this is just to get, again, everyone on the same page.

For full council, the committee has no legislation coming to full council this week.

For Sound Transit, on Thursday, March 5th, this week, I'll be touring the Ballard and West Seattle Link Extension Plan project sites with Sound Transit staff and board members.

Sound Transit has a board retreat next week in Tacoma, where from that retreat, more information will be coming out in how Sound Transit as an agency is approaching this $30 billion year of expenditure financial hole.

There are other levers that need to be utilized, such as the financing, the value engineering.

There's a lot of other tools.

This will be the first step in that.

So I'm happy to chat with any and all of you individually just before or after that retreat.

For Association of Washington Cities, I'm realizing, Councilmember Rivera, I don't have any updates for AWC today.

I guess in your report, if you do, I'm just double checking with you in the moment.

I mean, AWC was doing the same thing we were all doing, tracking all the things that were happening in Olympia.

There's a lot of alignment there, so I don't have anything to report out on that, but I know that's what they were working on.

Of course, we have an upcoming conference.

We're on the board, and you are all welcome to attend the conference, and we'll send information on that.

They have scheduled it over World Cup here in the city of Seattle.

So the week of June 20th, if you'd like to come to Spokane with us, it's going to be fun.

With that in district, I attended the Loyal Heights Community Center's annual pancake breakfast yesterday morning.

It was wonderful to see all my neighbors out there.

Proceeds go to scholarship funds and the community center programs.

I did not get to find Mary Pat, so if Mary Pat, you're watching Seattle Channel, I'm sorry, but also thank you for all the work that you're doing.

I have office hours this Thursday.

I hold office hours almost every single week, and we have a town hall coming up later this month.

That's my report, colleagues.

Any questions?

Seeing none.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Cool.

All right, awesome.

We will pass it off to Councilmember Rivera with the shoulder sweater today.

Very stylish.

My shawl.

My shawl.

It's a shawl.

Okay, okay.

Bringing back shawls.

I see you.

Single-handedly.

Ba-dum-bum.

All right.

All right, so what are we working on in the office?

So many things.

First of all, we have the Seattle Public Libraries Levy.

On Thursday the 19th of February and Wednesday the 25th, in anticipation of the Seattle Public Library Levy renewal, we had we had two Seattle Public Libraries presentations on the levy funded programs of the 2019 levy as part of our LEND committee meeting.

As I said at both of those committee meetings, this is our opportunity.

It was our opportunity to show our work to the taxpayers who so generously supported libraries through a property tax increase.

in the same way that I did with the Families Education and Preschool Promise Levy.

It was important to me to have robust presentations from the libraries.

I want to thank Chief Fay and his staff for putting those presentations together.

They're very detailed in true Rivera Due Diligence fashion, as you like to say, Council President, and they are available online.

Thank you to Councilmember Saka, who's not on the land committee but showed up.

and I love, I love when everyone is able to come.

I understand everyone has their own obligations and commitments.

And so I understand if you're not able to come, but everyone is always welcome to join a LEND committee when you're able to.

So more to come on that.

As we heard about the levy funded investments, they're in six buckets.

Hours and access, books and materials, technology and online services, maintenance, helping children, and administration.

Those are the six buckets that the library's levy funded in the last iteration of the levy.

I believe I've spoken now, I know I have, with all of you individually about your priorities for the levy as I engage in conversations with the mayor's office.

And more to come on that in terms of timing.

I'm working with the mayor's office to determine what that timing will be through a select committee.

where we can all participate.

And here again, I'll make sure that the first of those select committee meetings is a smaller version of the slide decks that we had for those of you that were not able to attend.

So you can also ask questions and then we will start working on the renewal process.

I'm really looking forward to working with the mayor's office and all of you on this.

And I know it's libraries you all know, our constituents love libraries.

as we all do.

Looking forward to shepherding that to the process.

But as Council Member Strauss just talked about levy caps and all of that, that all will be part of the conversation.

All right, I also attended a resident meeting at Mercy Housing in Magnuson Park.

I enjoyed very much being there with the residents and hearing about what is important to them and what concerns they have.

It was really great because a representative a library staff member attends that meeting and brings books, and there are kids that attend that meeting, residents who are able to check out books from the library there, and that was really great to see.

It's just such a great community asset there.

They did point out, residents pointed out, there's an RV parked illegally inside the park, just in front of the Mercy Housing Complex that they are concerned about, They reported seeing illegal behavior originating from that RV, and you all heard me say last year, colleagues, that I worked really hard with the UCT team to remove the RVs for the park because of these reasons, and I will continue to work with UCT on this matter because we want to make sure that our residents there, especially our kids, and there's a preschool there as well, you know, they feel safe.

and that is important to me.

Also, I was able to talk to the Windermere Community Council at their annual meeting.

They had some concerns about street racing also on Sandpoint Way in front of Magnuson Park, which I talked with SDOT about today, how can we mitigate for that street racing there and the noise disturbances that happen because of the street racing.

Also talked to the Windermere folks about, and was glad to hear, there was improvement at noise disturbances at Magnuson Park because of our summer of safety from last year.

And I know I've spoken with the current Chief Barnes about the summer of safety for this year and the hope to get that back on.

