Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 91620

September 16, 2020, Transportation and Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.31, and I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Mute.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council President Gonzalez, have you found your mute?

Hello?

She's there.

Doing the roll.

Here.

Thank you.

And Chair Peterson.

Here.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, so we've got four present.

We are expecting Council Member Herbold will announce her arrival when she's here.

And if there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Next item is the chair's report.

I'll be brief.

We have seven items on today's agenda for the transportation and utilities committee.

This includes the internet for all action plan and the bridge audit report.

We had requested both of these items to be presented to us before the mayor presented her budget to the city council.

And so I wanna thank the mayor's office, the Seattle information technology team their internet for all report.

I want to thank the city auditor for the bridge audit which included the cooperation of Seattle Department of Transportation and the mayor's office.

A big thank you for their hard work to meet these deadlines to give everybody better information to make timely decisions.

Today on our agenda, we also have five council bills that I'm hoping we can pass out of committee today.

And as everybody was signing on today, it was very heartwarming to see all this talent, all these professionals serving the people of Seattle, signing on from the different departments.

And just we're really fortunate to have so many people here working for the city in this capacity, and we're gonna see their great work today.

So at this time, we will open the remote public comment period.

I ask that everyone please continue to be patient as we learn to operate this new system in real time.

We're exploring ways to fine tune this process.

It remains the strong intent of the city council to have public comment regularly included on these meeting agendas.

However, the city council reserves the right to adjust these public comment periods if we deem that the system's being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner which we are able to conduct, in a manner we need to conduct our necessary business.

So I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

It'll be up to 20 minutes.

I don't think we're going to need that today.

And each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on two speakers at a time, although it looks like we only have one speaker right now.

If you're not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period, but do it soon.

Go to the council website, Seattle.gov forward slash council.

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

Once I call a speaker's name, our staff here will unmute the appropriate microphone, and an automatic prompt of, you have been unmuted, will be the speaker's cue, and it's their turn to speak.

But the speaker has to press star six to begin speaking.

Please remember to press star six.

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

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

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

Once you hear the chime, please wrap up your comment.

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

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, you can do that via Seattle Channel or the listening options on the agenda.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

That is Eugene Wasserman.

Welcome, Mr. Wasserman.

Go ahead and press star six to begin speaking.

Star six on your phone.

Colleagues, Mr. Washman is the only speaker signed up, so we're going to give him a few seconds here to...

It's showing he is present.

We just need you to press star six, Mr. Washman, and begin speaking.

Mr. Wasserman, if you're out there, please press star six and begin your comments.

So I'm going to ask our city clerk, because we're not hearing from Mr. Wasserman, who's our public speaker, signed up here.

I'd like to close the, oh, Mr. Wasserman, please go ahead.

Yes, sorry for the confusion.

That's all right.

I'm Eugene Wasserman.

I'm president of the North Seattle Industrial Association.

We represent the businesses and property owners along the Ship Canal.

And I'm talking about item two, the bridge audit.

We spend a lot of time on bridges Uh, linked light rail and also with the city's balance study.

And I personally have been on spent years on committees on the South park bridge and the five 20 project.

And while we appreciate the audit that was done, we just feel it's a starting point.

Um, the city needs to take a really solid look.

at the bridges that are drawbridges that go over navigable waterways with fish-bearing streams.

Those are expensive things to fix.

And if they malfunction, they create a lot of problems for everyone.

The Coast Guard rules the waterways, as I think people are finding out on the West Seattle Bridge.

And if a bridge gets stuck and can't go up, the city would be forced to decommission it and create a space for the maritime industry.

The estimates on just fixing the mechanisms on the Battle Bridge, I think around $271 million and close to $500 million to build a new 65-foot bridge.

So these things are really expensive, and you need a fully-based program to do them over the next 10, 15 years, which might require federal funding, state funding, and stuff like that.

They are different than building like the Land Street Railroad Bridge, where there are alternatives for traffic and you're going over solid land.

So while it looks like you want to ramp up funding for this, I think we need to use next year to create a new category of bridges, door bridges.

And also, we'd like to see you start on an EIS for the Ballard Bridge.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Wasserman.

And we are joined by Council Member Lisa Herbold.

And Mr. Wasserman was our only speaker signed up this morning.

So if there's no objection, we'll go ahead and close the public comment period.

We are ready to get into our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Information Technology Department report to the City Council Transportation and Utilities Committee on existing and proposed short-term solutions to increase internet access.

Thank you.

And before we turn it over to our presenters from the executive, I just want to make a couple of remarks about this, this intranet for all report.

It was requested by the city council via resolution.

And I want to thank council president Gonzalez and council member Juarez for co-sponsoring that resolution and also the city council for voting for it.

You know, we know Seattle is a city that rightfully prides itself on world-class technology, but the COVID crisis has laid bare the inequities and injustices of the digital divide.

And we called on this action plan together as a city council to achieve internet for all because we can no longer allow limited access to the internet to prevent learning.

to impede our workers or to hinder our small businesses.

It's time that we provide more reliable and affordable access to the internet as part of our city's vital infrastructure.

It's important for social justice, education, and economic development.

This ambitious report from the mayor and her team in collaboration with the city council will spur Seattle's long-term efforts to provide affordable and reliable internet to low-income, BIPOC, and all communities so we can finally achieve internet for all.

Council President Gonzalez, if you want to say a few words before we jump into it.

I'm just to say thank you for bringing it forward.

And big thanks to Vee Nguyen in my office for the work she did on suggesting some modifications and engaging with stakeholders.

Additionally, just to make sure that we were all on the same page, really do appreciate the opportunity to address this issue.

I think when we first talked about this issue, I don't think we imagined that that we would be in such a virtual world.

And certainly internet access and equitable internet access has become even much more important now than ever before.

So looking forward to the ongoing collaboration and work between us and the executive on addressing this important issue.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

You're right.

This is really a good example of collaboration between the legislative and executive branches.

And I want to thank Cara Valle on my staff as well and central staff.

And I'm glad to see all these great professionals here to present this.

We've got Saad Bashir.

We've got Brian Hockaday, Tracy Cantrell, and many others.

Vin, welcome.

So go ahead and take it away, Saad.

Go ahead, Brian.

Good morning.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

For the record, I am Brian Hockaday, Policy Advisor for Mayor Durkin.

And on behalf of the mayor, we want to thank Council in the close partnership with Councilmember Peterson, Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Juarez, as we've all worked together to launch the Internet for All initiative and develop this IFA report that is before you today.

As Seattle continues to respond and work to recover from the unprecedented COVID-19 that reliable and affordable broadband internet has become more critical now than ever before.

We also know that access to technology is a race and social justice imperative, as we all commit to centering the voices of BIPOC communities and expanding opportunities for youth through upstream investments, including workforce readiness programs.

Earlier this spring and throughout the summer, the city immediately got to work to address the internet needs and digital equity disparities that were amplified by the COVID crisis.

It quickly became clear that a new strategy and leveraging creative partnerships with community organizations, schools, employers, as well as private and philanthropic partners would be critical to rising to the occasion at hand.

Applying for jobs, going to school, finding healthcare, and just keeping in touch with our loved ones, all of these tasks have moved online, making internet access a vital to the well-being of our communities and the economy.

This was the impetus behind the Internet for All initiative.

The IFA initiative provides the city of Seattle with a new roadmap and a tangible action plan to close the digital divide and meaningfully increase the adoption of affordable, reliable broadband internet.

I'll close again by stating on behalf of Mayor Durkin that we appreciate the alignment with council on these shared priorities, and we look forward to continuing to pursue more partnerships to make sure all families and households have the online resources and digital skills needed to thrive.

Thank you.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Tracy.

join me today.

I want to quickly recap what the Internet for All resolution and the report.

We will be presenting an overview of the report in this PowerPoint presentation.

We will focus on gap analysis, lessons learned and action plan.

And again, there is much more detail in the comprehensive report that has been submitted.

I want to remind ourselves that this has been a collection of activity and action by many, and we are looking forward to the presentation, and we welcome your feedback.

I am joined today by Delia Burke, Alice Lawson, and Ving Tang, who will also be helping to present.

As we've mentioned, the importance of internet for everyone is critical.

It is a race and social justice issue, and the pandemic has intensified this.

Much of our data is related to the 2018 information, but we know with COVID, things have intensified.

We work to embrace digital equity, and it has been a part of our culture, and it will continue to be part of the solution as we look forward to economic recovery.

Before we get started in the mechanics of our report, I want to remind ourselves of many of the areas that we are continue to focus on.

We are looking for avenues to advance digital equity, and many of those are already in play.

We have a tech matching fund.

We are looking and have provided public Internet access.

We continue to promote low-cost Internet outreach.

We have Digital Bridge, which is a new initiative for unemployed workers.

And we are partnering with many agencies and highlight, for example, the library is initiating a hotspot loan program.

Just to add a little more context and remind ourselves that this has been an issue that the city has championed for many years.

I want us to remind ourselves of how far we've come and where we need to go.

If you look at this chart, you see that we've made substantial progress in universal Internet adoption over the years.

2018% and now we're about 95%.

This doesn't mean that we're done.

It shows that we have more to do, but we are moving towards universal Internet adoption.

So how do we help?

I think it's important to understand really our current state.

The first piece is that we are a well connected City.

If you look, 95% of our households do have Internet access.

We've moved the needle, especially from 2013 to 2018, but we still have adoption gaps.

These are in concentrated geographic areas, and we've also found that this is explained by affordability, not necessarily infrastructure.

When we look at who has impacted 5% of these households or 17,000 households, these are the people that we are trying to reach.

I see Council Member Herbold has a question.

Thank you so much.

As it relates to the finding that the 5% of households without internet or 17,000 households are an outcome of affordability challenges and not infrastructure.

I just want to flag that my office has worked with constituents in the past where it definitely was an infrastructure issue.

We worked with both Comcast and CenturyLink, and they wanted tens of thousands of dollars to connect certain homes to broadband infrastructure.

And so I'm just wondering, does the analysis only cover the gap in access to Internet for folks for whom there is an affordability issue, or does it also include those pockets throughout the city?

where there is an infrastructure issue and there isn't access.

You will see targeted recommendations that ask us that we look at specific areas to address an issue if it is in that specific area.

Okay, thank you.

So now, looking at where the gaps are, I just want to highlight some of the key characteristics of those groups.

So we find low income is a very predominantly It's a high indicator of homes without Internet access.

Some of these other areas, they're not mutually exclusive, but these are some traits about households without Internet access.

Older adults, our BIPOC community, those with disabilities, or maybe those where English is not their first language, these are all households that may struggle with having Internet at home.

We find a direct correlation between income Those over 50,000 do not tend to have an internet access issue or an adoption issue.

Those with lower income, especially those under the 25,000, do tend to have adoption issues.

Again, I want to highlight that we're seeing the gap in specific geographic areas.

And so part of this analysis is helping to inform our strategies.

When we look at the areas that we see in Seattle, these are the areas that are having the highest issues with Internet adoption.

So South Central Seattle, Pioneer Square, Yesler Terrace, the International District, South Seattle, New Holly, Rainier Valley, Beacon Hill, West Seattle, High Point and South Park, areas of downtown and Lake City.

And you'll see those areas highlighted in the light blue on the map.

Again, this information can be used as we develop our strategy.

I want to take a moment and look at the feedback that we get with households without Internet access.

And this again helps inform our strategy.

But when you look at the struggles that people are having without Internet access, these are the barriers that are most commonly cited.

Many indicate that the primary barrier is cost.

Some do not have a device to access the Internet.

Others site credit or deposit requirements.

We have a group that simply doesn't know how to use the technology, or they say that the Internet is too slow or they don't trust.

One of the things that we're finding is it's not just about a single factor.

In order to solve this problem, you need to take a collection of these items and solve for all.

It doesn't matter if you have access, but you don't know how to use the technology or you may not have a device.

