Seattle City Council Land Use Committee 32322

Thank you, Mr. G. The March 23, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It is 2 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Vice Chair Morales?

Here.

Chair Strauss?

Present.

Floor President?

Thank you.

We have four items on today's agenda, a public hearing briefing and vote on Council Bill 120265, which extends the bringing business home bill for six months while permanent regulations are finalized.

We have a briefing and discussion and a vote on Council Bill 120207 Councilmember Peterson and I's tree service provider legislation.

We have a briefing discussion and vote on resolution 32048, which ratifies countywide planning policies and a briefing on the strategy on the industrial maritime strategies process.

I do see that we have been joined by Councilmember Nelson.

And so we have a full committee here today.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda.

If you have called in to sign up for the public hearing, please do note that at the start of your comments, and then we will hold you over for the public hearing, which is separate from public comment.

And before we begin, I ask that everyone please be patient as we learn to operate this new system in real time.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to items on today's agenda.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas, the City Council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in the manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will, seeing as we have 18 people signed up today, I am going to limit comments to one minute, and I will extend the public comment from 10 minutes to 20 minutes.

So the public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, and each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak and would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

The public comment, the line to call is different than the council listen line and is included in the email from registering for public comment.

Once I call on a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you've been unmuted will be your cue that it is your turn to speak.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

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

Once a speaker hears the chime, we ask you please begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

Again, there is a separate public hearing for item 1, Council Bill 120265, the extension of the Green Business Home Bill.

If your comments are about item number 1, please reserve them for the appropriate hearing.

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

Joshua Morris is signed up first.

Though, Joshua, you are not present at this time.

Please take a moment to dial in.

I'm going to read everyone's name in the order in which you registered, and then we'll call a series of three names at a time.

So we have Joshua Morris, Ryan DeRamo, Laura Lowe, Ryan Donahue, Judy I'm sorry, Judy, I don't want to say your name incorrectly.

Rachel Ludwick, Julie Albin, John Marchione, Joshua Curtis, Steve Zemke, June Bruce Bruce, Richard Ellison, Alicia Ruiz, Jane Foy, Jessica Dixon, Sanders Latour, and Regina Gebkin.

Regina and Joshua are not present at this time.

Please do call into the phone number provided on your registration email.

All of that said, we will get started.

Joshua, I'm going to put you to the end of the list just for efficiency sake.

So up first, we have Ryan DeRamo, followed by Laura Lowe, and then Ryan Donahue.

Good afternoon, Ryan DeRamo.

Hi.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Please take it away.

OK.

All right.

Hi, my name is Ryan.

I'm a homeowner in Seattle, and I want to talk about the tree policy and the housing growth target.

First up, trees.

Let's support adding trees in the right of way.

What if we looked at swapping two parking spaces per block for trees?

We could add 40,000 new trees.

I think everybody would support this.

But secondly, I want to comment on the targets and resolution 32048. I don't know where the planners at King County have been, but 112,000 homes and 170,000 jobs for 25 years is so low they should be embarrassed.

Seattle has added that many jobs in the last nine years alone.

We are lapping job expectations and our housing can't keep up because it's constrained.

The reality is jobs are growing twice your expectations.

So you need to double that to 350,000 jobs and adjust the housing growth target so we don't push more people into homelessness.

We need more housing than this.

Thank you, Ryan.

Up next, we have Laura Lowe followed by Ryan Donohue and then Judy A. Laura Lowe, please take it away.

Hello thanks for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm calling on behalf of Share the Action Share the City's Action Fund.

We want a future Seattle with 12 plexes and rooftop gardens.

Four floors and corner stores is not a bold enough vision.

We want neighbors who don't have the funds for a down payment on a house to be able to choose to live within walking distance of our park.

Seattle's tree protections have partially failed because of our bad zoning.

75 percent of where we're experiencing deforestation in our urban tree canopy is our neighborhood residential zone.

Council Bill 120207 to create a tree service provider registration is one small step to address the problems.

Although not under consideration today, we also want you to move the oversight of trees out from SCCI and make it its own budget item that can be tracked year to year, maybe under Office of Sustainability and Environment or Department of Neighborhoods, who oversee historic preservation.

Saving our trees is way more important than saving the show box.

As a renter in the US district, I spent thousands of dollars taking care of a tree because my out-of-state landlord wouldn't.

We can't expect that of renters, especially when we don't have rent stabilization or rent control and can't plan to see the benefits of our investments in our trees.

We need a city-managed plan, 30% tree cover by 2030.

Thank you, Laura.

Up next, we have Ryan Donahue, followed by Judy A.

and then Rachel Ludwick.

Ryan, please take it away.

Hello.

Hello, thank you.

My name is Ryan Donahue, and I'm the advocacy and policy director for Habitat for Humanity Seattle King and Kinsas County.

I'm here to provide comment on Resolution 32048. As we continue to face a massive housing shortage and try to address the crisis that we're all facing the work of this committee in particular is going to determine whether we finally address this crisis or if we continue to kick the can down the road.

As outlined I know the growth targets are certainly higher actually than any other city across King County and I do applaud you for doing that.

However as other commenters have said I would urge you to consider what happens when the need ends up exceeding those current targets.

The reality is if we want to get serious about meaningfully addressing growth we need to be making sure that our land use codes are in alignment with where they actually need to be.

One crucial part of the solution will be opening up more space for more types of housing.

According to research from Zillow if we added just one in every 10 single family lots in the Seattle metro area had two instead of one unit.

we'd add over 125,000 units.

That is a significant improvement, and we can do even more.

So thank you very much.

I would encourage you to consider that moving forward.

Thank you, Ryan.

Up next, we have Judy A. And Judy, if you could tell me how to pronounce your last name, followed by Rachel Ludwick, and then Julie Albin.

Judy, good afternoon.

Hi, my name is Judy.

Hi, my name is Judy Acolytis, speaking for agenda item two.

Recently, three healthy 80-year-old trees were removed from a newly purchased property in three hours.

The tree company said a permit was not needed.

However, another potential buyer of the property had measured those same trees, and one of the trees was definitely too large in circumference to be removed without a permit.

It was an illegal cut.

With this bill, that tree might still be here, sucking carbon out of our air, and helping to prevent 106-degree summer days.

I ask you to please allow for 14 days for posting a tree removal notice on private property, the same time as stop planting strips.

Please vote yes for CB12027 and adopt amendments from council members Peterson and Strauss.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Judy.

Up next, we have Rachel Ledwick, followed by Julie Alban, and then John Marchione.

Rachel, good afternoon.

Hello.

Hi, I'm Rachel Ludwig.

I live in Beacon Hill, actually, and I'm also commenting on agenda two.

So my main concern with regulations as proposed is that I live in a already multifamily area.

And the way development goes on in our neighborhood makes it impossible, like currently makes it very hard for us to keep trees on lots and still provide homes.

And it's very important for climate change reasons that we encourage people to live in a dense area.

And so my concern is that we can't, these regulations aren't doing enough or really anything to encourage that development to take place and keep existing trees because we are actually going to have More heat events in those trees are most critical, not for protecting carbon out of the air, but for making our cities livable as climate change is happening, as we try to work to reduce the impacts of climate change.

And we need people to live in our cities to reduce those impacts.

So I'm very concerned that we're not doing enough.

We also, as someone previously said, we aren't doing enough to ensure that we build trees equitably, because depending on the redevelopment to get more tree canopy isn't enough, because you have to depend on the area you know, be developed, which only happens in wealthier areas.

Thank you, Rachel.

If you have more comments, please do send them into our office.

And thank you for your testimony.

Up next, we have Julie Albin, followed by John Marchione and Joshua Curris.

Julie, please take it away.

Hi, can you hear me OK?

Yes, we can.

Good afternoon.

Perfect.

Good afternoon.

Hi, my name is Julie Albin.

I just wanted to comment on a recent incident that happened pretty timely to today's meeting.

My partner and I just bought a home in Maple Leaf in December.

We've been really loving all the large trees in the neighborhood.

One in particular was a gorgeous large coast redwood on the side of our neighbor's yard, which provided shade, habitat for birds, and just really a gorgeous relaxing view at our backyard and bedroom windows.

Unfortunately, just yesterday, the tree was removed by a well-known tree removal company.

who is known for removing trees illegally.

They did not have a permit and we really don't see any reason to remove this this gorgeous beauty.

We are working with landscape architects for our own yard who said it was nearly certain it was close to being an exceptional tree that should have definitely had a permit to be removed if it even should have been removed at all.

It would be really great to include the additional amendment to Bill 120207 which would prohibit any tree service provider from working in Seattle for a full year if they have two or more violations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Julie.

Thank you for your testimony.

Up next, we have John Marsconi, former mayor of Redmond, Joshua Curtis, and followed by Steve Zemke.

Mr. Mayor, please take it away.

Well, actually, I am John Marsconi, executive director of the Public Skating Authority, which owns Lumen Field.

And I'm speaking on behalf of the PSA, Lumen Field and Events Center.

I'm speaking to item number four, the industrial maritime land.

Our board members have participated in several mayoral processes since 2011 on maritime and industrial lands.

In 2019, we asked to remove the stadium area from the MIC.

We participated in the last process, and now that that process is completed, we, along with the Public Facilities District, remain convinced that the stadium area is unlike any other industrial land under discussion.

Removing the stadium area from the MIC, given how unique it is, two large stadiums, an event center, two historic neighborhoods, would just be the prudent thing to do.

So broad policies that should be created for the MIC that don't fit the stadiums can be created for everyone's benefit.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Mr. Mayor.

Followed by Joshua Curtis, then Steve Zemke, and followed by June Blue Spruce.

Joshua, great to have you back.

Thank you, Council Member.

So yes, this is Joshua Curtis.

I'm the Executive Director of the Washington State Ballpark Public Facilities District.

We provide public oversight to the operations of T-Mobile Park and share an interest in ensuring that our neighborhood is walkable, safe, and vibrant.

