Seattle City Council Briefing 41221

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome back.

It is April 12, 2021. The council briefing meeting will now come to order.

The time is 9.32am.

Before the clerk calls the roll, I'd like to note that Council Member Sawant reached out to me this morning to let me know that it is unlikely she will be able to join us during council briefing this morning, but she does expect to be in attendance at full council.

So with that being said, will the clerk please call the roll?

Herbold?

Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Herbold?

If you just called me, my volume isn't working, so I see everybody pausing.

I'm here.

Thank you.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Here.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Present.

Devin, present.

Thank you so much.

We will move over to approval of the minutes.

If there is no objection, the minutes of April 5th, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are now adopted.

President's report, colleagues, I wanted to start off this morning's council briefing by acknowledging that yesterday afternoon we all heard and read about the horrible news that another incident of gun violence occurred within our community, this time in the Central District.

At least one gunman, a pedestrian who was walking south on 23rd Avenue near Jackson, rounded the corner of an AutoZone store and fired east into the parking lot of a strip mall where his bullet struck four people, including a two-year-old child who is, as of yesterday, still in critical condition.

Our thoughts, of course, are with the family and friends of the victims of this incident, and my thanks go out to the first responders, including the Seattle Police Department officers who were called to this horrific scene of yet another incident of gun violence in our community.

SPD is asking that anyone with information about this shooting call homicide detectives to share any information they might have about the shooting and they can do so by calling 206-233-5000.

Again, anyone with information about the shooting can share it with homicide detectives by calling 206-233-5000.

2, 3, 3, 5,000.

Our deepest thoughts go to, again, all the friends and family of the four survivors at this point.

And we hope that everybody has a speedy recovery.

And we also hope that we see swifter action from our federal government to address the issues related to gun violence in all of our local communities.

COVID-19 vaccines.

Colleagues, I wanted to remind folks at the top here that of course COVID-19 vaccinations will start to be available to anyone 16 and older beginning this Thursday, April 15th.

I did send out an email to each of you and your offices on Friday late evening, making sure that you were aware that the City of Seattle has put together for our own employees a vaccine website via SharePoint.

Members of the public can also pre-register for their vaccine at vaccination sites located within the City of Seattle.

It is important for folks to begin now to plan ahead for their vaccine.

And again, you don't have to wait until April 15th if you're a resident of the City of Seattle or King County to pre-register.

You can go to our website at City of Seattle and search for COVID-19 vaccination notification list and get yourself pre-registered for COVID-19 vaccinations.

With that being said, colleagues, I'm going to go ahead and have us begin the process of hearing from our team members from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations who are here with us today to share with us their report out on all of the events that happened last week and over the weekend since they were last with us.

I'm going to hand it over to Director Lily Wilson-Kodega from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to walk us through introductions and the presentation.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, OIR.

Passing it, OIR Director.

Passing it to Robin Kosky.

Robin Kosky, OIR Deputy Director.

Passing it to Quinn.

Quinn Majeski, State Relations Director, OIR.

Passing it to Hannah.

And good morning, Council President, Council members.

We are before you today with a state legislative briefing with just over two weeks left in the 2021 legislative session.

The House and the Senate have each released their biennial operating capital and transportation budget proposals, notably both referencing a 7% capital gains tax.

a high priority for Council as a shift towards a more progressive revenue system in our state overall.

And both budgets make historic investments in child care, human services, support for low-income parents, working families, the immigrant and refugee community, and others previously left out of federal assistance available to residents of our state.

as well as rental assistance and housing more broadly.

Now the focus for budget writers in the House and Senate will be on reconciling differences between their proposals.

As these negotiation continues, we are notably working with any large coalition of other cities that Robin can elaborate a little more on in her portfolio, given she's done a tremendous job of organizing this city coalition, but We will be requesting an additional $400 million in housing investments, utilizing the influx of ARPA dollars coming into the state, given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity cities have to house our most vulnerable through rapid acquisition of building land, hotels, et cetera, with rents at a historic low point.

Again, Robin will reference this in more detail when she speaks to her portfolio, but we very much appreciate Councilmember Mosqueda joining us for a meeting with Speaker Emeritus Chop on Friday to discuss these housing investments and our corresponding budget asks.

We clearly have some work to do there.

We may be reaching out to your offices to engage with specific budget writers or members of the delegation in the coming weeks, given this is a critical investment for the state to make in our local communities, but is certainly a heavy lift.

We have passed the final cutoff date before sine die just yesterday with opposite house for cutoff on Sunday.

and the final day of the legislative session is scheduled for Sunday, April 25th.

The remaining two weeks of session will be used for each chamber to reconcile differences in their budgets and over specific legislative proposals as they move between the two chambers, hopefully with the adoption of the $400 million in additional housing investments across the state.

I will now turn it over to Quinn Majewski, our State Relations Director.

Thank you, Lily.

In the budget and revenue space, Lily actually pretty much covered the state of things.

The House and Senate have all released and passed their versions of the operating capital and transportation budgets.

And this past week has largely been devoted to passing legislation before the final opposite House of Origin cutoff that occurred on Sunday.

So they're continuing to negotiate with the the primary point of difference and negotiation being the allocation of federal funds.

Guidance has continued to be promulgated by the federal government, and so we do anticipate, particularly the Senate, who allocated fewer federal funds in their initial proposal, but both the House and Senate parsing through and making some additional allocations of those federal dollars there, and that is the primary point of negotiation.

Outside of that, there is not much to report in the budget and revenue space, so I will go ahead and stop there and pause for any questions.

Colleagues, any questions?

I am scrolling to see if I see any physical or Zoom hands up, and I don't see any hands.

I think we can continue.

In the education space, all the bills that we were following passed last night's cutoff, which is great news.

Several will now head back for reconciliation, but a few exciting votes to share.

The Fair Starts for Kids Act, the Senate bill passed the House on Friday, 6236. Two bills dealing with equity in education, one that requires diversity training for educators, another that requires anti-racism training and assessments in higher education, both passed.

Senate Bill 5321, expanding the college-bound program, the amended bill passed 6038, and a bill authorizing bachelor degrees in computer science at community and technical colleges past 96-2, and the president has already signed that one.

So a lot of great education bills continuing to move this week.

Pause for any questions there.

Any questions, colleagues?

I am not seeing any, so I think we can continue.

Some big movement this past week in the environmental space.

The Senate passed both the clean fuel standard, the low carbon fuel standard, House Bill 1091, and the Climate Commitment Act, also known as, more commonly referred to as Cap and Invest.

Those passed largely on party lines with a few Democrats voting no.

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard passed 27 to 20, and the Climate Commitment Act passed 25 to 24. The Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which originated in the House, now has to go back to concurrence.

The Climate Commitment Act originated in the Senate.

It's not subject to cutoffs being necessary to implement the budget.

And so it is going over to the House for the first time with a hearing coming up on Wednesday this week.

We have, and legislators have often referred to these major environmental bills as being tied to transportation and in particular their fates intertwined with a transportation revenue package that was made official and memorialized as both bills now contain provisions stipulating that they do not go into effect unless the legislature takes action on transportation revenue.

I will speak to that a bit more once we get to the transportation session, but these major environmental bills, these two certainly, are now very much intertwined with transportation revenue.

Less connected but still important are Senate Bill 5022, which deals with producer responsibility and standards for recycled content.

That passed the House with actually strong bipartisan support, which is great to see.

It now has to go back to the House.

to the Senate for concurrence, as does Senate Bill 5141, the HEAL Act, which puts in place environmental justice and community engagement standards for a variety of infrastructure projects at the state level.

So both of those will go back to the Senate for concurrence as they were amended, but we do anticipate those moving forward and being delivered to the governor's desk.

I'll pause there for any questions on environment.

Colleagues, any questions?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can continue.

General government, some mixed results here as we move past the final cutoff, the opposite house of origin cutoff.

Some bills did make it through.

I should note that even in a long session, there was about a week for bills a week between the deadline for bills to move out of committee and the deadline for House of Origins.

So definitely a compressed timeline here.

We did see the Juneteenth holiday legislation passed the Senate, as well as legislation on tax increment financing.