So I'm looking forward to hearing more from SPD and the mayor's office about that.

FEP, community engagement.

I attended another community engagement session of the Families Education Preschool Promise levy to get feedback.

This time we were at Langston Hughes Center.

DEAL is continuing to do outreach to residents and community organizations to inform the INE plan that is the implementation and evaluation plan.

And I will be letting you know about the process in the coming weeks so that that is concurrently coming through land committee along with the library's levy.

And I'm really excited to shepherd those, these two things through land committee meeting coming up.

So more to come on that.

The Torrent press conference was really amazing.

I got to join some of you colleagues at that press conference, as you know, to celebrate our professional women's hockey league players' gold medal win at the Olympics.

These are such impressive and talented women.

What an amazing, what amazing role models they are for our young female athletes and our young women in general.

I know I have two daughters and these women are such role models for my own kids.

Whether or not they play sports, this is just a really monumentous achievement and I am so excited for them.

I was so honored to meet with them and congratulate them on this amazing accomplishment and of note is how humble they were.

and they trained their whole lives and worked so hard to get to that point.

And they achieved gold medal status and yet they were so humble and just so grateful.

It was just so really great to see.

And as a mom, it's very exciting for me to see.

Also, last week I attended the City of Seattle's Black History Month celebration hosted by our very own Department of Neighborhoods.

It was so nice to see old and new friends there to celebrate and show gratitude for our own city staff and it was just such a moving event.

I was really honored to be able to attend and be there.

So that was a great, and some of you were there as well.

So that was really nice to see.

And then this week I'm attending the Wedgwood Community Council meeting on Tuesday and looking forward to hearing from those neighbors.

And then finally the one last thing I'll say is I'm meeting the new president of the University of Washington, Mr. or Dr. Robert Jones.

The university is a really important partner in the district.

As you know colleagues, I speak about them often.

I'm happy to have a great working relationship.

with the University of Washington.

I had a relationship with the previous president.

I so look forward to working with President Jones.

And unless anyone has questions, I'll pass it on to my colleague, Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you, council member Rivera.

I will be brief.

However, I do want to add when we got to meet the torrent folk, council member Foster did a kick-ass speech.

It was wonderful.

I know Megan Rapinoe was awesome too, but you did a really good job.

I loved how you went looking for your key chain to your prop.

That was really well done.

Well done.

Represented our city well and our city council.

Parks and City Light Committee, the next Parks and City Light Committee is scheduled for this Wednesday at 2. Again, items on the agenda for Seattle City Light is the distribution easement and the platted easement and it's basically just routine legislation.

And then we have four appointments to Seattle City Light's Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee.

Last week we met with the new, as you all know him, the new CEO of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Joe Nguyen, formerly Director of Commerce and State Rep out of West Seattle, and welcome Joe to be at the Chamber and discuss economic development, economic enterprises, economic mobility, and also bringing tribes into the family of economic development, on their indigenous land.

We also met with Christine Moreland, the Executive Director of The More We Love, and went over the issues that they're addressing, budget issues, what we're gonna be looking at in the next level of, the next round of how we're going to provide services, particularly in sex trafficking, FIFA, and also having families, crisis centers available and beds ready for women on Aurora experiencing sex trafficking or who want to basically get out of that business that we're there to serve them.

A little information on the more we love, it serves families in crisis across our region, operates a 22 bed crisis center for women and children and a 24 seven crisis line creating pathways out of homelessness, addiction, human trafficking and domestic violence through immediate stabilization and connection to recovery services.

This week, let's see, today I'm going to actually meet with, I haven't met with her, I know of her, Ms. Bonnie Glenn.

She is the Director of Office of the OPA.

We also met with Chief Scoggins today to discuss Fire Station 24 and other budget concerns and issues that are going to come around soon in this next round.

I know, oh, he's already gone.

but those are our public safety issues that we address every year and I know in light of the mayor asking for some cuts there, we're gonna try to hopefully navigate that with our fire folk, with our fire friends, fire department friends.

Tomorrow, and I want to give a big shout out to the mayor's office, to John Grant, Tracy, and Nicole.

We had met with them a couple times, we were meeting with them again regarding shelter sites and policy, and a big shout out to Kelly Brown, my chief of staff, providing an inventory of the sites that we have in D5.

we have well over 100 locations with over 5,000 units and we're gonna continue to update that so we can actually see the matrix and what they're looking at when they start making decisions about where to put additional units of housing across the city because I think they're looking at trying to place this at 1,000.

1,000 new units to come online.

So we just want to find out how we're picking those spots and also maybe talk about some new criteria for looking at where we place tiny house villages, sanctioned encampments, encampments, RVs, and all the like.

And again, since someone who's been around since we declared war on homelessness in 2015, I hope we can move the needle on that.

Let's see.

Is there anything else?

Nope.

That's it.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you.

Council Member Juarez.

Oh, you had a question, Council Member Rivera.

Oh, thank you, Council President.

Just Council Member Juarez, you reminded me that I too met with Joe Wynn actually today from the chamber to talk about ways that we can work together and partner together in the city.

So thank you for the reminder and just wanted to say that and thank Joe for making the time to meet with us.

Well, you didn't share with people that you and I got to actually hold the gold medal.

I didn't see Council Member Foster Weasler her way in there like you and I did.