So I am also providing public comments related to item number four.

The PFD continues to partner with the PSA on sharing our vision of what we would like our neighborhood to look like, and I would echo all of John's comments I'd also like to note that our two organizations recently hired a consultant to help analyze the economic feasibility of the proposed building prototype in the DEIS.

We think there's actually a proposal that would work well in this area.

It would prohibit housing in the first two floors of any building and prioritize light industrial and commercial with the possibility of workforce housing above.

This prototype would also work well if you applied the multifamily tax exemption.

We would encourage the city to consider the option of removing our area from the mix.

We think there's an opportunity to meet multiple goals of creating industrial jobs, workforce housing, and a neighborhood around the stadium that is complementary to its location and recognizes its evolution.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you, Joshua.

Up next, we have Steve Zemke, followed by Gene Bluespruce, and then Richard Ellison.

I will note Joshua Morris and Regina Gebkin are not present.

If you would like to call in, please call into the phone number provided in the registration email you should have received for public comment.

Steve, welcome.

Please take it away.

Steve, I see you there.

If you want to press star six, not pound six, but star six.

Now is the moment.

And Mr. G, why don't you bring up June Blue Spruce, and we'll come back to Steve.

June, welcome.

Hello.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank all responsible for the Tree Service Provider Registration Legislation Item 2, particularly Council Members Peterson and Strauss for your amendments.

I strongly support Substitute Bill 1 with those amendments.

Obviously, we need comprehensive tree protection legislation, but for environmental review.

So moving forward, I particularly appreciate the delineation of specifics regarding hazardous tree removal.

Thank you for that.

The one thing, a lot to make practice consistent between SDCI and SDOT.

However, the one area where you didn't do that is in the length time that a permit needs to be or a notice needs to be posted, I strongly encourage you to change the two weeks for SDCI as well as SDOT.

And we need one agency in charge of tree protection in this city.

Thank you.

Thank you, June.

Steve, are you able to come off of mute?

Star six at this time.

We'll come back to Steve.

Richard Ellison, followed by Alicia Ruiz, and then Jane Foy.

Richard, welcome.

Good afternoon.

Hi.

Hi.

Hello, council members.

My name is Richard Ellison.

Richard, just real quick.

You're very quiet.

Clerk, if you can.

I don't know if you're using a headset, but.

Any better?

A little bit.

Yeah.

Hello?

Yeah.

A little bit.

Hello, council members.

My name is Richard Ellison, and I live in the Wedgwood community, a neighborhood that prides on its big trees.

Please vote yes for substitute bill SB-120-207 and all amendments from Chairperson Spouse and Council Member Peterson.

Seattle has been waiting decades to improve its private property tree protection, and arborist restoration is, registration, excuse me, is already required by SDOT for tree work for many years now.

Over a weekend a few years ago, I saw some big trees being cut at the Wedgwood pool, and neighbor filed a complaint.

By the time the inspector came out the next week, the stump had been completely ground down and no violation was identified.

The tree company, a major company, might not have cut the trees if it required threatening their license to cut an exceptional tree.

Substitute Bill 120-207 also supports improved requirements on how exceptional trees are identified as hazardous to prevent misuse of the category.

because subdivision developments are causing tremendous losses, particularly important to Amendment 3, codifying guidance to subdivision developments to maximize conservation.

Thank you, Richard.

And please do feel free to email in any further comments.

Steve, I see you're off mute.

So Alicia, before you go, I'm going to have Steve go since we're having some technical problems.

Steve, please take it away.

Yeah, this is Steve Zampini.

I'm chair of TREPAC.

We support the legislation here to require registration of tree service providers.

We note that this is something that SNOT already has been doing for nine years.

And eight states nationally already require this type of tree service, in their states require a tree service registration.

It includes California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

I do have concern about free service providers on retainer rather than being employee because this is not what most of these other states do.

And also strongly support the public notice noting that we personally about 10 years ago had a pickup truck in our driveway ready to cut down a tree when we came home and asked what they were doing and they said, to who said that, and it was a neighbor, and it was our tree.

That's why I published about it.

Thank you, Steve.

And please do feel free to write in with any further comments.

Alicia Ruiz, followed by Jane Foy, and then Jessica Dixon.

Alicia, good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

My name is Alicia Ruiz.

I'm the Seattle Government Affairs Manager for the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish County, representing nearly 3,000 members.

I'm calling in today to asking you to vote no on amendment number three for the Tree Service Providers Bill.

There are several serious problems with this proposed amendment.

First of all, tree care professionals are not experts on land use or pladding matters and are wholly unqualified to opine on the relationships of lot lines and other pladding issues to trees.

Secondly, the underlying pladding criteria cited in this amendment is unclear and very subjective.

Various STCI staff give various meanings to the provision, and the hearing examiner has also had issues about the meaning of this provision.

Furthermore, it puts the emphasis on the tree retention rather than promoting rational planting of properties to support the reasonable development of housing.

And finally, it will increase the cost of development and lead to further appeals, project delays, and ultimately

Thank you, Alicia.

And please do feel free to write in with any more comments.

I did see you emailed the committee today.

Followed by next up is Jane Foy, followed by Jessica Dixon, and then Sanders Letcher.

We have Joshua Morris not present, Regina Dickin not present, and Suzanne Grant.

I see you've signed up, and yet you're not present at the moment either.

Jane, if you want to mute how you are watching this presentation, it will eliminate the feedback, and I'll let you take it away at this time.

Take it away, Jane.

Okay.

My name is Jane Foy.

I'm calling in support of CB 120207. I think it is very important to have reputable tree service providers register with Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection just like Seattle Department of Transportation.

This is an overdue needed action that you can take today.

We have lost numerous trees in my neighborhood due to illegal cutting just within this past year.

I support CB 120207 in all the amendments except allowing tree providers one violation a year.

To me this just doesn't make any sense at all.

Also I feel that tree protection should be handled by the Office of Sustainability and Environment and not by the Seattle Department of Conservation and Inspection.

Thank you.

Thank you Jane.

Up next, we have Jessica Dixon, followed by Sanders LeCher, then Ted Lehman, and lastly, Suzanne Grant, Joshua Morris, Regina Gebkin.

If Joshua or Regina are listening and would like to speak, you are signed up, yet not present.

This time, Jessica, welcome.

I see you're off mute.

Take it away.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Jessica Dixon, and today I'm representing Plant Amnesty.

Planned Amnesty's board and membership, many of whom are professional arborists, urge council members to vote yes today for CB120207 and all published amendments from Council Member Peterson and Chair Strauss.

We've waited years for better policies to conserve Seattle's mature trees and urban forest canopy, so please don't delay adoption of this bill.

We have sent a letter to council members in advance of this meeting supporting the existing amendments and outlining some additional policies we would like to see addressed by this bill and subsequent legislation.

They include extending the posting notice to two weeks to match SDOT's posting schedule since any questions or concerns typically take more than three days to resolve.

Requiring all tree service provider trucks to have their company name clearly displayed on their vehicles as well as their registration sticker with city phone number or website to allow citizens to verify registration.

And in addition, along with our mission to teach best practices to homeowners and organizations through our slate of classes, we strongly support the creation of a program to...

Thank you, Jessica.

And please do feel free to email in any further comments.

Up next, we have Sanders LeCher followed by Ted Lehman and then Suzanne Grant.

Sanders, please take it away.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Sanders LeCher and I am a resident of District 7 and I am commenting on Agenda Item 3. When the city last started working on the comprehensive plan update in 2014, the median rent in Seattle, according to the U.S.

Census, was $1,131.

In the six years since, the median rent has increased more than 50% to $1,702.

That is due to high amounts of job growth and population growth in Seattle.

We've seen, we've added 80% of our target jobs to the area since 2015. That sounds great, but we plan to hit our target in 2035, not 2025. Seattle is exploding in growth.

There's a recent poll from ACTIV that said that Seattle was the number one place college students wanted to move to post-graduation.

Only targeting 112,000 housing units in the One Seattle plan will result in even higher rent prices going forward.

Realistic targets now will inform zoning changes later during the one Seattle planning project.

Thank you.

Thank you, Sanders.

Just last call for Joshua and Regina.

Please do call in if you'd like to speak.

We have two speakers remaining.

Ted Lehman and Suzanne Grant.

Ted, please take it away.

Thank you very much for your time.

My name is Ted Lehman.

I'm a member of the Seattle Industrial Coalition, a group advocating for a true mixed-use TOD vision in Minnesota, especially around the new light rail stations.

I also participated in Mayor Durkin's Maritime and Industrial Lands Council and was one of the many participants who were opposed to the all or nothing choice provided at the end.

Voting an 85% consensus is a bit misleading because it includes people that felt they needed to vote yes on dubious recommendations or risk getting nothing.

That being said, I appreciate that our group was recently invited by the city to weigh in on the proposed prototypes by CAI, the city's consulting firm.

We reached out to many of our contacts in the real estate development space to provide realistic cost inputs and revenue assumptions.

And across the board, the prototype's significant...

Forget.

Into the city from Jack McCullough, Peter Nitza, and me, we offered an alternative prototype that does pencil out and would attract investment interest from outside parties, but it acknowledges that newer industrial space will only get built if significant office and housing are part of the mix.

The whole concept behind a light rail system is that people live adjacent to their jobs and reduce the reliance on single occupancy cars.

Thank you, Ted, and please do feel free to email in any further comments.

We're not taking this bill up today.

It's just a briefing.

Last up, we have Suzanne Grant, Joshua Morrison, Regina.

If you're listening, please call in now.

Suzanne is our last caller for the day.

Suzanne, welcome.

Good afternoon.

I see you there.

Star six, Suzanne.

Not pound six, star six.

Mr. G, can we make sure that's the right phone number for her?

There we are.

Thank you, Mr. G. Good afternoon.

Take it away.

I support CB 120207 and the amendments proposed by CM Peterson and Chair Strauss.