Unfortunately, bills that did not make it due to the time crunch and time constraints, the future public meetings legislation, so in any sort of event where there's a need to modify Open Public Meetings Act to comply with staying at home or Working from home, that unfortunately did not move forward.

Similarly, the State Development Lands Authority, the Armory PDA Bill, and the Microenterprise Home Kitchens legislation all failed to receive a vote prior to the cutoff yesterday.

I will pause there for any questions.

I'm not seeing any hands raised, Quinn, so I think we can keep going.

In the healthcare space, a lot of more good news.

House Bill 1129, that authorizes medical licenses to international medical graduates past 3315. 1477, which is that national 988 emergency line, is NTIB, so it wasn't subject to last night's cutoff, but it has a schedule for executive session today.

Senate Bill 5068, the postpartum Medicaid bill, passed the House with only one vote against it, which is great news.

And 5195, the opioid reversal medication, was amended to require that the healthcare authority establish a bulk purchasing program and distribution program for opioid overdose reversal medication.

That passed the House 89-8 on Friday.

So those are the healthcare highlights.

I'll pause for questions.

Okay, I'm looking for any hands.

I don't see any hands up, so I think we can continue.

Good morning, everyone.

First, I'd just like to start out to say thank you to everyone who signed on to the letter to request significant housing and homelessness funds that Lily talked about in her opening briefing.

We really appreciate that.

And as Lily said, we may need to call on you in the coming days for some additional efforts to get that to the finish line in the final budget.

Lily gave a really good summary of where we are.

I think the only thing that I would add is that in addition to the local elected leader letter that was sent last Tuesday to legislative leadership, there was also a business letter that went out that had many of the major businesses here in Washington State sign on, as well as many chamber and regional business organizations from across the state.

There was also an advocacy letter sent by the campion advocacy fund which included many housing organizations around the state and housing development consortiums to show that we really do have a broad base of support for this ask.

So we are very hopeful that we will be able to see some additional funds to address housing and homelessness in the final budget this year.

And I'd be happy to answer any questions about that.

I think I'll just pause for a second.

That's Mara Mosqueda, please.

Good morning, Council President.

Thank you very much.

And good morning, folks from OIR.

Really appreciate your work as always.

Robin, I think that it's helpful for folks to hear a little bit more about where the potential 400 million could come from.

Obviously, we all know that it's very late in session.

And yes, the federal dollars are new and we're not totally known as each chamber were developing their proposed budget.

So my understanding is that there's about 700 million in reserves.

And part of the ask is, to ask the legislators to dip into part of the reserves that they were holding onto specifically from the federal assistance dollars to then be able to reallocate this for strategic acquisition and housing and homelessness support.

Is that accurate?

You know, Council Member Mosqueda, I think that I am a little apprehensive about identifying where I believe the money should come from in the budget.

You know, I think that the budget writers have, you know, a significant amount of information.

And while we do know that the House made a lot of indications about where they would like to see federal money spent.

The Senate, on the other hand, decided to wait, hoping that the federal government would provide more guidance about how the money could be used specifically.

So, you know, over the weekend, I've talked to several legislators and they agree that, you know, there is certainly there is some latitude and that there could be some things that are moved around in order to meet our request.

So I hope that answers your question.

And I do know that there is some money for reserves.

There's also a question of whether things could be, when things are spent, whether they're spent in year one or year two.

I know that you know, they're under the same parameters that we are at the city where we were each receiving a pot of money, but we're only allowed to use half of the money in the first year.

So, you know, there is a chance to defer some expenses to the second year, depending on, you know, spending plans for programs, et cetera.

Okay, thanks.

I just, I want to acknowledge, you know, that this is a pretty late ask and try to signal our support to the legislators, both for this legislative, both for the addition that we're asking of $400 million across the state, but also to recognize that, you know, they have it sounds like on the House side, been pretty specific on trying to identify where the federal dollars should go.

So I appreciate the desire to have some flexibility and deference to legislators to identify where those dollars could come from.

And in our efforts to try to make sure that this $400 million is funded, being flexible on our end on where that comes from, and hopefully we can all continue to send a message that this is also a cost-saving measure as we get more folks into housing.

Obviously, it'll cost the state and local jurisdictions less.

Our fiscal notes locally and at the state are not dynamic enough to really show those kind of cost-saving, but I know that that may help with some of the legislative members.

And also, to emphasize again that this is a win-win, especially for those properties that could be going derelict and the property owners who don't have the ability to move forward.

It's both a positive thing for business and property owners as much as it is for healthy economies, housing and homelessness, and social services.

I look forward to working with you more, but I know it's late, so I wanted to identify if we had been pushing for a certain area for that to come from because every dollar is important in this juncture.

And I'm also happy about the budgets that came forward and know that this is going to be just an additive.

Yes, we certainly don't want to, you know, do one good thing at the cost of another good thing for sure.

And, you know, I think, you know, you brought up a good point that I don't think we had clearly made this morning, Councilmember Mosqueda, which is that, you know, one of the reasons that we're pushing so hard for this is that we know that there are opportunities in the real estate market right now that will be very unlikely to exist even six months from now.

So we're trying to capitalize on a moment that we didn't really capitalize on as much as we should have during the last recession.

So trying to learn from the past and make sure that we can bring as many people inside and, you know, increase our stock of affordable housing when we have an opportunity right now.

Okay.

So moving on, I think, I don't think there are any other questions, just moving on to the more general housing bill reports.

There's a lot of good news that has been happening.

And if you would just bear with me for a second, I have the wrong date of my notes up.

House Bill 1220 that would require planning for affordable housing and emergency shelter passed the Senate late Saturday evening in a sort of a Saturday night gift.

the the portions of the bill that would have changed zoning for where permanent supportive housing transitional housing and emergency shelter is allowed was changed a little bit and now states that a code city may not prohibit transitional housing or permanent supportive housing in either residential or hotel zones And then also shall not prohibit emergency shelters in hotel zones unless an ordinance is adopted that allows for emergency shelter in a majority of zones in that district within one mile of transit.

So some changes to that bill, but still overall, I think a very good bill.

The Just Cause Eviction Bill, House Bill 1236, also passed.

You'll remember last week we had seen that bill get stalled and we were waiting to see what would happen.

There was an agreed upon amendment for the bill that continues to allow us the probationary period of an initial tenancy to allow a no-cause eviction with 60 days notice, similar to what was in the original bill.

The provisions are a little bit complicated, so rather than go into the very, you know, minute details here, what I'll agree to do is to just provide a written update, also in consultation with law, to keep me honest, that I'll provide to the council with all of the details later on.

Another part of the bill was that the property owners had asked for was a delay of implementation of the bill for three months after the eviction moratorium ends in order to allow anyone who's on a month-to-month lease to move on to a probationary six-month or more lease under the bill.

And these amendments were necessary to pass the bill.

Still a wonderful increase across the state to protect tenants.

give similar protections that tenants have in Seattle to across the state, which is really quite historic.

House Bill 1277, the bill that would increase the document recording fees by $100 is actually, was up for executive session on Saturday.

The meeting got kind of waylaid with the Blake decision.

So they moved the executive session on that bill to today.

It was merely just a timing issue, no cause for concern.

So that bill may have been exact while we were talking here this morning.

So I will provide an update there.

And then Senate Bill 5160 that provides tenant protections at the end of the eviction moratorium passed the House with an amendment that would prevent the extension of the eviction moratorium.

There's some work underway to see what might be done about that because there is some concern that the in order to get the right to counsel provisions established and underway that there might need a little bit more than the June 30th eviction deadline expiration.

So I'll also keep you posted there.

But still, this is also a historic bill.

We would be the first state in Washington to pass a right to counsel statewide if this bill does go into law in a few weeks.

So that's really quite amazing.

And then finally, the last thing on housing is Senate Bill 5287 on MFTE.

That passed the House Saturday morning by a resounding vote of 81 to 16. and now we'll go to the Senate for concurrence as well.

It provides for a 12-year extension of the program after the initial 12-year tax exemption period, so therefore, you know, preventing affordable rents from expiring if the developer or the property owner so chooses to extend for another 12 years.

