Seattle Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee Lunch & Learn 42619

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is Friday, April 26, 2019. It is 12.03 p.m.

And today we are having a special meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

It is a Lunch and Learn, and I am very excited about being able to host this.

I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee, and I hope to be able to be joined by some of my colleagues later on in the presentation.

Several of my colleagues were actually over at the Union Station having a conversation around the alignments for sound transit between West Seattle and Ballard.

So that conversation, as you might imagine, is going a little bit longer than we had anticipated.

So they are running a little late, but hopefully they'll be able to join us.

in due time.

So we have one item on today's agenda, and I'm really excited about this item.

We will be hearing from Puget Sound Regional Council on a presentation of the work that they have been doing over the Vision 2050 plan.

And we'll also have some community partners joining us at the table.

including transportation choices coalition future wise climate solutions and the housing development consortium to also provide us comments on how we can Better incorporate equity into our regional growth strategies across the across the region.

So Normally, we have public comment at the top of the agenda when we have items on the agenda for vote because this is just a lunch and learn and a briefing and discussion.

We will have public comment at the end of today's meeting.

So without further ado, I will have Roxanna read into the record the first agenda item, and I would invite all of our presenters who are with us today to join us at the table while she does that.

Agenda item one, regional growth and equity, vision 2050 for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

Nope.

You guys can sit any, you all can sit anywhere you are most comfortable.

All right.

Hello, everyone.

Thank you for being with us this afternoon.

So we'll just do a quick round of introductions.

You can tell us your name and your affiliation, and then we'll begin the process of going through the slide deck.

You start over here.

Sure.

Hi.

My name is Leah Missick, and I am the Washington Transportation Policy Manager at Climate Solutions.

Thank you for being here.

Hello.

I'm Brian Lee.

I'm a Principal Planner of the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Hello, Maggie Moore.

I'm an Associate Planner with the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Great.

Good afternoon.

I'm Ben Bekent.

I'm the Director of Regional Planning at the Puget Sound Regional Council.

Hi, I'm Hester Sarabren.

I'm the Policy Director at Transportation Choices Coalition.

And I'm Tiernan Martin.

I'm the Program Director for our Livable Communities Program at FutureWise.

Well, thank you all so much for being with us.

And who's going to kick us off on the presentation?

I will.

OK.

Great.

Should I just go for it?

Go for it.

All right.

So really happy to be here today.

Thank you for the invitation.

They are not as sensitive as some other microphones are in other public venues.

So.

Great.

I'll be really mindful of that.

Thank you.

So what I'll do is I'll provide a brief overview of the plan, the Vision 2050 plan, who PSRC is, what we do, why we're updating this plan, as well as how we're looking at equity really centrally in the development of the plan.

And then I'll turn it over.

I'll do that quickly and turn it over to Maggie and Brian to talk about some data we're developing, some of the analysis tools that we think are really improving the plan and will be even more helpful in its implementation.

So first off, we are the metropolitan planning organization for the central Puget Sound region.

That region is King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap counties, a region of about 4.1 million people, 82 cities and towns.

So a broad, large region.

Whenever around the country we talk about this region and the size of it compared to some other metropolitan areas, We're about the size of, bigger than the state of Connecticut, of an area that we're planning for, a little smaller than Massachusetts.

So a really varied landscape with different types of places.

As part of our work, we maintain the region's regional transportation plan, which we're required to do in order to use federal transportation dollars.

And so we grant out federal dollars for transit and other transportation projects.

But we also, under the State Growth Management Act, maintain what are called multi-county planning policies or coordinating policies under that Growth Management Act that help to guide the development of county comprehensive plans and city comprehensive plans.

So ultimately, policies in this regional plan, which is called Vision 2040 right now, but we're updating it to Vision 2050, will have an effect or an impact on the City of Seattle's comprehensive plan.

In that plan, this map depicts what we call our regional growth strategy.

The orange and non-green areas on that map are the urbanized area.

And we look at different types of jurisdictions.

So the city of Seattle is a metropolitan city.

So is Tacoma.

So is Everett.

So is Bremerton.

The main civic and cultural hubs of each of our four counties.

I'd also add that the city of Bellevue, for a variety of reasons, is also considered a metropolitan city.

The cities that are intended to accommodate the most growth over time.

The dots on this map represent designated regional growth centers.

Seattle has six of them.

And those are areas within the major cities that are intended to really be hubs of growth.

So that's the basic planning framework.

We're updating this plan and those policies.

and expect to adopt Vision 2050 about a year from now.

So presently, as Maggie will talk about, we're in a environmental review phase looking at various growth alternatives that will help guide the update of our policies.

We started out this update in a scoping process last year, about a year ago, and we heard loud and clear from the community, from our members, from discussion at our boards that equity, race equity, social equity need to be a central theme of the update of our policies, and that we need to look at our existing policies through an equity lens, look at how they are encouraging or helping to ensure equitable outcomes on a variety of topical areas, including transportation, housing, the way that land is developed, access to open space, access to jobs, and so forth.

We also were, we heard from the public and from our members that we should be identifying strategies to mitigate disparities in outcomes, growth outcomes.

And in particular, as we expect to accommodate over 1.8 million people in the next 30 years, how will that affect existing communities and what are the potentials for displacement and how can we look at that?

As part of that, we then have developed a work program at PSRC to really heighten the tools and the understanding that we have of equity.

to help our members, again, 82 cities and towns around the region, all with different capacities at the local level to put staff work to issues like this.

So to define equity and have a common understanding for all of our members as they do local planning work.

And as I mentioned before, to center equity in Vision 2050 and our other transportation plans.

So I mentioned 1.8 million people.

This is the lighter green is the historic growth in this region.

As everyone knows, we've had a very dramatic.

boom period over the last decade.

We've added over the last decade in the region over 400,000 people.

So think about a half of a Seattle within the existing urbanized area just in the last decade.

Dramatic growth that's having impact throughout the region.

