There is.
Good afternoon.
This is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee of the Seattle City Council.
The time is 2.05 p.m.
on February 25th, 2020. I'm joined by Council Members Morales, Warris, Peterson, and Lewis.
Thank you so much for being here.
If there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.
In today's meeting, we will hold our first discussion with the Seattle Office of Sustainability and Environment, who will present the work of their office and their work plan for this year.
I just wanted to mention that one of the things that they will be responsible for is supporting the newly established Green New Deal Oversight Board.
And over the next few months, we will be responsible for making those appointments to that board.
So if anyone who's watching the Seattle channel right now is interested in applying or if they feel that they know community members who would make who would fit the role of board members for the Green New Deal oversight, then please contact my office and we will make sure that we include all that information for all the council members in the committee when the question of appointments comes up.
Hopefully, I think the staffing question will begin in April.
And hopefully the appointments will be done by June.
Before we bring the Office of Sustainability and Environment to the table, we have public comment.
Ted, has anybody signed up?
There is nobody signed up for public comment.
No one signed up for public comment.
Is anybody who is not signed up, wants to speak, then please come forward.
But please write your name also.
And you have two minutes.
Yeah, you go ahead first.
Good afternoon.
My name is Daniel Hammer.
How it is?
I am with Sutter Holman Hearth out of Ballard.
We are a specialty hearth retailer that's sold natural gas fireplaces and barbecues for the last 40 years there.
We have 26 employees.
I also am on the board of the Northwest Hearth Petty and Barbecue Association, which represents hundreds of small businesses just like mine and manufacturers and many that are here in the city of Seattle.
I'm really only here today just to voice our concerns about any conversations or proposals that may have something to do with a natural gas ban for commercial or residential.
And if there are going to be conversations about that, we really would like to be at that table because there's a lot of jobs that depend on that and a lot of people who depend on these products.
So that's what I'm here today to say today.
And thank you.
Thank you.
And we're happy to talk to you.
So if you want to just connect with Ted from my office, we're happy to have a meeting.
Yeah.
Of course.
Anybody else wants to speak in public comment?
Seeing none, we will close public comment and we will have presenters come to the table.
I don't know how to interpret the lack of public comment.
So as you know, yeah, introductions for the record, and then you can take it away.
Great.
Thank you.
For the record, my name is Jessica Finn-Koven, and I am the Director of the Office of Sustainability and Environment.
Good afternoon.
I'm Liliana Ayala.
I'm the Climate Justice Director at OSCE.
Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.
Great.
Thank you.
Well, let me first start by thanking you all for having us here.
I have been the director of OSC for about four years now, a little over four years, and I can't think of another time I've had an opportunity to come in front of a new committee and just talk about our work and hear your questions and your interests.
So, really, we are excited to be here today and appreciate you having us here.
And I will add page numbers to our next PowerPoint.
We definitely will.
We are here to talk a little bit about OSE, who we are.
We'll provide a little more background because I know there are some new council members here.
So just a little bit about our office and then dig into some more depth about kind of the programs that we've been working on and what we'll be doing in the coming year.
But really quickly, OSCE, we are now in our 20th year.
We were established in 2000 as an executive office that really focused on internal city operations and how we could make those operations more sustainable.
Over time, the charge of our office has evolved and grown to focus, yes, on city municipal operations, but really look at a citywide response to sustainability and environmental priorities.
and ensuring that we are across city departments coordinated and convened to come together to advance environmental priorities.
There are about 30 of us at OSC.
We are small but mighty.
Our staff is without a doubt our biggest resource and biggest asset.
They are just an amazing group of people who come together to be innovative and really service-driven in their work.
And we like to go to Mariners games together, which is what this picture is.
We were very excited last summer to go.
And we're focused, as I said, on partnering across city departments, but also with partners outside of city government.
to ensure that we're coming together to find sustainability solutions.
And like all city departments, we're of course guided by the race and social justice initiative of the city.
And we really see our priority at OSC as being a partner in undoing institutional racism by advancing environmental justice.
And we'll talk a little bit more about that work.
I will get into more detail on each of our program areas, but we really focus in three core areas.
First, of course, meeting the climate challenge.
So we work to reduce pollution from buildings, to reduce pollution from transportation, and to really advance climate justice.
We work to champion environmental equity, both through place-based environmental justice programs like our Duwamish Valley program in Georgetown and South Park, but also through our broader equity and environment initiative, which is designed to make sure that all people benefit from our environmental progress.
and that those communities that have disproportionately faced environmental injustice are really centered in our work and centered in developing the priorities and the solutions that they want us to advance.
And then finally, we work to advance livable and sustainable communities through healthy and local food work and urban forestry.
Digging in a little bit to our climate change work, you can see here, this graphic illustrates the major sources of our core greenhouse gas emissions.
Those are the emissions that city policy most has control to impact.
So a lot of cities report both their core emissions and then broader scope emissions, which includes industrial processes and airport emissions and things that city policy impacts less.
We release both the full scope and our core emissions every two years in our greenhouse gas inventory.
And you can see here as well that Seattle's climate leadership dates back to 2005 when we released our first climate action plan.
Do you have a question?
Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt your flow.
And if you want to answer this question as you go through the slides, that's totally fine.
You mentioned that the numbers you have there are specifically also relating to what comes under the city purview, you know, transportation and building energy and so on.
And that obviously goes to the core of the whole Green New Deal proposal that the city, the outgoing city council last year signed off on, which we need to implement.
And I just wanted to hear from you if, in general, if you could talk about What are the other sources of carbon emissions and pollution that we, and climate change that we see in general?
I mean, obviously in Seattle, we don't have the industrial pollutants, I guess, as much as in some other areas maybe.
So if you could just talk about that and sort of put some details onto the statistic that I think is very important that has been highlighted by the climate justice movement about how The vast majority of carbon emissions are from industrial sources and why that, you know, unless we address it at the bigger level, only making changes at a personal level and among households is not going to go far enough.
Sure.
That's a great question.
Let me let me touch on that and then I'll jump back into kind of this graphic.