So our solutions are meant to look at things holistically.

So in the report, what we do is we outline the gaps, and then we move in towards how do we plan our action items?

And I want to just highlight that this is a collection of many people's input and organizations.

On the top bar, and we'll hear a little bit from Delia in just a moment about those partnerships, but we need to be reaching out to City of Seattle, many departments, the schools, community-based organizations, and private sector.

The center of the chart really reflects our North Star.

We know that the school districts and their work is very important.

What we can do to support them is essential.

We want to foster our internet connections, and we look forward to that universal internet adoption, our real North Star.

And we know that we need to focus on increasing the adoption rate, specifically for those with annual incomes under 25. The who represents the bar on the bottom.

Students, job seekers, low income.

Those are the folks that need our help.

Delia, can you share a little bit about our partnerships?

Sure, thank you, Tracy.

So as Tracy mentioned, partnerships have been essential in our digital equity work over the years, and we look forward to deepening these relationships as we implement the Internet for All action plan.

So the private sector has been a great partner, not only in funding our digital inclusion efforts, but also in donating equipment and lending technical expertise to various projects.

Philanthropy plays a role, and we're looking to align with new initiatives coming forth, like All in Washington, for example.

Anchor institutions like the Seattle Public Schools, the Seattle Public Library, Seattle Housing Authority, they have all been key partners for the city in helping us reach those residents, students, and families who are the most disconnected.

And our community-based organizations, so they're critical to this work.

They are the trusted ambassadors in delivering direct services to our most vulnerable BIPOC residents.

And we've had the honor to partner with over 360 community groups through the Technology Matching Fund program.

And we also look to regional collaboration by working with King County and the state of Washington, as well as engaging with local boards and networks like the Community Technology Advisory Board, the Innovation Advisory Council, and the Digital Equity Learning Network.

And now I'll pass this over to Vin Tang.

Thank you, Delia.

This slide points to lessons learned in the report.

The resolution asks us to study cities and their access and adoption.

We looked at recent news from cities that have announced digital equity initiatives because of COVID-19.

Reports examining broadband and municipal fiber systems, both Seattle-specific studies and national studies, and the digital equity plans of several major cities.

The lessons learned closely align with our proposed strategies and actions, including what you see on the slide.

Prioritize residents with lower incomes, device programs and skills training are as important as getting connected to the internet.

And reduce sign-up barriers and work with the community to build awareness to ensure residents connect to available resources.

On the screen, you will see the symbol for National Digital Inclusion Trailblazers.

Seattle is one of 15 cities to receive this recognition for advancing broadband access.

For a city with our internet infrastructure, high internet adoption rate, and our sustained history of digital equity work, it is recommended to use a micro-target approach to prioritize and allocate resources to close the remaining gap.

We now return to Tracy to present how we developed the action plan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vin.

So, again, as we heard from Delia and we heard from Vin, As we put our action plan together, what we wanted to do is leverage the lessons learned, rely and cultivate our partnerships with internal and external stakeholders and use this information to formulate our action plan.

We're focused, when we look at the gaps, we're focused on those geographic areas.

We're taking advantage of our infrastructure and we're looking at the root cause.

And again, we're looking for a holistic look at digital equity when we put together our action plans.

I'm sorry.

What we're going to do now is we have eight action plan strategies.

What we'll do is we'll look at these individually with a couple examples so that you get a flavor of how we plan on proceeding with addressing the internet for all.

Next, we're going to hear from Alice on a couple of our first strategies.

Good morning, everybody.

I'm Alice Lawson.

And I'm going to speak to our first two strategies which are areas where the city has already been doing a lot of work over the years and has been a big contribution to why we are up to a 95% adoption rate at this point.

These are key areas that will help us continue to close our digital divide and we're going to continue to emphasize them.

The first one is we want to continue to increase the awareness and adoption of programs for low cost access to internet service and devices in the city.

And as we can see from our 2018 tech access study, We only had a 53% awareness response rate for these programs.

So this is something where COVID has really helped us.

Since COVID, there's been really ramped up efforts with our community-based partners, who have always been our partners in this effort, as well as the Office of Cable Communications here at the city, to make sure that The clients who have intensified needs for connectivity are understanding and getting support to sign up for these low cost programs.

This includes collaboration we've done with Seattle Public Schools and helping them set up programs where they can sponsor some of these low cost programs for student households.

So the households don't have to pay for the service for up to six months initially is what the school has.

So it's a lot of good work that's been done in these first short months to have people know about and adopt these programs for services and devices.

But we know that the low cost service programs aren't a perfect solution for people who don't have stable housing.

And that's because these programs require a wireline connection.

So the digital equity study told us, and also this real time interaction with community based organizations over the last months, that we have a lot of people where a wireline connection is not a good solution and they need a mobile option for connectivity.

So that pushes us towards our second strategy, which is a continued focus on expanding our public Wi-Fi that's available.

And particularly, we're gonna focus in on our digital equity areas that were mentioned earlier in the presentation.

We've identified through our research that we think these are areas where if we could expand public Wi-Fi, it will have the greatest impact for community members to have free access through their mobile devices for an internet connection.

And we are going to, as a more immediate activity, have Seattle Public Libraries is working to deploy Wi-Fi outside their branches in Q4 this year.

And we're going to be looking strategically throughout the city, city community centers where we already have internal connectivity, how we might make that external also.

and through partnerships with private telecommunication providers who might have infrastructure in the area.

Tracy.

Thank you, Alice.

So looking ahead to strategy number three, we have partner with our organizations.

This strategy really reflects how we're continuing to partner with organizations to include and provide digital inclusion programs.

Some of the examples that we have here are to continue our programs, for example, the digital bridge.

It's also meant to recognize that we have in a holistic model that we need to help with For example, a train the trainer model so that we provide not only the access, but the additional skills needed to provide a complete picture for residents that need Internet access.

There's a digital navigator suggested as part of our action plan.

Strategy number four regards private sector and philanthropic support.

Again, we've seen a great outreach with our business and technology communities about wanting to help.

We need to partner with these organizations to secure the support that we need for Internet for All.

There has been tremendous positive engagement from the private sector for this initiative, and we thank them.

Next, I want to highlight strategy number five, which really has to do with championing legislation and policies.

So there's much going on at the state and federal level, and we want to continue to champion those causes.

The Digital Equity Act is just one example.

And we can take a look inwards as well, exploring what policies we have, for example, to enable internet access for all new affordable housing investments.

Those are just a couple of components that we can look at as part of our action plan.

Strategy number six looks at our regional collaboration.

We know that there has been a tremendous amount of work that is happening today, all within the same geographic area.

We have much with community based organizations, We have city action.

We have county action.

Having a stronger regional collaboration for these many, many different avenues is a recommendation in the report.

Alice, back to you.

Thank you.

So strategy number seven is working to align with the COVID mitigation type efforts that have been going on to provide and address some of these connectivity and digital equity needs.

During this time, ISPs, our internet service providers and our telecommunication providers in the city have really stepped up and been great partners in helping us meet the needs of low cost residents for affordable and increased connectivity.

One of the things that we do to measure our success towards a universal adoption is our tech access study, but we don't do that until every four years.

So getting more data in the interim years about the success at these low-cost program adoptions is going to be key for us to track our progress.

So that's going to be a strategy to work with the carriers who have that data to try to get access to it so we can see how much success we've been getting in the short term towards better adoption.

And that will help us keep our focus then and our strategy on where there might be lingering gaps, whatever the data might reveal.

Another focus area is that during COVID, we have had some successful outcomes.

So one of them, for example, is the low cost internet programs provided in the city.

Prior to March, they offered 10 to 18 megabit service, which was substandard even by the federal broadband definition.

And as of March, the companies increased that to a 25 megabit service, and they have committed to keep that as the ongoing service level for these programs.

So we think that's a real successful outcome.

But we also know that having so many people in households trying to connect at the same time has caused some service and speed constraints.

We get complaints of that.

And so we believe that the 25 megabit service is a baseline.

And we want to continue to have a strategy that focuses on how can we increase the service levels for our low cost programs, especially for those with families but there's multiple users in the household.

And our eighth strategy, and this kind of goes to what you were saying, Council Member Herbold, about these pockets we have in the city where there's not been traditional wireline connectivity or the connectivity hasn't been upgraded in a way to give someone what they consider is modern wired connectivity.

We need to constantly, and we are constantly tracking new technologies that are emerging to offer internet service specifically, but also to increase the capacity of existing service and systems.

And there's a lot going on in this area.

We've listed some here on the slide, and we talk about them a little bit in the report.

But these are all opportunities we think are important to consider to help us with the micro-targeting when we find specific need areas.

You know, maybe one of these solutions would work in one area, but not necessarily another.

So, for example, in an area where there isn't wireline connectivity, Maybe it's a block that for some reason it wasn't built out and now it's hyper expensive to do that.

Maybe the solution is some kind of a fixed wireless or even a increased satellite internet as those options are improving.

So we're gonna continue to track those and think this is an important part of the ecosystem of the internet to always be aware of the innovation that's going on and to closely monitor that and align that with the needs as they continue to arise and we become aware of them.

So Tracy, back to you.

Thank you, Alice.

So just for a quick wrap up, I want to highlight some of the timeline and key milestones.

And so our work has been in 2020. Really, we've put energy and effort into the report with an emphasis to gap analysis.

We continue to support the schools We are continuing our private and partnership and community engagement with different organizations.

And again, fostering those connections.

Those are work that is underway and will continue.

In 2021, we're looking to provide an update and provide a little more explanation on evaluation outcomes, for example.

And then again, continuing to provide updates and partner on how we develop an Internet for All.

fund.

Looking ahead to 2022 and 2023, again, really our North Star, the data points to universal Internet adoption in those years, and we're going to focus on the areas of need.

I want to remind ourselves that areas or households with annual incomes under 25 is a key group for us to help move the needle on.

So those are an overview of the timeline and the key milestones.

We want to have a few words from our CTO, but quickly we'll discuss our next steps.

And Tracy, if I may ask a question here about the milestones, if you could go back to that slide just to clarify a couple of items on this.

This is really important so that we are measuring our success.

And I know the resolution also called for an evaluation of how we're doing.

And so looking at our progress to goals will be really important.

So I wanted to clarify on the 20,000 Internet connections and devices that that is 20,000 Internet connections plus 20,000 devices.

I think what this will represent is what the need is.

What I We may have Internet connections and don't need devices.

You may need devices, but already have the Internet connection.

Our goal will be to report back on what is required to meet the need.

And that makes sense overall, but I know you all came up with the 20,000 number, probably based partly on the 17,000 plus households with the gap.

So I just wanted to confirm, we're not saying that this 20,000 number is both, it's combining internet connections and devices, so you're not saying- You're correct.

Okay.

Yeah, you're correct.

Absolutely, council member, that it may be, there may be some overlap and it may be more than, more than some cases.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for that question.

Did you want me to go ahead, Tracy?

Sure.

Yeah.

And I won't take too much of your time, council members.

Thanks again for the opportunity for us to present.

I was speaking with a counterpart in another city in the U.S.

And speaking about this report coming up and they heard about the 95% mark, you know, they seem to suggest that the mission was accomplished because in their particular region, 95 would be a really aggressive target.

And I said to that person, and I'm sharing it with you folks, that for us, this remains a work in progress.

We are challenging ourselves that we're not going to stop on what we need to do to bring that 17,000 number down to zero.

And so the more you can put us on the spot and expect that we come back to you with regular updates on some of the work that we have put in front of you, the better.

Because now we need to do some really micro-level targeted strategies because we're talking about a very small chunk of Seattle that have very specific needs.

And so our strategies and our tactics are going to align with those.

And with that, any questions that any council member have, we'd be happy to take.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions for Seattle Information Technology or the mayor's office?

And I know you may have questions, you know, feel free to ask them obviously at any time, but if you have any questions now, they are welcome.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I do want to thank this team.