You and I just went right in.

You were being very polite and holding back, but we just went in like, let me get in there.

That thing is heavy.

It's like a heavy thing.

It's a big chunk of gold.

so I wanted to ask if I could put it around my neck but I didn't think that was appropriate.

We were in a picture in the Times with my mouth agape because I was like a child.

But it was like, it just was an amazing event and it was so nice to be there to really greet our Olympians.

These women, they work so hard and they don't always get the recognition they deserve.

Well, I will say one thing on a side note, and I wasn't gonna say it, but now I'm gonna say it.

It was a great press conference.

Who's down here making a noise?

It was a wonderful press conference.

It was amazing the way they were fielding the questions, and the questions are about how did you feel when you got that goal in, and how did it feel to be up at the podium, and what were your strategy, what was your plan when you were down two to one, and you always have that one idiot that has to bring up that one idiot who said some things.

It just, okay.

and if you notice in the newsreels, that's the only quote they keep bringing up, that Hillary Knight said X about X, when we all know it was an over an hour event and we spent 99% of that time talking about this amazing team.

And I was a little, it's like, you know, why?

Can we just for once all be in the end zone at the same time and celebrate this?

And, you know, I won't say what news outlet, but anyway, it was very joyous and it was very cool.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez.

Wearing purple today, you are Blackfeet Nation royalty, so thank you.

Thank you, and I can't say one thing.

Councilmember Kettle, by the way, should get the award for storming the players with a bag of jerseys to get a signature, because he's a, what do you call it, a girl dad?

Yeah, he kind of threw us all out of the way, so thanks for that, buddy.

Yeah, he literally was holding his bag and ready to go.

We were trying to be polite, but...

Oh, there it is.

Okay, and you photobombed my picture.

Yeah, his big head is right in the back.

All right.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Councilmember Eddie Lynn for the win.

All right.

Thank you.

So just a couple things from last week.

Wonderful time celebrating our Olympian.

Yeah, and great job to Councilmember Foster speaking there.

A couple other events from last week attended a public safety meeting around in the CID around concerns at 8th and Lane.

There's been a number of shootings and other public safety concerns going back a decade at that corner.

There's been late night activity there.

and it was a good meeting and just very thankful that the mayor, deputy mayor, SPD, a lot of her staff were there.

There are some takeaways that will be coming out of that meeting, but I was just pleased to see the personal attention that the mayor's office is giving to the public safety issues in the CID.

Another event, unfortunately another public safety event, attended a Rainy Reach High School student-led vigil.

Councilmember Foster was there as well.

Deputy Mayor Surratt was there as well for the two, for Taijan and Trevea, for the two students who were murdered.

It was just a beautiful event that was organized by students, supported by staff.

And it's just a reminder.

I mean, one, it was just a beautiful vigil and also just a reminder of the importance of student voice and making sure that we are engaging with our youth as we try to develop proactive solutions to meet their mental health needs, public safety needs.

And coming up this week, we have a land use committee meeting.

We'll have two items on the agenda.

One, the FEMA floodplains permanent regulations will be up.

There'll be a public hearing and possible vote for that.

There is a technical amendment there.

It's really just kind of like a typo type of amendment that we'll be bringing forward.

and then we will also be bringing for an initial briefing potential legislation around the stadium area repeal and this relates to the Growth Management Hearings Board decision which invalidated the City Council ordinance last year and requires some sort of action be taken by May.

This is just an initial briefing and there are anticipated future briefings as well.

We've gotten some initial feedback already from folks.

This will be an opportunity to hear other feedback and yeah, moving that forward.

Awesome, thank you Councilmember Eddie Lynn.

For the win, Councilmember Bob Kettle with all that Navy medal in your office.

or to link back, since I'm from Western New York, in between Buffalo and Rochester, where the Wynn family is from, both our Olympic gold menace hockey player and her three older brothers from Rochester, just to tie that in briefly.

So thank you, Council President.

For Committee, Public Safety Committee, next meeting will be on 10 March.

We're going to have our second hearing meeting related to our staging bill as it relates to federal law enforcement as part of the federal law enforcement package of bills that we have primarily through Public Safety Committee but also in the select committee that I vice chair with Council Member Rink.

And speaking of Council Member Rink, we're working together with her office on ALPR, the 60-day pause, basically to line up ALPR, automatic license plate reader, with our CCTV legislation so it's paralleled.

And again, this is part of a collection of federal law enforcement-related bills that we're working through.

And actually, I spoke to you yesterday.

43rd LD meeting at the Folio Library at Pike Place Market, where we walked through that.

And I was just happy to be joined by Port Commissioner Tashigo Hasegawa, Captain Brown, Assistant Chief, Acting Assistant Chief for Operations, and then King County Prosecuting Attorney Lisa Mannion to speak about federal law enforcement.

That was a great opportunity to speak to the 43rd group For this week, starting off with today, just for today, I've already met with the DSA at their downtown.

They had a Future of Downtown Symposium, which was really good.

They had five different speakers and they broke out in different pieces, looking at all the issues related to the downtowns of the future.

So that was this morning.

I went from that, I had a meeting with the LGBTQ plus commission as it relates to accountability and and some other broader issues that are out there, primarily in the public safety world.