It establishes a 20-year program for homeownership that will be very helpful to our permanently affordable homeownership programs.

And it also provides some tenant protections at the end of a tax exemption when affordable units expire that includes relocation assistance of up to one month.

So some good news there as well.

And I'll pause to see if there are any questions on housing.

Sorry, there was a lot, real lot that happened over the last week in the housing area.

All right, any comments or questions, colleagues?

OK, I'm not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can keep going.

Terrific.

Moving on to police reform, also quite a bit of activity here.

House Bill 1054 that passed the Senate last Tuesday night, that bill bans chokeholds, no-knock warrants, limits use of tear gas, firing on a moving vehicle, and use of military equipment.

That goes on to the House for concurrence.

House Bill 1089 requiring audits of the use of deadly force incidents and audits to determine if law enforcement agencies are complying with all laws and training requirements passed the Senate as well.

And we'll now go on to back to the House, back to the, yes, back to the House for concurrence.

Very good news, House Bill 1267, the governor's request legislation that would establish a statewide centralized investigations for use of force passed the Senate on a vote of 27 to 72. And similarly, House Bill 1310 on use of force passed the Senate on Saturday, 27 to 22. On the House side, Senate Bill 5051, Senator Peterson's Oversight and Accountability of Peace Officers Bill, otherwise known as decertification, passed the House by a vote of 54 to 43, and will move back to the Senate for concurrence.

And Senate Bill 5066, On Duty to Intervene, passed the House last Wednesday, also back to the Senate for concurrence.

And then finally, Senator Noble's Law Enforcement Data Bill passed the House 97 to one.

last week.

So quite a bit of historic police reform legislation moving forward as well.

And before I move on to public safety, I'll pause again.

Colleagues, any questions on police reform?

Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised, so we can continue.

In the public safety area, House Bill 1320, a very complicated bill that carefully streamlines all of the protective order statutes passed the Senate Saturday on a vote of 27 to 20. Senate Bill 5135 for unlawfully summoning a police officer passed the House on Friday.

And then driving with a suspended license, Senate Bill 5226 also passed the House on Saturday.

This bill establishes that a failure to pay a traffic infraction will no longer result in a suspension or revocation of a driver's license.

And establishes that an infraction must give the person the option to admit responsibility and attest that you don't have the ability to pay and enter into a payment plan to, you know, avoid the situation where people are getting into a bad situation with fines building up if they've been driving with a suspended license.

Senate Bill 5476, which is the Blake decision bill by Senator Dingra, had kind of an interesting procedural move happen on Saturday morning in the Ways and Means Committee.

Lawmakers discussed the bill at length, and then decided to move the bill out of committee without recommendation to keep the conversation going.

This is a fairly complicated issue with quite a bit of controversy.

So I do think that this is gonna be one of the issues that we're gonna be seeing dealt with at the last days of session.

And I think that is all that I have for my report today.

If there are any questions about public safety, I'd be happy to answer them.

Any questions, colleagues?

I am not seeing any hands raised, so I think we can go to the next section.

In the safety net and civil rights space, House Bill 1072 passed the Senate 2821 and is headed to the governor's desk.

House Bill 1073, the paid family leave coverage that's now focused on COVID eligibility, passed the Senate 2920 and will move back for concurrence.

Great news with House Bill 1297, the Working Families Tax Credit.

It passed 27-2 yesterday, and adopted amendments require a joint legislative audit review of the program every 10 years, ensure that children with individual taxpayer identification numbers qualify to receive the benefit, And there was an amendment changing the benefit structure by household that reduces the amount for childless families and families with one child, but increases the benefit for families with two or more children.

And now it heads back to the House with those changes.

And Senate Bill 5214, that's the big TANF bill, passed the House 8513. So a lot of great movement in the safety net space as well.

I'm not seeing any hands raised, but you can go ahead.

Thank you, Council President.

Finally, in the transportation space, in terms of legislation, House Bill 1301, providing Sound Transit with the ability to conduct alternative fare enforcement, including non-monetary warnings in lieu of citations for the first time, that passed.

It was also not amended in the Senate, which means it does not have to go back for concurrence and will shortly be delivered to the governor's desk, so good news there.

And then with the council bulletin provided a summary and overview of the various transportation proposals and updated proposals that have been released.

I think if I'm happy to answer any questions in general, I think what we can see from this And I should note that I've done my best to make it an apples apples to apples comparison between the House and Senate.

That is not always how.

It is, it's difficult to do that.

And so, you know, if you are looking at some of the documents that have been put out by the House and Senate, you'll see it's sort of portrayed in different ways, but I've done my best to make it as close to a side by side comparison as possible.

I think we can see, you know, that the House continues to have a much larger proposal, although their revised version has gone down by several billion dollars closer to the Senate.

The House continues to provide more funding for multimodal than the Senate, although when it comes to specific projects within the city of Seattle, the Senate provides a bit more funding, including for some specific transit projects.

And then on the revenue side, the House has not put out an updated revenue side proposal since their initial release on January 25th.

However, the Senate has and they've made some some changes.

I think most notably that includes the the new preemption on local TNC fees and food delivery service fees.

There is a carve out for fees that were adopted prior to the potential passage of this legislation.

So City of Seattle, we could keep our existing fee.

However, I know there is still a concern.

This is obviously still a preemption.

It would curtail our opportunities to improve and innovate on the work that we have already done.

We'll be we'll be highlighting that there's a public hearing happening now and I apologize because I'm looking at my other screen monitoring, making sure that I don't get called up and surprised.

So we'll be speaking to some of those those concerns while still highlighting the our support for for transportation package.

But, you know, wanting to see the.

that preemption moved out, which would not have an impact on the balance sheet overall.

So it shouldn't be an impediment to them taking action on investment in infrastructure, but obviously something that we are concerned with.

So I will pause there for any questions on transportation.

Colleagues, any questions on transportation?

I am not seeing any.

Thanks, Quinn, for that.

And then I'm going to hand it back over to Lily for any closing remarks.

I would just say that concludes our briefing for today.

Thank you for your time and engagement and we will see you next week.

All right, colleagues, any other comments or questions before we shift gears?

I'm not seeing any.

So thanks to each of you.

I know you're multitasking and trying to do about 1000 things at once.

And we appreciate you for doing that.

And thanks for spending some time giving us and members of the viewing public a briefing.

We will see you next week.

Thank you.

All right, colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move to the next agenda item.

So we will now begin our discussion on agenda item four, which is a preview of today's city council actions, council and regional committees.

I'll call on council members as established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings.

As a reminder, this week's roll call rotation begins with council member Herbold, followed by council members Juarez, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, and then I will conclude this agenda discussion.

So I'm gonna hand it over to Council Member Herbold.

Good morning.

You are still on mute.

Okay, we're gonna come back to Council Member Herbold.

She's having some technology issues that we hope she will be able to resolve.

So we will shift gears over to Council Member Juarez.

Whoa, he did it again.

He was not.

I think you're trying to trick me, Council President.

I would never do that.

I would never try to do that.

All right.

So there are no items of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

The Public Assets and Native Communities Committee met on Tuesday, April 6th, to hear the remaining appeals of the waterfront lid of the hearing examiner's report.

The committee upheld the hearing examiner's decision and voted to deny the remaining appeals.

The next step in the process is for council action on two final pieces of legislation.

Thank you for those of you that attended.

I know this has been going on a while and we had a lot to get through.

On this afternoon's agenda is Council Bill 120013 which I believe Councilmember Peterson will be introducing which will transfer a plot of land from the Seattle which is located in the Cedar Park neighborhood.

And I'll speak more to this community-led effort this afternoon.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Parks, our normal, usual Monday morning update.

The Clean City Initiative.

The Parks Department Clean City Initiative crew picked up 8,000 needles and 63,000 pounds of trash from 62 encampments.

Two parks received deep claims, the Bitter Lake Park and Othello Park.

The shower program, for the last two reporting weeks, parks served 637 people in their shower program.

Childcare, last week, parks served over 300 children at 17 childcare sites throughout the city.

And the food distribution at Rainier Beach Community Center, again, Food Lifeline distributed food boxes to 1,400 individuals and families at Rainier Beach.

