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The February 17th, 2026 Finance and Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

And Council Member Kettle is excused.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Present.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

Four present, one excused.

Thank you.

We have two items on today's agenda.

The first will be a voting item since it is the second time it is in our committee.

and the which the first item is the appointment of Ali Panucci as director of the city budget office for briefing discussion and vote.

We will then have a presentation on indigenous planning.

This is a presentation of our native communities and tribal governments work.

I had the opportunity to meet with Sox Seattle tribal council members and chairman last week at their reservation, as well as had the opportunity of meeting with tribal leaders from the Swinomish, Upper Skagit, and Sox, Seattle tribes last week, continuing this work.

So second item is not for vote, just for presentation.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I realized I was starting to go into my chair's report there, which is having had those amazing opportunities to meet with sovereign elected officials.

Also had the opportunity to go with Council President Emeritus, Deborah Juarez, to the National Conference of American Indians last week.

It was really great to meet and learn from so many leaders around our world, around our nation, excuse me.

With that, if there's no one signed up online, I'm gonna just double check here.

We don't have anyone signed up for public comment in person.

Seeing none online, we will open and close the hybrid public comment period in one motion.

With that, we will move on to our first item of business.

Will the clerk please read the item into the record?

Item one, appointment of Ali Panucci as director of the city budget office for a term to December 31st, 2029. This item is for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Presenters will include Ali Panucci, interim director of the city budget office.

Thank you, welcome.

As I said in my chair's report just seconds ago, don't need to say it too many more times, this is the second of two meetings as in with previous appointments.

The first was to give the interim director a chance to introduce themselves.

This one will be a longer Q&A style with votes.

So interim director Panucci's responses to the written questions were circulated via email on Tuesday, February 10th.

responses are also included in today's agenda packet.

I've got a number of questions that I'd like to follow up on, but I do just want to see if there are other colleagues that have questions at this time.

And before we jump in, Interim Director Panucci, anything that you'd like to introduce that you didn't last time or anything you'd like to kick us off with?

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Strauss, Council members.

I'd just like to say good morning.

I'm looking forward to the conversation and getting to the doing of the work.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, any questions at this time?

Otherwise I can start taking off.

The fastest director appointment in city's history.

With that, if we could thank you for responding to all of these questions.

Question number three is of importance to me as the city of Seattle continues to face a major structural budget deficit in 2027 and beyond.

As part of the budget, 2026 budget council passed a statement of legislative intent that requires central staff and CBO collaborate to create terms and concepts around sustainable budgeting decisions.

What do you view as the main causes of that deficit?

And if you don't need to rehash history too much, how are we moving forward through this?

What are the tools that you will be using?

Thank you.

So I won't rehash what I wrote out in my written response, but like I note there, in general, it's that our ongoing costs have outpaced our ongoing revenues.

I think this was built during the boom years where we were not in such a constrained environment and really we expanded city services in a way that kind of assumed that growth continues.

We're now at a point where we're no longer facing that reality.

So it's a relatively simple exercise in terms of the math.

We either need to reduce expenses or increase revenues or some of both.

So I think the tools that we'll be looking at are the same tools you all have been looking at, but we've reached a point now where we really have to take a hard look at where there are ongoing services that may not be producing the outcomes we achieve and or are not the highest priority.

We've kind of missed, or not missed, we have exhausted a lot of the low hanging fruit in this city in terms of how to address the structural deficit.

So I think it is a combination of both taking a hard look at how we're currently spending our resources and identifying opportunities to scale back in some areas in order to focus on the highest priorities and also looking at new ways of generating revenue because I think the needs of our community are growing.

I think the expectations that the public has and businesses have to provide government services is increasing, so it needs to be a both and.

All tools have to be on the table and I plan to evaluate work that's done before, sort of re-evaluate a lot of the lines of services review that has been discussed and consider both areas where spending can be reduced and opportunities to generate new revenue.

Thank you.

I see council member Rivera has her hand.

So I'll just, you know, I'll come back and follow up with you about the SDCI core staffing fund.

This was one place where two rounds of low-hanging, easy, hard decisions were made, and now we're faced with some more difficult ones.

Councilmember Rivera, I see you have your hand.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ali, for being at the table today again.

I really appreciate what you just said about we really need to, I mean, the reality is we really do need to look at all the city's programs and see you know, where things are not meeting expectations or outcomes, because I don't think, I think there's still a lot of opportunity to do that across the board in the city services that we provide.