And we'll be looking to work through that in short order through committee too.

And this relates to the Sentinel review of the Cal Anderson protest from last year.

So great to talk to the commission about that.

And again, as I've already stated, we're going to bring that up in committee and using our accountability partners in terms of looking at the topic from those viewpoints.

I think it would be enlightening on the issue itself, but also give a better understanding of what our accountability partners do.

Then I met with the Coalition of Rights and Safety.

That was a follow-up to the meeting that we've had in committee last month or January.

and then, I can't see, now that we're in March, last month is February, not January, but it was in January.

And then II2, just before this, had a meeting with the policy team on shelter sites.

So just before today's meeting, that's all.

Yeah, so we had all those very important meetings ahead of council briefing today.

Wednesday, we have comp plan office hours, lots going on in District 7. That will also be part of the Queen Anne Community Council event that evening on Wednesday I should note there's those pieces related to like Queen Anne Magnolia But we also are working our downtown regional plan that is the first plan up and it's already in work and And all the other regional plans will come around as well.

I think Ballard being the last one But the first one is downtown regional plan.

I think second is South Lake Union and Uptown, and then I believe Cap Hill, and then kind of just working our way counterclockwise around to Ballard.

This Friday, looking forward to a public safety walk with my esteemed colleague from District 2, a council member, Lynn.

So we're gonna have a public safety walk talking and looking through those issues that are in district, and then look forward to that.

Next week, Monday Housing Development Consortium meeting, Again, on Tuesday, I mentioned the Public Safety Committee.

Tuesday, Wednesday, there's the State of Downtown with the DSA.

So they're going through the entire piece related to the State of Downtown.

Also have a Convention Center update next Wednesday.

And then Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, all part of the lead-up to St. Patrick's Day and the fact that I'm your representative for the Galway-Seattle Sister City Association.

So there's a number of events.

that are happening over those days to include.

And the big push now for the relationship is one, maritime.

It is a port city in Ireland.

Two, tech.

There's a strong relationship between Seattle and Ireland more generally, but to include Galway.

And then third, the academic piece.

And there's growing academic relationship between Galway and UW.

And so those are some of the pieces.

Of course, we'll have an Irish proclamation with the mayor.

and I invite all of everybody to come on Saturday the 14th to see the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

You may recognize and know the Grand Marshal of this year's parade.

I don't know.

Yes, I will be, thank you for asking.

I will be the Grand Marshal for this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Sash.

And I just wanted to note too, piggybacking on some of the comments made from last week, I just wanted to note, I did meet with Joan McGuinn from Metro Chamber as well, very good conversation.

But from last Wednesday, I did really appreciate the opportunity to be present at the Seattle Torrent Gold Medalists event.

I just also want to note that The Torrent had six Olympians on their team.

Obviously four won gold, one won silver, and then our teammate from Czech Republic didn't win.

But still, just to be an Olympian is such an achievement in and of itself.

And I just want to congratulate all six from The Torrent.

And I look forward to the secret that Councilmember Rink has for us.

And then lastly from last Thursday, I also want to thank being able to join in with the Black History Month celebration.

That luncheon was fantastic.

The food was great, obviously sitting there.

And the people that come out, the history.

And the history that our council president has, it's incredible.

And it's something that everybody really should know in terms of the book, Booker T. Washington, all those things.

First edition and all the pieces to that.

and the stories that go to that.

And one of the things I'm proud of is my hometown.

Being a little bit close to Rochester, Rochester's known Susan B. Anthony, women's rights movement, but also Frederick Douglass was there and he visited my hometown once, but importantly, my hometown in western New York as they made their way to Canada was part of the underground network.

And so Harriet Tubman most likely came through my hometown area as she made her way to St. Katz in southern Ontario.

And so...

No.

And so that was lunchtime.

That was lunchtime on Thursday.

And then...

And then...

Yes, I know the...

with the bald head and the gray beard.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

So that was lunchtime.

At dinnertime, I was actually here in Bertha Knight Landis for the Nisqually earthquake anniversary event.

25 years was, I believe it was Saturday, was the actual anniversary.

But that Thursday event was fantastic.

Walking through the issues.

Professor from UW, Professor Tobin, and all the various pieces, SDCI team talking about unreinforced masonry issues, some of the issues that we face in our city and the chances of another Nisqually or the big one that loom out there.

And I think it's really important to highlight emergency preparedness and also the work that the Office of Emergency Management does.

And so I just wanted to close on that note because that was the last thing from Thursday.

and for everybody here at the table, I will show you the picture that I photobombed Council Member Juarez at.

She was sitting behind our USA and Torrance Captain's name card and she, I couldn't tell whether she was, you know, 10 years old or her current age.

She was so excited just like my 10-year-old, let's just say.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Rob Saka, the dad from Delridge.

Council, Madam Council President, Dad from Delridge, yeah.

Appreciate the nod there.

Colleagues on the steps committee format.

Steps, of course, being Safety, Transportation, Engineering Projects, Sports and Experiences Committee.

We have our next Steps meeting on Thursday, March 5th at 9.30 a.m.

There's gonna be three briefing and discussion items.

The first being we're gonna have a check-in on the Memorial Stadium renovation project.