Regarding District 5, this is a project that's been going on when I was a community member and certainly as an elected well before 2015. Finally, the north pedestrian bike bridge spans will be installed over I-5 in May.

May will have a busy week of closures.

The spans will be moved into place and lifted by cranes and I-5 needs to close safely to complete this work.

So northbound I-5 will close at midnight on Saturday, May 8th, and reopen at 4.30 a.m.

on Sunday, May 9th.

And then southbound lanes will close at midnight on Saturday, May 15th, and reopen at 4.30 a.m.

on Sunday, May 16th.

This project has been going on for so many years.

It started out with the Tiger Grant back in 14, I think.

Two mayors have added an additional anywhere between 10 and 15 million to expand it.

So this is a really big thing for us, particularly since light rail's coming.

and it'll connect North Seattle College with the NHL Training Center and Northgate Mall and all of our new housing that's coming up.

So the whole transit-oriented development, transit-oriented housing, transit-oriented work, all of that's going to be there, so we're excited about that.

Sound Transit.

Sound Transit announced last week that the Northgate Light Rail Extension will open to passenger service on Saturday, October 2nd.

I hope you will all join us for a big celebration up there.

I'll be attending a briefing this week to learn more about the realignment and the next steps.

Last week, I'm sure you've all been talking about this extensively, but it finally has come to a conclusion, at least we hope.

The Biden administration canceled the planned sale of the National Archive building at Sandpoint Way, located in Councilmember Peterson's district.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for joining with me to asking City Attorney Pete Holmes to join.

as plaintiffs with the tribes.

This step reaffirms the Biden's administration, actually federal law administration, a commitment to tribal consultation.

Congratulations to the tribes, the people of Seattle, and all the plaintiffs that joined together for this historic win.

Second, I attended a Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Policy Board meeting where we approved extension requests to allow projects more time beyond their deadline.

We also voted to recommend approval of supplemental federal highway administration funding for two Seattle projects, the Downtown Bike Network Project and the Martin Luther King Jr.

Way Protected Bike Lane Project.

Thank you for those of you who gave us more information to all the groups that called in, sent letters, particularly for the Bike Network Project on the Martin Luther King Way and the folks that worked with us on the I'm trying to think of the bike people.

Cascade, there's a bunch of groups.

Urbanist, bike people, transportation choices, all those folks.

So anyway, those three things got done, and I'm done.

And I hope Council Member Herbold's volume is back on.

All right, thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Always prepared to pitch in, and I appreciate that.

Always, that's my job.

Are we good to go now?

All right, Council Member Herbold, you're up next.

so much.

Problems both hearing and projecting this morning.

All the audio issues you could imagine.

Good morning.

Thank you for the time on the Council Briefings Agenda.

First off, there are no items from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee Agenda on the full Council today.

As it relates to my committee meeting on Tuesday, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee is meeting.

We are going to meet to hear two appointments.

to the Community Police Commission.

They are council-initiated appointments.

And so it'll be a short committee meeting tomorrow.

We had planned to hear an update from the Human Services Department on the new Safe and Thriving Communities Division within HSD.

The new division is intended to elevate and consolidate the department's investments in safety and violence prevention, and it will house the city's work to counter domestic violence, including a team of victim advocates transferred from the Seattle Police Department and HSD's existing investments in youth and community safety transferred from the department's youth and families department division.

The new division is looking to hire a division director currently, and they're soliciting interested parties for that position.

hope to hear more about the development of this new division in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on April 27th.

Additionally, we had tentatively scheduled in committee a discussion and vote on Council Bill 119981. That is the carryover bill.

from last year, making a reduction in the police department's budget.

Coming out of committee, our last committee meeting in March, we had voted to replace the bill cutting the department's funding from $5.4 million to about $3 million, transferring funds into participatory budgeting and permitting the police department to fund some of the high-priority items that they had identified.

Unfortunately, we can't vote on this bill tomorrow because we received direction from the monitoring team that their questions to SPD should be answered as expeditiously as possible, but yet we have not yet received those answers from SPD yet.

And the expectation from the monitoring team is that the department should respond prior to further actions by the city on the budget of the Seattle Police Department.

So I'm hoping, hopefully we'll be able to bring those forward again on April 27th.

I'd like to say just a few words about the gun tragedy over the weekend.

As we know, gun violence is on the rise throughout the nation.

It's an all-too-tragic reality everywhere, but when it's in our own city as well, it's particularly painful.

I hope for the recovery of the victims, and my heart goes out to their families and loved ones.

Each year, nearly 40,000 Americans die by suicide, homicide, or accidents with firearms.

In King County alone, more people are killed by firearms than by car crashes, with an annual financial cost of nearly $200 million.

President Biden's recent executive order to address in a small way what is an enormous problem is welcome.

In the United States, we have 121 guns per 100 people.

In addition to encouraging states to model Washington State's own program barring known dangerous people from owning guns and mandating that so-called ghost guns have serial numbers, The executive order includes $5 billion for community violence intervention efforts.

Again, my hopes for healing to the family and loved ones of the victims from this tragic shooting, as well as the broader community.

I want to also speak to the Seattle Times article about SPD off-duty work that was published yesterday.

provide a little bit of information about my own inquiries about this.

In September, I wrote to Chief Diaz to inquire about the status of former Mayor Burgess's executive order of September 2017. This executive order ordered the Seattle Police Department to establish an internal office directed and staffed by civilians to regulate and manage the off-duty employment of its employees.

As for the SPD and executive branch officials was formed to work on this project and the requirements were laid out by the off-duty work group included reporting on off-duty hours worked by individuals.

The council had some follow-up questions about the status of the executive order.

And we received follow-up information in 2018. And that's where we learned about the overtime work group and the report said that this work would be ongoing.

In my September letter of 2020, I asked what the status of the project was.

The status is not, I think it's twofold.

It's both regarding the tracking of off-duty hours as well as changes in policy limiting off-duty work.

And as it relates specifically to the tracking, the response we received from the chief was that the work schedule and timekeeping project system could support the work, meaning support the work of tracking the hours.

And the work schedule timekeeping project is a technological project that the police department is undertaking right now.

But the chief goes on to say that it is not scoped to do so.

He says there would need to be substantial policy and operational work on how off-duty time would be managed beyond what was put in place following the executive order of Mayor Burgess.

It goes on to say that the work schedule and timekeeping system was scoped to ensure it could support the work, but the project is not currently incorporating it.

And so instead, they are working on logging off-duty work in the computer-aided dispatch system and do not have sufficient resources without the work schedule and timekeeping system to link up off-duty hours recorded in the CAD to aggregate them for current total thresholds.

They go on, the response goes on to say that officers must also currently log their off-duty work in the blue team system, which feeds an internal dashboard that is reviewed monthly.

And then finally, so that's just all about the tracking piece as it relates specifically to limiting the number of off-duty hours officers can do in regulating that area.

The chief goes on to say in early 2019, it was determined that the current Spog contract places limits on the changes that can be made to the off-duty process and that any additional changes in the administration of off-duty work must be addressed in future labor negotiations.

And he closes saying, it is my understanding that there were real concerns from the city about impacts on retirement packages if any off-duty pay hours were officially contracted slash tracked by the city.

Moving on to the update from the Human Services Department, just so folks know, this past week the Aging and Disability Services staff assisted with first and second clinics at two separate Seattle Housing Authority buildings where more than 100 residents were vaccinated this coming week.

Aging and disability services staff will assist in seven Seattle Housing Authority buildings scheduled for first or second doses.

This includes the first of the non-senior SHA buildings.

Vaccine home visits are available to all adults, 16 and above, who have not yet been vaccinated and who have an injury to developmental disability or a medical condition that makes it difficult to leave the home and for whom it would require considerable efforts to access vaccine outside of the home and their services and providers have approved approximately 800 clients for a home visit.

More clients are still being screened and of this total approximately 235 of those clients live in Seattle.

County COVID line and the City's Customer Service Bureau are also screening callers requesting in-home vaccinations.

You can call the City's Customer Service Bureau at 206-684-2489 Monday through Saturday during business hours and interpretation is available.