Our major sources of emissions are what we see here, waste, building missions, which is largely natural gas heating, transportation, and then we do have quite a number of industrial pollutants here, as we do still have, you know, a core industrial base, and we have that broken down by industry, so we can look at cement, for example, or steel, and we can provide more of that data.
But I think a really important point is that all of these emissions, they really come from upstream sources, right?
So it's less, of course, the choices that we make individually, they matter.
And we try to help people in making those choices.
But these are structural issues and structural emissions.
And without structural and systemic change, we'll never curb the climate crisis.
And also, it is not the decisions one family or one individual that has caused climate change, right?
This is a bigger systemic issue, and that is absolutely where we need to solve the problem.
It is not just the fault of our residents here in Seattle, and the burden can't be only on them.
Does that answer your question?
Great, thank you.
So just briefly, Jim, oh, go ahead.
Yes, thank you.
So just, you know, prior to coming to the committee, I reviewed the, you know, the annual emission reports.
It looks like Councilmember Peterson's actually reviewing them right now.
And the answer to my question is actually listed by coincidence of what Councilmember Peterson is looking at as I speak.
But I'm going to ask the question anyway, just for the edification of the folks in the audience.
Well, no, no.
And for the people viewing.
But when we're talking about the building-based emissions, what percentage of that are residential versus commercial in the emissions?
And then also, what kind of strategies could we use, particularly with commercial buildings in the downtown core, like a lot of the buildings in my district, to transition from natural gas-based heating to more electric-based heating, and what the feasibility of that technology is?
Okay, I'm going to answer your first question and you see if I get this right.
So our building emissions are a little over a third, so 35% for all buildings.
That is roughly half and half between residential and commercial.
I think it's 55-45, and I think about 55% is commercial emissions and 45% of that 35. So really, we roughly think about it of the roughly third of emissions that come from buildings, half are from residential buildings.
and half are from commercial buildings.
Is that what you have in front of you says?
Right.
I am going to dig in very specifically to the issue of commercial buildings and kind of what we've been doing and what some options are there.
So if it's okay, I'll hold your question and then if I don't answer it at the end, make sure you tell me to get back to it.
Great.
quick note on how we're doing on all of this work.
So in 2005, when council adopted the Climate Action Plan, they adopted a goal for Seattle to be carbon neutral by 2050, and some very specific targets, sector by sector targets to hit by 2030. We measure our emissions, as I said, every two years.
We measure against a 2008 baseline.
That's the first year that we feel we have really good data is worth kind of measuring against.
Since 2008, we've reduced emissions about 6%.
We are happy that we've seen some reduction, but I want to put a fine point on the fact that 6% is not consistent with meeting our carbon neutrality goal or our 2030 goal.
So we'll talk about kind of how we're responding to that, what we're doing, but we know certainly the response to climate change and the climate crisis is bigger than OSC, so we're all going to need to be aware that we're not meeting our targets and that we need to do more work.
Is that 6%, an absolute 6% reduction, or is it 6% for, you know, per building?
It's 6% of our core emissions, so buildings, transportation, waste.
Okay.
And then we do have, and I don't know this off the top of my head, but we have per transportation, per building, in the building sector, commercial versus residential, we have a lot of data on our emissions inventory.
We follow the Carbon Disclosure Project is kind of the standard by which cities report, and it is very detailed and very prescribed.
And so we have quite a bit of data folks want to dig in.
All right, digging in, starting with buildings.
So, you know, as we were just talking about, buildings are about a third of our emissions.
Most of that comes from use of natural gas.
as a heating source.
We, and I know that you all work sometimes with the Department of Construction and Inspection, SDCI, they control our building codes, and so they really look at how we can curb emissions from new buildings.
We realize that that's incredibly important, but in 2050, about 80% of the buildings that are here today are still going to be here.
So we need to figure out a way to be reducing the carbon content of the buildings that are here today and have had a number of policies over the years to help get us there.
We started with the idea that information is really the first step to action.
So in 2008, passed an ordinance to require buildings 20,000 square feet and greater to annually report their energy use and the carbon emissions associated with that to us each year.
We found that those buildings, just from reporting their energy use, have fairly significantly reduced their emissions.
So in those buildings that benchmark their data, we've seen greenhouse gas emissions reductions of about 6%.
So again, certainly not enough and at the scale of the crisis, but shows us that when you know your information, you can manage it better.
We were also able to build upon that energy benchmarking plan and more recently implemented requirements for buildings 50,000 square feet and greater to periodically tune up their buildings or to take the lower cost measures to make sure that they're improving their building performances.
energy world, it's often referred to as retro-commissioning, but we call it our building tune-ups program.
The first compliance year for that program was last year in 2019. We had about 400 buildings that participated and complied with the program, and we expect about a six to nine percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the buildings that do that program.
but have seen case studies where the emissions reductions have been significantly more.
So for example, one of the buildings that we tuned up was the Seattle Justice Center that saw an annual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 28%.
So sometimes going through this retro-commissioning process can have significantly more greenhouse gas reductions.
Can I ask a question?
So, I'm interested in this workforce partnership question and just in general the just transition questions.
So, do you, can you talk a little bit about whether there's a pay difference in the maintenance of fossil fuel buildings versus electric buildings?
And is there a plan to help transition employees who are maintaining fossil fuel buildings into having the skills that they need to maintain these other kinds of buildings?
Great question.
I don't know the answer about pay difference, but we can look into that.
My guess would be that there's not, but again, I want to check this, but the reason I would guess that is because the types of folks who maintain the systems, the resource conservation managers of buildings, I believe it's often similar skills if you're depending on kind of what the system of the building is, but I don't know that for sure, so let us dig into that more.
In terms of things we've done to ensure that that people are able to access these new jobs as they come online.
And we realize our building tune-ups program, it's not like it's been tens of thousands of new jobs, but we knew that there would be some new jobs created because we were creating a requirement for buildings to be tuned up and to have someone certify that.
One thing we did, is partner with Seattle Public Schools with the union representing their facility workers to make sure that we were able to utilize some grant funding so that those folks were trained, so that they were able to do the work themselves and that work wouldn't be outsourced, which was a fear that they had.
We've also, as you've seen here, we've been working with South Seattle College.