Gonna learn more about that Exciting project, a $150 million project due to be finalized in 2027 in time for the fall sports season of the 2027-28 school year.

But we're going to learn more about the status of that project.

FIFA readiness will be a central theme for Thursday's presentation as well.

because we're gonna have a briefing from Seattle Center and the Levy Oversight Committee talking more kind of broadly about our city's plans in terms of specific siting locations and the distributive model for the fan experience, what that kind of looks like.

And then a second, related but different agenda item will be on transit access, transit.

So we can dive deep.

When we talk about FIFA readiness, we can have a million different briefings and dive deep and go down certain rabbit holes.

But for Thursday's conversation, we're gonna focus on the Seattle Center's bits, and then within transportation more broadly, Transit, so Seattle Monorail, which we own, manage, others operate on our behalf, and the Seattle streetcar from a transit perspective.

And then we're inviting some of our partners from King County Metro to talk about the planning efforts, again, related to FIFA.

So it should be an exciting meeting, again, coming up on Thursday.

Colleagues, if you don't happen to sit on the committee, you're always welcome to join.

Next, in terms of some big, bigger, substantive community meetings and events that I've participated in over the last week, Last week I was honored to attend the Region Ready Summit at Climate Pledge Arena.

It was an event that was hosted by Seattle Sports Commission CEO Beth Knox, and I think it was sponsored in part by the Port of Seattle as well.

Terrific event.

Other colleagues were there.

It was great to see Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you for tag teaming that event with me.

And it was great to see Mayor Wilson there and members of her team kind of debrief.

That was a wildly successful Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl parade, the parade that our city just had weeks ago.

We were able to kind of debrief some of the learnings from that event and talk more prospectively on a going-forward basis about what that means for our city when we talk about FIFA readiness.

So great event to go to, honored to join.

Moving on to the waterfront, met with some key community partners involved in the waterfront, including friends of the waterfront, CEO Joy Shigaki, some of her board members.

Awesome meeting, really enjoyed connecting again with them.

Also met with some folks, including Jerry Johnson, who's a co-chair of the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee, among other roles that Mr. Johnson plays in our community.

So great to connect on all things waterfront.

Had some really exciting and productive meetings as well and more to come on the Seattle Center, including meeting with our partners at MLK Labor, who as we know on January 21st of this year passed a resolution calling for, among other things, a voter approved levy to help support renovation.

of the Seattle Center and help to address some of those long, long deferred capital maintenance upgrade needs.

So it's great to connect with our labor partners on that.

Also met recently with We are honored to have a great relationship with the Rainier Valley Community Development Fund.

They do terrific things.

Colleagues, if you don't know about their work at all, I invite you to engage with them, connect.

We're gonna have future conversations about them, probably at the committee level and their terrific work, but met with one of their former executive directors, Wayne Lau, who is also a District 1 constituent, District 1 resident of mine as well.

So terrific conversations, they do amazing things, looking to figure out how we can develop these innovative private partnership models to better support our communities, especially in including our small businesses.

In the community, a couple things.

I also was excited to be able to join and participate in that.

The Department of Neighborhoods Black History Month celebration last week.

Super cool, super exciting.

It was really cool and I felt very honored to be able to go into our schools last week and participate in a few Black History Month celebrations and assemblies at a few of our schools.

In particular, I went to Denny International Middle School in my district.

and West Seattle High School in my district.

Both amazing experiences, events.

Honored to join the students at Denny Middle School in particular.

They're doing amazing things.

They have a wonderful Kingmakers program.

And let me just say, take away from my perspective of these various, going into these various schools, The future of our city is bright, very inspired and moved by the opportunity to engage so closely and directly with our youth in our schools, especially on a topic of critical importance like Black History Month.

Councilmember Kettle noted the history of our own council president's role last week during the Black History Month celebration from the Department of Neighborhoods.

I mentioned that as well.

I forgot to mention, we have a couple history makers currently serving in that regard.

Our own Seattle City Attorney, Erica Evans, is the first black city attorney irrespective of gender, first black city attorney, period.

Super cool.

Shout out to city attorney Evans.

We are making history.

We are out here doing things, and it's a great time to be a part of this group.

Last week on Friday, so I meet with constituents regularly and during my regular office hours sessions with constituents on Friday, met with some folks coincidentally from South Park community who were sharing some of their concerns coincidentally about the problem speed racing activity that occurs on 99 and then kind of oftentimes branches off into city streets and the activity continues.

And just as we were talking about that, we got an alert that, unfortunately, Uncle Eddie's in South Park.

Uncle Eddie's is on the corner of 14th and Cloverdale.

It's the heart of the South Park community.

It's a great small business restaurant.

Check it out if you haven't already.

Highly recommend it.

but unfortunately a driver suffered a medical emergency and crashed through the storefront of Uncle Eddie's.

Grateful to learn that, so my office had already reached out.

Grateful to learn that our city's own Office of Economic Development had already proactively reached out when they heard about this.

and on Saturday, so this happened on Friday, on Saturday in between a community meeting and one of my kids' basketball games, stopped by, one of my kiddos stopped by to talk directly with the small business owner and myself, let them know they had the full support of my office, picked up some cinnamon rolls to go for my kids.

They appreciated that.