We expect a similar trajectory of future growth and so we need to get out ahead of it.

One thing that we also have recognized is that With that growth will come some pretty dramatically different demographic changes.

Right now about 14% of the region's population are over the age 65. We expect that to increase to about 18%.

4% doesn't seem like a huge number, but 4% of 6 million people.

18% of 6 million people is a dramatically increase in the region's elders.

We will be much more diverse.

Over 80% of growth in the region since the year 2000 have been people of color, and that's throughout the region.

As we'll show later, that is especially evident in some of our more suburban communities.

And our households are getting smaller, and that implies some differences in housing need, housing location, choice need, and how the jurisdictions throughout the region will plan to accommodate growth and house people.

So with that, we also recognize that we wanted to dig deeper into demographics and what the change in the region will be.

And so I'll turn that over to Maggie to talk about some of that analysis.

Great.

So I am going to dig deeper into some of these demographics and the change we've been seeing.

So here in the map on the right, you can see that this is for people of color in the region by census tracts.

So those census tracts, which are the darkest blue, are over 50% people of color in the year 2000. And then as I switch it over to 2016, you can see that those census tracts, there become more of them, and they're more dispersed throughout the region.

So as Ben mentioned, kind of more outside of the really urban areas such as Seattle and into those suburban jurisdictions.

So as we go back and forth, you can really see the growth in South King County, up north in Snohomish County along I-5, and then down south into Tacoma as well.

And so in 2000, people of color represent 24% of the region's population, and in 2016, that's 35%.

And many of our jurisdictions are at or near 50% people of color.

So count cities such as SeaTac and Tukwila are in the high 60%.

There are many cities which are at or near 50% such as Kent and Renton, Bellevue and Redmond.

The city of Seattle for this data set is at 35% people of color.

And then similarly for census tracts, which are.

low income.

So we define low income as being at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.

So you can see the difference here between 2000 and 2016. And similar to the change in people of color, the people census tracts which are at or over 50% people with low income is increasing and becoming more dispersed throughout the region.

And so in 2016, people with low income represent 24% of the region's population, and that's nearly 1 million people.

of our regional population.

Maggie, can you remind us in terms of dollars what the 200% of the federal poverty level is?

I am not sure at that number.

It changes for household size.

That's all right.

I thought maybe you had it at the top of your head.

I think it's about 21,000.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

And then, as Ben mentioned, we've been using this demographic information in a lot of the data we produce at PSRC in the implementation of our regional plans.

So recently we released the Vision 2050 Draft Supplemental EIS.

It's out for public comment now for a few more days.

And this plan evaluates the environmental effects of the three regional growth alternatives.

And those alternatives are, I'll review them briefly because they'll come up again, but that document really goes more into depth on them.

So the three alternatives are stay the course, which is a continuation of Vision 2040. It's our no action alternative.

There's transit focused growth, which puts more of the region's residents around high capacity transit station areas.

And those are light rail stations, commuter rail, ferry, and BRT stations.

And then there's reset urban growth, which disperses growth throughout the urban growth area and puts more growth into rural and unincorporated areas than the other alternatives.

And as part of this EIS, we also have the equity analysis, which is an appendix.

And this includes demographic information similar to what I showed, but also a lot more of it.

I think there are over 30 maps in that document, so there's a lot to dig into.

And it also measures impacts on specific geographies, which I'll go into in the next few slides.

And it introduces some new and updated tools, which Brian will talk about a little later.

So for the equity analysis, we look at the impact in areas with high concentrations of low income and residents and people of color.

So these maps show those census tracts which are over 50% low income and the map on the left, the pink census tracts there.

And then the map on the right, the orange census tracts are those which are over 50% people of color.

And then, so this is present day demographics.

We can't look at demographics in the year 2050, so we use these present day numbers to look at what the impacts on these communities may be with this additional growth under these three alternatives.

So here is an example of one of the measures that's included in that equity analysis.

So this is looking at the percentage of population and employment in proximity to high capacity transit in the year 2050. So I'll break this down a little bit.

You can see in that graph we have the three alternatives, stay the course, transit-focused growth, and reset urban growth.

The green bar on stay the course shows that 48% of the population and jobs in census tracts, which are greater than 50% people of color, are in proximity to high-capacity transit.

So this isn't looking at specifically the people of color who live there, it's all of the people and jobs in those census tracts.

So you can see under all three of these growth alternatives, the people and jobs in the census tracts which are greater than 50% people of color, there's a higher percentage of them who have proximity to, are in proximity to high capacity transit.

So this is a little complicated and a lot to look at.

So I used the exact same measure to show how we did this analysis also for those census tracts which are greater than 50% low income.

And this one has a similar result.

The people and jobs living in census tracts which are greater than 50% people with low income have a higher percentage which are in proximity to high capacity transit.

And I would remind everybody that is based on the assumption that demographics do not change.

And it's also based on that we will implement our planned transit improvements that are currently in our long-range transportation plan.

So the full implementation of Sound Transit 3, obviously Sound Transit 2, all of King County's bus rapid transit lines and so forth.

Yeah, and that's a great point in that this is kind of a proxy for looking at demographics.

We're using present day information, which is one reason why we've developed or updated some of our other tools to look at these analyses.

So Brian is going to talk about the development of those.

Great, thank you.

You can leave it there for now.

So what Maggie described is basically an explicit consideration of areas today where there are concentrations of people of color and low-income residents.

As part of the 2050 work, in addition to that focus, we developed two mapping tools, basically to help advance our understanding of disparities at the regional level, as well as to help focus attention on places and communities where we would expect mitigations and improvements may be needed.

The first tool that we'll look at is called Opportunity Mapping, and this tool basically assess the amount of opportunities that exist in neighborhoods today.

This tool first developed in 2012 as part of a partnership called the Growing Transit Communities.

where we analyze a range of factors that represent access to opportunities, which represent, which research has demonstrated to play an important role on positive life outcomes.