All the old trees in Seattle are falling to the ground.

From the city limits all the way to Puget Sound, the people who are cutting them come from everywhere.

They may not have a permit or be registered, but they don't care.

They are the murderers, the tree murderers.

They keep cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting them down.

Please do what you can to save what is left of our mature and exceptional trees.

We need these people to be registered who are cutting our trees.

I have to pay for a license in Seattle.

I'm a music teacher.

Electricians, plumbers, they need to pay.

These people need to be registered.

Save our trees to save yourselves.

Thank you very much.

Thank you as always, Suzanne.

Always great to hear you.

Just double checking, Mr. G, I see Joshua Morrison and Regina Gebkin not present.

Can you confirm they are not present and that we have no further public comment registrants at this time?

there are no further public comment registrants.

Thank you, Mr. G. Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Item number one, our first agenda item is council bill 120265, which extend the bringing business legislation for six months while final legislation is created.

Mr. On, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item 1, Council Bill 120265, an ordinance relating to land use regulation of home occupations extending for six months, interim development controls established by Ordinance 126293. Thank you, Mr. On.

Before we begin our public comment, public hearing, we're joined by Ketil Freeman of Council Central staff.

I briefed the committee two weeks ago on the work we did last year on the original bringing business home legislation, and Ketil is here today for a formal briefing to answer any questions you may have.

So, Mr. Freeman, please take it away.

Sure.

Thanks, Chair Strauss.

Today, the committee will hold a public hearing and may make a recommendation on Council Bill 120265. That bill would extend for six months interim development regulations that were put in place through Ordinance 126293 about a year ago.

Council Bill 120265 is pretty straightforward.

It provides for a six-month extension.

It does have a ratify and confirm clause.

Ordinance 126293 will expire on April 21st.

So Ordinance 120265, the bill, Council Bill 120265, should it pass, would ratify actions taken after Council passage, but before the effective date of the bill.

Council Member Strauss gave a briefing at the last committee meeting.

I'm happy to walk through the presentation related to Ordinance 126293 just to refresh your memory before the public hearing, if that's useful.

Okay.

Let me share my screen here.

Can you all see that?

It should be a PowerPoint presentation.

full screen mode.

So just to refresh your memories here a little bit, council members, about a year ago, the council passed ordinance 126293 known as the bringing business home legislation.

That legislation established interim development controls related to home occupations and neighborhood residential and multifamily zones.

The purpose of the bill is to provide temporary regulatory flexibility for home-based businesses to allow those home-based businesses to continue operating during the COVID pandemic with fewer restrictions and allow small businesses to remain operating to speed the economic recovery after several emergency restrictions are lifted.

Kind of the instant case for this was Yonder Cider, which was operating out of a garage in somebody's home in Finney Ridge.

Yonder Cider was cited by SDCI, and these regulations allowed Yonder Cider to continue operating.

I understand now that their tasting room has moved to a brick-and-mortar location in Ballard.

So, prior to the interim controls, how did the city regulate home occupations?

The city of Seattle has a sort of relatively permissive regulatory regime for home occupations.

A permit is not required, a land use permit is not required to operate a home occupation.

Instead, there are performance standards that apply to home occupations.

Somebody who has a home occupation may need to get a permit for some type of physical improvement to their property, but they don't need a land use permit.

The performance standards are primarily limitations around activities that may be seen as nuisance activities in a residential zone.

So there is a limitation on the number of commercial vehicle deliveries and pickups.

There's a requirement that customer visits be by appointment only.

The residential appearance of a home must be maintained.

So if it's a multifamily home, single-family home, that residential appearance must be maintained.

There can be no more than two non-residents of the dwelling who can work at the home occupation.

The home occupation cannot substantially increase traffic and on-street parking in the vicinity.

Signs identifying the business cannot exceed 64 square inches.

That's pretty small.

It's less than one square foot in size.

Outdoor storage cannot be associated with a home occupation, so you can't have materials that you use in your home occupation stored outdoors.

And there are limitations on noise, odor, dust, light glare, and other kind of standard nuisance impacts that apply to home occupations.

So what changed under Ordinance 126293?

The number of employees was modified.

It could be an unnominated number of employees working in a home occupation.

There could be the type of customer visit was also modified, no longer needs to be by appointment only.

There can be walk-up visits to a home occupation.

And the limitations on increased traffic and parking demand were also modified.

There are a couple of clarifications around the increased, around the limitations on increased traffic and parking demand that were made by amendment at full council when the council was considering ordinance 126293, and that clarified that you cannot have a drive-in business that is a home occupation, and also for certain types of home occupations like automotive retail sales and service.

So if you're working on cars in your garage, you also can't increase traffic and parking demand.

So those regulations were maintained.

Additionally, ordinance 126293 allowed home occupations to have a larger non-illuminated sign, about 720 square feet, which is about five square feet, and allowed home occupations to clarify that home occupations can use required accessory use parking for the home occupation purpose.

So for example, if you were using your garage as a tasting room, that would be permitted under the interim regulations.

Oops, I'm going in the wrong direction here.

That's a summary of what Ordinance 126293 did.

It's a return to the current bill that, of course, would extend these regulations for an additional six-month period to allow SDCI more time to develop a proposal for permanent regulations and also to allow home-based occupations that have taken advantage of the change in regulations to continue operating while the pandemic is ongoing.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Freeman.

That was very helpful.

The last things that you said I think are most important is that SDCI is taking the time to create the final regulations, the permanent regulations, so that we can take that up.

This extension is to give them the time and ensure that we continue with the level playing field so that Folks don't have to shut up shop and then reopen shop just because we lapsed.

Can you remind me when do the current regulations expire?

And will adopting this extension next week allow us to avoid that gap in these extensions?

Oh, you're on mute, Mr. Brannon.

The current regulations expire on April 21st, and so there's no avoiding a gap.

The proposed bill has a ratifying confirmed pause.

So any action taken by SDCI after council approval, but before the bill becomes effective, are ratified and confirmed by the council.

So for example, if there was an enforcement action against a home-based occupation that occurred after passage by the council, but before the bill became effective, and SDCI modified their inspection compliance response based on the future regulations to become effective, that action would be ratified by the bill.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I know I did my best playing central staff on TV at the last committee.

Do you have questions for Mr. Freeman?

Well, Quito, it looks like it did an okay.

Council Member Nelson, please take it away.

You're still on mute.

Hello.

Sorry about that.

So I asked this last time, and maybe, Ketil, you can speak to this.

How – how – I basically said, so how has it been going?

And do we have any information about new businesses that have developed that have been facilitated by this legislation since it's been in effect?

The short answer to that is we don't know, and that partly has to do with the existing regulatory regime.

So prior to the bill passing, the city did not require any land use permits for a home occupation.

You just had to meet the performance standards.

So we don't actually know how many businesses are operating out of people's homes.

We didn't know prior to the pandemic, and we don't know now.

Um, so the only thing we can rely on is anecdotal evidence.

And for that, um, you know, your sources are as good as mine.

It's what you read in the paper.

Okay.

That was my question.

Thank you.

Oh, great.

And Council Member Nelson, you raise a really important point.

And that's one of the things that I do want to see changed in the permanent regulations.

I don't need to see a cost or a fee associated with the permit.

And right now, the best way for us to try to figure it out is by looking at business permits that are existing in residential areas.

And if we had a permit for home-based businesses, we could have better data.

Again, I wouldn't want to put another fee on top of them,

Got it.

I do have other comments, but that's about the bill in general, so I don't know if now is the time.

Yeah, I'd say take it away.

Okay, so last year when this, when council voted on this, I wrote to the full council as a citizen and as a, someone with small business experience.

And I basically, let me say right now, I'm gonna vote for this thing, all right?

But I'm gonna go through my issues.

So what I said last year and what I still feel is that in last year, In March, middle of the pandemic, I wrote in saying basically, if you wanna help small businesses right now, there are a lot of things that council can do.

And this seemed like a distraction because it's changing the land use code, which is pretty significant for home-based businesses.

And it didn't seem like there were very many home-based businesses that were clamoring for a land use change.

I understand that there were a couple of businesses that had reached out.

So that was my main point.

And I also took umbrage that this legislation was being put forward as leveling of the playing field, because in fact, it confers added advantage to home-based businesses.

Home-based businesses do not have to pay rent, commercial rents.

Business owners don't have to put up guarantees or their homes, basically, to back a bank loan, to have a business in a brick and mortar, and they don't have to pay utility bills, et cetera.

So saying that it levels the playing field, if you've ever tried to get a commercial space and start a business, it seems like just the opposite.

I also, I am completely for small business incubation.

And that's one thing that I asked about last time, which was how did it work?

Because I want to see home-based businesses move into larger spaces.

I want them to succeed, expand, and thrive, and ultimately contribute to the vitality of our neighborhood business districts.

And so I was happy to see that I want it to be an incubation, and it's not clear to me, and this is some information that I'm going to need to ultimately get behind.

making these things permanent, or these code changes, or this program permanent, because that's the goal.

I want businesses to thrive, and I want them to contribute to the vitality of their neighborhoods, ultimately.

I haven't heard very much about impacts to neighborhoods, what residents living next door or on the same street.

I really will want to see that kind of outreach.

And let me see.

There are lots of models for small business incubators that I can get into and basically.

Anyway, so, so I'm not worried about the competition, I think the kind of business that sets up shop in a garage is different than the kind of business that would, you know, so that would set out looking for a commercial space in the neighborhood.

business district, so that is not what motivated me then, and it's not what's motivating me now, but I really do think that there needs to be outreach to our BIAs and neighborhood chambers, and that they, other businesses might feel differently, that they're putting in all this other, all these other resources to be able to set up shop in a brick and mortar someplace, and I just want to make sure that they are aware and know how they feel.

But I'm gonna vote for this because I support small businesses and I know that a lot of people are operating in their homes and especially immigrant community and in BIPOC small business owners that really don't have the resources to have a commercial space.