And today had a productive conversation with SDOT on some potential solutions to better address the underlying problem activity in the area.

So in any event, a lot going on, but, oh, finally, I'll note, last night I was able to attend and I'm honored to have been able to attend this, but the Muslim Association of Puget Sound, their Redmond facility and campus, they had an Iftar event, it's Ramadan, and so they invited members of the community to come celebrate Iftar with them, honored to join other elected officials there, the State Attorney General Nick Brown was there, among other elected leaders, I think State Representative Daria Favar was there as well, other folks.

So great to just literally, quite literally break bread with some folks at MAPS.

Learned a lot and honored to have been able to join.

That is all I have.

I do welcome any comments, questions.

If none, I'll pass the baton on to Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much.

I'll just start with saying, I think, thanks for the update on the accident over there in South Park.

I know that that area, I know that you know that area coming over the bridge has had a lot of car accidents and people sort of making that sharp right turn there.

So thanks for your fast follow-up and leadership and bringing that to our attention.

Okay, so I guess I'll start with the Olympics since people already talked about that.

That was fun.

It was great to get to be a part of the press conference to honor and welcome back our Olympic champions.

I was really pleased to share a few words there and echo the fact that it's pretty incredible that in our first year of our PWHL team here, we have six Olympians.

The only thing I can add to what's already been said is just to uplift the incredible showing out that Seattle did.

Their game was sold out on Friday night and I think that is just incredibly powerful and the way that this city continues to support sports and women's sports.

And yeah, I got to show my little key chain.

It didn't really compare to their gold medals for anybody who saw that picture, but that was really a lot of fun to get to honor them and they deserve nothing less because they are pretty cool.

Last week, I also met with Joe.

Joe was busy.

Joe Wynn from the Chamber was busy, so I had a great meeting with them, which is fantastic.

We also had some of the folks in who are working on RUBS, which is our rate-based utility billing.

I know several council members' offices have met with them, but I especially want to lift it up because what I think is really phenomenal about the organizing they're doing is this isn't a nonprofit.

These are just like renters who have had this experience of some of their utility bills going up and they're just sort of self-organizing.

And so that was a great meeting to hear more from their perspective.

I also got a chance to go to a ribbon cutting at Little Woods Preschool.

And I want to give a shout out to my colleagues who were here in 2020. because there's actually a direct link.

And I'm glad that Councilmember Strauss is back in here.

I think you might have sponsored this legislation.

It is in DJ D5's district.

However, this was the preschool near you or preschool near me zoning legislation.

And so, yeah, so it's actually...

It's a great opportunity to just look back and see how some previous legislation is allowing really exciting new facilities to open.

So I got to go to this ribbon cutting.

I'm going to post a little bit more about it on social media, but it's a direct result of the zoning legislation that allowed this preschool to open up in the neighborhood in a residential, what's otherwise a residential neighborhood and gives a chance for families to walk their kids to school.

and it's just a really beautiful facility, really incredible ribbon cutting.

I was glad I got a chance to attend that.

I also went to an iftar celebration on Friday in New Holly that was really fantastic and got a chance to talk to some neighbors there and Friday was also at the youth safety meeting or the vigil that Councilmember Lynn mentioned over the weekend it was the end of Black History Month so Saturday morning I started off at Tabor 100 I know many of us have good relationships there lots of fantastic black businesses and other minority-owned businesses at Tabor 100 middle of the day stopped by NAMM and got a chance to present our proclamation our Black History Month proclamation on behalf of us colleagues there and then ended it with Black Hockey Night with the Kraken and I got to see other council members there as well council member Saka and other black leaders so that was really fantastic I won't go into meetings coming up.

I will say colleagues, I'm looking forward to my data resolution that we will discuss in the joint committee coming up this week.

And I will just preview a little bit of it now here and we'll talk more about it there and central staff will have a memo for folks.

Really want to give a chance to make sure that we are ensuring our privacy and our data practices are meeting the standards that we have set.

So we know that we saw at the state level we had protections in law, but there were things that were occurring that the state was not aware about.

So this is really a chance for us to request the departments to do a review to ensure we don't have any of the same issues here at the local level.

It also does some other things around sort of reaffirming our existing commitment to data and strong privacy practices.

So looking forward to discussing that in committee with folks.

That's gonna be it.

Awesome, thank you Council Member Foster, the mom who's the bomb.

Keep it going.

Council Member Rink, who makes legislation to make you think?

Council Member Rink.

I like that.

Thank you, council president.

Oh, colleagues, I think it's worth recognizing that a lot has happened since the last time we came to council briefing.

And I know I've had various meetings across community about everything going on.

And without unpacking each of those community meetings, I will say this.

whether it be here in Seattle, in Tacoma, in Kansas, in Texas, or in Iran, there is a lot of pain and uncertainty and a desire to be seen and heard, and most importantly, a desire for us to enact change and build a world that actually honors our human rights.

I wanted to start off by acknowledging that before going into some, and really I'm going to be focusing my remarks today on business.

First, kicking us off with just an update on the detention center moratorium, just for awareness of members and the public regarding my bill establishing a one-year moratorium on detention centers.

a substitute bill removing jails will be on the IRC tomorrow to be referred for a full council vote on Tuesday, March 10th.