I know this is layered and complex and huge undertaking, so I appreciate the work that has gone into this report and the work that you're doing to try to reach out to community.

I have to say, though, that I feel a little bit frustrated because what I hear you saying is that there is a small you know, percentage of our community that has, for many different reasons, has trouble accessing the Internet.

I'm sure a lot of that is language, affordability, just really lacking the infrastructure, lacking an understanding of how the Internet works at all.

And so it seems counterintuitive to me that the answer to that problem is to suggest research on assorted technologies, different needs, different, you know, assorted different programs and and initiatives, and I'm not sure how that solves the problem of, you know, speaking from my district in particular, a community that has layers of challenges.

It seems to me that a more holistic and a more uniform approach would make it easier, there would be one thing to explain, one way to access, one way to pay for things, and that is to move toward making this a public utility.

So I know that's a bigger and different conversation, but I just want to say that, you know, speaking for the District 2, folks in District 2 who have many of the challenges that you are talking about, Offering a menu of different things to different people doesn't seem like the right approach to solving the problem.

But I speak to that just really quickly.

So Alice Lawson and I'm with the broadband and cable program.

And what so this presentation did definitely heavily emphasize the service access portion of it, but our work definitely has been holistic in looking at digital equity as being access to the internet, access to a device, knowing how to use a device and knowing how to use the applications that are on that device.

And a lot of that type of work is with our community-based organizations.

So that is part of it.

I think you'll see more of that in the report.

And that's definitely something that's a key focus for us.

One of the programs we've stood up Um, in the last few months with office of economic development and the Seattle, um, jobs initiative called digital bridge.

That's very much what that program is doing.

It's giving them the device it's giving them, you know, one-on-one skills training, Seattle public libraries has already done that.

So we definitely have work.

We know that's where a profound need is.

It's not enough to tell us, turn it on in somebody's house or give them a mobile hotspot.

That is just the very beginning.

And it's a lot of.

hard one-on-one work often to help with those other solutions.

And so that's why we as a city really have to rely on our community organizations who work with those residents and know their specific needs and languages.

And so some of our strategies are supporting those organizations at that level.

If I can just build on that council member, there was a slide where we showed six different reasons, broad reasons why there are those gaps that exist.

One of them was about device.

The other one was about we just don't know how to get internet access.

And so when we maybe the subtle point to make is that when we talk about strategies, we're talking about coming up with a holistic strategy for each one of those six areas.

Last thing we want to do is confuse the person on the other end that we're looking to help by swamping them with 10 different types of options that they may not be able to perhaps choose from.

So we definitely want to target as simple of a solution as possible, but do it holistically for each one of those six areas.

Thank you for that question, Councilmember Morales.

And I know when the mayor submits her budget, we'll be looking carefully at how the dollars are allocated so that we can close the digital divide.

And, you know, you mentioned in your slide one of the strategies about training the trainers and getting people more comfortable with the devices.

It has to be you know, culturally competent and there'll be lots of language barriers that we need to overcome.

So, you know, in terms of whether that means that we need to fund more community groups that, you know, already have those connections and speak those languages to get to expand this access and adoption, that's something we could also handle during the budget process, even though we're facing, you know, massive budget deficit, probably for the operating budget and the capital budget there.

If we spend our money wisely and hoping we can move the needle forward on this and meet these milestones and you'll be back to our committee.

Um, um, you know, in a few months as well.

So we have the fall budget process, and then you'll be coming back.

And so that we can see how the progress is going and decide whether we need to, um, focus on other paths as well.

Okay, Council colleagues, any final questions for them while they're here?

Okay, I'd like to thank everybody from the mayor's office and Seattle Information Technology for all your hard work.

Now the hard work will continue to actually implement this, but really appreciate the cooperation, collaboration on this effort and we'll continue to ask the tough questions and try to move the needle forward on this.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, so we're on to item two on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Presentation by Seattle Office of the City Auditor.

Strategic approach to vehicle bridge maintenance is warranted.

Thank you.

So we have with us our city auditor and for the folks viewing.

The city auditor is part of the legislative branch of government.

The federal government has something similar with the general accounting office and it's very useful, very important office.

to help the city council, help the legislative branch look into things going on in the executive branch.

And, you know, with a $6.5 billion all funds budget, there's lots to look at.

And so we, this report was, After the West Seattle bridge closure, the questions came up about how are our other bridges doing?

What are their physical conditions?

Is there something that we could be doing differently?

So I want to thank the council president for enabling this report as well.

Lisa Herbold has obviously been very involved in West Seattle Bridge.

And so this report, there have been media reports about this already.

So we're eager to hear directly from the city auditor today.

I think Seattle Department of Transportation cooperated very much on this report, generally concurs with these recommendations in this audit report.

So we will hear a little bit from SDOT as well.

But I'd like to turn it over to our city auditor, David G. Jones.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

I just want to thank you for making the request for this audit.

I think it's a very timely topic.

And so thank you for bringing it to our office.

I just want to tell the viewing public, if you want to see a copy of the report, you know, you can see it through the agenda for this council committee, but it's also available on our office's website, which is www.seattle.gov slash city auditor.

What I'd like to do now is turn it over to people who really did the work on the audit and Sean Dublick, the Deputy City Auditor, and Jane Dunkel be taking you through this, but I would be remiss if I did not thank Melissa Alderson for her work on this and also Louisa Bravato Montessanti, who helped up on this audit.

Many thanks to them for getting this done.

As you said, Council Member Peterson, really quick, timely manner because you needed it, the committee needed it, the council needed it before budget.

So I'd like to turn it over now to Sean and Jane.

Thanks, David.

Good morning, Committee Chair Peterson, Council President Gonzalez, and committee members.

For the record, my name is Sean Dubleek.

I'm with the Office of the City Auditor.

Today, my colleague Jane and I will be providing you with highlights from our audit of Seattle's bridges.

This audit was, of course, prompted over concerns about the city's bridge portfolio following the emergency closure of the West Seattle High Bridge this past March.

I want to make it very clear from the beginning that our audit was not an investigation into the specifics of that bridge, but it was instead a look at the broader conditions of our bridges, the investments we as a city have made in their maintenance and upkeep, and recommendations for SDOT, as well as the city, to take to preserve and protect our transportation system.

Next slide, please.

The three key takeaways of our audit are listed here.

First of all, based on condition, Seattle's bridge portfolio is similar to other cities in the United States, but since most of our nation's bridges are aging and in need of more costly repairs and upkeep, this is not a great place to be.

Second, we found that on one hand, SDOT is spending the amount set by the budget on bridge maintenance, and that's good news.

But on the other hand, the amount needed for the upkeep of our bridges is far greater than what our city historically has set aside for these purposes.

Third, we have several recommendations for SDOT to address that will help us shift from a more reactive approach to the upkeep of our bridges and to establish what experts call a strategic bridge preservation program.

Before handing it over to Jane, I want to say that SDOT is taking steps in that direction and has concurred with nine of 10 of our recommendations and partially concurred with one of them.

Jane.

Yes, good morning.

So this next slide shows what we looked at.

We looked at 77 vehicle bridges that SDOT owns and maintains.

And just a couple of technical notes.

SDOT often speaks about having 124 bridges, but that includes, you know, Bridges that includes pedestrian bridges, tunnels, bridges shorter than 20 feet, and bridges owned jointly with other jurisdictions.

So that's the difference between the 124 and the 77. And another technical note is that we used Federal Highway Administration National Bridge Inventory, NBI, data for our analysis.

And sometimes NBI counts bridges based on their engineering components.

So in other words, they might count what we would consider to be one bridge And in this instance, they counted the university bridges, two bridges.

So when you look at the bottom of this slide, this is what we found.

We found 22 in good condition, 50 in fair and five in poor, although really the five in poor are essentially four.

Fairview Avenue North, which is in the process of being replaced, Magnolia, Second Avenue South Extension Bridge, and the University Bridge.

And as we saw on the last slide, most Seattle vehicular bridges are, yes?

Excuse me, Jane.

Vice Chair Strauss has a question.

Oh, OK.

Thanks.

And Jane, my question is on slide two, or three, slide three.

This is very helpful for us to understand which bridges within our city are in good, fair, and poor condition.

And as you mentioned, we're already intervening in some of the poor condition areas.

When we chatted yesterday, we discussed how the Minneapolis, the bridge in Minneapolis was in fair condition and the bridge on I-5 in Skagit County was also in fair condition when they both collapsed.

And those collapses were due to external variables in Minneapolis.

There was construction load as well as construction occurring and rush hour traffic.

And in Skagit County, an oversized truck struck one of the structural beams.

When we're looking at these bridges, is it your sense that without an external variable that these bridges that are in fair condition, as long as they are receiving inspection, should be fine?

Sean, do you want to take that question?

Sure.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

The NBI data are Not granular enough, I think, to make a determination like you're suggesting there.

What you need to have is ongoing inspections.

So bridges are required to be inspected at least every two years, and then certain components are inspected on a more frequent rotation.

And using the NBI data to determine what needs to be replaced or fixed wouldn't be a good idea.

Great.

Thank you so much.

I guess my question was also highlighting The fact that even if we have a bridge that is in fair condition, if an external variable comes into play, then we could see the bridge having substantial problems like what happened in Skagit County.

Looking at the 4th Avenue South Bridge, is there a way, how do we determine the length of use that that bridge has?

You do that by a very fine grained analysis of the bridges useful life.

So the design, the original design life for the age of the bridge impact that, but there's not a direct correlation.

So that's why we have one of the recommendations in our report that has to really update the useful life of their bridges based on current condition data down to the component level.

So that's how you do it.

You inspect them by component and then look at it that way.

Is that helpful?

Sean, do you want to add anything to that?

No, thank you.

We'll have Council Member Herbold in a moment after Sean.

Okay, Council Member Herbold, please.

Thanks.

Not another question, but just a response to Council Member Strauss' earlier observation about the fare-rated bridges and his question, just recognizing, of course, that the West Seattle Bridge was one of the bridges rated fare.

If that's, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure that's.

You are correct, and you are correct.

And so when we, when SDOT implements the recommendation about looking at the bridges in a more granular component by component measure, I think what we'll find from one hypothesis is that these, the 50 bridges in fair condition, there are gonna be some of those that show a more immediate need to address a concern.

I don't think there is a need for that.

I don't think there is an absent even an external involvement as Councilmember Strauss was pointing out.

Yes.

Yes.

Jane and Sean, is that your understanding when you do a component by component analysis that some of these bridges in the broader fare condition may indicate that they have a more immediate need of

Council Member Peterson, this is Lorelei Williams from SDOT.

Do you mind if I speak for a quick moment?

Yes, go ahead.

I just wanted to add to what was said.

We have an inspection frequency for all of our bridges, and that's where we get these ratings and results.

And when we see things that give us concern or create any inability for the bridges to not carry the traffic or loading that they're carrying, we take action.

So I just wanted to point out that If we saw anything in those inspections that would change things, we would take action on them.

And I think for this discussion, we'll go ahead and have the auditor run through their entire report, and then if SDOT has any comments at the end, just note things during the presentation.

At the end, we can hear from SDOT, and then we'll have the city auditor wrap it up for us at the very end, if that's okay.

Please continue, Sean and Jane.

Thank you.

So, let's see.

As we noted, most Seattle vehicular bridges are in fair condition, but again, this is not necessarily good news as many Seattle bridges are old.

In fact, the median age of the 77 vehicular bridges that we analyzed is 70 years.

and some are reaching the end of their expected lifespan and will need more costly repairs or to be replaced.

Also, things have gotten worse in the last nine years.

During this period, 15 bridges worsened in condition and only six improved.

This slide, for context, we compared Seattle to five peer jurisdictions that also had large bridge portfolios and had either similar populations, bridge issues, or geographic challenges.