So I just want those concerns on the record and I look forward to seeing what, what we know in six months or so, or a year, however long the system is extended before these things become permanent.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Appreciate that feedback.

Other council members, anyone, questions or comments before we open the public hearing?

Seeing none, and Clerk Sanchez, can you confirm for me, we don't have any public comment registrants remotely present for this public hearing.

Do I need to open and close?

Do I need to read the script?

Can you advise me on my next steps?

If you wouldn't mind, Chair, just stating that you're opening up the public hearing and just verifying there's no public commenters and then closing the public hearing, you do not need to read the entire script.

Thank you, clerk.

At this time, just confirming there are no further questions or comments before we open the public hearing.

Seeing none, we will now open the public hearing.

Before we open the public hearing, let's see, where is this?

The public hearing on Council Bill 120265 is now open.

We will begin with the speakers on the list.

Mr. Gee, Mr. Ahn, can you confirm with me that there are no public comment registrants remotely present for the public hearing on Council Bill 120265?

There are no public hearing or registrants.

Thank you, Mr. G. At this time, I do not have anyone remotely present to speak.

Staff has confirmed that there are not members of the public in the queue before closing this public hearing.

And so I will now close the public hearing.

Public hearing on Council Bill 120265 is now closed.

Colleagues, given that this is the second meeting we have had to discuss the legislation and that there's already a gap in this legislation, and that this is an extension of legislation we have already adopted last year, I will ask that we suspend the rules today to vote on legislation, to vote the legislation out of committee.

Voting today will allow us to keep the extension on track so there's not a larger gap in the interim regulations.

Colleagues, any concerns with suspending the rules the same day as the public, to vote out the bill as the same day as the public hearing?

Seeing none, I move to suspend the rules to allow for a vote on Council Bill 120265 on the same day as a public hearing.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to suspend the rules to allow for a vote on Council Bill 120265 on the same day as the public hearing.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Clerk Peterson?

Abstain.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed, one abstention.

Thank you.

The motion carries and Council Bill 120265 passes.

No, the rules have been suspended.

Now we move to passage.

Is there any further discussion before we vote on the bill?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad there's an opportunity for a quick comment just to say thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks for bringing this legislation forward.

I'm excited that we have the opportunity to vote on this legislation to provide businesses already serving as a springboard for our small businesses and our local economy to be able to continue this good work.

a huge amount of appreciation for folks like Younger Cider, which started out as a small business operating out of a garage, and they, as a great example, got some good coverage of their ability to transition into a taproom, a commercial space, which was due to the great work of this body and your leadership, Mr. Chair.

I think it's a great success story in these times as we're looking to recover in a more equitable way post-pandemic and to make sure that we are looking at how Seattle can have resilient local economy that is thriving and diverse.

I think it also makes our neighborhoods more diverse, thriving and vibrant.

And I look forward to hearing more about the newest businesses that will continue to crop up as we think about ways for folks to walk around their local community and see how they can support local businesses operating by our neighbors throughout our community.

So looking forward to supporting this legislation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 120265. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 120265. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Member Peterson?

Abstain.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Strass?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed, one abstention.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

Council Bill 120265 passes and the legislation will be at full council next Tuesday for a final vote.

Thank you, colleagues.

Moving on to much anticipated and weighted legislation.

Our next item is Council Bill 120207, which requires tree service providers to register with the city.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Agenda item two, Council Bill 120207, an ordinance relating to land use in urban forestry, adding a tree service provider registration procedure and requirement.

Thank you, Mr. On.

This legislation was introduced by Councilmember Peterson.

I am excited, happy, and honored to be co-sponsored with him in this effort.

Councilmember Peterson, would you like to take it away as the prime sponsor?

You're on mute.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And I also want to thank Yolanda Ho on central staff, who's been helping us with this bill throughout, and my staff and your staff.

and everybody who's worked on this.

Thank you for scheduling Council Bill 120207 for a vote out of committee today and for your hard work on it, Chair Strauss.

Colleagues, as you may recall, this bill to register tree service providers who want to exceed routine pruning or cut down trees was introduced last October, and we walked through the specifics at our committee on February 9th.

The amendments published with today's agenda reflect much of the discussion we had last month, and I urge you to support all of these amendments.

I know we'll discuss them individually here.

Passing out of committee today this Council Bill 120207 will be a small but mighty step to increase transparency and accountability by simply having tree service providers register with our city government before they cut down more trees.

In the midst of the climate crisis inflicting severe heat waves, let's not have any more trees sawed to death in the middle of the night by chainsaws wielded by unknown tree cutters.

Let's daylight these operations on a registry for all to see.

Professional arborists who care about trees and follow the rules already, already register with the city for removing trees on public land.

And this bill will create that transparent and accountable process for all other properties in our emerald city, in our evergreen state.

Due to the horrible heat waves last year, we saw once again the negative disparate impacts to communities that have seen a loss of tree canopy and experienced harmful heat island effects.

Increasing accountability and transparency by registering tree service providers who cut down or heavily prune trees should improve compliance with current and future protections of Seattle's trees and help those neighborhoods most at risk of losing more trees.

I want to thank the dozens of tree advocates who already know very well the environmental and health benefits of existing mature trees.

And it was steadfastly urged the council to do more about the city's twin link tree canopy.

Similar to what we saw in February, we saw during the past 24 hours, dozens of emails asking us to pass this council bill today.

I want to thank those who took time to call in today.

also the Seattle Audubon Society.

We did just get an email from them.

Tree Pack, Friends of Seattle's Urban Forest, heard from many of these same supporters for the past two years.

In addition to this support from emails and public commenters, there is a statistically significant survey conducted throughout Seattle last year that showed 77% support of registration system.

So we're here today to hopefully pass it out of committee.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Well said.

We are joined by Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff, who will walk us through the legislation again, as well as three amendments that have been proposed, including one of them as a substitute that wrapped up a lot of the amendments that have been in discussion over the last few weeks.

Yolanda, would you like to take it away?

Sure, thank you.

Let me get my screen shared here.

Is that good?

Great, thank you.

So, I think we had a good introduction by Council Member Peterson, but so my intention with this presentation is to describe Council Bill 120207 that would establish a requirement that tree service providers register with the city prior to conducting commercial tree work privately.

As a reminder, the city already has a tree service provider registry that is administered by the Seattle Department of Transportation, also known as a stock data is only for entities doing work on trees in the public right away.

We did discuss the potential impacts of the bill at the meeting on February 9 so we will.

Instead, today, focus on some of the key points from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections Implementation Analysis, which is attached to the agenda today, and then also discuss the potential amendments that are attached to the agenda.

So as a reminder, this legislation would amend Seattle Municipal Code Title 25 to require that Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, also known as SDCI, establish a registry process and system within 90 days of the effective date of the ordinance.

Tree service providers would then have 90 days to register with SDCI following the setup period.

After this 90 days, all tree service providers would need to be registered in order to apply for prints or provide tree related reports to SDCI.

It would define commercial tree work as conduct major pruning, removal of trees larger than six inches diameter at breast height, and the assessment of tree health or hazard risk for financial compensation.

It excludes routine pruning activities that do not meet the threshold of major pruning.

and define tree service provider as an entity engaged in commercial tree work.

We require that registered tree service providers comply with various best practices related to the specific type of work for which they are engaged, such as maintaining adequate supervision over their workers as they conduct the work, assessing what the appropriate level of tree work is needed to meet clients' objectives.

that authorize SDCI to create rules as needed to support administration of the registry, amend other sections of Title 23 to align with the legislation's intent, only registered tree service providers conduct commercial tree work.

This table was a side-by-side comparison of what is being proposed in the legislation before you and SDOT's existing registry system.

Since we talked about this at length last month, I will just kind of remind you of the key differences.

Here we have the commercial liability insurance coverage is required, but SDCI has discretion to determine what is the appropriate amount.

Estat allows tree service providers to either have a currently credentialed International Society of Arbor culture certified arborist on staff or retainer, whereas the.

Council Bill 120207 would require that that person be on staff.

There is also a shorter public notice requirement, and a number of folks in the public comment noticed this, noted this.

I would just note for you all that the difference acknowledges that the SDCI public notice is more about just letting people know that commercial tree work is authorized, but is not necessarily an appealable decision, right?

So that is just something that SDCI acknowledges.

And whereas SDOT's public notice is actually intended to inform and allow people to appeal the decision.

And thus there's kind of that greater span of time because these are publicly owned trees, right?

So there's a kind of a difference of who owns the tree.

and who's making that decision.

And also, the penalty would be different if the bill, as introduced, SDOT would remove, so SDOT's current practice is to remove a tree service provider from the registry for a year after it's been issued two notices of violation.

The proposed registry would prohibit SDCI from accepting tree-related reports from a tree service provider who has been issued a single notice of violation related to the illegal removal of an exceptional tree.

So it kind of ran through that, but does anyone have any questions about anything on this slide before I move on?

Just noting Yolanda, a lot of these issues have been changed in the substitute.

So this was the starting point for the bill that we had at last committee and council members, maybe it would be helpful if I moved the legislation so that we could take up the substitute that makes significant changes to this.

Do I see consensus there, or do other folks have questions at this time?

Vice Chair Morales, please take it away.

Sorry, I just have a quick question about what it means to resolve a violation in the penalty section.

Is that paying a fine?

Yeah, that's typically paying a fine, or if SDCI withdrew the violation.

So those are two pathways.

And I just interject, and I think some of that is, that language is cleaned up in the substitute.

So let's, I'm gonna move the bill so that we can discuss the substitute at this time, unless Council Member Nelson, do you have questions?

I see, no.

So before we take up amendments, I will place the legislation before us.

So I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 120207. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded.

The first of three amendments today is a substitute amendment that Councilmember Peterson and I co-sponsored together.

This substitute reflects a suite of changes we agreed to and include that will make this legislation more effective.