And when you say essential services in your response, I mean, there are things we are chartered to do, and then there are other city services that we provide that we're not chartered to do, but our community feels are important.

so when you talk about prioritization I suspect there's some of that too like what is essential versus what are we doing that's important to community but that you know again may not be meeting expectations so I don't know that you know the answer to that today so I'm not going to ask that but I do appreciate your response you know when and facing the reality what I appreciate about you Ali is that you you take this thoughtful approach and you don't tell people what they want to hear, you're very clear on, you know, these are the constraints we have, these are the realities we have, and we really do need to take not just thoughtful approach, but just a realistic look at what we're able to do because we know we're not going to be able to rely on just raising revenue to plug the shortfall.

So anyway, thank you, Chair.

I really just want to appreciate, I wanted to appreciate and acknowledge Ali's answer both in writing and also what she said today and really underscore the importance of what she just said in terms of taking the thoughtful look at programs because we're not going to be able just to get our way out of this by raising more revenue since there aren't a ton of options there.

So thank you.

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you.

Allie, anything that you'd like to share from that conversation?

I think the only thing I would add there and sort of building off what Council Member Rivera said in terms of essential services and there's what is statutorily required and what is a critical need and expectation of the public.

I think one of the challenges things, and really it's your difficult job as elected officials, is that every dollar in the budget was added for a reason at some point.

And so any reductions are going to have impacts.

And I think

What we have been talking about is really we just need to be real about what those impacts are and likely make some hard decisions Really well said I was briefed by a department who's been working on a project for 20 plus years and they shared with me that Changing course at this time might be a little difficult because outreach had happened for 20 years and I politely reminded them that 20 years ago, our city had half the population that we do today, right?

We have, maybe not quite, that was 30 years ago, but still, so much has changed in the last 20 years.

Colleagues, do you have, Council Member Rivera, do you have additional questions?

Yes, it's a follow-up on the same point, Chair, if that's okay.

Please, the floor is yours until you're done.

How about that?

I appreciate that, Chair.

The other piece, Ali, and you and I have talked about this in the past as well, I just really wanted to put a pin on the fact that during COVID, we got some dollars from the federal government and with those dollars, we started some new things at the city because to your point, Ali, you know, we saw a need somewhere.

But the reality was that those dollars were not going to be ongoing.

and that presented a challenge.

And I don't know where we are at with all those programs that we added, some were new, some were expanded with money that was meant to be temporary.

So I think that also bears mentioning and as a piece of this puzzle in addition to the fact that our population in the city has grown as Chair Strauss just said.

So that is also a reality.

Thank you.

Council member Rivera, any further questions at this time?

Not at this time, maybe as we continue.

Thank you, Chair.

Fair enough.

Council members Hollingsworth or Saka, any questions at this time?

I don't have any.

Thank you, Chair.

All right.

Well, then I'll just kind of keep ticking through and lead us through here.

Interim Director Panucci looking at question number seven.

We don't have to read the whole question out loud.

This talks about some of the levers that we have to deal with the structural budget deficit.

Clearly one is economics and revenue.

Us being Super Bowl champions is gonna give us a sales tax bump that we didn't necessarily expect.

So go Hawks.

Hopefully we'll get to the big mitt this next year and it'll repeat with the Mariners.

but some of the structural budget deficit is dealt by revenue, economic growth, economic activity.

Some of it is faced by using one-time funds in an unsustainable way.

And so we've got a number of tools really clearly.

It's employees, revenue, or cuts, right?

And we've made really hard decisions in all three areas over the course of the last few years.

as you're facing the structural budget deficit, how will you approach using these different levers?

And in particular, looking at underspend, we know that if all departments other than public safety underspent by 2%, that would give us about $10 million, which isn't a whole lot of money in the grand scheme of things.

And how, from your perspective, do we coach through underspend.

Is it something that the mayor's office will decide which departments will underspend?

Is it something where we provide that prerogative to departments so that they can decide internally?

How do you approach underspend?

That's the first question.

And the second is coming back to this SDCI core staffing.

We've already laid off employees.

We've already raised permit fees and that core staffing fund is continuing to decrease.

Two big questions.

I'll let you take either one first.

Okay, I'll go with, I was gonna say the easy question.

Neither of those are easy questions.

I think, like I said, all tools are on the table, so it's not like we'll be doing a repeat, but the same sort of options that you've all been looking at in terms of revenues and expenses will have to be considered.