They had a program of folks who have been And so we reached out and partnered with them where they are now being trained and skilled up to do some of this tune-up work.
So we've been trying to look for opportunities to ensure that more folks are able to access these jobs and, again, that more people are able to access these jobs.
that we're being intentional about making that connection between folks who need new job opportunities and us when we have new job opportunities.
But it's something we've identified in our office as wanting to get skilled up on more so that we can really be a more intentional partner on this workforce work.
And do you, sorry, just one more question.
Do you know, I mean, this talks about the, for the city facilities, the transition that we're going to be making.
And you mentioned the folks working for the Seattle Public Schools.
Do you know if other unions representing city employees were part of the conversation about this decision to change city facilities from fossil fuel to electrification?
Good question.
I don't believe so.
I think that that was a broader policy decision of moving away from fossil fuels in city buildings.
And then there's been confidence that our facility staff are trained and ready and they can do the work that needs to be done.
But I don't know that they've been part of that policy conversation.
Okay.
Thank you.
Other questions on this?
Okay, last point on the buildings here is just as you mentioned, Council Member, our city facilities, we believe strongly in leading by example in our own city work.
So we've had a longstanding program to significantly reduce emissions in our municipal buildings, working with city departments who own building assets.
And you can see here, we've had about a 14% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from those city-owned buildings.
But it's a program that we're continuing.
in scaling up in the next few years.
On the residential side, those of you who were here last year are familiar with a lot of the work we did around an effort to convert oil-heated homes to clean electric heat pumps.
About 10% of our single-family homes in Seattle still use oil as a heating source.
which is by far the dirtiest and most expensive heating source.
And, you know, not only is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, but really poses health and environmental threats to our communities, particularly as more and more of these tanks are leaking.
We also realize it's expensive to make the conversion.
Most people who have oil, it's not that they want it, it's that it's been hard for them to convert.
So thankfully we were able to work with council last year, with council and the mayor on a plan to transition all homes off oil heat by 2028 and creating a revenue source so that we're able to cover 100% of conversion costs for our lowest income residents.
We have a few, at least two, maybe three reports due to this committee this year.
I'll lay them out at the end of this presentation, but specifically on this program to come back to let you know our outreach strategy and will we be reporting annually on how that program's going.
But we're really excited to get it going.
I have a lot of questions about this, but it might be coming out in your report, and if that's true, you can just tell me.
So I have questions about how much this costs.
It looks like it's about $1,700 a year to make the conversion, or that's how much somebody who uses...
That's how much the average cost of oil heat per year is.
So, I guess my question is, how much is the conversion cost that you're covering for 100% for those 25 households?
How was that decided, this pilot program, because that's not a whole lot of families that are covered, and what percentage of poverty are they, or low income?
What are the workforce development opportunities here?
How is this funded, and will this pilot continue?
So let me answer what I can and say some of the more detailed questions, particularly on workforce development opportunities.
That's one of the things that we were asked to come back.
I think there was a slide specifically on that.
So we will be back on that.
There are two programs here to some extent.
One, we've had a pilot for a few years where we partnered with a heat pump manufacturer to offer $2,000 rebates for homes that wanted to convert from oil.
to heat pump, and we've converted about 400 homes in that way.
We amended that program last year to say we wanted to be more intentional about using that funding to cover all the funds for our lowest income residents, so we partnered with the Office of Housing particularly working in the neighborhoods of South Park and Beacon Hill, to say how could we work with folks that OH already was providing assistance for to convert those homes from oil to heat pumps.
to give us a better sense of cost, to give us a better sense of kind of what was needed in this program.
And then from there, when we had a little more information, that's when we came to council last year with a proposal that required all underground storage tanks to either be decommissioned or replaced with a modern take by 2028, and created a tax on oil heat, and that revenue goes to fund the conversions.
for anyone on the utility discount program that the cost of that tax is refunded on their city light bill so that they're not paying for the tax.
And that is also how we are identifying folks to convert, to cover the 100% of conversion.
We were asked by council to expand that beyond just those eligible for the UDP.
recognizing that a lot of folks are struggling here who might not be eligible for UDP.
So that's part of what we're working on coming back and reporting to you all on.
And all the households that you're talking about, for example, the 400 households that were covered in the pilot program, these are Families that own their homes, we're not talking about renters.
Am I right?
Because it's, to me, it's sort of, it's a gray area then because when you talk about renters, the renting households might be low income, but the landlord might actually be quite well off.
In fact, it could be someone like Carl Hagelin who is an exploitative landlord, but the tenants are very much marginalized.
Absolutely.
And I'm sorry that I don't have this data at my fingertips.
I was much better on this when it was in front of council last year.
But we do have data both on the number of oil-heated homes that are owner-owned and occupied versus renting, and it is dramatically.
Do you remember, Yolanda, what the percentage was?
I don't remember the numbers, but it seemed like it was mostly homeowners, right?
Owners, yeah.
Very low percent of renters, but we did include in the program.
And low income owners, homeowners who are, yeah.
We included in the program a covenant that you can't raise rent for, I forget the period of time, but it was the period of time that I think Office of Housing typically uses for programs like this, if you get funding to convert, to make sure that folks weren't accessing funding, converting, and then pricing people out of their rentals.
So that clause was, the covenant was part of that pilot program?
Yeah.
It's part of the ordinance that passed.
Yeah.
In the pilot program was one with OH, so that it was in Office of Housing, within their housing program.
Thank you.
I had a question.
So I was also tracking in the state legislature right now, there's some legislation around PLEA and how that And I was wondering if you had been tracking that more closely than I, but I thought about that just now.
Are you allowed to ask questions, Yolanda?
No, I'm kidding.
Yes, so we have been, and we talked to Council last year that we were going to ensure to engage PLEA.
As a reminder, PLEA is the Pollution Liability Insurance Agency.
So right now it is a free insurance program that anyone with oil heat can sign up for.
And it covers, I believe, $60,000, up to $60,000 of damage if you find that your tank is leaking.
So a huge priority of ours has been to get people signed up for PLEA because too many people don't know about the program.
So really a deep foundation of our outreach plan has been first get people signed up for PLEA and then we start to do the work.