And the takeaway from this slide is that Seattle is not an outlier in terms of the condition of its bridge portfolio.

But once again, this is not necessarily good news, as many jurisdictions nationwide have unfunded bridge maintenance needs.

In fact, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that of the 614,000 public bridges in the United States, an annual investment of $24.6 billion is needed to eliminate the backlog of national bridge maintenance by the year 2032. So this is a national issue.

For this slide, we go back to SDOT and to their maintenance.

We examine for a 14-year period.

We compare the budget SDOT was given for bridge maintenance and what they spent.

The orange line in the graph is the actual expenditures and the blue line is the budget.

And the purpose of this visual is to show that for the most part, SDOT spends what it's allocated for bridge maintenance.

There are two exceptions.

Exceptions, one example is underspending in 2008, but overspending in 2009. This was a planned cycle as SDOT sometimes saves funds from one year to use the next year on a larger project.

So that is something is just to be expected.

The other exception is 2016 to 2018 where SDOT underspent their budget and SDOT officials told us that this was due to the fact that they did not have enough staff hours needed to complete the work.

And for context, the SDOT division responsible for bridge maintenance, the Roadway Structures Division, has 51 employees.

This includes the interim director, supervisors, managers, and administrative staff, as well as the engineers who conduct inspections and maintenance crews.

They also have bridge operators not included in that number, but they don't do maintenance work.

Furthermore, in addition to bridge maintenance, these employees are responsible for, in addition to bridges, retaining walls, stairways, areaways, review of construction permits that affect transportation assets, and assisting with transportation-related emergency response.

And we'll talk more about the impact of this work and other work that SDOT does for external parties later in this presentation.

Council Member Herbold.

It's my recollection that the levy spending plan puts limits on allocations of funding according to different categories in a way that might make it more difficult to spend more money on bridge maintenance.

Did you take a look at the transportation levy spending plan to see about those limitations?

Um, we did not specifically, we looked at what was in the levy for bridges.

I don't have that figure right in front of me, but, um, we did look at that.

And at the, at the end, we can ask, uh, Lorelei Williams, if she wants to address that.

That's a good question about the Seattle levy limitation.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Okay.

So finally, SDOT estimates that more funding is needed.

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone.

We just wanted to give some background on how they come up with their estimates.

They use an industry rule of thumb to calculate what they should be spending each year on bridge maintenance to maintain a bridge in a state of good repair.

And a state of good repair is one where the bridge can operate at a full level of performance.

The industry standard is that SDOT should spend from one to 3% of total replacement cost on bridge maintenance every year.

And so we used the 3.4 billion replacement value for all SDOT bridges over 60 years old at 1%.

That's a minimum of 34 million a year they should be spending.

And we found that average annual spending on bridge maintenance for the last 14 years was 6.6 million.

So even with the most conservative estimate, SDOT needs another 27 million per year to keep up with bridge maintenance.

So now Sean's going to talk about some of the things SDOT should do to ensure they make the best use of any new resources they are able to obtain.

Sean?

And I think that's a really good point.

I want to emphasize that last, that previous slide, if you don't mind going back to it, which is the 1% figure that's been quoted in the media.

So SDOT on average spending $6.6 million, but yet should be spending 34 million.

That is based on the 1%, but it's really one to 3% that would be the best practice.

And so really you could be over $100 million if you did up to the 3%.

So I think that's a really important point that the gap is large.

Thank you.

Yeah, very good point.

Super.

Thank you, Jane.

Thank you, council member.

For the second half of our presentation, I'm going to focus on four key areas for SDOT to address as they move towards a proactive bridge preservation program.

First off is laying the groundwork for using any maintenance funds efficiently and effectively.

Now this slide here shows a deterioration curve and illustrates where investments in bridge maintenance make the most sense.

That is up in the green zone where conditions are fair and good.

And the reason it makes sense is by investing in that you're going to extend the useful life of the bridge.

As Jane mentioned, there is a very large gap between what is needed for bridge maintenance and what the city historically sets aside for that purpose.

But in order to close that gap, SDOT needs to know how long each bridge, and in particular, each major component of each bridge, is going to last.

Now, right now, SDOT has the information in the Y-axis for those components, knowing its condition.

But it lacks the information in the x-axis, how long these things are supposed to last.

And without it, the city cannot effectively and efficiently program money to the bridges that need the money the most.

Next slide, please.

I'm going to emphasize this point again, but we note here that the importance of having that information that was shown in the x-axis.

You need to know, again, where to put the money you have in order to get the most out of it.

So our recommendation in this area is to update the useful life estimates use that information to plan the maintenance work, and with those items in place, develop strategies to close the funding gap.

Next slide, please.

The second of the four items is compliance risk.

SDOT's inspection and maintenance practices are audited by the federal government on a multi-year cycle.

In preparation for their next formal audit, which takes place in 2023, SDOT proactively invited officials from the Federal Highway Administration and WSDOT to do an informal review of the bridge program this past fall.

According to the federal and state officials that conducted that review, they found some items, and leaving those items unaddressed could lead to audit findings and put us out of the running for federal dollars and lead to administratively burdensome oversight.

So our recommendation is for SDOT to immediately move forward to address the issues identified in that informal review.

Next slide.

The third area where we recommend changes to be made is in regard to reimbursable work.

This picture here shows an SDOT bridge crew inspecting a structure that belongs to Seattle City Light.

These SDOT employees have critical skills that are of course beneficial to other city departments and they're also they're also doing reimbursable work for the state and for the county.

We found that the amount of reimbursable work is significant.

About 20% of the work done by the bridge maintenance is not on SDOT bridges.

The next slide, please.

The issues that we identified are, of course, one, it means that less is being done on the bridges that could be done given current resources.

And the second item is that it changes the type of work that's being done on our bridges.

Now the first point is pretty self-evident, so I'm just going to talk more briefly about the second.

According to SDOT officials that we spoke with, maintenance crews may choose to do smaller bridge jobs in order to accommodate the time that they need to do the reimbursable work.

This is like putting the cart before the horse.

The impact is that the work that could be more beneficial for the bridges might not be done because of a timing issue with the reimbursable work.

So our recommendation here is for SDOT to reduce the amount of reimbursable work that they do with the bridge crews.

Next slide, please.

The fourth and final area that I'm going to talk about today has to do with the oversight of private bridges, like the one shown here.

This structure is a pedestrian bridge in the Interbay neighborhood.

And while it's not owned by the city, SDOT inspectors are required to do a safety inspection on this and other private bridges every year.

Now, of course, the safety of these private bridges is very, very important, but the frequency and type of inspection work is probably unnecessary given current bridge standards and the inspections and oversight that the owners also provide.

The next slide.

We discovered that the reason that SDOT is doing this work on an annual basis for these bridges is not necessarily because it increases the safety of the bridges.

Rather, it's an old requirement from an ordinance from about 50 years ago, which is shown to the right.

It's worth noting that back then in 1968, there was very little oversight of bridges anywhere in the country.

So at that time, having an ordinance like this really made sense.

Our recommendation is for SDOT to use its expertise to review this old ordinance and propose a new one that makes sense for this day and age.

Next slide, please.

All right, back to the key.

Council Member Strauss.

Pardon me, Sean.

Council Member Strauss.

Thanks, Chair Peterson.

And Sean, I was hoping to speak to you about the private bridges slide.

Hal Hallstein, OSBT:" yep, this is perfect, so I understand that newer bridges are built with a higher structural integrity, however, we do have a number of older bridges. Hal Hallstein, OSBT:" privately owned throughout the city i'm thinking of the one on Westlake, for instance, which the property owner was.

not maintaining because they were in the process of deciding whether to take down the bridge or to retain it.

In doing so, it was very important that SDOT maintained the inspections of that pedestrian bridge that was privately held because without proper maintenance, it was beginning to deteriorate.

Do you have recommendations as far as if there is a year that the bridge was built that fewer inspections should take place or is there further guidance or is your guidance simply that we need to reassess this and update this ordinance?

So our recommendation really leaves that operationalization of the ordinance and what specifics would be into it up to the experts at SDOT.

From our work on this issue, what we found is that using something really broad like the age of the bridge or what kind of entity owns it is not specific enough to address safety risks for bridges.

You could have a very new bridge that's unsafe.

You could have an old bridge that is safe.

So it really does depend.

So what we're asking SDOT to do is to use their expertise to develop something that basically fits with the variety of bridges that we have in that area.

Great.

Thank you.

All right.

I think we're on.

Yes.

Great.

Slide 15. Finally, I want to return to the overall message of our audit.

First of all, bridge conditions might look like other places in the country, but that's not a good place for us as far as bridge portfolios go.

Second, the city needs to invest more in bridge maintenance, and SDOT has been able to spend the money that has been allocated for that purpose.

And third, adding more money is not the only thing that needs to get done.

As I described, the updating estimated useful life of the bridges needs to happen, and there are other areas that should be addressed, including in addressing the informal review findings from the Federal Highway Administration, reducing the amount of reimbursable work that the SDOT maintenance crews do, and updating the oversight of private bridges.

All right, last slide.

In conclusion, I really want to emphasize our gratitude to SDOT for their cooperation throughout this audit.

And to note that they are taking steps now to implement many of our recommendations.

If Chair Peterson, if I just might add to just for the public, and I know council members are aware of this and departments, but.

Any recommendation in our report we follow up on until it has either been implemented or closed.

So just to note on that, the recommendations we have made, it's not like we just make them and walk away.

We will be touching base annually with SDOT to see what progress they've made on these recommendations.

Thank you, Auditor Jones.

And we're gonna hear from SDOT briefly, and then from the city auditor again, in case there's any final information, but Council Member Herbold, please.

And you're on mute.

I just want to put on the table one question for SDOT and then also a question for the auditor.

The question for SDOT relates to the bridge load level rating.

I was under the impression that because of Load level rating regulations out of the federal government that needed to sort of.

re-rate the load levels for the bridges and that that was going to actually be part of this audit.

But I understand that it's possible that it couldn't be part of this audit if that was still work that SDOT needed to do.

And then my other question, relates more to the fact that this focus on maintenance around bridges raises, I think, a broader question for asset maintenance of infrastructure.

You can look at other capital structures which I understand there has not been an asset management study since 2015. You can see that from taking a look at that asset management study and taking a look at the value of particular types of And so given that we've taken sort of this deep dive on bridges and learned what we've learned on bridges, does it make sense to also do it with things like arterial pavement and other hard assets that SDOT is responsible for doing maintenance on?

We can hear from, Lorelei can probably address that.

But I agree with you.

I know that one of the points Director Zimbabwe had made is when we decided to do the bridge audit is to remind us of all the other assets that they have to manage.

And so I think they have a shared interest in this.

But if we can turn it over to SDOT for a brief remarks and then see if the auditor has anything to add.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

So I wanted to share a few thoughts from SDOT in summary, and then also I will roll into working to answer the questions that I heard during the course of the presentation.

Good morning, everyone.

Thanks for having Estat here at the table today.

My name is Lorelei Williams and I'm the Deputy Director for Capital Project Delivery at Estat.

We want to explicitly thank Council Member Peterson for initiating this audit.

And we also want to thank the Office of the City Auditor for their excellent work and the professional way that they handled putting this report together.

I would be remiss if I also didn't mention and thank our SDOT team, led by our Interim Roadway Structures Division Director, Matt Donahue, and our finance team for putting in the time and working very closely with the City Auditor's Office.

As you can imagine, there was a lot of information to gather and put forward.

It was an incredibly collaborative experience for all of us.

From SDOT to the city to the people of Seattle as a whole, we stand to benefit a great deal from the process and the report itself.

It definitely highlights and calls attention to our maintenance challenges.

And so we're looking forward to where we go from here.

A quick few points that I want to make.

First, that public safety is our number one priority.

SDOT is committed to developing an even more comprehensive and proactive bridge asset preservation program that further maximizes the life of our critical infrastructure in alignment with what the auditor's office has presented.