So again, for folks who cannot leave the home and need vaccination services in their homes, you can call the Customer Service Bureau for screening.

Let's see, for public health updates, we're very close to putting the worst of the pandemic behind us, but of course we're not in the clear yet.

The moment the virus is spreading more quickly, then we can vaccinate and hospitalizations are hitting younger people more so than we've seen before.

Everyone ages 16 and older in Washington State will become vaccine eligible starting this week on April 15th.

If you're at least 16, live or work in King County, and you would like to receive vaccine from one of the city's four vaccination sites, you can join the city notification list now, even if you won't be eligible until the 15th.

You can get in the queue and go to Seattle.gov forward slash vaccine.

And then again, just as a reminder, the vaccination sites that the city operates are at West Seattle, Lumen Field, North Seattle College, and Rainier Beach.

And where the numbers of vaccines available to us here in King County are on the rise, but supply is still a problem.

So please understand that it will take some time and patience for everyone.

vaccinated and in the meantime, continue to limit your activities with unvaccinated people outside of your home.

Avoid those crowded indoor spaces.

make sure that when you are inside that you're in a location with ventilation that includes, you know, sometimes opening the doors in your windows, keep that air moving and stay home and get tested if you have COVID symptoms or were exposed to somebody who can be positive and keep wearing masks.

And as far as events that I have coming up, Let's see, this week, actually, I think most of my events that I have that I wanted to highlight were our last week's events.

I participated in Local Progress' event.

Local Progress is a national organization of progressive elected officials, and they hosted an event focused on how Austin has transferred its transformed its police budget, took a HealthONE ride-along with the Seattle Fire Department and the Aging and Disabilities case managers on Thursday, and then again on Thursday, participated in the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting where we learned the good news of some expansion of access to the lower-level bridge.

And that's all I have.

Thank you.

Busy week.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Any comments or questions on that report?

All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and go down the line.

Next up is Councilmember Lewis, and then after Councilmember Lewis will be Councilmember Morales.

Good morning, Councilmember Lewis.

Good morning, Council President.

Not very much to go over this week.

So first off, there is nothing from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments on today's agenda, either the introduction, referral, or this afternoon's full council agenda.

I am announcing today that the committee meeting that was originally scheduled for April 28th is going to be rescheduled to Thursday, May 6th.

So just a difference of a week.

And I look forward to having that meeting of the select committee now on Thursday, May 6th.

So folks make a note of that on your respective calendars.

I do have a resolution on this afternoon's agenda, resolution 32001. referring to the designation of the Uptown Neighborhood.

This resolution is being brought at the request of the Uptown Alliance, which is the neighborhood organization for the Uptown Neighborhood and collaborates with several related organizations like Uptown Arts and a lot of other critical stakeholders, providers, and arts organizations that are in the Uptown Neighborhood.

As some folks may be aware, the Uptown neighborhood is sometimes intermittently referred to as Lower Queen Anne, sometimes even in the same sentence, and interchangeably referred to as such.

The Uptown community has been putting a lot of time and effort into crafting and developing a unique neighborhood identity separate from the Queen Anne neighborhood and wants to resolutely make it clear of a name designation that is entirely separate to continue to cultivate and craft that identity as a arts district, as a district increasingly with a higher, or a neighborhood increasingly with a higher density of permanent supportive housing and more affordable housing.

and a destination culinary and, of course, theater scene in the good non-COVID times.

In the spirit of looking toward that recovery and towards Uptown continuing to develop that identity, especially post the hollow-up zones with the increased amount of density that's going into that neighborhood and the built environment improvements going into that neighborhood, the Uptown Alliance felt it appropriate at this time to seek a resolution affirming their identity to match a lot of the physical changes the neighborhood is seeing.

And I'm proud to bring that resolution forward this afternoon and would hope for the support of my colleagues on that.

With that, Madam President, I don't have any further updates to give to the full council this morning.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

Any comments or questions on that report?

All right, hearing none, we'll go ahead and go down the line.

Next up is Council Member Morales, followed by Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, Council Member Morales.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, colleagues, there are several items on the introduction and referral calendar this afternoon, including several appointments and a bill will be talking about later that authorizes the office of arts and culture to accept a license agreement with.

the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority.

It basically confirms that we have an agreement to install the AIDS Memorial Path art project that we talked about last year, that we have an agreement to install that project at the light rail station at Capitol Hill.

So we'll be in that a little bit later.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on this afternoon's agenda.

My next meeting is Tuesday, next Tuesday the 20th.

Colleagues, we recently received a memo from the executive's office offering two different options for how we implement the participatory budgeting plan for this year.

So I have invited the executive office to present information around their fiscal and administrative assumptions for those two options, invited them to next week's committee meeting.

We've also invited folks from the National Participatory Budgeting Program as well as folks from Boston and New York who have implemented these programs in the past and are currently doing so again.

So this is an opportunity to hear about how other cities have implemented the program and invite colleagues to come.

If you'd like to attend, please reach out to LaQuisha Farmer.

Moving on to department updates.

At a meeting with the Arts Department last week, you may or may not know that 63% of creative workers in the city are unemployed right now.

So we are talking about what it would look like to integrate the arts into our recovery as we talk about development, public art projects, how we can make sure that these creative workers are included in the ARPA funding and the other conversations that we're having about moving toward an equitable recovery.

So look forward to continuing that conversation with them and with all of you.

And the economic, sorry, the Equitable Development Initiative, the next round of funding is out for EDI projects.

Those applications for RFP are due June 6th.

For 2021, the EDI funding is about $6.8 million available to organizations working on anti-displacement efforts particularly in high displacement risk neighborhoods.

The funds will be used for organizational capacity building, for property acquisition, and for capital expenses.

So those are the kinds of things that could be funded.

And the city's EDI website includes funding guidelines, the application itself, and proposal templates.

the city's ed.

I website.

Additionally, there will be webinars on providing information sessions to potential applicants and to ask questions of program staff.

And to get information about those webinars, you can also go to the city's EDI website and click on the date that's posted and it'll take you to that information.

The fifth round of Small Business Stabilization funding is wrapping up at the Office of Economic Development.

And the department is working on a summary of lessons learned from the different rounds of funding that we had this year so they can provide some analysis before the next round about how and whether there should be any changes in the parameters future funding for small business stabilization.

I know that there have been several discussions about creating new BIAs in different neighborhoods.

We've heard from folks from a couple different places.

So I want to remind colleagues that as your business community is getting closer to having ordinance language ready to create or to amend their BIA, I'm happy to invite you to attend the Community Economic Development Committee to be part of the discussion and to share what your community has been working on.

Moving on to district updates, last week my staff and I met with SPU.

We met their RV pump-out unit along with some food assistance volunteers from St. Vincent de Paul and with researchers from the University of Washington.

We met at a site in my district to learn more about the work that the pump-out stations do to assist RV residents.

And it was great to watch.

I learned that despite the budget cuts that we have experienced, the RV pumpout unit runs effectively and efficiently.

And it was really an opportunity to see what they could do if we scale up and provide additional funding to that unit.

I also learned that researchers from the University of Washington are working to gather data on the state of RV residents in our city.

And as we move forward, that could be really valuable information as we develop policies to address homelessness.

We will be staying in touch with those researchers to see what they are learning.

I do want to remind folks that this week, SPU and the Department of Neighborhoods are holding their webinar for organizations who are interested in pursuing funding to help stand up the Street Sinks Initiative.

As a reminder, this is the citywide network of inexpensive, easy to build street sinks with running water that the council funded during last year's budget.

There's a webinar that starts at 5.30 tomorrow.

Interested nonprofits, schools, or other grassroots organizations can visit the Department of Neighborhoods website for more information about that.

And the application period for StreetSync funding ends on April 23rd.

The expectation is that funding will be awarded in May.

And as always, I hold office hours virtually on Thursdays from 10 to noon, Sundays from 3 to 5. Starting in May, my office will be holding outdoor, distanced, but in-person office hours at the Columbia City Farmer's Market on Wednesdays from 3 to 5. And I'm hoping that we have nice weather for that.

That is all I have this morning.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Morales.

Any questions or comments?

Councilmember Juarez, please.