As you can see on the slide, there are five factors, there are a range of factors grouped into five areas, education, jobs, housing and neighborhood qualities, transportation, and health.

So as part of the 2050 work, we updated this index that was first developed in 2012 with the most recently available data to basically refresh our understanding of who has access to opportunities, rich areas, and who does not, and where there may be needs for improvements in opportunity-poor areas.

So this map is the updated index where the darker colors are areas with very high opportunities and the lighter colors are the ones with very low opportunities relative to each other.

So these are places today and in a planning applications, we're basically looking at considering the three scenarios that Maggie described and where growth may take place in each of the three alternatives for analysis in the draft supplemental EIS.

Other applications that we've used this for is to help facilitate board discussions and to help develop regional policies to mitigate and provide additional access.

This is also one of the factors in consideration for project prioritization.

in our transportation funding, as well as our criteria for selection for funding.

And then lastly is also a factor that's used in the Washington State Housing Finance Commission's program for multifamily housing bonds with low income housing tax credit.

The second mapping tool is a new one for us called Displacement Risk Analysis.

With the tremendous amount of growth expected, we wanted to help ensure that that growth can occur without displacing existing residents.

So what this tool does is to identify areas that are at greater risk of displacement based on today's neighborhood conditions.

We reviewed a whole bunch of tools that were developed across the country.

We looked at best practices, and what we found were similar approaches that vary depending on data availability and what the stakeholder values.

And ultimately, we decided to piggyback on something that the city of Seattle did in the 2035 growth and equity work.

We found that it was a very good piece of work and it already has a lot of components that are relevant to us.

We are basically, because of this, embarked on an ongoing collaboration with the Office of Planning and Community Development here to help each other.

Anything that we can get our hands on as far as data is concerned could be useful for the city and the methodological advancements that the city make could help us keep our tools up to date.

And so on this slide, similar to the opportunity mapping, there are five areas in which are considered to be indicators of risk of displacement for people living in those areas.

First, we want to know who lives there and some of the characteristics of people who are at greater risk of displacement, the transportation and neighborhood qualities, some housing characteristics, as well as civic engagement.

So what this map shows are areas where the green have lower risk of displacement, the yellow is moderately higher, and then the orange is the higher level of displacement.

The risk of displacement doesn't mean that displacement will necessarily happen, but if there are areas in which there are certain qualities where if the right conditions occur and the amount of growth that we may expect are concentrated in those areas, there may be causes for concern and where we need to focus on mitigation.

So...

Brian, on this particular slide, I think if we were to lay over the areas of opportunity that you all identified in previous slides, we would see that the displacement risk is most significant and pronounced around those areas where there are also high opportunities.

And obviously that's a huge concern for a city like Seattle that really wants to make sure that we are making room for new residents while also not inadvertently displacing generational residents from our city.

So I appreciate the deep dive on the risk analysis and hope that maybe we can get a slide that incorporates sort of that layering over of the opportunity areas relative to what we're seeing this map show in terms of the risk of displacement.

Sure.

And we don't have that here, but you're perfectly on point.

Some of these tools, when they're looked at in isolation, are not as powerful as when they're considered together.

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate that.

Yeah.

So just moving on, this work is being used in our Vision 2050 plan, and we're providing technical assistance to local jurisdictions.

I've met with various arms of King County, including King County Metro and the long-range planning King County Housing Authority in terms of some of the planning exercises that they're doing, where they're concerned, they have equitable concerns as well as concerns for displacements.

And then the last slide that I'll go over are some of the draft policies within Vision 2050 where we're using these tools to specifically call out items that are of interest for equity reasons.

We're explicitly kind of considering the displacement of marginalized residents and businesses.

We're calling on local jurisdictions to engage in equitable community planning.

And also when we're considering access to opportunities with respect to transportation, how do we connect low areas with low opportunities to places with high opportunity, that they do so in ways that we can maximize that access while minimizing and preventing negative impacts on marginalized populations.

So I'll close out, but before I do, one thing that's important.

Is this not?

Yeah, okay.

It's important, looking at this map, it's important to see, you know, oftentimes people think of the fastest growing parts of the region, like Seattle, as having the most potential for displacement as growth continues to occur.

But one thing for us as a regional organization, it's important to talk to all of our members and to say, one, If people in Seattle, say, are being displaced, one, where might they be displaced to?

And then also, what pressures might that pose for some of our other member jurisdictions?

If you look at the map, Tacoma, which has struggled over the years but is beginning to really have its own boom, a lot of development downtown.

The UW campus downtown has completely transformed what was formerly a fairly derelict warehouse district into a really vibrant new part of downtown Tacoma.

You can see that those parts, if you know your geography, those parts of Tacoma, the communities that are living there today are also at high risk of displacement as growth happens over the next several decades.

It's important for us, as Brian mentioned in the policies that he, those draft policies that he reviewed very briefly, to think about how throughout the region, and this is, we need a regional response to these sorts of pressures, regional tools, regional resources.

As I mentioned earlier, some jurisdictions are very small.

I think our smallest jurisdiction index is about 180 people, right?

I don't know that there's much risk of displacement there, but they have their own issues.

And so we need to think about what those regional responses and resources are.

And a role that we have at PSRC is to highlight these issues, to encourage that conversation amongst our members, to research best practices.

And so to that end, we're really trying to institutionalize this approach to being explicit in how we evaluate or or consider equity at PSRC.

We've already mentioned that we're centering this within our regional plans and policies, but very importantly right now we have We're recruiting for a new staff position, a managerial staff position to be the lead person at PSRC to shepherd these sorts of conversations amongst our members and to lead the work across our agency in developing new tools and data and working with community partners and engaging with our member jurisdictions.

So we're really excited about that.

It's a huge advancement and that has not only the full support of our management, but of course of our boards.

This is one thing we heard back in that scoping process for Vision 2050 was that you need to really center this and resource it and make sure that there are folks that have the ability to have this as their portfolio at PSRC.