As you know, and as has been said, we've already begun that effort, but when it comes to maintaining public safety, we always strive to improve.

Second, and this is an important point, though the closure of the West Seattle High-Rise Bridge on March 23rd of this year is what instigated this audit, it is actually not the result, the closure is not the result of any deficiency in our bridge maintenance program.

In fact, it's to the contrary, because the critical issues with the bridge were identified and addressed as a result of our existing proactive and thorough bridge inspection program, which had us inspecting that bridge at twice the rate of the federal guidelines.

The third thing I want to say is that the most critical challenge we feel we face as we work towards this is scaling up the program funding.

The audit includes some helpful process improvements that we will definitely implement to be able to gain a better understanding of where we need to go from here.

But the greatest challenge we have faced and we will continue to face is sustainable, scalable sources of revenue.

to develop a more comprehensive asset management program across all of our responsibilities, and that is a nod to other assets that SDOT and roadway structures has to maintain.

Last year we had to implement restrictions on First Avenue and Pioneer Square, for example, for areaways.

So that story continues.

Consistent with SDOT's own reporting over the years, the audit does highlight the need for additional funding for bridge maintenance.

As was noted in the presentation, with a $123 billion backlog of unfunded rehabilitation needs nationwide, Seattle is not alone in this trend, and we are unfortunately in line with almost every other major city in America.

While that is a city, state, and federal government-wide challenge to resolve, SDOT recognizes the fact that we have important work to do in order to better understand what a fully resourced bridge maintenance budget looks like.

both in terms of total dollars and in terms of scope and staffing resources.

And then we need to figure out what it would take for us to build up the capacity.

You've probably heard Director Sam Zimbabwe say that even if we had the money today, it takes us time to ramp up the staffing resources to be able to respond to it.

So money is not the only piece of the puzzle.

And the work plan that we're looking to develop will reflect that.

And as was noted, we concur with nine of the ten recommendations.

The one that we partially concur with is recommendation number two in regards to reimbursable work.

With safety as our North Star for all that we do, we're grateful for this report and the thoughtful suggestions around keeping the traveling public safe and responsibly managing the money, but we disagree that the reimbursable work in itself is a problem.

The challenge is that We are able to maintain more staff with that reimbursable work than we would be able to do with the existing maintenance budget.

So it gives us flexibility and more ability to respond to emergencies, training, development, that type of thing.

So though the reallocation of resources to reimbursable is definitely a challenge, for right now with our funding levels, it allows us to keep more staff on board.

So that brings us all to, you know, our goal would be to fully fund inspection and maintenance staffing needs in the way that we will be able to outline better with this work plan, how we can deliver on our program.

I can stop there for a moment if I get any questions.

Yes, please.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Thanks, and great to see you, Lorelei.

Thank you for all your great work.

My question yesterday to the auditor's team was actually about slide two, or recommendation two, the reimbursable work, because we know that having a crew that has a high level of expertise performing work for any department is important.

My question there was, And you partially answered this, is it an issue that we just need a larger sized crew or should we start having these other departments like City Light to create their own inspection crews?

I don't have a particular preference.

It just seems to me that it does seem like we need to have a higher level of staff.

And then a follow up question to that is regarding the budgeting.

Is it, do we currently have a single line item for bridge maintenance and operations and repair, or is that scattered throughout the budget?

Thank you.

So I'll answer the second question first.

It's in a variety of places in the budget.

Some are levy funded, some are not.

And so the auditor team had to go in and work with our finance team and make sure that they understood what pieces they were looking at.

But you have to look at the full details of our maintenance and our rehab and replacement budget to understand all the resources that we have in our roadway structures division to maintain our assets.

And Sean and Jay may have something more to say there too.

And Council Member Strauss, your first question around reimbursables.

What would actually be ideal would be to increase our funding and our staffing resources in the long run, which is what we need to be able to plan out and better explain and present for needs in the future, but I would recommend that even as we make those changes that we would still ideally have enough staff that we could handle some reimbursable work so that we could have the flexibility that comes with that.

And by having the reimbursable work part of what we do, then we can have a larger staff than we might otherwise have if we purely depend on the bridge maintenance budget.

Thank you.

And we have a Calvin chow from our city council central staff is here.

And I know when we, when the mayor's budget is transmitted, we'll, uh, he, and we all will be looking carefully at all the bridge maintenance line items to see, was there an increase or at least maintaining that level?

Uh, please Calvin.

Calvin chow with council central staff.

Uh, thank you, council member.

I think I wanted to just, um, underscore something that was in this presentation that, um, These bridges are very old that the median age is 70 years and so at some point.

Well, when we talk about maintenance, the maintenance need becomes replacement.

It becomes a much larger project.

That's what's happened with Fairview.

That has been the conversation around Magnolia and other bridges.

Council Member Herbold asked about the Move Seattle levy, which expires at the end of 2024. And it established three categories for that spending of the levy money, including $420 million for maintenance and repair.

and there is some authorization to be able to move things slightly within 10% with comment from the Move Seattle Oversight Committee and future council action.

But largely, there's a whole, obviously, there's a whole series of commitments that have been made with the Move Seattle levy.

The next real opportunity for elected officials to consider what we do on a bigger scale with significant amounts of money will be when the new Seattle levy comes up for renewal.

That conversation will be for elected officials in 2023. And so it may be about thinking about what can we do in the time between to set up that conversation, to have better information, to look at our broad range of assets and be able to put something before voters to start to address some of these needs.

So I think there are sort of near-term issues that would be appropriate for our budget cycle and how we deal with the regular maintenance.

But this is big dollar items as well, and we probably need to think about it in two different scales.

Thank you.

Can we hear a final word?

Lorelei Williams, are you finished from SDOT, or can we move to the auditor and just wrap it up?

I, there were a few other questions that were asked, but if we want to.

So I can grab those really quick Calvin got the move Seattle one and handled it very well so nothing more there.

The private infrastructure that we inspect, one of the things we have noted is we could hire outside resources to do those inspections also rather than drawing from our team.

So I wanted to call attention to that.

Also make sure that you all were aware that we last year created roadway structures as its own division, particularly in response to understanding the growing maintenance needs and needing to elevate that within our organization.

And then there was a question about the bridge load rating.

program and what that looks like going forward with the changes from the federal government.

I was going to call on Matt Donohue just really quickly to respond to that.

Thanks Lorelei.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Matt Donohue.

I'm the interim director for roadway structures.

And I think perhaps what Councilmember Herbold was referring to is the mandate from the FHWA, the Federal Highway Administration, that dictated that all owners of certain types of bridges on the national highway system have to load rate their bridges for two new commercial vehicles that were introduced into the federal system, emergency vehicles and special haul vehicles, which are very large multi-axle dump trucks for heavy construction.

And so that resulted in us starting a program that's due in 2022, that we load rate 69 of our bridges for those two specific trucks.

Councilmember Peterson, I think that wraps up everything I had notes about.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold.

So, again, I think my question, though, is for the for the bridges that you have done.

load level, new load level ratings for.

I understand they're not all due until 2022, but my recollection is that this regulatory change Was back in, um, I think it was like 2014, 2015, 2015. And although folks, although the cities were given a long time to complete all of the load level rating of all of the.

The eligible bridges and.

There's there's an expectation that we don't just wait until 2022 and do them all at 2022 that we that we phase phase the work in.

And I guess my question is, is for those bridges that the work has already been completed.

Has the city auditor looked at those new load level ratings as part of the city audit on bridges and come to any conclusions about something that we should be doing differently with those bridges that have already had this work done, these new ratings?

Because as we know, this is what sort of triggered, in some ways, greater scrutiny on the West Seattle Bridge.

And so I'm just wondering if we went through that same exercise with other bridges for which we've done the new load level ratings on, would we come to conclusions about other bridges that are rated fair that need some extra attention?

I think so a couple things in the audit and Sean please chime in or Jane load rating was considered in the in respect to the budget.

If you look at bridge made the bridge maintenance budget it's comprised of four components to that are out of the general fund and to that are out of capital.

The two out of capital are our load rating program and our bridge painting program.

So they consider the budget specifically for our load rating program.

I think when I hear what you're saying, load rating assessments are to look at bridge components specifically for a truck type.

And all it does is say, will the bridge handle the load from that particular vehicle type or not?

It's not really an assessment of the condition of the bridge by component or overall.

And I think the audit recommendation about getting down to a bridge preservation program that's at the component by component level, rather than just using the overall sufficiency rating for the bridge, which is what we do now.

It speaks maybe more to what you're asking for, that we can, even if the overall rating for a bridge is at a fair level, we can identify specific components that need to be addressed, even though the bridge itself overall is considered fair.

That's helpful, and I might have more refinement of my not very well stated question as a follow-up.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Vice Chair Sprouse.

Oh, thank you, Chair.

And Matt, if you could stay on the line, your last comment was something that was also brought up by Eugene Wasserman during public comment today regarding the Ballard Bridge.

As I was traveling into City Hall today, It was just after 9 a.m., and I noticed the bridge was up, which is outside of our typical ‑‑ usually the bridge does not open ‑‑ I guess it is after 9. Never mind.

Let me retract that statement.

All that to say is I was worried that the bridge was stuck up, and I took the Fremont bridge instead.

And that is because of that ball bearing and some of the component level issues.

And I just appreciate you calling that out and flag for the committee the importance that we look at the component by component issues.

Laurel, I also just wanted to follow up with you regarding the private bridge inspection.

It is my understanding that we, as the city, charge the owners of these private bridges for the inspections.

Is that correct?

Is that a correct understanding?

That is correct.

And I think the second paragraph of that ordinance that was on the screen talks about how we're able to charge them for that, which is why it could be even more directly easy to acquire consultants to fill that void.

Yeah, definitely.

And one more thing, just because it came up.

SDOT's working right now on our transportation asset management plan and the update for that.

So just to your point from earlier, Lorelei, is that with the reimbursable work and with this work that can be either with private bridges where the funding is not necessarily the issue, it is that we as a city need to take a stronger look at the crew levels that we're able to provide you SDOT and the residents of Seattle.

Just flagging that for the record.

Thank you.

Thank you, council members, and thank you folks from SDOT and from the city auditor.

I really appreciate this work.

We're gonna, you know, the city auditor, as David G. Jones mentioned, they will be back.

They will be following up on these recommendations.

Council members, if you do have additional questions for them that you want to address, we will have them back at our committee.

They actually were able to do So much more work in this period of time than we have been expecting we were hoping to get this preliminary report prior to the mayor transmitting her budget, so it can inform our now so we can.

might be helpful to the executive branch as they finalize their budget, transmittal to us, and then inform us when we decide how to amend the budget.

But they were able to get a lot more work done in advance.

And that was thanks a lot to SDOT as well.

But we will still hear from them again as a follow-up.

So send any questions you have to them.

Auditor Jones, any final words before we move on?

I'll defer to the team that did the work.

I don't know if Sean or Jane had anything they want to add.

I would just put out there that this is a very expensive and complicated problem and the consequences of not doing anything are pretty severe.

And I think that we're the good news story is that you have SDOT very interested in doing this work and then also the attention that you all are giving it.

So we're hoping that with our recommendations that it'll help put us in a better place.

Thank you very much.

And once again, it's the collaboration between the executive branch and the legislative branch is greatly appreciated here.

All right.

Well, let's thank you everybody.

Uh, let's move on to the next item.

Item three on our agenda today is a council bill.

Uh, will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Okay.

Well, folks, presenters are getting themselves ready.

Council Bill 119870, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, authorizing the general manager and CEO to execute a 10-year agreement with Ponderay County for loss of revenues and additional financial burdens associated with the City Light Department's operation of the Boundary Hydroelectric Project on the Ponderay River pursuant to RCW 3521-420, 3521-425, 3521-426, and 3541-427, and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

And we do have with us the CEO and general manager of Seattle City Light and her team.