Thank you.

This is just briefly.

Councilmember Morales, we are looking and working on creating a BIA up in the North End.

We've never had one.

particularly with the NHL coming in and connecting to North Seattle College.

We're anticipating around 800,000 people a year that will cycle through there and all the new housing and business that's coming in.

So I'm going to take you up on that offer.

Dean Alsop has been working, so I'm really excited to work with you guys about figuring out how to do this.

So thank you.

You will see me.

Looking forward to it.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Any other comments or questions?

All right.

Well, then let's keep going here.

Council Member Mosqueda is next, followed by Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Mosqueda, good morning.

Good morning, colleagues.

Thank you very much, Council President.

There are several items on today's full council meeting.

The first is the confirmation of Dan Torres for the Sugary Sweetened Beverage Community Advisory Board Early Learning Seat.

This is a mayoral appointment that we discussed last week in my committee.

We also have the confirmation of Joel Shapiro to the Labor Standards Advisory Board.

We also have the Council Bill 12030, which is adding a calculation method to the Jump Start legislation to allow for hourly ratio as an additional method for determining amounts owed if the payer prefers this alternative.

Again, this is the result of direct feedback that the Finance and Administrative Services Department received through rulemaking.

and incorporating feedback from various businesses that will be paying.

Looking forward to passing that and making sure that it is easier to implement for folks who want to choose that alternative.

There is also the Rental Assistance Bill, Council Bill 120018. This is amended and it is in front of us to allow for $22.7 million to be provided in rental assistance dollars.

This comes as a result from December legislation that Congress passed to make sure that folks had COVID relief in the form of rental assistance.

There were two amendments that were included in council committee, excuse me, in my committee meeting.

I wanna thank council member Peterson for bringing forward the one amendment that I was happy to sponsor on his behalf.

And it did pass that allowed for internet services to be part of the allowable use for expenses for community partners who are helping those who need rental assistance and helping out households that may need access to this type of assistance.

Thank you very much council member Peterson for bringing that forward.

There was also an amendment from Council Member Herbold, which passed, which makes sure that we direct the Office of Housing and United Way to do proactive outreach regarding available rental assistance funding to landlords who may be struggling with mortgage debt due to rental payments and delinquencies.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, for bringing that forward.

There was an amendment that you may have seen on the published agenda that I had sponsored that would have allocated the $1.5 million that was directed to Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light to go back into rental assistance.

I did withdraw this amendment due to questions, and I'm still doing some research about how this ties into additional state-level discussions.

I think that the concept was to We want to make sure that those who owe the debt don't have that I'm looking forward to learning more, though, because I understand Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities sent a request to the state legislature for an additional $100 million in ARPA funds.

And I'm going to do some research, Councilmember Peterson, looking forward to working with you on that, because I do have concerns about additional federal dollars continuing to go to our public utilities that could be potentially in competition with dollars that are already unneeded from community partners and small businesses.

So would look forward to following up with you.

I also understand that there's specific dollars from LIHEAP directly to the utilities and 100 million was included in the house budget.

So I think that there's more information to seek out there as we try to figure out how to make sure that ARPA funds go directly to those who are most in need.

in the city of Seattle.

I think it is a gesture of good faith to recognize the need And then lastly, we have the AAPI legislation, Council Bill 120029. This is legislation that complements the Seattle City Council's statement that we all signed on to unequivocally condemn the rising anti-Asian hate crimes to stand in solidarity with Seattle's Asian-American community and acknowledge the long history of anti-Asian racism here in Seattle and in our region.

This legislation appropriates $1.5 million to invest in the API community and to make sure that we are addressing increased hate crimes and also make sure that there's greater investments in safety, youth education programs, and API-owned businesses.

This was transmitted by the mayor and it was introduced without changes.

I will defer to Council President Gonzalez and I sponsored the amendment and during the meeting there was a number of questions asked about very specific pieces in this.

I will defer to the Council President to describe amendment number two.

I will also note that amendment number one is technical in nature.

include, thanks to central staff's review of the legislation.

So there will be two amendments being brought forward for your consideration today.

Again, amendment number one is very technical in nature, and thank you, Council President, for your work on amendment number two and your leadership on this bill.

Do you want me to pause, Council President, or should I continue?

I'm happy to address it now and just get it out of the way, if that's okay with you.

Absolutely.

Okay, amendment two, thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for describing in general where we're at.

So, colleagues, last week, Asha Venkatraman of our Council Central staff circulated Amendment 2 to Council Bill 120029 that I am sponsoring with Council Member Mosqueda.

This item is on this afternoon's agenda.

It's under Agenda Item 8 on today's full Council agenda and is listed as Amendment Number 2. So, again, although we voted the bill out of the Finance and Housing Committee last week, I think adopting amendment to will strengthen the bill before us and as a result, the bill with this amendment better incorporates what community advocates advocates have expressed to many of us via email, but also we heard some concerns during public comment, and I think that this amendment to still.

is true to the joint interest by the council and the mayor to support community safety needs for the Asian American and Pacific Islander American communities and neighborhoods.

We did hear directly from the mayor's office and the city budget office that they think that this is a a welcome amendment and that it will be well received by the executive.

So this amendment would add $150,000 to the Department of Neighborhoods as a pass-through.

This $150,000 will fund a Chinatown International District-based public safety coordinator who will be housed within a community-based organization.

So this is building on the infrastructure that the council has supported in the past by enhancing and expanding the capacity for a public safety coordinator that will be geographically located within a community-based organization.

and will, but will be serving all AAPI neighbors, members of our community across the city.

But this will allow for us to utilize the existing infrastructure that's in place now and the muscle memory of the public safety coordinator position and sort of the natural connectivity that exists there to address the issues related to bias crimes and hate crimes within the AAPI community across the city.

This amendment will also remove a proviso on SPD funds that would have supported creation of a bias crime prevention coordinator position within the Seattle Police Department.

So I want to thank again Kusumura Muscata for her support on this amendment.

And I do think that this sort of threads the needle in a way that still allows us to meet the needs with additional funding while also responding to concerns from advocates and folks within the AAPI community who had expressed concerns about adding more capacity to the police department to address some of the issues that they were advocating for.

So I look forward to answering any questions on this and hope that you all will consider supporting amendment two.

Thank you very much, Council President, and looking forward to getting this piece of legislation out the door.

And as a reminder, this is not the last opportunity for us to look across our city, especially at the communities that have been impacted by hate crimes, especially the AAPI community.

There will be additional opportunities through ARPA funds as well as we look at how we respond to the growing needs across our community.

So thank you for that summary and looking forward to supporting that legislation.

And then Council Member Strauss is not going to be able to be here today, so I do want to note on his behalf that Council Member Strauss has the appointments of nine individuals to the Seattle Youth Commission in our full council agenda today.

I will be speaking to those in his absence with your permission, Council President.

And these nine appointees will be joining a 15-member commission of teenagers who advise the city and work to connect youth to our local elected officials.

As a reminder, our next Finance and Housing Committee meeting is not until April 20th at 9.30 a.m.

There will be the first half an hour dedicated to public comments, so please do dial in if you're interested.

As a reminder, all of our colleagues are welcome to join us at the Finance and Housing Committee.

to provide feedback and to have a dialogue on the ARPA funds.

We will have the opportunity to send you meeting materials and make sure that this is on your calendar.

If you don't usually attend, please let Farideh Cuevas in my office know if you are interested in joining the meeting, and we will make sure all the materials get to you.

If you didn't have a chance to join us, I know Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Morales were with us.

If you haven't had the chance to watch it, we did have a really robust discussion for the first hour of our meeting.

where we heard from various jurisdictions who are also deliberating how they are going to allocate their ARPA funds.

I want to thank council members from across this country who are members of Local Progress who dialed in to provide us with updates on what they are considering as they look at the allocation of their ARPA funds.

We heard from Council Member Vanessa Fuentes from the City of Austin who spoke about the needs for dollars going to homelessness, child care, job and food security.

We heard from Council Member Robin Kanish from Denver City Council who spoke about the immediate need for direct relief and increasing the city's capacity to respond to the crisis that COVID has exposed in many cases and also worsened in many cases by staffing up public programs and creating new public jobs, investing through an equity lens, and expanding the capacity for Denver to have alternatives to policing as they are looking at the allocation of their ARPA funds.