I'm hoping this year to focus really squarely on ongoing areas of ongoing reductions.

There's been a lot of one-time reductions that is helpful to sort of get through a year, but it doesn't address the structural issue.

and then, as you said, there's challenges with revenues as well.

But in terms of underspend, I will say, I'm less than 60 days in, so I'm still evaluating.

That assumption has been baked into the financial plan.

And so understanding sort of how to unwind that will take me a little bit of time.

Ultimately, What we need to do is take a hard look at which departments are sort of have patterns of underspend and maybe their budgets need to be right sized to sort of basically cut out that underspend assumption without really reducing programs.

However, it's not always that neat and tidy, right?

Some departments one year might underspend more than others for a number of reasons.

I need to dig into that analysis a little bit.

The other challenge with doing that, as we tighten departments' budgets, they have less flexibility.

So when emergent issues come up that often come from council, right, and from issues you are hearing from your constituents, it makes it harder for those departments to have any flexibility to respond.

So we need to be real about the trade-offs as as we really tighten down budgets, which would be necessary to remove that underspend assumption, that it will be even harder to respond to emergent issues.

But that's what we'll be looking at.

I think there's been some initial conversations already between my team and Council Central staff in response to this slide.

I believe you sponsored Chair Strauss, and I'm optimistic that we will come to some shared understanding.

I'm not gonna yet commit to we will agree, but I think we can, come to a shared understanding of what the assumptions are and just lay those cards on the table and hopefully have a smoother path forward, at least in terms of our discussions and analysis.

That's the first question.

The second question in terms of the SCCI fund and sort of core staffing issues, that's a real challenge.

As you know, that department and that fund is particularly...

what's the word?

Sensitive to fluctuations in the market.

And so as we see changes in the development cycles and that sort of thing, those revenues and that fund that core staffing is difficult.

So one of the strategies is of course, you know, permits are supposed to be fully cost recovery.

In this year's budget, I believe the council approved an 18% increase in those fees.

In order to be structurally balanced, we are looking at at least that much of an increase next year too, in order to sustain core staffing.

So we need to continue to look at, are there opportunities for efficiencies in the permitting process and that sort of thing.

But the reality is right now, those costs are outpacing.

on what we're bringing in in revenue.

And the alternative option to increasing fees is subsidizing that work with general fund, which we also know isn't an issue.

So I think you can expect to see additional fee increases as well as SDCI is continuing to look at strategies through attrition and other opportunities to reduce expenses.

I'll also just say it's why it's really important, particularly in more of a downturn or where we see a slowing in the development cycle, is to be really protective of those fund balances.

There have been some decisions over the last few years to use some of that fund balance for one-time technology programs rather than general fund, that sort of thing.

That sort of makes it more difficult to glide through this development cycle.

So you will probably see me being even more productive of any, protective of any fund balance that remains until we have some assurance that the development cycle is sort of picking back up.

Because what we want to do is we want to be ready to move swiftly when it picks back up so we can get those permits out the door and the development happening in our community.

Thank you.

I mean, very in-depth answer.

There's not a clear solution necessarily, but it's mostly what I wanted to hear was the philosophy for how we move through this.

Through that conversation, you raised a question for me that we'll come back to because I'd like to continue on with the structural budget deficit.

It really occurs to me at the moment that the current mayor was not part of last year's budget cycle.

And so if the mayor and the executive team has desires that they want to fund something, I heard this in your response of if council members make a request of a department that does not have underspend flexibility that that might be difficult.

So I put that in the reverse of the mayor was not part of the budget discussion last year.

If she is interested in pursuing policies that cost a lot of money, how will you approach that?

I'll come back to that though.

Which is, back to this question 11, and you might have already answered this through these other questions, but I'll just kind of keep teasing it out.

We've talked about these trade-offs with the structural budget deficit, employees, programs, revenue, all of that.

these are really difficult trade-offs.

So for you as the budget director and then helping to guide the decisions of the mayor's office, how are we gonna go through and what principles will guide these decisions about what to protect, what to reduce, what to eliminate, what to add?

And if you wanna add the answer in about how will the mayor fund her priorities this year without having been part of that budget discussion last year, that's totally fine to wrap that in.

Otherwise I'll just come back to it later.

Okay, I'll try to, I'll do my best to keep track of all of that.

I will say, so I think having clear understanding of what the priorities are, I am still sort of getting clarity on that with this new administration, right?