We also have our central staff, Eric McConaughey.

Eric, did you want to say anything to introduce this?

Or should we just hand it over to Deborah Smith?

I think it's fine just to jump right in.

And I'm here for any questions should you like to ask, especially if there's something to follow up that I can work with the department on later.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So general manager and CEO, we need to come up with an abbreviated.

I know we can just title.

So we can just go with general manager.

That works for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Council member Peterson and members of the committee.

It feels really good to be back, I guess, even though it's a slightly different way, but it feels good to be picking up work.

And moving forward, and so we'll be bringing items to you today.

And then I think next week as well.

So great to be here and great to see you, Eric call out there.

Thank you.

So I'm gonna go ahead and introduce the team because we have four items.

And while I know that they'll be introduced individually, we'll go ahead and do the intros all at once.

So again, I'm Deborah Smith, general manager of Seattle City Light.

On the first two items that we'll be reviewing with you today, we have Mike Haynes, who's our chief operating officer and Jeff Wolf, who's our legal affairs advisor.

And then we will switch directions and you will, we will talk about green up and that metering and we will have Craig Smith, who's our chief customer officer and Lori Moen.

who's the manager of solutions design and management.

So, again, these are all fairly, well, maybe not routine, but they are tactical kinds of issues.

When we come before you next, we will talk about some of our more far-reaching, the transportation electrification strategic investment plan, and that's a more forward-looking piece of work.

But these are important pieces.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mike Haynes.

Thanks, Debra.

And good morning, committee.

Good morning, Council Chair.

Mike Haynes, Chief Operating Officer.

So this first presentation is specific to the Boundary Project in Northeast Washington State.

So Maura, if you can advance the slide.

This constitutes the renewal of an existing 10-year agreement that expired at the end of 2019. As long as I've been here, we've been negotiating these on about 10-year cycles.

We have a similar agreement with Whatcom County, just to put it into context for the Skagit River Project, and that'll be coming due in a couple of years time.

So the context is what it is in this first slide.

It gives you the authority from the state to require us to pay what we call impact fees to counties outside of our jurisdiction where we operate a hydroelectric plant.

So next slide, please.

Within the context of this particular agreement that we've negotiated with Ponderosa County, the city is obligated, according to the ordinance, because of our population, because we own and operate a public utility, and because we built a hydroelectric project outside of our county of origin.

And this written agreement requires continued payments by state law, even though the current agreement is expired, for instance, we continue to pay Currently to the county based on the terms of the agreement that expired last year and that's that was built into the state RCW.

So next slide please.

The next.

The reason why we do this and the reason that is embodied into the RCW is in front of you.

These elements, public peace, health, safety, welfare, all components of impacts that are highlighted.

in the context of constructing a major hydro project in a county on a river system.

One of the things I wanted to highlight is road maintenance.

We do take that part very seriously, and that was one of the major components contributing to the current renewal and the negotiations that took place.

late last year and earlier this year.

This essentially is the basis for the dollars.

Going forward, the county will take those dollars and distribute them according to the construct in the agreement.

Next slide, please.

A little bit more context.

Arbitration is a clause within the RCW.

We did not have to go that route because negotiations were successful.

The county, myself and Deborah came to agreement and all parties are in agreement with the terms that we came up with.

And as I mentioned earlier, this agreement replaces one that expired last year.

We would anticipate being back here in about nine years time.

to present the next 10-year agreement.

So next slide.

This slide just highlights the order of magnitude of the dollars that are in play for the county.

The county gets these disbursements and quarterly payments that are coming out of our light fund.

And then the county then disperses those payments according to provisions in the agreement.

So next slide, please.

agreement identifies that the county is the keeper of the funds and also the disbursement authority.

There's three towns in the context or in, I guess, in close proximity to our boundary project, the town of Medellin, Medellin Falls, and Ione.

So they, by formula, get a portion of these funds distributed to them for their general funds.

And associated with that, too, three school districts that get appropriations based on a county formula.

the three school districts, Selkirk, Cusick, and Newport.

Just as a point of information, the Selkirk School District, if we have school-age kids that are children of city employees that work at Boundary, more than likely they are attending the Selkirk School District.

That's the North County area.

And then, yeah, so that last bullet just affirms that the county does the fund disbursements.

So that was pretty quick.

And I'm happy to take questions.

Council members, any questions for Seattle City Light on this council bill?

OK. then we will go ahead.

I don't see any questions from my colleagues here.

So Council Member Strauss, please.

Thanks, Chair Peterson.

Just to say that meeting with Seattle City Light yesterday and General Manager Smith, your team is just so excellent.

They were able to answer all my questions.

This is very routine and standard piece of legislation.

So thanks to everyone for making this happen.

Thank you, Council Member.

Thank you.

So council members, at this time, I'd like to move that the committee recommend passage of council bill 119870. Is there a second?

Second.

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

Any final comments?

OK.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that we pass this bill?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Aye.

Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five yes, no no's.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that this bill pass will be sent to the September 21st City Council meeting.

Thank you presenters and we'll move into item four on the agenda.

Will the clerk please call the, or please read the item four into the agenda.

Council Bill 119857, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, clarifying that residents living in the City Light Department owned housing in the Diablo and New Halem communities are subject to the City Light Department's rates under Chapter 2149, and 2156 of the Seattle Municipal Code, amending section 2156030 of the Seattle Municipal Code and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

General Manager Smith.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Not going to do additional intros.

This truly is a fairly perfunctory housekeeping type of items.

So I'm going to turn it over to Mike Haynes again.

Thanks very much, Debra.

Thank you, Council Chair.

Next slide, Maura, please.

So the history of this goes way back in time, even before my time here at City Light.

We own 44 houses up in the towns of New Hamel, Halem, and Diablo up in the North Cascades, the foothill to the American Alps, as they say.

We have a few essential employees that receive utilities as part of either a collective bargaining agreement or through offers because of their essential capacity with the city and their desire to live in our company town.

Other employees who work and live in the New Halem and Diablo area actually sign rental agreements that require them to pay both rent and utilities.

Next slide, please.

So the language that we're updating at the recommendation of the city law department is in front of you now.

The SMC hasn't been changed in a very long time.

I believe this language dates back into the 70s.

And so this is an opportunity to clear up some ambiguities and also clear up any confusion for new renters and for existing renters who are under our current lease agreements.

So next slide then looks at the proposed amended language and the revised language for the SMC, which makes it very explicit that City Light employees living in company housing will pay utilities.

So that is the gist of this update.

Next slide, please.

So this just kind of summarizes what the code application does.

It requires people living in the towns living for, or working for the city to pay electric rates similar to all city residences.

And I mentioned earlier that some rental agreements explicitly require, or our rental agreements do explicitly require this.

There has been some confusion and misinterpretation of this over the years that we've had to clear up on a case-by-case basis.

And again, the law department has been recommending this for some time, and I'm glad we're finally bringing it to the table today.

So next slide.

So the impact is that, again, it clarifies that employees, when they sign rental agreements, they will be paying utilities.

This doesn't impact any of the current employees' existing arrangements, whether it's by labor agreement or hiring letters.

Those agreements stand.

This language is, again, clearing up what's been the practice for a very long time up at Skagit and then also makes it very clean for new renters coming in and new employees who want to rent housing with what the terms and conditions will look like that are embedded into the rental agreements.

So that, again, was very fast.

I'm happy to take questions, Council Member, Council Chair.

Thank you, council members.

Any questions on this particular council bill or the presentation?

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Just again, flagging from my meeting yesterday with Seattle City Light, it is clear that this is just an update to clarify and make consistent what could be confusing language, and this is well received.

Thank you for making this happen.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Well, Council Members, if no further questions on this item, I would like to move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119857. Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Any final comments or questions?

Great.

So we'll have the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five yes, no nays.

All right, the motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 21st City Council meeting.

Now we're going to move into the third city light item, which is item five on our agenda.

Council 119871. Will the clerk please read item five into the record?

Council Bill 119871, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department establishing updated eligibility requirements for net metering and customer requested net metering aggregation billing arrangements and amending section 2149.082 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you.

We have another short presentation by City Light.

General Manager Smith, take it away.

Thank you.

Thanks again, Council Member Peterson.

Yes, so the next two items are both related to provisions and offerings from our customer energy solutions group.

So up first is the net metering ordinance, which is a technical fix as well.

And I will turn it over to Lori Mowen for a presentation.

Thank you, Lori.

Thank you, Debra, and good morning, council members.

Thank you for having us this morning.

Next slide, please, Maura.

So we've been involved in renewable energy for a long time at City Light, and we have a whole suite of renewable energy programs.

This specific request today is to align our current Seattle ordinance to the state Seattle ordinance, but it gives me an opportunity to provide some context about the current state of solar in our service territory.

So we have offered net metering since it was required by the state in the late 1990s and with adoption of an SMC in 2000. Over the years, the requirements for net metering have changed.

Initially, utilities were asked to to have a cap of 0.1% of their 1996 demand for city light.

That met 10 megawatts, and we hit 10 megawatts and kept going.

That is, the state only required us to meet their cap, but we, as a municipal utility, allowed additional customers to continue to get net metering under our own umbrella.

Today, the cap for net metering is 4% of the 1996 peak demand for city light that represents 78 megawatts of solar.

Our current total is 41% of that we have currently 32 megawatts of solar connected That's 26 megawatts in the residential sector and 6 megawatts in the commercial sector.

So we're doing quite well.

And I'll just take an opportunity to speak to the ways that we do support solar and other renewable energy projects across all of our portfolio.

So in addition to net metering, we have recently added the option to aggregate.

And I'll talk a little bit about that in the next slide.

In addition to an aggregation option, we're looking to pilot a virtual net metering option in affordable housing.

And what that allows is for one system to credit multiple customer bills, which would be a great case to enable solar on a multifamily building.

We last year we adopted a large solar program which created a clear process and a purchase rate for our customers who wanted to install a larger solar array.

That would be anything that exceeded 100 kW up to 2 megawatts.

We also work with the Department of Construction and Inspections very closely on the Seattle Energy Code.

The code has a current solar-ready requirement for multifamily buildings over three stories and commercial.

And the new code, which will go into effect in February and is currently under review, is taking that one step further to require solar installed at the time of construction for these same buildings.

Relative to residential, there's no firm requirement right now for solar, but builders have to choose certain energy efficiency options and solar is one of those options that they can choose from in order to meet code requirements.

And finally, I'll just talk a little bit about our voluntary green power programs, which is the second item that I'm going to be presenting on, but that again is a a two decade long effort by Seattle City Light to promote renewable energy in our community.

And what started out as a demonstration program led to over 30 projects in our community that demonstrate renewable energy.

And the current Green Up program is supporting actual project development in local schools, community centers, nonprofits, and current focuses on affordable housing.

So across all of our programs, we've really supported net metering and solar for quite some time.

So the purpose of this request is basically to align the Seattle code with the state code.

And there are two simple changes.

The first change is relative to how we account for solar energy.

In net metering, customers generate power with their solar cells.

And if they can consume it internal to the house, they get retail rate.

If they generate more than their home is consuming, that gets exported.

And under a net metering agreement, it gets put in a bank.

And so they bank all summer long.

And in the winter, they'll pull from that bank.

And then the bank is cleared out at a point in time.

Previously, that point in time had been April 30. The RCW has changed that to March 31. which gives customers another month to acquire solar, assuming that we'll get some solar generation in April that they can pull from in the wintertime.

So great benefit, small change.

The second piece that the RCW allows for is utilities can recover the administrative costs of allowing net meter aggregation.

Aggregation is when you have a customer who owns more than one solar array on adjacent properties.

So for example, if you've got a large garage on a parcel and your home next door on a parcel and you have two meters and two solar arrays, you can now combine those two so that your home can benefit from the generation on the garage.

And that has required us to make some changes in our billing system.

So utilities are now allowed to recover those costs.