There is legislation right now that looks on ensuring PLEA.
PLEA is only funded through 2030, which is why one of our focus areas was ensuring folks are off oil, completely off oil by 2030 so that they are not just stuck with the bill.
There is legislation to make sure PLEA is solvent until then or maybe after then.
I don't know exactly where it is right now because I know we're in the point of sessions where things keep changing.
But let me check and I can definitely get back to you and anyone else who's interested in the PLEA legislation.
Thank you.
All right.
Keep going.
We're moving to transportation.
But happy to come back to buildings anytime.
You know, I guess I'll say quickly that you'll remember from the emissions graphic that transportation is over 60% of our emissions.
That is not because our transportation sector is dirtier than other places.
It's actually because our electricity is so clean.
So proportionally, it just looks like transportation is a larger proportion of our emissions.
And many of the efforts to reduce emissions from transportation aren't led by our office, though are still really absolutely critical.
So at OSC, we always recognize that affordable housing is a huge climate solution.
So being able to welcome more neighbors and ensure they're able to live near where they work, play, go to school, this is a key way to reduce transportation emissions.
We also know that our friends at SDOT have partnered to provide more transportation choices for folks so that folks don't have to drive.
The more we can offer people choices for biking, for walking, for moving to transit, all key transportation and climate solutions.
But our office really focuses on coordinating two key transportation climate areas.
One is transportation electrification, and the other is exploring equitable congestion pricing.
On transportation electrification, we've really focused on how can we have a citywide strategy that looks at scale, where you can get emissions reductions and air pollution benefits beyond just single occupancy vehicles.
So looking at how Metro is working to electrify their buses, working with the port.
working to encourage fleets to electrify.
And one of our key strategies there has been leading by example with the city's own fleet.
We installed over 300 charging stations to move our passenger sedans towards EVs.
And when I say we, I mean the city broadly, that was really FAS and City Lights work.
We were also really thrilled last year when SPU launched the first all-electric trash truck.
in North America, so really trying to use our purchasing power to move markets.
We also partnered with the city of L.A.
to combine and reach out to over 30 cities across the U.S. to aggregate our fleet demands and then approach auto manufacturers together and say, first, when you look at heavy-duty vehicles that folks have not yet developed in electric solutions for, we said, If you build it, we will buy it.
Here is our demand together.
And we also, for passenger sedans, for city fleets, approached auto manufacturers together and said, will you give us a lower price if we all purchase together?
So trying to use the power of cities, recognizing the city of Seattle, that we're big, we're not a huge market, that we can combine forces with other cities to help move the market.
Sorry, it's not a question so much as something I wanted to note.
I mean, there's going to be hardly anything I would disagree or my office would disagree with in the slides, but the one exception is congestion pricing, as you know.
I just wanted to note that, and this is something that my office has consistently given feedback to the mayor's office about this, is that, and I don't know, Jessica, maybe you watched, there was a committee meeting last year.
It was Council Member O'Brien's committee, environmental committee, and I don't, I think it was some consultants that the mayor had hired, I'm not sure, It was a very long conversation about congestion pricing.
And I continue to be troubled by the fact that these words, equitable approaches, these phrases continue to be used in connection with congestion pricing even though there's no evidence whatsoever that there is any economic model that allows congestion pricing to be done equitably, because just the kind of statistical information you would need to do it equitably, it's just, I mean, just from a statistical standpoint, it is not doable.
And so there's no actual examples.
So I feel like it's not And I'm not I'm not saying this about OSC, but generally this is a feedback we've had for the mayor's office.
It's I don't think it's honest to say that we are doing something to find equitable approaches when there's really no documented equitable approach to do something like congestion pricing, which it's by definition is a regressive way.
I mean tolling is a regressive approach.
So I would just urge that the departments, you know, take that into account and at least say honestly, at this moment, we don't have an equitable approach to doing this.
I appreciate that.
And it was a perfect segue because I was going to say, I know not everybody here agrees on congestion pricing.
We are very much at the beginning of our conversations and our work on this.
I will say that I take the spirit behind your feedback really seriously and really appreciate it for us.
throwing words like equitable or sustainable around, we see that happen a lot, right?
We all see that happen a lot.
And it's something that we take really seriously and rubs us the wrong way, too.
So I appreciate that I'm hearing from you that that's how that's hitting you.
For us, our approach, and I'll say, like I said, we're just at the start of trying to have a civic conversation around is there a model for equitable congestion pricing?
And I know that we're going to have to, all of us are going to have to have that conversation quite a bit.
The way we look at it is there are only, you know, two or three cities around the world that have congestion pricing right now.
So there is no model for what a truly equitable system looks like.
But I kind of view that that's where Seattle's always jumped in, right, and created the model where nobody else had.
Maybe we can't.
We're not asking the question presupposing the answer.
So I really look forward to engaging you and kind of engaging all of you and this committee as we move forward.
Absolutely.
And I wanted you to know that it's not like personal feelings about these phrases.
It's more like the what is the accuracy of the information that's being described here.
And I don't want our slides that are coming from the city to be in such a way that somebody who doesn't, wouldn't know about this should not walk away with an idea that there is an equitable model for congestion price, because there isn't.
And it's just an exception to the rule.
I mean, as I said, I agree with 99.9% of this, and I have no fault to pick on any of this.
Just on the congestion pricing, I mean, I appreciate what you said, Jessica, There's no, I mean, certainly from my end, there's no resistance to Seattle being the first on anything.
We were the first major city for 15. We also passed the winter evictions moratorium ruling, which is actually the first of its kind in the entire country, and the council has voted that in.
So that's, I just want to clarify that my objection to this is not that there isn't an existing model and so we shouldn't be looking into it.
My point is merely that from an economics and statistical standpoint there, it seems to me almost impossible to have, I mean, here's what I'm talking about.
If you wanted to make injection pricing, equitable, you would need the income information of every driver that came into a certain zone.
How would you do that?
So for me, the statistical barriers seem insurmountable.
Not so much, it's not a political thing.
Should Seattle be the first on anything or not?
Of course I want Seattle to be the first on many progressive things, but that's not my objection.