It includes technical changes, extends the implementation time to five months in line with STCI's implementation memo, and sets a date certain, November 10th, for tree service providers to register by.

It allows for tree service providers to have an arborist either on-staff or on-retainer rather than only on-staff and aligns penalties with SDOT's registry so that a tree service provider would be removed from the registry for one year after two violations.

And lastly, it adjusts the requirements for tree risk assessment qualification or TRAC, requiring that an applicant for hazardous tree removal permit must be TRAC qualified and requiring that for hazardous exceptional trees, a different tree service provider must file the permit rather than as compared to the provider who plans to do the removal.

Yolanda, Council Member Peterson, did I miss anything?

And Yolanda, if you have a different slide that reflects the substitute, I think that's important to have visually on the screen at this time.

Yeah, well, that's fine.

There was just one more slide before I got to that.

It was that I wanted to talk about the implementation analysis as kind of like Just one more piece of new information before we moved into that, but I would you prefer that I go to that slide that shows kind of a track changes version and then I think just there was some confusion just a minute ago.

So yeah, well here it is and then we can move back to the STCI implementation analysis.

I think for folks reference.

Yes, council chair, you did.

I think you got all the critical points on what is included.

Some of those things are not reflected in this table, particularly the hazardous tree permit requirements that you note.

But I am noting in this slide where now there is kind of more.

The next item on the agenda is the ISA certified arborist.

public notice would be, there is, that is, sorry, there's another amendment, amendment four, that would create business days.

Then the substitute would also bring the penalty structure into alignment with SDOTS.

Very helpful.

Council Member Peterson, any thoughts on this?

I agree, this slide's very helpful in clearing up some of the earlier questions that, so the substitute basically addresses.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Vice Chair Morales, Council Member Nelson, Muscata, any questions from you?

I'm seeing none.

Yolanda, would you like to finish your presentation?

Sorry for interrupting.

No problem.

No.

I just wanted to highlight for the committee that we did receive some additional information between the committee the last committee meeting on this subject and today.

And that implementation memo from SEC I is attached to the memo.

I mean, the agenda.

And so SDCI anticipates that it will take about five to seven months to build the registry and associated automated features that would help with registration and creating public notices.

And also that SDCI noted that this new system needs to integrate with the overall Acela permitting system so that reviewers are able to easily confirm that tree service providers are registered as required.

The department estimates that the total cost of implementing this proposal this year will be between about $300,000 and $470,000, with roughly half of this amount supported by the general fund, and the remainder can be permit fee supported.

These costs include outreach, development of the technology to support the registry, and temporary staff to support these efforts.

The department anticipates requesting this additional general fund support in the forthcoming mid-year supplemental budget.

SDCI will then consider what, if any, ongoing staffing and funding needs might be necessary next year, and these would be included in the 2023 proposed budget.

Does anyone have any questions about any of that information?

colleagues?

Seeing none, take it away.

Okay, so I think we talked about the substitute, so I just wanted to give a chance to ask any questions.

The chair very well captured all the many different kind of big pieces there.

I want to kind of highlight the hazard just tree permit requirement one.

That one's kind of the, I would say the biggest change.

Um, and this is the city already requires that anybody removing a tree have the ISA track or tree risk assessment qualification credential.

So that is already a requirement.

Um, and, um, that.

But the change here is more around codifying some of the requirements that are in what SDCI has a hazard tree tip that that they updated a couple of years ago.

That includes this report about the health of the tree.

And but the difference here is that we would have.

If the tree that would be removed, that is also being deemed hazardous, would meet the city's definition of exceptional, this would require that there be two different registered tree service providers involved, right?

So there would be one who would independently assess the tree and submit the required application materials, and then the other tree service provider would perform the major pruning or removal.

So in no case can the, there be just one tree service provider who applies for the permit and performs the removal.

So that is a new requirement that the city does not have, but otherwise the required report, the ISA track credential, those are existing requirements.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Very helpful.

Colleagues, do you have further questions about the substitute?

I'm not seeing any.

So I think at this time, to keep us moving along, before we vote on this, just last check, Council Member Peterson, nothing more to add?

Good to go, sounds great.

I would move to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown in substitute amendment one.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown and substitute Amendment 1. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Clerk Stratus?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Wonderful.

The motion carries.

Substitute amendment one carries.

There is no amendment two.

And so we will move to Council Member Peterson's amendment three.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to describe your amendment?

Actually, if central staff would describe it, that would be ideal.

It's just a paragraph.

Sure.

Take it away.

All right, amendment three would add an additional report requirement to the subdivision, short subdivision, or boundary line adjustment process.

This would require that either a registered tree service provider or a state registered landscape architect provide a report describing how the design of a proposed subdivision supports the city's policy of maximizing retention of its existing trees.

Currently, the city only requires that a registered surveyor draw plat maps and does not require an explanation of how the plats were drawn to maximize retention of its existing trees.

We just note that the subdivision process does not involve permitting development directly, but does usually take proposed development into account, such as building footprints and vehicular access.

Thank you, Yolanda.

Council Member Peterson?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Yolanda, for that description.

Colleagues, it's just one paragraph.

You see that it's as published on the agenda today.

It's the same language that was actually in the February 3rd Central Staff Memo on the February 9th agenda.

And basically it says either a registered tree service provider or Washington State licensed landscape architect will prepare a report.

It could be less than a page.

Submit it to the director of STCI.

And that's only if there's going to be a subdivision or boundary line adjustment.

And they would simply describe how they're trying to maximize retention of trees.

It's not required that the trees be retained.

It's really just if we're trying to get at this goal of yes, yes, and yes, we can maximize units, we can maximize trees.

It's really about just being more creative and proactive early in the process, configuring the footprint of the proposed building in a way that tries to retain the trees.

So it's having trees top of mind earlier in the process.

I know that creative architects and landscape architects can get this done to maximize both units and trees.

And this is just requiring that they put down on paper how they're trying to do that.

So I would ask for your support of this amendment.

I'm happy to answer questions or try to move it first.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I have some comments, but I will wait to share them.

Vice Chair Morales, please take it away.

Well, I do have some questions about this amendment, but I don't know if you want to move the amendment first and then have the discussion.

I'm happy to do it either way.

Sure, maybe I'll share my thoughts and Councilmember Peterson, I'll let you move it and then we can take up some discussion.

And so I really appreciate Councilmember Peterson, the intent behind what you're bringing forward in this amendment today.

And I unfortunately will not be able to support the amendment today.

While I appreciate your intent to ensure we are maximizing protection of trees during subdivision process, I do believe that this change will impose added costs on housing without a new public benefit.

As we already have a requirement as part of the subdivision process that applicants must maximize the retention of existing trees.

And when SDCI reviews applications for subdivisions, one of their responsibilities is to ensure that existing trees are being retained to the maximum extent possible.

We've had so many conversations in this committee about the permitting process backlog and delays associated with our permitting process.

I can't.

I have to remain committed to those goals of moving this work forward.

And I am wary of adding another layer on today, because we do know that every time the city imposes a new requirement for permits, it lengthens the permit review times and adds another cost for producing much needed housing in the city.

And I would say that if this was not already on the books, I would feel very differently.

And I just want to center my appreciation for you Councilmember Peterson and your team for bringing this forward.

I'll let you move move the amendment if you should if you so desire.

Thank you Chair Strauss.

Yes colleagues I move amendment three to Council Bill 120207 as presented on today's agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown in Amendment 3. Before I move for a vote, we wanted further discussion.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Vice Chair Morales, please take it away.

Still on mute.

Sorry about that.

I think, so I did have a brief conversation with Council Member Peterson about this and I'm not sure if he or Yolanda would want to answer these questions, but I do have kind of some, I think some sequencing questions about what would happen if the intent here is to maximize retention of trees.

You know, then my questions are, you know, when is the report do how long do these kinds of reports take would something like this delay the project is the requirement to submit the report.

to delay or to prevent the tree from getting cut down or is it just to provide information?

So it doesn't sound to me like it's required to get approval to cut the tree down.

And so that makes me just wonder what the point is.

So maybe Yolanda, you can kind of walk me through like the sequence of what information we would gather from this and what purpose it would serve.

Sure.

So, I mean, I think this, as I had mentioned before, the subdivision process does not necessarily, it's not permitting actual development, right?

So it wouldn't permit removal of trees.

It is just kind of, that process is for a developer to show how the lots will be drawn, right?

So it's a plat map.

And then as a part of the approval of that flat map, this report would be required, right?

So prior to SDCI saying, okay, good, your subdivision looks good.

We still would, this would be a new report added to that process.

Now, in terms of what the report is exactly, that would be, that is up to SDCI.

You know, in my, And former life as a landscape architect, I could imagine writing a brief paragraph saying that this is drawn in such a way that this North lot was kind of configured so that this specific tree was.

maybe kind of in the corner versus in the center of the lot, right?

So something like that.

So I, you know, it's, it is, I think intentionally vague to give SDCI some space to decide what it is that they are, they would think is helpful in terms of decision-making and reviewing the plat map that is proposed.

Is that helpful?

Yeah, I appreciate it.

I still have similar concerns to Chair Strauss, which is that this feels like an extra layer that doesn't give us a whole lot of information and could potentially delay projects.

So I'm just not sure I can support this right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much and possible question for either the sponsor or for central staff.

It's my understanding that is currently enforcing retention policies for subdivision and boundary line adjustments.

Is that the case?

There is an existing policy at states as part of the approval process that the SDCI director shall consider how the proposal maximizes the retention of existing trees so that you are correct.

That is an existing policy.

Okay.

I to the good sponsor and for the chair and the committee, I think this is an interesting concept.

I am supportive of the intent to make sure that those retention policies are robust.

I'm hoping that this actually might be something that we could continue to flesh out a little bit more given the ongoing tree protection ordinances that we will be considering later this year.