I'd also mention as part of that where I don't know if how many people are aware of this organization, but there, it's an initiative of Race Forward, formerly of the Center for Social Inclusion.

There's the Government Alliance on Race and Equity, and it's a national organization that works with members of the public sector to create, well, to conduct trainings, to create peer learning cohorts.

They have national resources available, and so we've recently become members of GARE.

and will be participating in a Northwest Learning Cohort.

There are members you can see listed on the second bullet.

These are the ones we know of right now who will be participating in this work, but those include King County, the City of Linwood, Port of Seattle, City of Seattle will participate, the Seattle Housing Authority, City of Tacoma, and Tukwila.

But also, this cohort will have members from Oregon as well.

Metro, which is the equivalent organization in Portland, Oregon, to PSRC, Lane County, and others.

And so we're really excited to be part of a cohort that will learn from one another and have sessions like this, talking about tools that they're developing or issues that they are identifying in their jurisdictions.

Do you think I could add two things to this slide?

Absolutely.

The first is also just to kind of explain why some non-PSRC folks are up here, is that a couple years ago, TCC and some other organizations worked with PSRC to develop a space and a group that we've been calling the Community Partners, which brings together advocates from a range of sectors and throughout the region that really are focusing on health, equity, and the environment.

And so, we've been meeting about quarterly, and staff has given us time to provide feedback and really dive deeper on some issues.

I think a lot of folks, for a lot of folks, PSRC is kind of a a mystery and difficult to navigate, and it's hard as kind of a person from the general public to engage.

And if you're not lucky enough to have a seat at kind of the board decision-making tables, then there's not necessarily a lot of ways to engage.

So, one of the things that PSRC has done is given us staff and time and a really good chance to kind of dive deep on some of the issues.

Climate solutions and future wise have been really active in that space.

And so that's one of the reasons we've been here is because we've been working on these things alongside.

And then the second is we were really pleased as part of that work that PSRC hired an equity consultant for help on this vision plan to do some research and some focus groups.

And so that was really nice to see some dollars invested into that effort.

And maybe at some point you can also talk about some of the recommendations that came out of that.

Yeah, I can mention a couple.

And so what we did was we hired a group to look not only at what we were doing at PSRC, what we have been doing in terms of our approach to analysis or what our policies look like, but to look around the country and look at peer organizations, how has this been tackled in peer regions like Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area, the Twin Cities, LA, San Diego, other places around the country.

And one thing that we were pretty gratified was to see that we weren't I would say, too far behind our peer organizations.

We've been doing good work and pursuing paths that our peer organizations are.

But they also then looked at some places where we could improve.

And one of them was to have some dedicated staffing.

So to date, we've sort of through different projects, different people at PSRC have taken the lead, whether it be for data or policy.

And now to have a dedicated and resourced position, permanent position within PSRC to mind this topic and this issue was one of the recommendations.

Another was to continue to engage with community partners on a regular basis and really make sure that we're hearing from people themselves.

I'm trying to think of some of the other recommendations.

You may have them, or you may remember some of them.

Yeah, another big recommendation was to, that mainly came from the focus groups that the consultants put together, was to make our data more available.

So PSRC produces a lot of data, and sometimes even as staff it's hard to know what we have available and where to find it.

So, trying to make that as easily accessible as possible.

And that's something we're working on moving forward, especially with this opportunity mapping and displacement risk, making it available to our member jurisdictions who may not have the same amount of staff who can make these tools themselves, but also to different stakeholders and community groups.

I think another one was around.

Oh, sorry.

Is that better?

Oh, okay.

was around how do we not just have equity dedicated staff but really frontline community representation and input throughout the whole process.

I think the group of community partners is groups that are kind of well resourced to do this work and not necessarily working or representative community or community-based organizations, but I believe there are some recommendations around having something like the regional equity network that was in place during the growing transit communities work, where we could have kind of dedicated space to have those conversations and really have frontline community experience.

I also think, you know, among the advocates and the staff and the board really looking around and seeing that we're a predominantly white group and figuring out ways to ensure that the folks that are there are well up to speed and versed in these kind of things.

I think it's awesome that the staff gets to participate in the GARE cohort, but thinking about how we can bring board members along and then continue to kind of diversify within the groups that are doing this work.

Just to build on that, one point is that with the great new tools that are coming online and being made Oh yeah, I'm Tiernan Martin, and this is Hester Cerebrin.

She's with Transportation Choices Coalition, and I'm with FutureWise.

You can just mention in one phrase what your group does, that would be super helpful.

Oh sure.

Why don't we, thank you, from the audience.

Why don't we, it seems like we're at a good place to transition from the presentation and really provide some of the community partners and leaders at the table an opportunity to talk about how they've been engaging in the work and from what space they are entering into that work.

I think that would be a really, this is a good opportunity for us to shift.

So, Ternan, you were already starting, so why don't we go ahead and start with you.

You can tell us, remind us who you are, the organization that you are with, and fundamentally sort of what is the goal, that you all are trying to accomplish, and any sort of other remarks you'd like to share with us here.

Great.

Great, thanks.

Yeah, so I'm Tiernan Martin.

I work with FutureWise, which is a environmental nonprofit organization that works on land use planning throughout the state of Washington.

So our organization started back in the early 90s when the State's Growth Management Act was enacted, and we have sort of played a shepherding and stewarding role for that particular law over the past nearly 30 years.

My role at FutureWise is to support our urban work and sometimes that takes the role of data analysis, sometimes it's more community engagement work, other times it's providing policy expertise.

So to work with a regional planning organization like the Puget Sound Regional Council is something that's very high priority for us, and the opportunity to sort of collaborate with other issue-focused organizations like Climate Solutions, Transportation Choices Coalition, the Housing Development Consortium, and others is something that we are very eager to do, and it's been a really good experience so far.

The workshops that Puget Sound Regional Council has put on I think led by members of GARE in the past, were really excellent sort of clearing houses for the different ideas of how to pursue racial equity in regional planning.