I just want to clarify that.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Council Member Borges.
I was just going to make a point.
Didn't SDOT do a study on congestion pricing that came out last spring?
Yes.
Yeah, so, and we had some findings there that were talking what Council Member Sawant was sharing about the impacts of the regressiveness of it and that labor wasn't at the table, low income.
Those are all the things that we had to balance and look at, but SDOT did do a study on that.
And I did read it.
But that's what they found, that there is, it's hard, yeah.
What you said.
Yes, exactly.
Yes.
And where I think our next steps are, all the people who weren't at the table and who are identified, we want to craft a table that hears from everybody and see what we find out.
I think one of the things was having exemptions for people that drive for a living, labor folks, low income, where we would pull the data, like people who participate in the Seattle City Light.
What's that called again?
UDP.
Yeah, UDP.
I mean, there were certain ways to, and then we're going to do, I thought we were going to do a pilot program.
I thought that was one of the recommendations from SDOT is that we would be doing a pilot.
We'll be working with your office on a pilot program at some point.
Maybe.
My understanding for broader congestion pricing is that to pass in Seattle it would need to go to the vote of the people.
That doesn't mean we can't do certain pilots and try certain things, but again I don't believe we would start, we're not even at the point to know what that pilot would look like because we really want to engage our residents, particularly those who could be harmed by a regressive tax, to say what would a pilot look like that could best tell us what should be next and how we should explore this.
Were you working with SDOT on that study?
We are working with SDOT now.
It's not that we didn't work with them or didn't see the study, but we weren't active participants in kind of shaping the study.
Oh, okay.
to do no fault of their own.
We weren't working on this that much at the time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you want to add anything?
I just, I do think that it is worth noting this point that, I mean, it's not quite just at the beginning because the city's been talking about this for a year and a half and has no equitable model thus far.
You know, even with all the exemptions that Council Member Juarez made, it still would be grossly inequitable.
think about what percentage, how much Jeff Bezos would have to pay in a toll in order to have the same percentage of his income as it would be in the millions every time he drove by.
That would be quite a congestion model.
Yes, so we don't have any model right now, an equitable one, an inequitable one.
We don't have a model for congestion pricing yet and are just starting to engage our residents on that conversation.
Sorry for, yeah, I just wanted to add that.
But feel free to move ahead.
No, we are going to continue with the committee.
All right.
moving from transportation that we can circle back to talk a little bit about our climate justice work, which, of course, all of our work is embedded in that.
But Liliana, pass them to you.
Hi.
I'll start with the Green New Deal executive order.
So the meat of that directs departments to form an interdepartmental team, as you all know, to advance actions that, one, reduce carbon pollution, to invest in an equitable transition to clean energy, and prioritizes environmental justice-based approaches to ensure the benefits and investments of clean energy transitions go to communities historically most impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustice.
Of course, the RSGI and the equity and environment agenda will help ground us in this work.
And I apologize, I didn't bring enough for everybody, but I thought it might be helpful to have some agendas.
So I brought those for you all, and I'm glad to bring whoever doesn't get one a copy of their own.
The executive order also establishes a fossil fuel ban on new and substantially altered municipal buildings.
And OSC will also work with our department colleagues and stakeholders to develop carbon pollution indicators and a dashboard to measure and communicate progress in a way that's accessible for not only our colleagues, but for stakeholders in the community as well.
There is also the establishment of a Youth Climate Council.
We're in the process of, I guess, interviewing and appointing folks.
There's 15 seats total.
Two will be for current members of the Youth Commission.
And their charge is to provide recommendations on new or existing policies and programs that address climate change.
They will also be working with the existing committees, boards and commissions that look at environmental justice, such as the Green New Deal Oversight Board when that's established, and the Environmental Justice Committee.
Are any of those appointed yet?
No.
Okay.
What's the timeline?
Right now they're interviewing folks and I can get back to you on where they are currently and when they hope to have appointments made.
I'll make a note of that right now.
And then the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
So as you all are familiar, there's 19 appointed members, and I'm looking forward to working with council and the mayor's office to collaborate on those appointments.
They'll work with the city and stakeholders to advance a Green New Deal for Seattle by proposing policies and programs, making budget and legislative recommendations, and also engaging with existing boards, committees, and commissions that are looking to advance environmental justice and economic justice within the city.
And that process begins when?
Council gave us, in the budget last year, a position on the Green New Deal starting in April.
And so our timeline has been, if we're able to hire in April, we're hoping that in June we have appointments.
All right.
Next slide.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Can we go back one?
Okay.
Sure.
So under the executive order box, it talks about a city team to advance high impact actions.
Can you give us an example of what that might be?
And then I have just sort of a broader question about, what you can tell us about any community engagement or outreach that went into creating that executive order?
Want me to answer?
Yeah, yeah.
Sure.
For high impact actions, so two things.
One, the executive order asks us to create a list of the most impactful climate actions that we could take.
So we have to develop that.
But we also recognize in the Green New Deal Oversight Board legislation that council passed, it asks for the creation of an IDT, so a city interdepartmental team, to work on advancing advancing carbon reduction policies and programs in each department.
So we're seeing these as kind of one in the same, right?
So we'll have a city team or the IDT that will come together and that will conduct the pieces that the Green New Deal Oversight Board Ordinance asks us to do and looks at these high-impact emissions, if that makes sense, these high-impact actions.
Okay.
So we will figure out exactly what those actions are, and we will continue to move forward with the pieces already in place.
I'm trying to figure out how the, I assume the IDT and the Oversight Board, and I know there's an existing Environmental Justice Committee, and so I'm just trying to figure out how they play together.
Actually, I had the same question, how the executive order relates to the Green New Deal proposal that was bashed back on, and I'm happy to hear also from Yolanda as well.
Well, I'll say, and I think I've said this to some of you individually, so I'll say it here publicly too, what keeps me up at night sometimes is knowing that we need to think of a meaningful and intentional way for all these pieces to fit together.
So I think Liliana soon will talk about our environmental justice committee as part of our equity and environment initiative.
We really want to honor that committee as being people of color, created, led, driven, and working specifically on environmental justice issues.