And I'd be really interested in hearing from the department directly about to what extent SDCI is seeing maybe a problem with the current approach, whether we can look for ways to strengthen that enforcement in the upcoming tree protection ordinance, and especially how we can strengthen that without adding additional time or processes to the already existing permitting process, which we know just equals additional costs.

And if we're thinking about building things like housing, additional time and cost to that.

So I do appreciate the intent here.

I think that for me as well, the concern for amendment number three at this juncture, without that additional feedback from the department, is the potential for unintended consequences and slowing down the permitting process.

And I'm looking forward to hearing more about how we can avoid unintended impacts on cost and timeline, as well as make sure that we are protecting those boundaries.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any further comments on the amendment?

Council Member Peterson, would you like last word?

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I really appreciate the questions and the comments from all of you and Council Member Mosqueda's vision of trying to look at this in a comprehensive manner as we move forward as well.

I think one of the concerns from some of the community is that, you know, STCI is put in a difficult position.

They're required to do so many different things with the project.

And, you know, there is a whole movement out there to have trees under, you know, Office of Sustainability Environment or some single department.

And I think This was just a small step to say, let's be more mindful and creative earlier in the process so that we can do both, maximize units and trees.

That is gonna take, that won't happen on its own.

And so this was a way of doing it where you have the expertise of the landscape architect or arborist to opine briefly about how they are and that could in fact help the SDCI director make a better decision if they are informed by that expertise early on by the landscape architect or the arborist when there is a lot line adjustment, which is all this is proposing to do.

So I'm sure if this doesn't pass today, we'll see something like it again later in our process.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

And it has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown in Amendment 3. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Abstain.

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Vice Chair Morales?

No.

Chair Strauss?

No.

One in favor, three opposed, one abstained.

Thank you.

The Amendment 3 to Council Bill 120207 fails.

The motion fails.

We do, I think it has been echoed loud and clear.

We all support your intent, Council Member Peterson, and we all look forward to working with you on this further.

Our final amendment today is Amendment 4, which I'm proposing.

This amendment would change the requirement that public notice be given for three days the change from just three days before tree removal to three business days to avoid a scenario in which a notice is posted on a Friday for a Monday removal.

It also requires that the notice include additional information such as the copy of the tree service provider's registration and whether a permit is required for the removal or not.

It also clarifies that the hiring entity as in the property owner or manager is responsible for posting the notice.

Yolanda, did I miss anything with that?

One minor thing is that the tree service provider would provide said notice to the hiring entity.

So that is one small thing, but otherwise you got it all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions, discussion before we vote on this amendment?

Seeing none, it's a straightforward one, and apparently I play central staff on TV all right.

So I move to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown in Amendment 4. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120207 as shown in Amendment 4. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Stroud?

Yes.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

Amendment 4 to Council Bill 120207 passes.

We can now move to the passage of the underlying legislation.

Before I move that, are there any final comments before we vote?

And Council Member Peterson, I'll give you the last word on all of this.

Council Member Mosqueda, I see you have a hand.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I did want to take a quick second just to thank you, Mr. Chair, and also Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Peterson, thanks for your leadership between the two of you for bringing this bill forward.

And I especially want to thank you for the substitute.

I didn't really get a chance to comment on the substitute as we voted, but I think the substitute is a great combination of amendments that address some of the equity concerns that we had regarding small BIPOC immigrant-owned businesses to make sure that there was the ability to collaborate and work with certified arborists.

I also appreciate the inclusion of an option to have an arborist for retention that will achieve the same ends of having that expertise on hand while not creating a barrier for those smallest businesses.

So thanks for your work on the substitute as well.

I did want to ask Mr. Chair of central staff here something that I'm going to start doing as more of a practice in our committees that we participate in is really asking central staff to lift up before final passage.

fiscal notes so that we have an opportunity to take a look one more time at the fiscal note.

Obviously, this is something that I should have probably also called out in the initial briefing of the legislation, but we'll be doing so as just a more routine basis as we look at final passage.

So, you know, Yolanda, thanks again, Ms. Ho for talking about the fiscal note in your presentation.

You noted that depending on the extent of rulemaking by the director of STCI to implement the ordinance There may be city FTE position commitments needed to implement the registration requirement depending on the number of complaints received I'm wondering if we might just have you elaborate on that for just a quick second given the budget situation that we're all in and and in together as a city family.

We are looking forward to opportunities to mindfully move forward important legislation like this as well as couple these discussions on policy with the fiscal impact since we don't have a traditional system as Council Member Strauss I know is something you were advocating for last year to have a policy committee, then a fiscal committee, and then full council.

So would love to take a second, if you might, for central staff to help us identify any additional considerations around the fiscal note, and if there's a possible funding source.

Again, I'll underscore my support for this legislation.

This is not intended to be a roadblock or a pushing pause conversation by any means.

I do wanna make sure that folks know this is something I'm gonna be asking of all legislation.

but I thought it was a great opportunity for us to show the importance of this legislation while also lifting up the fiscal impacts and be mindful of that as we look at the constraints facing us in this upcoming budget session.

I would note that STCI is a largely permit fee supported department, and so I think I do not know to what extent they have their ways of calculating what can be general fund, what can be permit fee supported.

The hope would be that most of the FTE, you know, depending, you know, there's a body of work that I think the complaints and dealing with that may be general fund supported, but I might be getting that reversed.

But there is kind of a body of work in SDCI that cannot be permit fee supported, but the vast majority of the work there is permit fee supported.

I think that it will be good for us to understand how much of that ongoing work can be permanently supported versus, you know, kind of on the general fund.

Right.

And so that that will be, I think, to be determined as SDCI kind of gets this thing up and running and starts to see what You know what the ass of it are and all those things.

So we don't quite know.

And that's why we kind of had to wait.

So if you look at the fiscal note of this bill, it is not going to be particularly informative because I was waiting on STC eyes analysis to kind of inform help inform the council on kind of the the fiscal impacts.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm glad to know that there is a possible revenue source.

And I think that that will be helpful for the broader conversation, again, that we hope to have later this year.

Thank you very much.

I almost said vice chair.

Council Member Mosqueda, very well said.

As chair of the Finance Committee, I think that that attention is just completely spot on.

One thing that I've noticed in the tree work that we've been doing from a policy level is that when enforcement is conducted for folks that have Broken the rules cutting down trees in environmentally critical areas or without permits, there are fines levied against them, and those fines are returned to the general fund at large, rather than being retained for tree planting.

tree maintenance, or even just this work that we're discussing here.

So I think that there are more ways that we are able to protect trees and fund these programs, because what's happening right now is those fines are being levied as a deterrent, yet those dollars are not actually helping regrow our city's canopy.

Well, with that, Council Member Peterson, any final words?

I have nothing to add.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you.

I'm just very thankful for you and your team for bringing this forward and for allowing me to co-sponsor.

With that, would you like to move the bill?

I'll do it.

I recommend passage of Council Bill 120207 as amended.

Is there a second?

Seconded.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Council Bill 120207 as amended.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Five in favor, nine opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

Council Bill 120207 as amended passes and will be back before the City Council on Tuesday for a final vote.

I want to give a special, a huge thank you to Council Member Peterson, Yolanda, Toby, and Noah for all working together on this incredible work.

Thank you.

Up next is our, the next item is a resolution ratifying countywide planning policies.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item three, resolution 32048, a resolution approving and ratifying the decision of the Metropolitan King County Council to adopt a revised set of countywide planning policies.

Wonderful.

This resolution would ratify the recently adopted countywide planning policies for King County.

The city can ratify these policies by resolution or by taking no action.

We are taking up this resolution as an opportunity to be briefed on the countywide planning policies and to recognize the work that King County has done.

We are joined by Eric McConaghy from Council Central Staff.

Mr. McConaghy, please take it away.

Good afternoon.

Eric McConaghy, Council Central Staff.

Chair Strauss, you did a great job of capturing my first few bullet points.

Thank you for doing that.

This is an opportunity for the city to just recognize how the city's comprehensive planning, which, as you know, is going into a major update cycle to be voted on in 2024, that the city's comprehensive planning is nested within overall county planning and regional planning.

Members of the City Council this year and last year and for many years since 1992, as well as the city's mayor, our representatives on the Growth Management Planning Council.

And these countywide planning policies, the amendment process, went through multiple meetings at the GMPC.

And so this is sort of a culminating moment.

And since 2012, when there was the last large update to the countywide planning policies, there have been incremental changes.

Some of them have been acknowledged by the council, but by and large, they've been ratified in sort of positive silence.

In this case, this would be an active action by the council and the mayor to recognize the countywide planning policies for 2021, including the new growth targets.

There is a slide deck attached to this agenda, and I blasted right on past before asking Noah if maybe he could show it to you all.

There's a few stats in there that I might want to share with you.

I think in my haste, I didn't allow for that to happen.

So I apologize for that.

Mr. Arnott, are you able to share screen?

Here we go.

Yeah, thank you.

No, I really appreciate that.

So let's just advance sort of slowly one at a time.

Let's see what maybe the slides could add to this.

I think we're good here.

Next slide, please.

And one more, please.

Great.

So the Growth Management Planning Council directed staff of the various cities that gathered together as the inter-jurisdictional team, that's King County staff as well as city staff from the various jurisdictions, to update the CPPs using some guiding principles.

Chief among these were to use the 2012 CPPs or Countywide Planning Policies as the base to center on social equity and health, to integrate regional policy and legislative changes, to provide some clarity, make things more actionable, and then to implement the 2044 regional growth targets that come from the PSRC vision document for 2050. Next slide, please.

The GFPC, by an official motion in June of 2021, recommended these CPPs to the King County Council.

King County Council took them up in committee, made some amendments to them, and then ratified them in December of last year.

Next slide, please.

It's, I think, helpful to note that Seattle's 2019 to 2024 targets for new housing units is 112,000 and new jobs 169,500 new jobs.

OPCD, the Office of Planning and Community Development, as you know, is coordinating the work on this along with key departments like the Department of Transportation and others, Department of Neighborhoods.