We were hoping to vote tomorrow but in order to properly amend the bill to remove jails we were advised that we need to make a change to the title which has resulted in a substitute bill being necessary.

and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Taking us to the Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes, which will be this Thursday, March 5th at 2 p.m., and I know that's a joint session with the Public Safety Committee, and we will be having, as Council Member Foster discussed, we will be talking about the resolution related to data sharing and data privacy protections.

We will also be having a briefing from the Mayor's Office, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, and the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs on what city and state federal response has been.

And then we will have a briefing from the Seattle Police Department responding to the statement of legislative intent that was unanimously passed in the 2026 budget.

As a quick refresher, this is requiring a report from SPD that outlines how SPD will respond to potential actions from the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security.

and then taking us to the other committee I chair, our Human Services, Labor and Economic Development Committee.

We'll be meeting on Friday, March 6th at 9.30 a.m.

and we'll have a briefing from the Seattle Film Commission on their body of work followed by an appointment of a new member to the commission and we'll also be getting a briefing from King County Regional Homelessness Authority on the continuum of care issues that have been going on.

My office has been convening these monthly stakeholder meetings on the COC for the past few months, which all of your offices have participated in at some point.

I just want to recognize how great it is that every office has popped in on those issues.

Thank you all for having your staff participate and just stay appraised.

It's really important.

and I invite those who are not on the committee to attend this critical update about our homelessness system.

And I'll close my remarks for today by just giving an update on Torrent, and I don't wanna end on bad news, I'm sorry, but worth saying that we don't have any players from the Torrent coming.

We have a representative of the team.

I apologize, but it will still be great to meet them and recognize them.

I apologize, Council Member Warris.

Thank you, Council President.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

I'll be super brief.

Our governance and utilities...

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just want...

My bad.

I'm sorry, Councilmember Kettle.

Well, I was disappointed to hear the news about the Seattle Torrent.

And to balance that out, I just wanted to bring to everybody's attention, there's a great documentary called The Rise.

It's part of the Rise series that goes into the inaugural season.

And our own captain, Hilary Knight, and Alex Carpenter feature prominently.

So if you really want to understand the story behind the story and who our captain is, watch that documentary, because it's fantastic.

Just to end on a, you know,

Thank you, Council Member Kettles.

Thank you.

Are there any other more comments No, okay, awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

I just dived right in and didn't even see your hand.

Council Member Kettle.

Governance and utilities will be 312, which is next Thursday, 9.30 a.m.

We have the Comcast franchise agreement that will be up for a possible vote.

And then we also have, that's from our IT department, and then we also have from SPU a Glacier Well property cell that will be up for a possible vote as well.

So there's two substanti- Gosh, I can't talk.

Substanti- Substantive.

Substantive.

Substantive.

I did graduate from college, so I'm sorry.

Substantive, okay.

and I know, Seattle Prep just let me in.

Okay, substance, you all know what I'm saying.

I have a speech that I've worked really hard, but it comes out now since I have to talk a lot, but I'm working on it.

Okay, substantive, thank you, bills that are coming to the table.

We also have a police pension board meeting this month and then nothing on the regional side from Regional Water Quality Committee, which I serve on with Council Member Eddie Lynn, thank you.

and then some other stuff.

I will say this, and last but not least, and this is not a high note or low note or whatever, but I know as council members we often have to, and this is actually for the record, but we often have to be quiet about security stuff that happens with us or things.

But I think we have to highlight, and I wanna thank Council Member Juarez for bringing security assessment about what we have to do at council, because a lot of you all, and I'll just speak from my experience, there's just been a lot of instances that happened and I know I have to be quiet about it and not talk about it, but just for the record, there's a lot of security stuff that happens, whether it's at our home, in a grocery store, on the bus, walking, whatever it may be that people just don't see and I have been talking about it for the last two years and I am as your council president going to make some changes to protect us because they're just have seen elevated stuff so this is for the record for the public because I have kept quiet about it for two years stuff that I've endured whether it's been on my voicemail or people in public or people that have come to my home and we have to protect ourselves and so anyways, and just wanna make sure that we're just keeping the temperatures at bay.

You can come after policy, but you can't attack people's homes.

You can't attack people's families, their nephews, their kids.

You cannot come up to people at parks and be aggressive towards folks.

That is not okay, and I don't think that that needs to be okay, or come to people's home on their front porch and do things.

You can't do that.

So I just wanted to say that because I know that some people experience those things.

I know I have.

I've kept quiet about it.

I've tried to work it out behind the scenes and I'm going to be more vocal about the protection that council members need to have and safety assessments that we need to be able to navigate.

So thank you.

Council member Juarez followed by council member Saka.

Council President I am so glad that you are the candid leader that you are in bringing things out in the open and so I'll just kind of state the elephant in the room post 2020 about what some of us endured in our homes death threats rape threats all of that and then some and you're right we've kept quiet about it we looked at legislation that the Los Angeles City Council did in I believe Minneapolis where they instituted it would be a misdemeanor if you came within so many feet of an elected person's home and this was before the two state representatives were shot and a federal judge's son was killed and the other two state representatives in Minnesota were shot but survived so without going to all the darkness and trying not to end I think that that is such an important civic conversation to have in light of what we're dealing with now and it isn't just about the electeds, it's also about the people and the clerks and the people that work here, the people that come out here and sit here.