We also really want to honor the Green New Deal Oversight Board.
the Youth Climate Council, the Transportation Equity Committee, the Equitable Development Advisory Committee, and the Youth Commission that has an Environmental Justice Subcommittee.
So we understand there's lots of reasons why different commissions and committees are often set up.
We want to make sure that we're leveraging support so that they're all greater than the sum of their parts and they're not duplicating efforts.
We don't, I don't have some magic sauce that makes it all happen, but we are very, very aware of it.
Would you add anything more to that?
That was very helpful, but I would also add in the and in working with Jessica and crafting the ordinance establishing the oversight board, we do lay out that the oversight board shall kind of determine what its work plan is and so but precisely to her point around there being a lot of overlapping interest and so for it to define what its kind of grand vision is and what it wants to do that year and, you know, really, as, you know, noted, they're engaging with the existing bodies and figuring out, you know, the Green New Deal is a complicated, multi-layered kind of, thing to try to tackle and so just kind of acknowledging there's, you know, pieces that the planning commission might be best suited to, you know, embrace or even the design commission or things like that.
So just having that body kind of thinking more holistically about that work and maybe working more collaboratively which I think doesn't always get to happen with the city and just kind of acknowledging how interdisciplinary the work around the Green New Deal is.
Yeah, I agree.
I think about this in the context of a movement building perspective.
And each of the boards and commissions have skills, strengths, and talents that they're able to contribute to this initiative.
And so I'm really excited to be able to look at this from a collaborative perspective and not from a duplicative standpoint.
The next slide is about our equity and environment agenda.
I'll just note the initiative was an initiative that started, I believe, in 2015 is when the initiative began.
I'm really excited to be here at OSCE as staff because I was part of that initiative from a community standpoint.
And the agenda was one of the major deliverables of that.
So 2016 the agenda was released.
It significantly shifted the work of OSCE.
The agenda is a blueprint that was developed collaboratively with community.
to advance environmental justice.
It's very much rooted in the tenets of the RSJI and also acts as an accountability mechanism, I believe, to ensure that the city prioritizes the needs of community impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustice.
And so as a result of that, there were a few recommendations that we moved forward.
One of them is the creation of the Environmental Justice Committee.
Right now we have 13 members who represent black indigenous communities of color.
They work on program and policy recommendations as well as developing their own ideas that are community led.
And OSC plays a support role in helping those ideas come to fruition.
The principles of open space for communities of color was one of the products that came out of the Environmental Justice Committee.
They also worked collaboratively on a project in partnership with the Ethiopian Community Center.
And this past summer hosted an expo on traditional ecological knowledge in partnership with the Office of Civil Rights, Arts, and the Muckleshoot Tribe.
The other big piece of the agenda is the creation of the Environmental Justice Fund.
This is a priority in terms of investment on community-led solutions.
Since 2018, over $1,475,000 has been directed back to community for projects that they are leading on.
This is a combination of funds from the Environmental Justice Fund, as well as a partnership that we have with King Conservation District to allocate funds to community-led efforts in natural resource conservation, as well as environmental justice projects.
Another piece of this is a commitment to reshaping the narrative.
It's no secret that the environmental movement historically has been overrepresented by white folks.
Part of the commitment of OSCE and the Equity and Environment Initiative is to reframe that narrative to bring historical and ancestral knowledge and contributions from communities of color to the forefront.
A part of that is our environmental justice in action series that highlights our leaders on the EJ committee.
And it's been pretty cool so far to see those profiles come out.
And then, of course, there's the internal work that we're doing as an office and grappling with how we're shifting our processes, our approach to policies in collaboration with those most impacted by environmental injustice.
And then our last slide, and one of our signature projects that has come out of the Equity and Environment Agenda is the Duwamish Valley Program.
So the creation of this program was a recommendation of the agenda.
It's a comprehensive city effort that has taken colleagues across multiple departments to execute in partnership with community and external partners with the intent of better delivering community priorities to the Duwamish Valley.
The action plan was released in 2018, and there was a recent update to that.
That's available online.
And it's just been a joy to see that work come to fruition, and I truly believe that it's a model for how we can be working across city.
And in your inbox, you will find for me every now and again, every time we send out an update, I also send it to all of you.
We are really committed to holding ourselves accountable to what we said we would do in the community.
So a few times a year, we send a really comprehensive update saying, this is what we heard that you wanted us to do, this is what we've done, this is what we've yet to do, and this is what's coming.
If you ever see that and have feedback or comments or questions, please do reach out.
And a few more pieces of our work at OSCE.
Many of you are familiar with our regional food systems work.
We started this work in 2013, and our goals have been to ensure residents have access to healthy and local food, that we support sustainable agriculture in the local food economy, and that we do all we can to prevent food waste.
Similar to how we work on other city-wide issues, we really work to convene, coordinate, collaborate city departments with other regional and national partners.
Over the last few years, we've really grown our food justice work.
Thanks to the sweetened beverage tax and the success of our Fresh Bucks program that many of you are familiar with, But for those of you who aren't, Fresh Bucks started as a program that provided a match to SNAP at farmers markets.
With the success of that program, the expansion, and support of the Sweetened Beverage Tax, we've been able to expand that program in some really significant ways.
First, it's now eligible to folks beyond just who's eligible for SNAP.
And folks who have an income of up to 80% of area median income are now eligible for FreshBucks.
So we see as our federal government makes it harder and harder to achieve food assistance, we're really trying to fill that gap in all ways we can to provide more benefits for folks.
We also, where this program started as a program at farmers markets, folks can now use their FreshBucks vouchers at any Safeway store in Seattle.
and at a number of neighborhood grocers as well.
So we're excited about the program.
We expanded it dramatically between 2018 and 2019, and now we're set to triple it this year so that we'll be serving 7,500 people.
Just very, very quickly, I don't want to forget to mention the success of FreshBooks has largely been, you know, our staff is absolutely amazing, but the community partners that we have listed here, Folks, and beyond Justice Group too, these are the community organizations that have been out enrolling their constituencies into FreshBooks.
So I really want to thank them for all they've done to make this program successful and to make sure that it's going, the benefits are going to the people who need them most.