And what Seattle City Light would like to do is provide a one-time setup fee to do that.

aggregation in our system.

Thank you.

We've got a question from or comment from Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

And thank you, Lori.

You actually answered my one of my questions, which is, is this a one time fee?

Is it nominal in order to cover the basic administrative costs that you are incurring?

I know that It is, we have the ability to make it a more an annual fee and I just registered that I appreciate you making this a one time fee.

My other question that I wanted to tease out it sounded like the.

Most important benefit from this aggregation is that as it currently stands, if you have solar on your garage and solar on your home, your net benefit from your garage could only be used on your garage.

And this change would allow that energy generation for your garage to also be used on your home.

Is that a correct understanding?

Yes, it is.

And with rooftop solar, of course, your generation is limited to the rooftop size.

And so that would allow for people to have a system that's more in line with what their home energy consumption might be.

And just for a fact, we have two people who have taken up this option.

Not a high demand, not a Black Friday rush to take advantage of it, but I suspect over time we'll get more customers.

Excuse me, Council Member Herbold.

Thanks.

Maybe I should have waited to see the rest of the presentation, but I recently had a constituent contact me about the fact that they were producing more energy than they needed, both Including for the period of time where you would bank the energy, the excess energy.

So they didn't need to use all the excess energy in the winter months.

My recollection was that Seattle City Light's response to that issue is that their practice is that we don't pay customers for overproducing energy.

I'm assuming that's still the case even with this proposal before us today.

But if that particular individual had another structure, I don't know if that's the case.

I don't know.

Perhaps I could contact that constituent and find out if there's another structure and if they want to apply what's in their bank towards the costs associated with energy and that other structure.

But I mostly just want to confirm that the policy is going to their ability to use it when they banked it.

That is correct.

And we feel that the change to the solar year will actually benefit those individuals who end the year without anything left in their bank.

So we have very few customers who have a bank at the end of the year, and that gets dissolved back to the utility.

So there is no cash out at the end of the year.

That's correct.

Please continue.

All right.

So this last slide basically says that it will edit the municipal code.

And as a result of that edit, we don't expect any budgetary impacts from either item.

And so very, very minor impacts.

Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation.

Any final questions from council members before we vote on item five on our agenda?

All right, Council Members, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119871. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that we pass this bill?

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Aye.

Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Aye.

five ayes, no nays.

Motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 21st city council meeting.

Colleagues, we just have two more items, two more council bills, one from Seattle City Light and then the one at the end from SDOT.

So item six on our agenda now, will the clerk please read this item into the record?

Council Bill 119885, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department amending section 2149084 of the Seattle Municipal Code to enable a broader suite of voluntary renewable energy program options to City Light customers.

Thank you.

General Manager Smith.

Oh, you're on mute, General Manager.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

And again, this is another relatively small piece of legislation, but it will give us increased flexibility and allow us to be more responsive to our customers.

Lori will, again, be presenting, but before I turn it over to her, I did just want to check in and see if Craig Smith, our Chief Customer Officer, had anything he wanted to say since he is on the call.

and he is silent.

So I will take silence as a permission to move forward and turn this over to Lori yet again.

And by the way, council members, I really, really appreciate you all hanging in there with us.

I know that we're running a bit late and so we're very, very thankful that you've all carved out the time and then been able to stay.

Thank you.

Lori?

All right, well, Voluntary green power purchase is another one of our suite of renewable energy programs.

And this is a really fun program because as you all know, Seattle City Light is green power and we've had our long history of hydroelectricity and since 2005 we've been carbon neutral so These programs allow our customers to go beyond what we already provide them with and support the growth of renewable energy in our local communities and In some cases, they result in some beautiful artwork, which I think you're probably all familiar with the sonic bloom.

So go ahead and present the next slide.

Again, this is a two decade long journey that we've had for renewable energy.

Started off with some requirements again by the state of Washington to require utilities to offer a voluntary program to purchase qualified alternative energy resources.

The first program that we initiated actually took the Qualified Alternative Energy Resources component and added another element, which was demonstration projects.

And while customers would subscribe to purchase a Qualified Alternative Energy Resource, which again was additive above and beyond what they would get from their electric bill and kilowatt hours supplied by City Light, dollars would go to buy qualified alternative energy resources and also invest in demonstration projects.

And you've probably seen one of these projects somewhere throughout the city.

Like I showed in the first slide, one of the most famous ones is Sonic Bloom.

Another reputable one is the solar installation on the carousel at the zoo.

So that program, because it had the demonstration project component in it, actually closed in 2011 because a secondary program had been adopted to clearly allocate, give customers the opportunity to buy renewable energy credits.

So second slide, please.

So GreenUp was established in 2005, and that was intended to be a very straightforward and simple way for customers to purchase qualified renewable energy credits more aligned with the market rate and, again, additionality, but they could provide feedback on what portfolio of renewable energy they would like to purchase.

We have a very simple formula.

It's a $3, $6, $9 contribution on a residential bill.

And for commercial customers, it can be a little bit more creative and flexible.

And so we've operated this program since 2005. And during the time when we had the authority to do some creative things, we continued to invest in those demonstration projects.

In 2011, when the Green Power Purchase Program ended and Green Up was our sole program, we now had to line all of our program spending to purchasing renewable energy credits, which are in order to be a qualified REC, you have to go through a few hoops and there's a certification body, usually not closely aligned to smaller projects.

But despite that, this program has really supported a number, as I said in my original presentation, it supported a number of local renewable projects in schools.

We have done seven schools with the Seattle Public School District.

We are working, we have funded Harborview and the Pacific Science Center as community spaces and nonprofits.

And currently the program is working with affordable housing as our focus.

We've got four projects identified in new construction on an exemplary buildings demonstration pilot, and an additional eight projects in the affordable housing sector.

And all of these projects will be the purchase of their renewable energy credits, which actually occur once the projects are up and running.

So as we've talked to customers and we've looked at their interest in funding renewable energy in our community, there is an interest to go back to a place where it's not just a renewable energy credit that they're purchasing, but more of a direct funding of some of these local projects, and in particular funding projects on affordable housing.

So the proposed changes that we have are really to allow some flexibility.

The first thing is that the municipal code uses the term green up as a product.

And we feel that that's really branded to the renewable energy credits.

So we'd like to remove that from the ordinance.

And the second piece is that we would like to add a section to the ordinance, not taking away from anything that currently exists, but that allows us to offer a product that doesn't align with a qualified alternative resource.

And these products would still be permitted under our rules and regulations.

They would comply with all of our net metering and aggregation program requirements, but they would allow for customers to opt in to funding things that are a little bit more creative and flexible.

And in particular, we really perceive a focus here on providing solar in low-income communities and affordable housing.

Next slide.

So once again, these programs are fully funded by voluntary contributions.

Customers select their level of participation.

That participation rate is around 14,000 customers a year.

It's been very steady.

We've got a lot of customers who are very outspoken in this area and very interested in supporting the community.

So again, no financial impacts to these changes.

Council Member Strauss.

Thanks, Chair Peterson, and thanks, Lori.

If you could switch back to slides three and four.

I just wanted to hear a little bit more.

I understand that when we are ensuring that the correct voltage is on our network to be able to provide electricity to have the correct load for our network, that sometimes we have to make blind purchases of electricity on the market, which in turn means that we are purchasing dirty electricity from carbon polluting sources, and that City Light does such an excellent job of offsetting these carbon purchases by purchasing carbon credits to offset these blind purchases.

Can you share with us how that Ability for us to keep city light carbon neutral is different and separate from this green up program.

Yeah, we actually have an individual who oversees our carbon neutrality program.

And I believe that's part of our integrated resource plan.

Those are wholesale market purchases at bulk levels.

The purchases that we make through the green up program are roughly 26 megawatts a year.

So nowhere near what we might be purchasing for the City Light system requirements.

So they're two separate programs and they may buy Renewable Energy Credits from the same projects, but the RECs that we purchase for the Renewable Energy Program is customer driven.

It's all based on customer funds.

It's not rate payer, rate based.

Thanks.

So what you're saying is that this is, and I think you said this during the presentation, I guess I'm just calling it out, that this is an additional fee or charge that a customer is voluntarily paying so that we are able to create a more green electrical network.

Is that correct?

So the customer is opting into an additional fee so that we have a green network.

They are opting into an additional fee to support renewable energy in our region and also in our local community.

They don't expect this kilowatt to come to their home.

Excellent.

And Craig or Mike can chime in here if they'd like to add perspective.

Council member.

So the programs are two really distinct programs.

Again, this program today, we're talking about is funded by customers and this additional flexibility is consistent with what a lot of utilities do.

I worked at E-Web in Eugene for a long time and E-Web's customers have the ability similarly to sign up and then they actually vote on projects that they want to fund.

So everyone who participates in the program gets to vote on community projects that allow generally nonprofits or schools, et cetera, to install infrastructure they perhaps wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

The Greenhouse Gas Neutrality Program, which is actually managed out of our environmental group, we actually go out and we purchase credits, their projects.

So it's really not, it's not a wreck per se.

It's more, in order to get credit for greening, you're literally having to invest monies Um, in green resources that or projects that would otherwise perhaps not be done.

So, again, it's the same concept you are greening and offsetting any carbon impact for the resources that you're procuring to serve load.

And you're doing that with specific projects that bring value to the larger region.

And those are funds that are budgeted each year, and they are embedded, and they are part of the revenue requirement that we use to set rates.

Thank you.

That is helpful clarification and distinction.

And I'd like the record to reflect that for the second time in the last 30 days, we are taking public policy direction from the city of Eugene, Oregon, who is a bastion for good public policy.

Thank you.

My apologies, Chair.

I did have one second question on slide four.

There we go.

And Lori, can you share with us, if we are not using the RCW determined qualifications for new programs, can you share, you mentioned a little bit about where some of the metrics are that you're using to identify what qualifies a project.

Can you just clearly share with us what qualifications are we using to determine which programs are eligible?

Well there is a definition in the RCW that defines a qualified project and everything we do normally fits under that definition.

What is different is that we're not engaging a certifying body to certify that the projects qualify.

That is an administrative burden when you're doing something like a small 10 kW solar project on an affordable housing.

to go through the project requirements to become certified by Regis is where the burden is.

And so these projects will be fully qualified as renewable energy projects through all of our codes and inspections and validations.

And the kilowatt hours will be tracked in our system and accounted for as we would any other project.

The only difference is that we're not engaging a third party to walkthrough procedures to qualify them.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

All right.

Let's wrap this one up.

Okay.

We're at the end of the presentation.

Thank you.

And thanks for the questions, council members.

Any final questions before we take this to a vote?

All right, Council Members, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119885. Is there a second?

Second.

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

Any final comments?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that we pass this bill?

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Aye.

Morales.

Strouse.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Morales.

Sorry about that.

That's all right.

Five yes, no no's.

Motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 21st City Council Committee.

Thanks, everybody, from Seattle City Light.

It's good seeing you, as always.

Council members, we've got one last item here, which is Item 7. Yes, we've got one last item here.

So will the clerk please read this item into the record?

Yes, it is Item 7. Council Bill 119883. and ordinance amending ordinance 12600, which adopted the 2020 budget, including the 2020 to 2025 Capital Improvement Program, the CIP, revising project allocations for the Madison BRT, Bus Rapid Transit, Rapid Ride, G-Line project, and certain other projects in ordinance 12600 into the 2020 to 2025 adopted CIP and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

Thank you.

Our Seattle Department of Transportation is back for this item about the Madison Bus Rapid Ride.

So is it Lorelei Williams, will you start us off or Eric?

Yes, I'll get us started.

Shauna's gonna get the presentation loaded.

So as Toby said, we're here to talk about, we actually have some good news today.

We're here to talk about the Madison BRT Rapid G-Line.

And we're here today in final preparations for receiving a Small Starts Grant from the federal government.