And so we've been very supportive of that work continuing.

We're really happy to see that you're hiring an equity manager and we're curious to know sort of what their scope of work will be, what their sort of budget may be.

But one of the sort of comments that I wanted to point out is related to the displacement risk analysis.

One of the strengths of the method that you all used is it takes lots of different indicators of displacement risk and combines them together so we can have a very clear picture of where the risk is high and where it's low.

One of the downsides of that is that you might have displacement being driven by different things in different communities.

In one place it may be that there's a light rail station coming in and there's a big development boom around that.

In another place it may be a new employer just moved there or lots of other reasons.

And so I would hope that in addition to making those great maps available, you'll help member jurisdictions and the communities that they represent analyze what particular displacement mitigation solutions are best suited to their conditions.

And I think that a key role in that will be having a dedicated staff member, but it will also be about making inroads into those communities and working with their community leaders who really understand the on the ground conditions in a way that And frankly, census data is not ever going to be able to reflect.

And so while it's great to be part of the community partners group, I would really be interested in seeing ways that we can expand the membership of this group to include some of those community leaders who have a place based understanding of what they're facing, because future wise doesn't.

I'll just quickly respond to that.

I think that's a really excellent point.

At the regional scale, things look very different than, say, the Seattle application of a displacement risk analysis and then what Tiernan's referring to at the neighborhood level.

So one example that's fresh in my mind is that I recently met with planners from King County who are looking at certain unincorporated areas.

And technical assistance in the clearinghouse role that we play is sharing the data, but then us assisting them in understanding what went into these measures and how they can augment what we have with their on the ground information for their specific purposes for the communities that they're specifically looking at.

And so what we would try to do is provide that technical assistance that combine with their knowledge for their specific planning goals.

And what we're hoping to do is with other communities that are interested in this topic.

That's great.

I'm really, I think that's such an excellent point, Tiernan, around really sort of producing the data is one thing, but then trying to figure out how, what do you do with it?

How do you interpret it?

How do you analyze it?

for lack of a better term, manipulate the data to really sort of begin the process of identifying some place-based solutions is really an important part of producing the data in the first place.

And so I appreciate that perspective.

Is there anything else you wanted to add before we go around the table?

No, I'll let it go around the table.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

And I just wanted to acknowledge that I've been joined by my colleague, Council Member O'Brien, who I'm sure can assure us in a moment that he has fixed all of the issues related to the alignment on Sound Transit between West Seattle and Ballard.

I think they're going to open up Sound Transit 3 this afternoon.

Excellent.

I knew that I left things in good hands.

Hester, do you want to provide us some remarks, reactions, suggestions, comments, anything else that you think would be really important for us to to learn and understand as part of this body of work.

I mean, I think I gave some of my comments already, but just for the record, my name is Hester Sarabren.

I'm the policy director at Transportation Choices Coalition.

We are a statewide transportation advocacy group.

We really focus a lot on transit, but also healthy, sustainable, equitable transportation.

So really trying to root our policy recommendations and advocacy in transportation justice.

And we do, again, work at the state, but also largely in Puget Sound region, Sound Transit District, Puget Sound Regional Council District, King County, Seattle.

So, yeah, all that.

Sharon, sorry, my back is a little bit to the audience here, but my name is Leah Misick, like I said earlier, and I am the Washington Transportation Policy Manager at Climate Solutions.

Climate Solutions is a regional environmental nonprofit, and as our name suggests, you know, we are interested in finding solutions to the climate crisis that we are facing.

We work in Washington and Oregon.

And our mission is to accelerate just and equitable clean energy solutions to the climate crisis.

And one of our values is justice.

And so as we face the climate crisis, we want to make sure that the policies that we're advocating for help.

with a just transition and make sure that we leave, you know, we're creating a system that is not just better for the climate but better for everybody than it has been before.

And so, you know, this work obviously intersects a lot with what climate solutions does and what I personally do with a focus on transportation in that this kind of long-range planning obviously has huge social climate and environmental ramifications.

And we just want to make sure that as we're talking about, for example, displacement in the environment, these things interact with each other really closely and they create feedback loops, actually, and they can create negative feedback loops that have even, you know, further negative consequences for climate, for folks, for folks who are being displaced, for marginalized communities.

And so, you know, we're involved in these discussions just because we wanna make sure that we have both the qualitative and quantitative information to address this and to make sure that as our region grows, it's gonna be more sustainable and more equitable.

So, yeah.

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you have any comments or reactions that you would like to share with us?

I know that you are both on the executive board for PSRC and our lead here in the city on transportation and sustainability and I know that you are sort of also leading the efforts to draft a letter of comment as it relates to the vision 2050.

Sure, thank you.

Yes, in addition to the Executive Board of PSRC, I'm also on the Growth Management Policy Board of PSRC and the Transportation Policy Board of PSRC, so it's kind of my job away from a job a little bit.

I know, it's funny how that happens.

It is funny.

And I have been involved in the process of drafting a letter.

I will be honest that our amazing staff folks are the ones that are putting together those points who I'm relying on to really help guide through this.

I'll just say that The work around Vision 2050 is critically important, and Council Member Gonzalez, I really appreciate you holding this forum here.

People, for whatever reason, tend to not always see the conversations we have down at PSRC, and I think it's important to be able to daylight that here.

And it's great to have so many folks in the audience here today, too, and hopefully tracking along on TV.

There's a lot of growth coming to the city.

You know, we talk about the big numbers.

It's great to look at the graph and recognize that we've actually been growing pretty consistently, pretty rapidly for, you know, 40 years.

And what we're talking about is like, is it really going to grow that much?

It's like, well, that's just pretty much continuing what we've been doing for the last 40 years.

And so, you know, we'll have lumps and chunks and all those things that will happen, but it's a desirable place to live.

There's a lot going for it, and there's a lot of challenges.