I know there's questions.
I just have some, going back to the other slide, on the, are you, is it OSC that staffs the Community Advisory Board for the Sweetened Beverage Tax?
Yes, sorry for not mentioning that.
That's okay, how many members are there again?
The Sweetened Beverage Tax, is it like 15?
Yes, ish.
15 ish.
Do we have some coming up, some seats coming up?
Yes, there are a few vacancies.
I think we had talked, we need to talk more about this.
I think there were some questions about
the committee that...
Yeah, we have questions about the committee.
Okay.
And we will be for budget.
So can I get a list of the new, the list?
Yes.
And then what vacancies are coming up?
Because I know that some of us felt, well, I don't want to talk about feelings, but I know that we had some balance, we wanted some balance on the board between those that were professional UW people, nothing wrong with that, but also people that were running food banks for food insecurity.
And so I can't remember what the balance was before.
I know I had some issues and I thought we kind of recalibrated that board, but that was like a year ago.
So I would like to see that well before budget because that's going to come up again about How much revenue we've gotten, where it's going to go, what the priorities are, and what the ordinance actually says.
And the second part is on the Seattle Public Schools, can you give us a list of the 19 elementary and high schools that are receiving this?
Because we don't know what those schools are.
Sure.
So that would be helpful because we've gotten a lot of questions.
I think in your district, they're not actual food deserts, because food deserts are where you don't have a grocery store for miles and miles and miles.
But for city, I think it's all relative to call something a food district.
I know that in, because I chair parks, Magnuson Park, and what we know are low-income housing and other areas.
The point is we don't have a grocery store there, and that's been an issue for years.
And we want to revisit that, Council Member Peterson and I, and looking at the deed and the lease on the Magnuson property.
So one thing that we were looking at is getting the buy-in and help from this board to work with us on the food insecurity piece.
Great.
Especially, how many, you have three buildings there now?
There are a thousand low-income residents now at Magnuson Park.
Yeah and that's grown in the last three years so that's and that again we work together because I chair parks so I hear all about what goes on at Magnuson and that is council member Peterson's district and we also worked with council member Johnson on that in Pacheco so now that we have So I'm more permanent.
I'm hoping that we can dig in on that.
That sounds great.
And if you can get us the list of the schools, that would be real helpful.
We can absolutely do that.
And, you know, our food work, what we want to do is serve as many residents who are food insecure as possible in as innovative ways as possible.
So we are always keen to partner and to help and to work with the other departments like HSD as well, who also provide food services.
And just more of a note, the chairwoman knows this.
My struggle or concern with OSC and the Fresh Bucks program has always been, and I don't know if it will continue to be, is we don't have, at least in my district, a market that's around 12 months out of the year.
It's just, you know, I think just the UW.
Who has a market all around just the UW?
Just University District.
Ballard and Clemson.
And Ballard.
No, just Ballard and U District.
So we know now where the poverty levels are, at least in my district, and my concern has always been, and we've struggled with this with the Fresh Bucks people and the farmer's market people, is there not the type of food that needs to be there so we are actually providing food for low-income people?
Because what we do see at the farmer's market, and I don't see a lot of families using Fresh Bucks there to buy designer cheese and ale.
I'm just not seeing that.
And that drives me crazy.
I'm trying not to sound glib, but it concerns me, particularly since we have two huge housing complexes.
One of them is the Tony Lee House.
And we had a meeting, and one of the things that, and I'll just say this because I know customers won't understand what I'm saying.
Somebody made the comment that these low-income people aren't using the market and maybe we should just teach them how to shop.
No, that's not what we're doing.
People know how to buy their food.
If their food is there, they will come buy it.
Not everyone likes kale.
If it's accessible and affordable, we don't have, you know, it's, I completely agree.
Every Thursday from 1 to 7, you're not going to have family of four coming in there with their SNAP and their benefits to buy, I say kale because I hate kale.
It's all about accessibility and affordability.
And you don't have to, there are families who know what to do.
And actually, to your point, Council Member Juarez, to buttress your point, actually, when I was actually teaching at Seattle University, one of my colleagues, and I believe she's still doing it, she's a statistics professor, and she does this kind of project with her 101 students where they look at the prices of organic produce.
And they compare them.
And you know who consistently comes out ahead?
It's PCC and Central Co-op.
It's not the farmer's market.
So I'm just saying that we want, I mean, on the one hand, we want to support local businesses, local produce, all of that.
But at the end of the day, the larger, more fundamentally important question is, are low-income families able to afford the food that's around them?
And to your point, Council Member, if the food is not affordable, and it's mostly sort of artisanal or design, you know, which, yeah, then it is not accessible.
So what's the point of giving the money to have that if you're not coming there to buy all this stuff, and it isn't about the people that are living in these houses and they need to be taught how to shop, which I found offensive, but that's another issue.
I'm sorry, Councilor Morales, I interrupted you.
So I helped write the Food Action Plan, so I want to thank you for continuing to implement it.
As somebody who's worked on food systems for 10 years or so, or more, I would love to talk with you about what you're trying to do.
And just in defense of farmers, I have to say that farmers charge what it costs for them to produce high-quality produce.
And the issue here isn't that farmers should charge less.
The issue is that our families need to be making livable wages.
So the struggle that I have with the way that we talk about the emergency food system is that it has always been intended to be an emergency, not a normal way for people to access food.
And if we really want to solve the issue of hunger and food insecurity, what we need to do is look upstream and make sure people have livable wage jobs because hunger is an income issue.
So that said, because we struggle to be able to do that, we have entitlement programs like Food Stamps and Fresh Bucks, and we need to make sure that folks are able to use those programs as much as possible.
I appreciate what you're doing, and I think that, you know, when we have these kinds of opportunities to give people double the access of what their food stamps might buy or what their WIC voucher might buy in terms of fresh produce, those are definitely ways that we need to, things that we need to leverage.
We also need to look at increasing people's registration to use these programs that they are entitled to, and that is a big part of the problem, too.
People don't realize that they are eligible for these programs, so that's another issue.