And from there, I'll get into the details.

Next slide.

So we'll go through project background just to set the stage.

We'll review the schedule, and then get right to the CIP amendment proposal, which is why we're here today, and then follow up with any questions.

And then as we usually do, our mission, vision, and core values.

Obviously, this project addresses equity, safety, mobility, sustainability, livability, and excellence.

So we're hitting on all counts with the Madison BRT project.

Next slide.

So purpose and need, so this bus rapid transit project that also includes quite a bit of capital improvement along the line that you see there highlighted in blue, it will provide fast, frequent, and reliable service from First Avenue and downtown through the Madison Valley.

It will serve neighborhoods that are experiencing rapid growth and are also historically underserved.

And then, as noted, it will connect riders to dozens of other bus routes, the light rail, First Hill Streetcar, and ferry services at the Coleman Dock.

And here I'm going to pass it on to Eric Twight, who is the project manager, to get into the details.

Okay, so this is one of the premier rapid ride projects coming out of Move Seattle in a partnership with King County Metro.

They will be operating it as RapidRide G, and it has all the key features of their RapidRide program.

Buses will be frequent throughout the day, arriving every six minutes during the day, including Monday through Saturday, and 15 minutes in the evenings and on Sundays.

There will be raised platforms and off-board fare payment to make loading faster and easier.

Between I-5 and 12th Avenue, the platforms and the lanes, the buses will be running on the inside lanes, so they have more or less Interaction with other traffic, improving their overall transit time.

So the travel time for the buses is expected to increase or improve, I should say, by about 35%, going down to 7.5 minutes in the westbound direction during the PMT period.

And finally, the project also includes improvements to access and safety for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The image on the lower right part of the slide shows the intersection of Union and 12th Avenue and Madison, where we are making improvements for pedestrians crossing through this intersection and accessing the station there, as well as carrying bikes through a protected section through that intersection, connecting to the union PBLs that were under construction this year.

Next slide.

Next slide.

The project also includes enhancements for our utilities.

There will be a new water main installed west, or I'm sorry, east of Broadway, a new sewer main as well east of Broadway, and City of Light is constructing with this project streetlight improvements in the first hill area.

So a little bit of background, getting to where we are.

The city council approved the locally preferred alternative in 2016, and this project was approved for entry into the FDA's Small Starts program as well later in 2016. We completed our environmental assessment, documented categorical exclusion, and approved by FDA at the end of 2017. Last year, the FDA assigned a Project Management Oversight Consultant, or PMOC, to this project.

That is part of their standard approach for their capital investments grants programs projects, including small starts to go through this oversight process.

Their consultant looks at our overall risks, our capacity and our capabilities to deliver the projects to ensure for FTA that the funds that they're giving us are going to be used wisely and complete the project.

We did receive some input in November.

They completed a risk assessment and their initial assessment in our overall capacity and had some recommendations, including a recommendation to increase our overall risks.

I'm sorry, contingency consistent with FTA requirements.

We also updated our project management plan in response to their recommendations, including adding the full staffing plan for construction and some of the other sub plans that really build off our current practices and needed to be documented.

So at the end of June, the PMOC issued their final readiness report to FTA, and that report concluded that SDOT does have the resources and capacity to plan, develop, manage, and complete the Madison BRT project.

As well, they confirmed that we had addressed all of their other findings.

The PMOC did identify a few things that we need to complete before we go into a Small Starts grant, and they are going to be addressed by Lorelei on the next slide.

All right, so our next steps are our local funding commitment and the amendment to the CIP, which is what we're here to talk about today.

And that amendment incorporates that additional contingency that came out of the process with the FTA's PMOC.

The ST3 package that was approved by voters in 2016 includes funding for Madison BRT.

which is the second item you see here.

A funding agreement with Sound Transit is ready and waiting for action by the Sound Transit Board.

It is now included in their larger assessment of cash flow and funding decisions affected by COVID-19.

Mayor Durkan and actually now our levy oversight committee have contacted Sound Transit and urged them to move this agreement forward as soon as possible, as after an anticipation of receiving the amendment to the CIP with Council, the Sound Transit funding agreement will be the only thing that remains.

So once those two steps are complete, then FTA will prepare their Small Starts Grant Agreement.

We are targeting and have been targeting the end of the year for executing the Small Starts Grant Agreement, though we are definitely getting a read from the FTA that that is going to be very difficult to achieve.

Considering everything going on, particularly the election, etc.

But we are still maintaining that as our target until and if we are unable to meet it, and then we will move forward from there.

Then, following the execution of the Small Starts Grant Agreement, we would advertise for construction.

We are not recommending at this time to advertise for construction in advance of receiving the grant agreement.

Sometimes with small starts grant agreements, you could get what is called the letter of no prejudice and allow you to proceed.

But that would require us to have a plan to fill the $60 million if we were to award for construction.

So right now, our focus is on getting that Small Starts grant agreement and then advertising for construction.

With the schedule, construction would begin in Q2 2021, and then incorporating the approved schedule for the project, revenue service would start in the third quarter of 2024. Next slide.

So our amendment to the CIP here on this slide, you see the 2020 CIP and the funds and then the amended proposal.

This includes additional Move Seattle funds, and we'll discuss the detail of that on the next slide.

I also wanted to call out the other city transportation funds that are noted here include Historical funds on this project bridging the gap levy some read vehicle license fee other types of funds such as that but they already are allocated and have been spent on the project so the other city transportation funds are not the funds that we expect to use going forward.

We are working with our counterparts at City Light and SPU to incorporate drainage and wastewater and streetlight improvements into the project.

So you see their funding there.

You see the King County commitment, our Connecting Washington grant.

Those all remain the same.

Then we have the Sound Transit three agreement that we were just discussing and an increase in that amount.

And that increase has been discussed and agreed to at the staff level with Sound Transit.

And that is what needs to go to the board approval along with the remainder of the amount.

Then we have our FTA small starts grant agreement in the amount of about 60 million and our CMAQ grant.

Next slide.

So then just specifically noting the changes in the CIP, there's an increase to the Sound Transit amount of about $7.2 million.

And then as far as Move Seattle, and this was to, both of these changes are to help address the contingencies through the FTA review.

We had savings in the Lander Street grade separation project and so that is proposed to be moved over to this project to fill that gap as well as $916,000 in money that won't be spent at this time on Fauntleroy due to the pause nature of that work.

Laura, I thank you for showing the sources of funds.

I think that's really important for the viewing audience to see that the vast majority of these funds are non-city funds.

However, a couple issues of concern for me. the filling the gap based on what you're hearing from the federal government on what they wanted to see more of in this budget, filling the gap did end up coming from city funds.

So seeing the move Seattle money, the 2020 dollar amount being 15 million going up to 19 million.

So I am, I am, Eric Bussis, Applicant OLIV-MGNNMNMNMNMNMNMNM their own budget deficit.

So if the sound transit money is not available, I just want to signal my concern is that while this allocation of city dollars makes sense to satisfy the federal government and have a more realistic budget, I just want to flag my personal concerns about not putting additional city dollars into this project beyond what's being proposed today until we have another discussion about this, about broader transportation issues and what our priorities as we, where all levels of government are facing massive budget deficits.

So, and I know you would have to come back to council for that anyway.

I just wanted to flag that while I support this, Cllr Rachel Gilliland, COB): reallocation just if there has to be yet another reallocation that might be a concern, especially we just heard the bridge on it, for example, showing all the needs that we have.

Cllr Rachel Gilliland, COB.: : Regarding bridge maintenance and staffing levels of Councilmember herbold had to go to another appointment.

She did want me to put on the record for her, Council Member Herbold, that she has concerns about the money, the nearly $1 million coming out of the Fauntleroy project from West Seattle to supplement this.

So just wanted to flag that for you, and I'm sure she'll talk to you offline about that.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss.

councilmember Strauss yes thank you just looking for the unmute button thank you chair Peterson and I just want to Center or focus in on your last comments about needing another discussion if additional city dollars were to be used and I think that's a a fair and appropriate approach.

I do want to signal my strong support for this project in particular.

This one has a high level of priority for me, even though it's not in my district, because this project in particular really is one of those key connections of moving the freight of people.

Once we are past COVID, which I am more and more convinced we will be out of this state of how we are living sooner than later, and when we do return to a more standard style livelihood where we're using transit more readily, this bus rapid transit in particular is very important for us to have operational and operational as soon as possible.

So I'm just signaling my support for using what we understand as transportation restricted dollars to support this project because again bus rapid transit is different than RapidRide.

There are a couple additional elements that TrueBus Rapid Transit utilizes.

And this project on Madison gets us so much closer to that.

I'll again signal for the third time in a month, Eugene has a TrueBus Rapid Transit system.

And their TrueBus Rapid Transit system has its own dedicated lanes, level platforms, all door boarding and with all of these elements used on a single line, it allows for transit frequency that is plus or minus about three minutes as compared to light rail.

And so when we are looking at the need to be able to roll out the ability to move people throughout our city without using cars and we have congested roadways, Rapid rides are an absolutely necessary and critical role for us.

So signaling that I support you, Council Member Peterson, in an additional discussion if we were to use additional city dollars, and also signaling to SDOT and the general public that I support this project with a high-level priority.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Eric Bussis, Applicant Ombudsman, COB.: : I'm more alive.

If I may, one request I do have as this goes to the full councils for the for s dot and the city budget office to Eric Bussis, Applicant Ombudsman, COB.: : Put this additional information that we see here on these slides, put it into the fiscal note because the fiscal note is not showing the sources and uses of funds.

in their totality.

So here we have a nice snapshot of the sources of funds.

This is not in the fiscal note, and I'd like to see that in the fiscal note.

In addition, the uses of funds.

So we should be seeing a breakout of design, construction, cost of the buses, how much for street repaving, how much for utilities, what the contingency is.

Just seeing that all laid out in the fiscal note for the benefit of the public.

I'd appreciate that.

Okay, and in response to your comment about the risk of the Sound Transit funds, Council Member Peterson, we are expecting at this point that Sound Transit will move, take action next week to move things forward with a full review by the board in October.

So things are moving in a positive direction.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, may I make a quick little remark?

Yes, please.

I don't want to belabor the point, but I also want to signal my strong support for moving in this direction.

And, you know, I just want to acknowledge the years of work and intensive work that SDOT and others have done, including members in the community, to really see this project come to fruition.

And I think, you know, when we're all sitting sheltering in place right now for not just covid reasons, but because of the massive climate crisis symptoms that we are experiencing in our region currently through the air quality impacts as a result of the wildfires.

I just I just think it is so important for us to address, you know, sort of the due process issues and the due diligence issues that Councilmember Peterson has flagged, but to remain committed to investing in advancing these really important public transit projects is one of our city's key strategies to mitigating the realities of carbon emissions and the impact that it has on air quality.

So I am, I'm looking forward to I'm continuing to support these efforts and to working with my colleagues on making sure that underlying concerns about how to make the investment sustainable are brought to fruition.

So thanks so much to the chair and thank you so much to SDOT and others for your important work in this space.

I really appreciate it.

Council Member Strauss and Council President Gonzalez, I really appreciate the support.

Thank you.

Please continue.

We're to questions.

That's what we've got.

So anything else?

I think we covered our questions and comments, and if there's nothing else further, we'll look forward to that beefed up fiscal note when it advances forward here, which I think it will.

So any final comments before we vote on this?

Council members, I move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119883. Is there a second?

Second.

Great, it's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this bill pass?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss.

Yes.

Peterson.

Yes.

four ayes, no nos.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 21st City Council meeting.

This concludes our September 16th meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

The committee will have a special meeting on September 25th to catch up on several time-sensitive items before our budget season begins.

After September 25th, the next regular meeting of the committee will be scheduled for December 2nd and we'll probably have one on December 16th too.

So thank you everybody for attending.

It's good to see you all and we'll see you next time.

Committee is adjourned.