I think what's critical in Vision 2050, and I really appreciate the agency, PSRC, and the great work we've done.

And I also want to emphasize having Governing for Racial Equity help with framing that and that they're hiring an equity director at the agency is an outstanding step.

And then also recognize at the end of the day that agency is led by elected leaders throughout the four-county region.

There's always a tension between staff leading the electeds and electeds leading the staff, and I think staff does an amazing job down there, and working with local jurisdictions too.

The Vision 2050 is an opportunity for us to really understand what has worked well and what has not worked well in this recent period of growth and pivot.

And I'll just say that it's been amazing to be in the city in this last period of growth.

There is no doubt that there has been a ton of opportunity generated and massive amounts of wealth created.

And we look at the data here, you know, low-income households have continued to increase.

And you look outside, and it's very clear that there's a growing, well, obviously learned homelessness, but just poverty and the risk of displacement, the fear of displacement, and actual displacement that's happening at an unprecedented level.

And this idea that we can be an inclusive city with a bunch of opportunity and a bunch of prosperity that's shared, I think we're failing at.

And as we look at where do we go as a region in the future, and this isn't just a Seattle thing, it affects everyone in the region, getting that right is really important.

Now, there's a lot of things.

PSRC is probably not going to drive national tax policy.

But we know that how we choose to grow as a region, how we accommodate that growth, Housing has a lot to do with access to opportunities, as does a transportation investments and how you access those opportunities, whether they're walkable or across the street on a light rail to a job or education or clean air or whatever it is.

And so this work is really fundamental to what's going to happen.

And it gets a ton of attention from a lot of people, a lot of amazing organizations in town that really work on this.

including the government agencies.

But oftentimes I think the general public isn't aware of this going on.

So I don't have anything more specific to say other than how important this work is.

I think it's heading in the right direction.

And I think one of the challenges at the elected level, and I'm going to look to an elected official who will definitely be here next year, coming from one who won't be here next year, elected official, you know, how we continue to show up at those various board meetings and make sure that we're continuing to elevate voices that often, well, certainly most people just don't, you're not aware and certainly don't have the time and capacity to come down and testify there.

But as elected officials, how do we make sure that our fellow elected officials throughout the region are, who I believe share in our values, really will commit to them.

Well, thank you.

That's really wise remarks and wise counsel for this council member who will continue to be here in the next year.

So I appreciate all of the work that you've done, Council Member O'Brien, to really make sure that the City of Seattle's values and perspectives are being advocated for in this regional context.

And, you know, I continue to believe that it is really important for us.

When we look at the maps around the opportunity mapping, which was slide 16 of the presentation, and we compare that to and look at also slide 18 around the displacement risk analysis, it really does paint the picture of how regional this issue is around growth and the impacts, potentially negative impacts of the growth and the opportunity that our region continues to experience.

And when we talk about the region, we are talking about four very large counties in the state of Washington, Kitsap, Snohomish County, King County, Pierce County.

Having spent a lot of time in all of those, in addition to a lot of counties on the other side of the mountains, you know, you can go to places in Pierce County that are very different than Tacoma, and you can go to places in Kitsap County that are very different than, you know, Bremerton.

You can go to places in Seattle that are very uniquely different than North Bend or Issaquah, right?

But you're still in that county, and same is true for Snohomish, right?

But I think what is common and true is that the entire region is at risk of building a future for people who are here currently now, but might not be if we don't plan accordingly.

And that is really an important value for us to continue to talk to.

other member cities and throughout the region to make sure that we are all understanding how this impacts all of us and it's our shared responsibility to really struggle with it.

I really want to thank you all for the work that you've been doing at the Council.

I've been a member of the Operations Committee and an alternate member of the Executive Board since I was first elected in 2015. I, however, only went to my first Executive Board yesterday, so I handed in my...

cashed in my alternate chit and actually attended.

And I think, to Councilmember O'Brien's point, it was remarkable to me that Out of all of the folks who attended who are all elected officials sitting at the board table, I was by far the youngest person and I was the only person of color.

And it's interesting to be in those spaces as a woman of color who is definitely on the younger side, who relies heavily on all of the things that we're building and constructing throughout the city through this regional planning, and to be sitting at a table where that's not necessarily the representative And so, I really appreciate the staff's willingness to continue to engage with me around some of these issues that are really important to me that I know are also important to you all.

And I want to continue to commit to being a good regional partner to all of these other jurisdictions who we share this responsibility with and who I believe, I have hope that we will continue to be able to work together to really identify solutions that work for our individual communities while still having that common shared vision of what we're trying to accomplish for the whole region.

And then lastly, I'll just say that I really want to thank the community partners, Hester in particular from TCC who reached out and said, hey, I have thoughts about PSRC and you're on the operations committee.

Would you talk to me about it?

And I said, oh my gosh, of course I will.

And she really put this issue on my radar around why Vision 2050 is important and why the work around the equity space is particularly vital and critical to any identified solutions through this process.

And so I really want to thank you Hester and TCC for making sure that I was aware of the importance of this issue and that I was paying attention to the granular details.

She even provided me a chart that broke down exactly what PSRC does.

which was amazing.

I was like, oh my god, I've been doing this thing for three years, and I just figured this out.

So really, truly, just thank you to the community partners.

Really appreciate all of the work that you all have been doing in this space, not just in this context.

in just the broader context for many, many, many years, the work that your organizations have been doing to push us as elected officials to be, and as government employees, to be radical thinkers and more radical thinkers in this space is super important.

And when I think about the Vision 2050, I'm always like, gosh, I hope we're still here in 2050. And I think we have some clear opportunities to be more radical to really save not just our planet, but to save the people who we love and ourselves from really destroying ourselves by not doing planning in a more sustainable way.

So really, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you all taking the time to be with us and to share with the audience all of the work that you all have been doing and looking forward to continuing to partner on this issue and beyond.

Any other closing remarks from you all?

Thanks for the opportunity to be here.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, just thank you for the kind words.