That was another point I wanted to make.
which I won't remember, but I just want to say, you know, there was a slide up that showed the folks, the organizations that are participating, and I didn't see them on it this year, but Rainier Beach Action Coalition did participate for a couple of years with the food, with the farmer's market that we had at the Ethiopian Community Center, and I know that was a really important opportunity for people in the community to access fresh food.
And I would love to talk with you all about the issue with the farmer markets and every community wants one, but it's really hard on farmers to be spreading through our communities.
So other ways we can work to find culturally appropriate affordable food for people are things that we definitely need to prioritize.
Thank you.
Yeah, I just wanted to say yes, I totally agree with you about living wage jobs.
And I think it also goes to the question of, you know, overall having low incomes.
And then on top of that, what chunk of that goes into paying your rent and the big ticket items, and then how much is left over.
So I really appreciate you bringing in the point that if you're talking about of access and affordability of good quality food, it also brings in the question of the overall standards of living, which is also related to the housing crisis, affordable housing crisis in our city, and how much money is left over for households with the combination of the rent that they have to pay and the fact that many people are stuck in jobs that don't pay them anywhere close to enough.
I just want to acknowledge the hard balance we have to make.
The point of these programs, the point of the Food Action Plan originally was to create a vibrant regional food economy, and that means that we're supporting our region's farmers.
and understand that they have to make a living as well, so we can't solve this problem on the backs of our region's farmers.
Yeah, we should not be pitting the interests of small farmers against the poorest households.
And also, I think the other point that you made, Council Member Morales, which is extremely well taken, is that these programs are emergency programs.
They're corrective programs for a system that's failing most people.
So really, the focus should be on correcting the system on the other end.
Thank you.
I very much appreciate that entire discussion.
And we'll also say, Council Member Juarez, we would love to talk anytime if you ever want to dig in.
I think the last thing I'll say on our food work, unless there's more questions, is It's precisely the spirit of, it's not up to us to tell our residents with lower incomes how they should shop or where they should shop, and that's how we've tried to approach Freshbucks, and that's why they're able to utilize those vouchers interchangeably at neighborhood grocers, at Safeway, or at farmer's markets.
We've tried to respond to the feedback that farmer's markets alone weren't enough, but to keep building that out.
But we're very passionate about this work, so we are keen and excited to talk any time.
The last piece of work that I'll mention that OSCE focuses on is our urban forestry efforts, which I think many of you are familiar with.
Another effort where we play a convening role, there are eight city departments that work on urban forestry, and we, OSCE tries to ensure that we're all speaking with one voice and that we're providing appropriate customer service to our residents who care about trees and issues related to trees, but don't know if they should call Parks or City Light or SDC High, that we're all coming together to talk to them.
We staff the Urban Forestry Commission.
They are commissions that write a lot of letters, so you will hear from them and from us.
You can see here on this graphic that every few years we measure canopy cover citywide.
Our last measure showed that citywide canopy coverage was 28%, which is close to our 30% goal.
Not there, so we know we need to pay attention to that.
But we found that in communities of color, canopy cover was only 20% in the city.
So, you know, that's really just a data point to show us what we already know in the lived experience of Seattleites, which is that access to green space, access to trees, and the benefit they provide is an environmental justice issue.
And we've partnered with community groups, including a really great project we had with the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps, to go out and do targeted planting, tree plantings, to see how we can increase canopy cover.
We are currently updating the Urban Forestry Management Plan, so we'll be excited to talk with you all about that.
We know that the Land Use Committee has been focusing on trees, so we'll probably be here less on the tree issue, but it is something that OSC works on and that we're, of course, always happy to talk with you about.
Thank you for talking about trees.
And the 2016 canopy coverage, 28%, I imagine when they do a new study, we're going to see actually a decrease because there have been, anecdotally, we've heard about trees being torn out throughout the city, especially in the south end, and it is an equity issue.
So thank you for raising that.
In fact, what we may end up seeing with the new tree ordinance is we want OSC to take a greater role in oversight because Right now we have the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection as a main regulator of that, which could be problematic as the real estate developers are more inclined to want to take out the trees rather than keep them.
So maybe OSC will be taking a greater role in oversight.
We'll see how that plays out with the full city council.
And we are quite happy to talk to you about that anytime.
We appreciate folks, you know, wanting OSE to engage.
We always do.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't say that, you know, we partner closely with SDCI and feel confident in the services that they offer.
But really happy to keep talking about that and see what makes the most sense and how folks want to move forward.
Thank you.
Okay, last slide is just letting you all know a few things that we will certainly be bringing forward to this committee this year.
I mentioned that we have a few pieces on the oil conversion work.
That's an update on our implementation plan.
We'll be coming annually with a report on how it's working and the high road contracting standards associated with the oil conversion work.
In the Green New Deal Oversight Board Ordinance that you all passed last year, there is a requirement for each department to report annually on their climate actions.
From talking to Council Member O'Brien, I believe the intention behind that was for departmental leadership to communicate directly with you on that and kind of not go through the filter of OSC, but we will certainly be partnering to help convene and help you get what you need on that.
We annually report on the Equity and Environment Initiative.
We typically do that as part of our annual RSJ presentation to council.
Chair, of course, you can choose to split those up if you want, but to date, that's how we've been doing that annual presentation.
Also, when the building tune-ups law passed in 2016, there was a resolution asking us to report back to council at the end of this year about how it's going and how effective that ordinance has been.
So we'll be preparing that.
And then, of course, a note that we are working on updating our food action plan.
that we will intend to bring to this committee next year.
And then a quick note, the tree protection update, as Council Member Peterson mentioned, and our urban forestry management plan will likely move through the Land Use and Neighborhood Committee, but we'll be sure to keep you all updated.
I know several of you are on that committee anyway, but that will be something that our office is participating in.
And that is OSC.
Fantastic.
Thank you very much for the presentation.
Thank you.
I really appreciate it.
I appreciate the questions.
Any questions?
Thank you for also giving us an outline of what's coming up.
Yeah, that's really helpful to know what reports we should be looking out for.
Thank you.
And yeah, and council members, if you have any suggestions on appointments for Green New Deal Oversight Board, please send them to my office.
We will start looking at them soon.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
There are no other items.
Meeting adjourned.