I could go on and on.

It's a really integrated process.

into this effort leading to a new comprehensive plan known as One Seattle in 2024. And it's really going to sort of heat up and be more I think I anticipate being more on the agenda for this committee as directed by the chair and you all to discuss the development of that plan between now and 2024. So next slide, please.

Eric, just on that slide.

Yes, please.

As we spoke earlier, I know you might not have this information offhand.

I am curious about how the 112,000 new housing units targeted by 2024 compares to our understanding of population growth and how many new units we need.

It's my back of the envelope understanding that we need 112,000 new units every year, not 40 years.

Well, the general answer is that I can develop some more information to come back to the committee with or share that with you.

The target for, let's see if I can pull that up very quickly, the target under our current planning horizon has not been met, so that provides some context for that.

So...

And I know I asked this question just an hour or so ago, so if you need to follow up with us after...

Well, I think maybe it's helpful just to note that there was a housing unit target in the current horizon that we're in, 2015 to 2035, of 70,000 new housing units.

And with the information that I have through the end of 2021 as compiled by our planning department, we've gotten to about 49,000 of those units, to kind of give context on that.

So the thing that's interesting is that we have an overlap in these timelines and I think maybe it would be great to see in forthcoming presentations how we map from one comprehensive plan to the other for those targets.

Overall, however, the idea in the countywide planning policies is that these targets are policy statements for what the cities within the county are willing to plan for.

They're not guarantees that that number will be attained or not.

But it is a guarantee that the city will plan for that number of units as well as for jobs.

So I think more to come.

Thank you for your question.

And hopefully that context helps a little bit.

Yes, thank you.

And we can follow up after committee too.

Great, thank you.

Please take it away.

Let's see, next slide please.

That's what I thought.

Any more questions?

Yeah.

Thank you, Eric.

One last question.

Is there precedent for Seattle not ratifying these policies?

You know, I did some research along those lines in drafting the resolution, and I think early on in the development of the CPPs countywide, there was some consideration on the part of the council about some technical aspects of it that I think were resolved subsequent to that.

So I could dig into that.

That is sort of historic at this point.

We're hearing back, we meaning, you know, folks in the county overall are hearing back from various cities now about whether or not they want to ratify the CPPs.

From Seattle's point of view, they're in line with what has been planned.

Seattle staff have been engaged and Seattle's representation on the GMPC have been positive for these as we've gotten to here.

So I'm not in a place where I would recommend anything other than either approving this resolution or I'm silently letting it be ratified.

So, yeah.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Eric.

Yeah.

Colleagues, any other questions or discussion before we vote on this legislation?

Resolution.

That's resolution.

Resolution, yeah.

I am not seeing any at this time.

Eric, great work on your briefing.

I would like to now move to recommend passage of Resolution 32048. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of Resolution 32048. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Chair Stroud.

Yes and if you could call on Council Member Mosqueda one last time.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Five in favor none opposed.

Thank you the motion carries.

Resolution 32048 passes.

Thank you all.

This legislation will be at full council on Tuesday for a final vote.

Our final item of business today is a briefing.

Thank you, Eric.

Our final item is a briefing on the industrial.

I always leave with maritime and industrial strategies, but everyone keeps trying to switch it up on me.

Work that OPCD and Office of Economic and Development are doing.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

The item four, industrial and maritime strategy report.

Thank you.

We are joined by presenters from OPCD, OED, and SDOT.

Before introducing yourselves, I'll mention this was a process that was led by Mayor Durkin.

There was 87% consensus on the recommendations.

There were a few people that did not agree with the recommendations.

And what I said at the time of people voting on whether or not to support the recommendations, there were a couple of things that I needed as the chair of the Land Use Committee, which is that I needed the mayor to take serious the public safety issues occurring in the industrial area and present a plan to address it.

Secondly, that the recommendations would be taken as a whole package and not one by one, which is why we are waiting for the draft environmental impact statement appeals to be resolved before we take up the aspects of legislation that we can take up legislatively.

With all of that said, I think that it is important that members of the committee begin digesting and understanding the information within this proposal because it is a long document, because there's a lot of new information that needs to be understood, and we should get to that now because not everyone on this committee was part of that process.

With all of that said, We've got some really great folks here from OPCD.

We've got Jim Holmes.

We've got John Persak from Office of Economic Development.

And I am looking for who our SDOT liaison is not seeing at the moment.

So I'm going to pass it over to Jim.

Yeah, so take it away, gentlemen.

And Le Wu here is representing SDOT as part of our project team here.

And I'm going to share my screen to pull up a presentation.

All right, so yeah, I'm here to talk about the industrial and maritime strategy.

Today we're gonna talk about why this strategy is important, the process and implementation actions to date.

We're gonna get into with the proposed land use concepts and EIS alternatives and some of the EIS discussion.

So I think the importance of this plan is really reflected by the importance of industrial land to the city.

We have two regionally designated manufacturing industrial centers, the Ballard Interbay North End Manufacturing Industrial Center, known as the BINMIC, and the Greater Duwamish MIC.

This MIC designation is a regional designation by PSRC, as well as in our comprehensive plan.

And it gives the city priority for federal transportation funding in these areas.

Recertification of our MIC designation is due in 2025. We know that right now there's in excess of 95,000 existing jobs within our industrial mix.

Two thirds of these jobs are accessible without a four year degree.

Many remain unionized with quality benefits and starting salaries can exceed 70% of area median income in key fields.

And an important part of our industrial lands are the irreplaceable assets, the deep water port and waterways, historical investments in freight and rail infrastructure.

So the process to date, in 2016, a group was convened to really look at industrial land use around the Soto ST3 station in that area.

That work went on for a couple of years, concluded with a series of draft recommendations, which in some ways informed the next process, but those were not adopted.

The citywide strategy council, these recommendations come from was convened in the fall of 2019. It was backed by an interdepartmental team of OPCD, SDOT, OED, OSE, SPU, and other city family as needed.

The meetings were professionally facilitated.

It included four neighborhood subgroups, one for Ballard, one for Inner Bay, one for Duwamish, and one for the Georgetown and South Park communities.

And it also included engagement with BIPOC youth in the summer of 2020. In June of 2021, this group adopted consensus recommendations, 11 strategies that comprise industrial maritime strategy.

And there was some early implementation in the 2022 budget.

And we also launched the EIS addressing the land use recommendations last summer.

So the 11 strategies, and I'll keep this high level, involved investment strategies, making workforce investments to help develop a skilled workforce, to work within our industrial areas, public safety partnerships, increase public safety in our industrial areas, transportation investments, environmental initiatives, what they call the action items included a recommendation that whatever happens at the Waska site and the Interbay Armory site, that the city is committing to work in a master planning process with the state on those sites.

And finally, recognizing the need for a stewardship group to really advance the interests of our industrial areas.

The land use strategies include stronger protections for land, industrial land in our mix, promoting dense industrial development, almost industrial TOD around future transit stations, enhancing healthy transition areas.

Where are industrial areas but non-industrial areas?

I'll talk more about that in a minute.

There was a consensus that generally speaking in our core industrial zones, there would be no new residential uses.

And some select areas of Georgetown and South Park were identified for removal from the MIC to advance neighborhood goals.

So we started the EIS process last summer, in July.

Could we, sorry to interrupt, could we go back to that last slide?

I just wanted to hang on this for a minute to see if colleagues have questions on this, or would you prefer questions at the end?

I'm fine, either way.

Colleagues, I was very well versed in all of these because I was in the process where consensus came to these ideas.

I just wanted to pause here to see if there's additional information.

Vice Chair Morales, please.

Thank you.

I wonder if you could talk just a little bit more about Georgetown and South Park being removed from the MICC.

I've had lots of conversation with folks in Georgetown who are very nervous about industrial lands, the residential parts of Georgetown having industrial lands expanded into the residential area.

I know industrial folks don't want residential moving into their area.

So talk to me about that conversation about removing Georgetown.

So it wouldn't be.

It's most of Georgetown is not within the mic.

There is a small area that extends.

It's kind of bound by Airport Way, Corson and Bailey's kind of a triangle shaped area that we proposed.

We study for removal because that's really contiguous to the kind of what we think of as the Georgetown CBD.

Um, you know, it might be amenable for mixed use housing.

We haven't made that recommendation.

We have studied it, and that's what came out of this stakeholder process.

In South Park, there's an area, there's a park, and I'll show you on the map in a few slides to show the area.

It would just really bring a better connection between the park and downtown to the river's edge.

And there's small areas that I think is a total of four acres.

And that was also identified as a potential in our subgroups.

But as we'll talk, we're in the midst of doing some extensive engagement in that community.

And I think we will be able to come back with more information about various viewpoints in South Park and Georgetown on those issues.

Okay, thank you.

John, I don't know if you have anything you want to add as a resident of Georgetown to the conversation there.

I would just, uh, echo what Jim was saying and that I am unaware of anything on the table that would expand the mc boundaries into anything that is not a mc boundary.

And I just I think I wanted to highlight that and make that clear.

Thank you.

All right.

Shall I move on?

So We started the EIS process last summer.

We held scoping in the summer.

That started in early July.

During that period, we did extensive outreach to different stakeholder groups to make sure they understood the process and how to participate in the scoping process.

In early August, scoping period concluded.

We prepared the final scope for the draft EIS and work began on that.

We released the draft EIS in December, December 16th of 2021 with a 45 day comment period based on requests we received from the public.

We extended that 75 days and actually we extended it further for the Georgetown and South Park communities to April 15th.

We anticipate a final EIS will be complete late second quarter.

And following that, it's our hope that we will be able to transmit comprehensive plan amendments that would begin the implementation of the land use recommendations for this year's annual amendment cycle.

Thank you, Jim.

Real quick on that one.

Given that we saw appeals and maybe I conflated some things here in my in my earlier comments, my apologies if I did.

Just given that we saw appeals to the previous SEPA decisions on some of these recommendations, how would this timeline be impacted with any potential appeal for?