They're also looking at land acquisition, child care, and business assistance.

So many of those things sound very familiar to what we've been discussing this morning and in our ARPA discussions as well.

And we also heard from Council President Lisa Bender from Minneapolis City Council, who spoke about their needs for investing ARPA dollars into housing, safety, city jobs, and capacity.

that we've been able to do.

We've been able to increase equity by making sure that there's an evaluation and performance tool that they're using to really look at the allocation of their ARPA funds and ensure that their equity goals are being met.

And really great ideas for implementing these federal dollars are shared via a video that we shared on our social media and have an incredible communication team.

So thanks to Stephanie specifically for teeing up those Seattle Channel for always recording us.

In terms of updates, just one update today from one of the departments that we have under our purview.

That's from Finance and Administrative Services.

I want to note their ongoing work with high volume vaccination planning implementation.

They continue to support the daily operations at Lumen Field, continuing to support firefighters in their ongoing vaccination efforts.

and making sure that they are helping thousands of people.

The day that I had the chance to visit last week, we had the chance to hear from over, to see Lumenfield vaccinate almost 8,000 people, and they are well on their way to making sure that more I think 20 or 30,000, how many is it councilmembers?

Councilmember Herbold, do you remember their goal?

I think it's up over 20,000 people a day.

So really an incredible effort.

They are hiring a lot of the people that we saw in the field themselves are being hired by FAS so there's both volunteers and new people that are getting good union wage jobs at FAS and I want to thank Director Calvin Goings for that commitment to making sure that people have access to not just helping out because so many of us want to help but that we're also encouraging people to apply to FAS so that they get access to good union jobs in our city as they respond to this crisis.

FAS is also working on consumer protections related to short term rental assistance.

I'm sorry, short-term rental licensing revocations.

They are issuing letters to 12 individuals revoking the license of operators who are not compliant with the short-term rental ordinance, most of whom are operating in the city's shoreline zone.

Two of those operators have appealed the revocation through the Office of the Hearing Examiners as the ordinance provides.

And finally, cat removal and sterilization.

The Seattle Animal Shelter Office removed 73 cats from a small studio apartment in Seattle.

The owner admitted to being overwhelmed and surrendered to all but three cats, surrendered all but three cats, and these cats will be sterilized before returning to their owner.

The other cats appear to be relatively healthy, and the animal shelter is focused on spay and neuter efforts and transferring.

individual pets to new foster or adoption opportunities.

I highlight this to note that how many different ways FAS is involved in helping to make our city run.

And finally, in our events for this week, I continue to meet with folks to hear directly from roundtable discussions that we're convening about the ways in which folks would like to have these ARPA dollars utilized, both from housing and homelessness folks, small businesses, childcare advocates, and hearing from those who work directly in the immigrant and refugee communities as well as others.

We are trying to collect as many ideas as possible as I know many of you are doing and the executive is doing as well to really inform our deliberations starting on April 20th.

Last Wednesday, I also had the opportunity, as I mentioned, to go visit the Lumen Center.

And I would say this, this is not in my script, so I'm gonna try and remember off the top of my head.

FAS absolutely wants people to come and sign up, not only to volunteer, but also to sign up for these jobs that I mentioned.

So we will put information out on our website, but specifically if folks speak various languages and are interested in applying, We have a huge need for folks who can help provide translation and interpretation services.

I saw some of those translators walking around with the vests on.

Great opportunity there.

And please, please, please, if you have any form of a medical license, they need all folks who have medical license to apply to help be volunteers and to draw vaccines and administer shots.

This is something that they are continuing to expand, who is eligible to give these shots and draw those vaccines.

So if you have any medical license, please do get in touch with the volunteer efforts at Lumen Field.

And again, we'll put more information out on our website.

And I'll stop there.

Thanks for all of your time.

Great, thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Any comments or questions for Council Member Mosqueda?

All right, hearing none, we're gonna go ahead and go down the line.

Council Member Peterson, you're next.

Morning, colleagues.

Our Transportation and Utilities Committee has five items on today's full City Council agenda.

As co-sponsor Council Member Juarez mentioned, Council Bill 120013 authorizes our Seattle Department of Transportation to accept a donation from the Seattle Parks Foundation for the Lake City Living Memorial Triangle.

Council Bill 120014 is a step toward completing the Georgetown South Park trail.

The benefits of that non-motorized connection have been reinforced by the traffic impacts in the area due to the temporary closure of the West Seattle High Bridge.

In 2012, Seattle Public Utilities built a storm drain in the Georgetown neighborhood, but City Light retained ownership.

Council Bill 12014 partially transfers jurisdiction from City Light to Seattle Public Utilities so that SPU can continue to maintain the storm drain.

future legislation will transfer the City Light property to Seattle Parks and Seattle Department of Transportation and will provide City Light funds not only for a segment of the trail, but also for a new dog park in exchange for City Light acquiring another property near their south service center.

But the legislation before us today is simply transferring partial jurisdiction of the Georgetown property from City Light to Seattle Public Utilities.

It was recommended unanimously by our Transportation Utilities Committee.

There were three reappointments to the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board.

I know pedestrian safety is a priority for all of us, and I want to thank Akshali Gandhi, Hanjun Koh, and Maria Sumner for their service to Seattle and congratulate them on receiving a unanimous recommendation from our committee for their reappointments.

All three individuals are qualified and eager to continue their service, and I hope they are formally approved today at full council.

Please note that the roster, which lists all of the members of the Pedestrian Advisory Board, that roster had one of the reappointments listed as living in Council District 1, but she actually resides in Council District 3. So there is a substitute roster that will approve at full council today that makes that single correction.

Our Transportation Utilities Committee meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9.30 a.m.

So our next committee meeting will be April 21. I'll highlight now just one of those items coming to our committee next week regarding Seattle Public Utilities.

At our meeting last week, April 7, we received an important briefing from Seattle Public Utilities on the proposed strategic business plan.

It's important to note that SPU's strategic plan has been endorsed by the customer review panel.

At our April 21 committee meeting, we will discuss the upcoming analysis of the plan and the proposed rate path from our city council central staff, and we'll discuss any possible amendments.

Fortunately, the average SPU rates are expected to be lower than what was promised back in 2017 for these upcoming years.

Keeping rates low is important because rates are technically regressive with lower income households paying a larger percentage of their household income for utility bills.

other issues.

I'd like to echo the remarks by Councilman Juarez, applauding the Biden administration for canceling, for now, the hasty and irresponsible sale of the National Archives facility, which is located in District 4. I'd like to thank the Seattle Times for their investigative reporting, which highlighted that Seattle City Light may be overpaying for private traffic control.

As chair of the Transportation Utilities Committee, I've asked City Light, why is this the case and what are they going to do about it?

So we will hear from them later.

Let's see.

This past weekend in Northeast Seattle, there was a repeat of dangerous and illegal activity with speeding cars driving recklessly in the middle of intersections.

I would like to make sure residents stay safe and refrain from participating in such dangerous activity on our city streets.

Other news in District 4, this afternoon, Seattle Public Utilities will announce the winning name for the new tunnel boring machine that will enable us to complete the Ship Canal Water Quality Project, which stretches from Wallingford all the way to Ballard.

Astonishingly, over 30,000 people voted to name the tunnel boring machine, Anything But Boring, for this environmental protection project.

As chair of the Transportation Utilities Committee, I joined on Friday evening several other officials from Seattle Public Utilities, King County Government, and workers constructing the project to see the massive drill up close.

Council Member Strauss was there as well.

It was in Ballard.

This, again, is stretching 2.7 miles, this underground storage tunnel from Ballard to Wallingford.

This is a mega project.

It's been planned over many years due to the state and federal governments requiring the city and county governments to prevent harmful stormwater and wastewater from polluting our local waterways.

With a cost estimated at $570 million, this environmental protection project includes the new tunnel boring machine, which is going to start work soon.

It'll be completed in 2025. We might have already discussed this.

Sound Transit announced the three new light rail stations opening on October 2nd.