So when we were dealing with COVID, we had the added issue of dealing with just physical safety.

And I don't think that that makes you, I gotta be careful what word I use.

I don't think it makes you a hyper person that you want safety where you go to work, where you're just doing your job.

You're not doing anything to anger everybody.

You're just doing your job.

So I want to thank you for your leadership there.

I know you and I talked about the study that we had done before I left and the money that we put in there for the safety of the clerks, for the electeds, and the doors and the cameras on the second floor because the seventh floor is protected.

Let's just be honest.

No one's going to go up there and do things.

They can do that here.

And in the people's house, they should be able to come here and speak.

Absolutely.

But we are so...

and we're so like right here.

And that was at its height was really scary.

We were dealing with COVID and we were dealing with death and rape threats on the reg.

And it's unfortunate and I'm being a little bit vulnerable here, and I'm really glad that you and I had these long discussions about the study that we did, the money that we got out of FAS to talk about protection because all of us should be safe where we work as well as the clerks and our guards and everybody else.

So thank you so much and I appreciate your leadership in that because I know it isn't always easy to just state the obvious sometimes.

So thank you.

I'm not trying to end on a sad note.

I apologize.

But I think it's worth a discussion for us to have because, you know, I've gotten to the point where I'm like, okay.

Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

I, too, just want to echo my sense of gratitude and appreciation for you and your leadership in elevating this issue, bringing it forward as a conversation starter and, you know, any additional sort of concrete, specific actions that we as a body or as a city, frankly, need to take.

It's not just a legislative priority to keep everyone safe, all elected officials and their respective staff, support staff in the immediate and outer rings as well.

It is no secret, as Councilmember Juarez described, that we are experiencing and, frankly, suffering a severe uptick in political violence across the country, and that's frankly just the tip of the iceberg.

Those egregious examples that were listed a moment ago is just the tip of the iceberg.

All I have to say is thank you for your leadership in raising this issue.

Councilmember Foster.

Yeah, I was just gonna add to that and say, I don't talk about my previous work that much, but I used to help support candidates of color who are fundraising to run for office, so I had a lot of conversations with people about the barriers to running for office and what that experience is like, and harassment and safety was constantly something that I heard back from and so I just appreciate you bringing that to the front because it is a real experience and it really does dovetail with being a person of color and being upfront and publicly available and vulnerable and being a black woman, so I really appreciate that.

I also know you said you didn't want to end on that note.

So I wanted, you had some fun.

We got the dad from Delridge, the mom who's the bomb.

So I just, you know, I was working on this while we were going around because we didn't do one for you.

Here's what I got.

A council president who's heaven sent.

That's a big one.

I know, I know.

I couldn't think of that many rhymes.

That was a big one.

I'm trying to get it.

That was a lot.

That was good.

Too much?

I'll keep working on it.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Councilmember Kettle, is that a hand?

Yes, I just wanted to note, obviously, on the public safety side, there's a lot of conversations over the last couple of years to those pieces.

And so I think we do need to step forward.

And I just wanted to also say, since we have our security team right here who's got my back because I can't see, like if somebody just came in.

It's really important for our security team, and I really think and appreciate their help.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Cattle.

And I know that Councilmember Juarez did a security assessment, and we're going to be looking into implementing some of those things because the plan had already been laid out, and so we want to make sure that we're following through with some of those suggestions and recommendations.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez, for all you did.

It was a really tough time, and I was working on the seventh floor, and I was watching, and that was not okay.

So I'm sorry that you had to live through that.

That's never okay.

And Council President, thank you for your leadership on this and for just talking about it.

And then I'll also say that I've heard in the past, you know, when you run for office, there's somehow a perception that you knew what you were getting into.

You're never getting into being physically threatened in the way people have been threatened since before COVID, actually.

It intensified during COVID.

And then even in the time since, and in the time that we've been here, most of us have experienced that.

So no, we don't run thinking that, you know, we're not accepting this.

We run because We all want to have a vibrant, safe, wonderful city for all of us and our families and all the children and families that live in the city.

and all the humans that live in this city.

That's why we run for office is to really help, be a helper.

We don't run for office thinking that we're gonna get attacked.

And so it doesn't, it should not be an expectation that that's gonna happen.

And so I really wanted to say that because I've also heard that and I think that that is a really wrong way to look at this job for the people that are looking at us doing these jobs.

And to your point, Council Member Foster, for the people who might want to run and think, I don't want that, so maybe I'm not gonna run if that comes with the job.

And that's not okay because it keeps good people out and we should be all about inclusivity.

And so, again, I want to thank you, Council President, for your leadership around this.

I fully support it.

And then, as so many of us mentioned, the folks that sit in this room who are not elected, they're here doing a job to support us, and then they get attacked as well, and they were put in very vulnerable positions that they did not want or ask for or deserve.

So I wanted to echo a lot of the sentiments I heard, add that piece to it, and thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

And we're going to have a great week, right?

We have a lot of meetings.

We're going to have a great week.

All right.

Appreciate you all.

It's great to sit at this big table as if we're having a family dinner.

And if there's no for the business to come before the council briefing, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.