Yeah, so.

And those appeals that we received last year, we decided to withdraw the legislation, and we are studying it in this EIS, which was actually the request of the appeals last year.

But we could still get an appeal, and that would definitely add a delay.

We would not be transmitting comprehensive plan policies if we do receive an appeal on the final EIS until 2023. Great, thank you.

So we are, what the EIS is studying, what the recommendations of the stakeholder group were, was to look at three new land use concepts that would become zones in our industrial areas to replace the existing zones.

The first one is the maritime manufacturing and logistics zone.

That is really our core industrial zone.

Most land that is currently in the IG zoning category would be in this category.

The industry and innovation is really a response to what do we do about land use around future sound transit stations and industrial areas, and I'll go into more details in a few minutes, and urban industrials to really create vibrant transitional districts where industrial land transitions to non-industrial land.

So the maritime manufacturing and logistics concept, these are the core industrial areas that benefit by their proximity to the port, to that rail infrastructure, freight infrastructure.

With the stronger protections that we would be proposing through the comprehensive plan, these are areas that businesses would feel that it was economically reasonable to reinvest on site and continue operations in these areas.

The industry innovation concept is what we would place around transit stations or around some transit stations.

And this is kind of like an idea to go with industrial TOD.

So what you see in this diagram is the first few floors of these buildings are gray.

And those would be industrial space, light industrial space.

There would be development standards requiring them to be built to industrial standards.

And then as an incentive, building that is the incentive that would allow commercial development above them.

And these could be 10 to 12 story buildings with fairly generous floor plates.

And then the idea is to try to get employment density using the station.

So we would apply TOD requirements, limited parking, all the things that you would see in traditional TOD.

And finally, the urban industrial concept.

These are those transitional areas.

I think areas around like the Ballard Brewery District is a good example where you have a finer grain pattern of development and parcelization.

But you have increasingly residents from the adjacent areas coming into the industrial area.

In the case of the Ballard Brewery District, they're going to tap rooms.

There's maker spaces, there's things that draw people in rather than just traditional industrial areas.

And so we would envision better streetscape designs to eliminate safety hazards and conflicts between pedestrians and freight movement, but it will allow these areas to continue to serve the community.

So a little background on the EIS.

The EIS studies a range of alternatives, different choices that we can make to identify the potential adverse impacts on the built and natural environment.

By having a range of alternatives, we understand policy tradeoffs between the choices that can be made, the choices that you will make.

And then finally, we understand that by also including the no action alternative.

What is the impact over 20 years if nothing changes?

I'm only going to show you two alternatives, but they span the range of the alternatives.

This is the no action alternative.

As you see, 90% of the land is currently in that industrial general category.

5% is industrial commercial.

So that's this area around Expedia.

You see it in Fremont.

You see it north of I-90 here.

And then industrial buffer, which doesn't really show up great on this map.

That's the existing transitional zone.

You see it on the edge of Ballard.

Get us out of my way.

You see it around South Park, around this edge here.

You see it surrounding Georgetown.

That's 5%.

So what I'm showing you now is the alternative with the greatest amount of change.

So in this one, the maritime manufacturing and logistics zone has replaced most of that industrial general, but it still comprises about 86% of total land area.

In this alternative, the industry and innovation zone comprises about 8%.

And so you see that around the Soto Station.

It extends down to Starbucks Center, and it continues north along 6th.

You see the existing industrial commercial areas placed in this zone category because it's the closest fit.

You see it.

by a potential Ballard station, kind of using 14th Avenue as a spine.

And in this alternative, it removes focus areas of land from Georgetown, as we discussed, and South Park.

These are very small areas.

And it allows an increase while there is no new residential uses being proposed in the vast majority of the industrial areas in their urban industrial zone and two of the alternatives.

And this is the one that studies the most housing.

We would expand the caretaker's quarters provisions from one per business to, uh, you know, as high as 50 per acre, but it would need to be part of a project with industrial activity.

So in this alternative, we could see as many as 2,000 new dwelling units within the mix.

So as we've gone through this process, the Georgetown and South Park communities reached out.

They felt that they really needed a little more in terms of the kind of outreach that would help residents in those areas participate in this process.

So we extended the comment period to April 15th.

We are working with a collaboration of neighborhood organizations to reach out to residents in these neighborhoods because they experience greater impacts from proximity to industrial activity.

Next week, we will be having two community meetings, one in South Park, one in Georgetown.

We'll also be having a virtual meeting to anybody who wants to log in.

And then we're having a series of drop in hours, very informal events where it will be a couple members of city staff at a coffee shop with materials for a few hours, and people can drop by and talk to us informally and ask questions.

Um, and we are providing translation services for many of these events in Spanish, Somali, and Vietnamese.

So the next steps, we are preparing the final EIS for release at the end of the second quarter, 2022. Assuming no appeal, we would submit comprehensive plan amendments for consideration in 2022. We would prepare zoning regulations for consideration in 2023. And we would update the center's plans for the Binmik and the Duwamishmik, which is a PSRC requirement for recertification of their manufacturing industrial centers designation.

And that concludes the presentation.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Jim.

John, anything?

to add there.

You were an active participant in a different role and glad to have you in the city family to keep this move this work moving.

Uh, sure.

Council member Strauss.

Thank you.

Um, I guess the only thing I could add is more of a philosophical note, I guess.

Um, just in terms of how, uh, many of these areas of evolved over the year where you have, a conflict between the sense of place and what is actually happening in these areas versus the utility of maritime and manufacturing.

And for a number of years, we've kicked that can down the road.

And I think we've reached a point where we really need to bring out the data and to really understand what we're dealing with so that we can make a decision and resolve a lot of these longstanding differences of opinion and misunderstandings and conflicts around various places around the mix.

Also, a key part of the industrial maritime strategy is the workforce development piece, and that fortunately is not contingent on many of the outcomes in this environmental impact.

From the perspective of OED, we can do workforce development now.

We can prioritize the recommendations and the policies, the policy table that supports the recommendation for workforce development.

And we can begin to take a look at those and implement some of those and fund some of those.

So that's all I would have to say on that.

So I'll just cut it off here.

Thank you.

Well said, John, and I was on mute just a second ago as I started speaking, so thank you for those comments.

Colleagues, do you have further questions or comments?

And we can have this information back before council again.

Vice Chairman Morales, please take it away.

Thank you.

Well, Jim and John, thank you very much for being here, for sharing kind of the process that you went through and some of the initial alternatives that you're offering.

I think this is really more of a statement.

I just want to say two things.

The first is that for us as policymakers, I think it's really important that we assess the economic impact in addition to the environmental impact and the sort of industry and sector impacts in order for us to make a sound decision.

Can you talk about whether there will be any analysis of the economic impacts of these changes?

And I'm especially interested in understanding the different impacts on the two mix.

Because I do anticipate that there will be disproportionate benefits and impacts in Ballard and Duwamish.

They're very different areas.

And especially as it relates to transportation, to housing, to job growth.

I think it will be important as we move through this process to differentiate between the two parts of town.

I don't have to tell you that there is a legacy of contamination in the Duwamish.

We've got folks who do subsistence fishing in the Duwamish, and I think it's going to be important as we move through this over the next year or two to be very intentional about calling out the different impacts that these changes will have on the different communities.

Well, yeah, we have done.

an abbreviated economic study that's really about employment projections of the different alternatives.

That's on our website, and I can send that to you to make sure you have that.

A lot of the impacts, I think that you're talking about impacts on housing supply and the need for housing.

What are the impacts of increased truck traffic as these areas continue to have, you know, in terms of air quality, in terms of noise, in terms of increased workforce, in terms of open space.

Much of that is in the draft EIS and sections of the environment and and I know it's a Very dry document and I apologize for that but I If there are areas you are specifically interested in, the summary is a great map to know where to go to look in that document to get specifics.

I would also add that there's an equity analysis that shows how the impacts on different elements of the environment disproportionately affect some areas more than others, which is also a useful tool to look at.

Yeah, I think, Chair, if I may, The point I want to make is that, you know, I know we're talking about industrial area and people don't necessarily live in these areas, but they live next to them.

And so I do think it is still important to center the people who are going to be impacted by this.

You know, not just the businesses, not just Sound Transit, although the fact that there's 14 stations going through this raises a whole set of other questions for me that we can talk about later.

But I do think that calling out the differences in the way that people in the surrounding communities will be impacted, whether it's access to jobs or access to housing or health, air quality, water quality, noise, all of that is going to be different for folks in the Duwamish than it will be for folks in Ballard.

And so I don't know, maybe the chair and I can kind of play good cop, bad cop here.

But I think it's going to be important to acknowledge that and to be ready to have those conversations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

conversations will come up, although there are a few hurdles that have to be overcome before it comes to us.

And that's why I think that it's important for us to start digesting this now so that we don't try to do all of our learning right in the last minute.

So we'll probably have Jim and John back with us again before not too long, just for an update on how things are going.

Colleagues, any other questions?

I'm seeing none.

Jim, John, I really, really appreciate you coming and look forward to continuing following this work as the EIS process moves forward and we'd love to have you back.

Thank you for all your hard work on this because it's been a number of years worth of work that was put on pause by the pandemic that was restarted with a whole new set of challenges and it was incredibly impressive to see such a range of opinions get to such a high threshold of agreement, even if it wasn't the perfect solution for everyone.

And I think that that's really what compromise and consensus can can build at times.

So thank you, gentlemen, and thank you to Chase Kitchen and the mayor's office for leading this work last year and the year before.

And we'll have you back.

Wonderful.

And so, colleagues, if there's no other business, I will conclude this meeting.

Anything for the good of the order?

I am seeing none.

So this does conclude, before we conclude, I will mention that the next regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee on April 13th will be canceled.

So our next Land Use Committee will be on Wednesday, April 27th, starting at 2 p.m.

With nothing further, this does conclude the Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.

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