This includes two in District 4, one U District at Brooklyn Avenue and Northeast 43rd Street, and the other station in Roosevelt neighborhood.

This weekend I toured the reconfigured Brooklyn Avenue.

and the almost completed redo of Northeast 43rd Street, which leads into the University of Washington's main campus, I continue to share the concern of 20 environmental and community organizations about the decision transportation officials made a few years ago to narrow Brooklyn Avenue, which unfortunately impedes access for more buses.

Ideally, Brooklyn Avenue would have remained wide enough to accommodate most buses and provide seamless transfers from bus to light rail.

As all the light rail stations open, our Seattle Department of Transportation will need to stay tightly coordinated with King County Metro to adjust bus routes based on rider feedback for the thousands who will be transferring from bus to light rail.

But overall, the opening of these stations just six months away is great news.

More good news, there's another capital project benefiting District 4, especially the nearly 1,000 low-income residents who call Magnuson Park home.

Last week, SDOT confirmed that the construction of the pedestrian safety improvements will begin later this month, including crosswalks and sidewalks along Sandpoint Way adjacent to a regional park.

This, I believe this highlights one of the benefits of our hybrid council election system that includes representation by districts.

Due to our knowledge of the neighborhood on the ground, we were able to lift up the benefits to the low-income residents there and prevent this pedestrian safety project from being stalled.

I want to thank my colleagues for joining me to enable this project to move forward quickly.

And that concludes my report.

Thank you so much.

Any questions or comments on that report?

Council Member Esqueda, please.

Thank you, Council President, for seeing my actual hand.

I couldn't get to the virtual button fast enough.

Council Member Peterson, thank you for your report and also thanks for your leadership as the Chair of Public Utilities.

I appreciate that you're sending a letter about the potential overbilling or overpayment.

I'm sorry, overpayment there.

When I had the chance to chair Seattle City Light, I also sent a letter to City Light about concerns I was hearing about people being overcharged, various charges coming in at $300, $600, even $1,000 over what the expected amount was.

This was in 2018. And the auditor's report did come back with some interesting findings about overcharges, but a lot of the concerns I'm wondering if you might have any intel on whether or not something similar is starting to percolate within Seattle public utilities.

I'm wondering if that is something to look into to see if there's higher than anticipated

happy to look into that and have Seattle Public Utilities get back to us on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other comments or questions on Council Member Peterson's report?

Okay.

Looks like there are none.

So I will go ahead and give my report and then we can conclude today's council briefing.

So really quickly, colleagues, the Governance and Education Committee, as a reminder, will be meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, April 13th at 2 o'clock p.m.

via Zoom.

We do have a full agenda.

First up, we will consider two appointments to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

These are listed on today's introduction referral calendar as items 18 and 19, which are the appointments of Zachary Pekelas-Jones and Kirsten Hawes.

Second, we will be joined by Sheila Kapastani from the King County's Best Starts for Kids.

She is the lead over there on that issue and she will be joining us to provide council members and members of the viewing public an overview of the levy renewal work underway with our counterparts at the King County Council.

At the conclusion of that discussion and our third agenda item for tomorrow's committee meeting will be the consideration of a resolution in support of the best start for kids levy renewal.

This is listed as resolution 32002 which is item 17 on today's introduction and referral calendar and colleagues that resolution does have the concurrence of Mayor Durgan.

Fourth, and lastly, we will round out our committee with a briefing and discussion from the Department of Education and Early Learning to brief the council on the results of the racial equity toolkit analysis that I requested be performed on the Seattle Promise Program when we first considered instituting and funding that program through the Families Education Preschool Promise Levy.

If you have any questions about any of those agenda items, please do reach out to my senior policy advisor, Vi Nguyen, who is at the ready to answer any questions or hear any concerns that you might have.

In addition to the items I just discussed, I have a few additional items on today's Introduction and Referral Calendar.

Item 20 on the Introduction and Referral Calendar is a reappointment of Kimberly Walker as a member of the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

Item 2 on the Introduction and Referral Calendar is Council Bill 120034, which is an ordinance authorizing the execution of a collective bargaining agreement between the City of Seattle and Protech 17 strategic advisor hyphen slash legislative bargaining unit to be effective January 1st, 2019 through December 31st, 2020. This is an ordinance that will now govern the bargaining relationship between the city of Seattle and our very own central staff policy analyst unit.

This ordinance is a direct product of our city's labor management obligations under Seattle Municipal Code 4.04.120, which governs the city's labor negotiations and establishes the Labor Relations Policy Committee, which is a hybrid of the executive and five council members to set parameters for negotiations with our labor partners.

This ordinance is a product of that process and is consistent with the parameters approved by the members of the Labor Relations Policy Committee.

The ordinance is, as a result, being referred directly to the full city council and is scheduled for a final vote on Monday, April 19th, 2021. If you have any questions about this ordinance, please reach out to me or Interim Central Staff Director Dan Eder as soon as possible with any of those questions.

Next on full council agenda, I am bringing forward a proclamation for Kim Pham, founder and publisher of Northwest Vietnamese News, Khiem recently passed away and leaves behind a legacy of building community here in Seattle and across the region.

He dedicated his life to the Vietnamese American community of Seattle and beyond.

For those of you who don't know, Northwest Vietnamese News is the first privately owned Vietnamese language newspaper founded in Washington State and is the largest Vietnamese language newspaper outside of Vietnam.

He connected and bridged generations and inspired many through a lifelong commitment to service.

And again, publishing the longest running Vietnamese language newspaper in Washington State.

This afternoon at full council, we'll be joined by his son who will accept the proclamation on his family's behalf.

And colleagues consistent with our ongoing commitment to language access, this proclamation was translated into Vietnamese And your signature, if you approve to have your signature added, will be added to both the English and Vietnamese version of the proclamation, both of which will be presented to Mr. Pham's family this afternoon.

I do encourage members of the viewing public and you colleagues to read the lovely obituary and tribute that was done to Thu Kim on April 7th.

in the Seattle Times and just want to sort of acknowledge once again the deep loss to the community of Kim and certainly do know that he leaves behind a strong legacy of community building and access and connection for the members of the Vietnamese and Vietnamese American community here in Washington State.

So, colleagues, are there any questions or comments about that proclamation before I ask the clerk to call the roll?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the proclamation honoring King Pham?

Herbold?

Yes.

Clares?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Yes.

Peterson?

Yes.

And Council President Gonzalez?

Yes.

Seven in favor.

Thank you so much.

Okay, colleagues, last Thursday, just a quick report of regional committees that I had last week or that are coming up this week.

Last Thursday, the Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Policy Board approved a recommendation for a supplemental budget action totaling approximately $53 million for projects on the adopted contingency lists for PSRC's Federal Highway Administration funds.

That's a mouthful.

The good news is we have some additional money for some really important regional infrastructure projects and looking forward to having the full executive board and general assembly consider those suggestions.

The board also discussed outreach efforts that will begin to occur here soon related to the regional transportation plan.

I do want to report out that there is a strong commitment, I think, amongst many of the members of PSRC to make sure that we center safety efforts, efforts like Vision Zero at the City of Seattle in the regional transportation plan and look forward to ongoing conversations to work with our staff at SDOT and OIR to continue to advocate for Those safety components and equity components being baked into the regional transportation plan as we think more broadly about our regional network of transportation infrastructure.

On Tuesday, March 13th, I will be meeting with the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center as a member of their Honorary Advisory Cabinet, and also the King County Regional Homelessness Authorities Governing Committee will be meeting on Thursday at 10 o'clock a.m.

via Zoom.

This will be the very first Governing Committee meeting for the newly hired CEO, Mark Jones, who will make introductory comments and provide an update on their proposed interim staffing plan.

Lastly, on Wednesday, March 14, 2021, I'll be speaking to a group of first-year law students at my alma mater, Saddle University School of Law, and I'm really excited about being able to join them virtually.

So that is all I have for my report.

Happy to hear any comments or answer any questions.

All right, easy peasy, no questions, no comments.

So colleagues, that does conclude our agenda for this morning's council briefing.

We don't have anything else, so we are adjourned and I will see you all at 2 o'clock p.m.