And we're really excited about this work.

We think it is necessary.

And we're also excited to see that our board members are taking it very seriously and that this is, it seems to be a shared value across all of our board members and they've asked for it.

And so we're just excited to keep moving forward.

That's awesome.

Well, thank you all so much.

It is just a, yes ma'am.

Sure, go ahead So We have a question from the audience about how the Opportunity mapping, is that what it is?

How the opportunity mapping correlates with transportation planning.

And zoning.

Yeah, so I would, do you want to answer, Brian?

Go ahead.

I would just say, this has been, it feels weird to be speaking from my back to you.

I know, it's an awkward setup.

So zoning isn't taken into account explicitly as in the development of this opportunity mapping.

The opportunity mapping is more outcomes based, so observe data about positive life outcomes and there are things in there like housing quality, crime within neighborhoods, proximity to parks and things like that, but we don't look specifically at the zoning that might have created those conditions.

Transportation is definitely part of that evaluation.

So what type of access to transit does a community presently have?

What are the costs?

Who is walking within a neighborhood and so forth?

So there's a relationship there to transportation outcomes, but not to, even necessarily, this is looking at observed conditions and what that means for how people are experiencing their lives within those communities.

Great, thank you so much.

Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and end out the presentation because I have to do a public comment and I have committed to end today's meeting at one o'clock.

So we only have one individual who signed up for public comment and that is Teresa Barker.

Okay, I've never done this before, so thank you very much.

And my timer is there, correct?

Okay, so my name is Teresa Barker.

I'm a resident of Seattle.

I was born in Tucson, but my dad moved here, the family here, when I was three for a job at Boeing in the early 60s.

I've been helping organize a group of 80 to 100 North End neighbors, 120, that have been meeting with city representatives on the mayor's office on social equity and justice issues in housing.

And I've been following the Council Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing Affordability Sessions, which is great work.

So I also have a doctoral degree, and my work is in engineering, and we did research into environmental sustainability and manufacturing.

So at that time, I reviewed the City Council's Zero Carbon Plan, which I'm not quite sure what the name of it was a few years back.

And I just wanted to comment that I, one of my comments is that I support and I'm excited about the direction of this thoughtful growth with regard to incorporating social justice issues as well as climate change issues.

And I, before I heard the presentation today, I wanted to state the importance of local and block-wise services in reducing carbon emissions.

So groceries, dry cleaners, the kinds of thing we used to have along Stoneway and along Roosevelt Way.

And for example, we still see Infini-Ridge in Columbia City.

It's wonderful just to be able to have more than just brew pubs and day spas and Pilates studios.

So walkability being the key, I think someone mentioned here.

And then after hearing the discussion, I was concerned about kind of a larger issue of displacement.

We're having homes and low cost multifamily residence knocked down in our community.

And I just want to want to continue to support thoughtful and sustainable approach to development that the council is working on now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Teresa.

Really appreciate your engagement.

It's always scary to show up for the first time and then just dive on in and give public comment, but I think you've done a pretty good job today.

So thank you for being with us and for sharing your comments with us.

We as elected officials and just members of the general community really appreciate hearing directly from folks who care about these issues.

So thank you so much.

That was the only person we had signed up for public comment.

Is there somebody who didn't get a chance to sign up that would like to provide us some comments?

All right, we got lots of hands up in the air.

So we're gonna go ahead and ask folks to come on up to the microphone.

If they're interested, you can begin by sharing your name and then providing us your testimony.

Great my name is Carrie Campbell and thank you for this today this was great opportunity and I just be really quick.

I just want to invite you when you're looking at equity and your plans for the future that we consider art. in some of those areas.

You're looking at your opportunity gap, that slide, I think it was slide 18, that art actually touches every one of those areas that you're looking at.

Art helps with health.

Health art is important in our economic growth more than 70% of people that have moved here in the last five to ten years Indicate that art is one of the reasons they move here It's also an employer of this area it improves the health of certain areas in your housing so bus stops corners that are getting trashed.

What do people do?

They bring art to that area.

And arts education.

So I would just argue that it's missing, and I would love to see it included.

Great.

And remind me, what's your name?

Carrie Campbell.

Carrie.

Carrie, I appreciate you bringing that up.

We talk a lot about the creative economy, and that definitely hits a lot of the bells around living wage jobs.

Many of those creative economy jobs are union jobs.

and they pay living wages, and I really appreciate you highlighting the fact that we have, as a city, we have an Office of Arts and Culture, and we really prioritize recognizing the contributions that the creative economy has in our state, and certainly in our city, so thank you.

All right, we have another person coming up.

And just because we need to make sure we have the public record of folks who have signed in to give public comment, if after you have given your public comment, if you can sign up on that sheet, that'd be great.

But let's start off with your name, and we'd love to hear from you.

My name is Walt Saveland.

I'm a retired demographer and social statistician.

And I came to this meeting because I saw PSRC and I wanted to come and see what they had to say.

The adding of equity to their forecasting work is an enormous undertaking.

I appreciate how difficult it is because I had occasion among many other people to criticize Mayor Murray for his comprehensive plan and his poor forecast, under forecasting of growth to 2035. And I brought along a table, which I can leave with the young lady here about that.

And I would be very interested to see the draft forecast.

If you've gotten the draft forecast, I'll leave my coordinates.

The first forecast number, I believe, in the previous forecast was 2020, which was way in the future, so it was necessary to interpolate to the present time, and that's what my table talks about.

So I'll be looking forward to more information.

Thank you.

Great, thank you, Walt, for joining us.

I'm happy to have Roxanna, the clerk, take whatever information you'd like to share with us.

All right, next up.

Should I wait for the timer to start?

Yeah.

There you go.

My name is Polly Membrino, and I have just a couple of comments from listening to you all.

My first is, I guess, concern around how you look at low-income data moving forward, especially if, ideally, we're kind of pairing these strategies with bringing people out of low-income status.

And so I guess just kind of have a concern around how you can track the difference between low-income households being pushed out of city limits versus low-income households rising out of that status.

I think that's something that gets easily lost in census data and something worth looking into.

And then also, I just want to kind of make a note that I think other people mentioned, but the difference between PSRC's board vision on equity versus Frontline Community's vision on equity.

I think it's great that board members are pushing for that, but it might not be the same outcomes that people who are actually impacted want.

And so just making sure that you are building relationships with community and making sure that those people's comments are incorporated.

And then just how to make the Vision 2050 more nimble because I think as we bring in new strategies on income and like if we have guaranteed basic income between now and then or if we have major mass transit that changes everything before 2050 or in the meantime, how can you kind of change that document, make it more of a living document, and be able to change strategy in a way that makes sense for the actual outcomes that we see over the next few decades.

And oh, and then my final two cents on the third option, PSRC option for resetting urban growth boundaries, I think is really dangerous because it can really encourage sprawl.

And we have great urban growth boundaries set up from decades earlier, and I think we need to focus more on equitable growth in our city limits rather than pushing people and taking away our rural areas and our farming communities.

Thank you.

I think you just spoke future-wise language by talking about sprawl and preventing it.

Let's talk later.

Great questions.

Thank you so much.

Okay, next up.

Hello, my name is Erica Thomas.

I'm a relatively recent graduate within the past few years and I have worked in retail up until recently but I'm now an archaeologist.

I wanted to actually first agree with what Polly said about the third option being dangerous and I think that the second option is really the best option for growth and I think transit is incredibly important, especially with my coworkers in the retail industry and the food service industry who can't always afford cars or don't have a place to put a car.

It's very important to have access to public transit and access to public transit with enough capacity for everybody when people are all commuting at the same time.

Another thing I wanted to say was that in terms of opportunity mapping, and economic health, I think that it's really important to think about.

food service jobs and retail jobs and also temp jobs or part-time jobs within an office setting, like the kinds of jobs that Amazon and Microsoft often offer that are part-time so that they don't have to offer benefits in terms of economic health.

And I do think that there's been some great work done in terms of raising the minimum wage, in terms of requiring sick days in retail jobs, but I think that that's really important to remember that there's this group of jobs that a lot of people, especially recent graduates with bachelor's degrees, are getting that are lower than what we would all like in terms of benefits and economic health.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Commissioner Kalkins.

Thanks.

I'm Ryan Kalkins.

I'm a commissioner with the Board of Seattle, and I just wanted to say thank you for this work.

I serve at the PSRC on the Transportation Policy Board and the Economic Development Board.

One of my colleagues serves on the executive board and another on the growth management board.

So we are deeply involved in this work.

And as you noted earlier, one of the things you notice on these boards is that the folks at the table don't look like our community collectively.

And so actively engaging this is really important.

At the Port of Seattle, we have just recently, we're in the process of hiring our first senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion.

And over the last two years, we have instituted two programs internally to try to address issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, including a diversity in contracting program where we can start to examine disparity in our contracting and address that with more affirmative actions to take in that regard.

And also a priority hire program where we look at zip codes that are disenfranchised and say, how do we get more employees, not only at the Board of Seattle, but also with our vendor contractors?

Yeah, and I think there's a really important nexus to the federal government that the PSRC plays.

And so another kudos to the city for leading on efforts and the county around Census 2020, which really impacts the work that PSRC does.

I'm very concerned, in fact, signed on to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court around the question on the census that has been proposed by the Trump administration to ask about citizenship.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Supreme Court is leaning towards allowing that, which just makes this work much more important.

And so all of us, community partners especially, need to be engaging those communities that will be systematically undercounted to find ways to make sure those communities are represented.

Because the four counties that are included in the PSRC will be systematically undercounted because we are much more, we have more communities of color than the areas that will be overcounted.

And so in order for us to get our fair share for this region in all those federal projects and at the port, it's especially important for all of the transportation and freight mobility passenger movement projects that we are working on.

We need every federal dollar that we can get.

So thank you again for convening this and I hope to be a partner in working with you on these efforts.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Really appreciate it.

And one of the things that we spent obviously a lot of time talking more about residential components, but she's not regional council and certainly these growth issues certainly impact our maritime and industrial industry and we spend some time talking about those issues within PSRC.

So I appreciate you being with us.

Looks like we've got one more person.

One more person.

My name is Robert Weiss.

I've been a resident of Seattle since 1975. I'm here, frankly, because I have a business interest in Puget Sound Regional Council data.

But I feel I should put in a word for my age cohort, and that in regard to transportation.

And this comes from, I've done a lot of campaign work, doorbelling for District 4 candidates.

And in North Seattle, it just seems that for senior citizens, for elderly people, cross-town transportation is becoming more and more of a challenge.

And I'm reminded of one particular older lady that I talked with at her door who said, nobody seems to be thinking about, and she's in Northeast Seattle, Thinking about crosstown transportation, and we're also north-south.

But perhaps we need to take a look at more flexible transportation for older people in terms of crosstown.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Robert, for being with us.

We try to work as hard as we can to build a system that is for all ages and all abilities.

And as somebody who relies primarily on public transit, I'm not yet in the older side of the spectrum, but certainly can appreciate the struggles with those east-west connections.

I think we can all empathize with that sentiment and that difficulty and we're gonna all keep working together to make sure that we continue to make those connections so that folks, more folks are incentivized to use our wonderful public transportation systems that will have a great benefit for mobility across the area and obviously for climate change reasons as well.

And that appears to be the last person who is interested in giving us some public testimony.

I want to thank everybody for attending in the audience, everybody at the table again.

I want to thank Roxana Gomez from my office who clerked today's meeting and organized the whole thing.

Thank you, Roxana.

Applause for Roxana.

She did a great job.

She is very eager and excited about the area of transportation policy as somebody who doesn't own a car.

So really thank her for her leadership in this space.

And with that being said, we are adjourned.

Thank you.