Cause there's a lot of work to just as well as sort of what is the highest priority for next year's budget.

I hope to hear from all of you.

I've had the opportunity to meet with many of you one-on-one and we'll continue those conversations to understand really where you as individuals have priorities for your districts or for the city-wide seats, as well as what you as a body are sort of doing in your committees, and that sort of signals to me what some of those shared priorities.

So we're tracking, we're listening, we're trying to figure out how to how to balance all of that.

In terms of what to protect and what to preserve, I think my approach deviates a little bit from past cycles in terms of, I don't think any sort of entire area of city government should be off the table for evaluation and consideration for efficiencies or reductions.

I think that we all could very easily get behind.

Public safety is core and is a very critical issue for the city.

Does that mean that every single program and service we are funding in that space is delivering tangible results for the public?

I don't know the answer to that question.

So I think it's worth evaluating all of our programs and services and really taking a hard look at what is having the biggest impact, what is the best use of our public resources and are there opportunities to scale back in some areas and potentially scale up scale up in others.

I say that with also clear eyed, like that's a big body of work to really review all of our programs and services.

So this is not a, and I have a big, like five months basically to start making sort of scenarios to start presenting to the mayor and then to present to all of you.

And so Transparently, I'm hoping to identify some programs and services where we can take a harder look and start to build a list of how we're going to sort of do those evaluations over time.

Where are there the most questions or uncertainty?

Where are we spending big dollars?

And are we clear on what those outcomes are?

So that is like my General philosophy, there's a lot of work to do, but I believe that we're all ready to do it.

And I know in my conversations with all of you, you all are eager to look at outcomes as well as opportunities to invest in areas that really aren't meeting the meeting the needs of the community.

And then in terms of how to fund the mayor's priorities, I think many of the mayor's priorities that have been discussed to date, let's use, for example, investments in shelter, are not do not deviate from this council, from the budget, from what is embedded in the budget.

As of the executive, she has some autonomy, right, to direct those resources in certain ways.

And so we are looking at opportunities to how the existing budget can support those priorities.

And there may be asks of the council to make some modifications based on what is in the adopted budget, but we're still evaluating those choices.

But fundamentally, I think the priorities are pretty shared.

How we get there, there may be differences, but I haven't seen any areas where the mayor wants to prioritize spending that are out of alignment with what I've seen in the adopted budget.

That's good news.

Sounds like we built a budget that works for everyone last year.

I'm going to hold you to it.

No, I can't.

I know that in the way that our powers are structured here.

Interim Director Pannucci, this has been very helpful.

I want to do last check with colleagues.

Any further questions?

Otherwise, I'll get into my famous calendar in question.

Councilmember Rivera, I see you have a hand.

Thank you, Chair.

I just really want to also thank Interim Director Panucci for the response related to this unique relationship that CBO has between the executive and the legislative branch because CBO really responds, I mean, they're overseen by the executive, but of course we rely on CBO as well as we're working to create the budget.

And so I very much appreciate, Allie, your, you know, I just want to read from your response here.

You know, these inherent tensions are also opportunities for constructive partnership in the service of shared goals.

And I really appreciate how you answered that in terms of opportunities for constructive partnership versus, you know, it can sometimes feel adversarial in nature, just inherently.

and I really appreciate, I agree with you, these are opportunities to work together in a constructive way and I really wanted to highlight that for the public that may be watching because I think your response was really great in this regard and I very much appreciate that and the way you see your role as a director of CBO in terms of working with us as we move forward to address the budget.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Chair, nothing else from me.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

With that, Interim Director Panucci, my last comments are again about calendar.

We've had unfortunate experiences in the past couple of years where we've had...

Do you have a hand?

Council President Hollingsworth, right over to you.

And I apologize, Chair Strauss.

I didn't have a comment, but now I do, just for the record, too, because people, you know, I'm not asking questions today just because you answered, obviously, all the questions that we had submitted to the chair, and then also we had a great one-on-one where we had a frank conversation about what my priorities are for the district and community and just really appreciate that conversation.

And also to highlight what Council Member Rivera said, just like that constructive conversation where, yeah, we're not gonna see eye to eye on things, but we can figure out how we get and where that common ground is shared.

And I really appreciate that open line of communication as well.

So I just wanted to say that for the record that even though I am not asking questions, Interim Director Panucci answered all my questions and looking forward to continuing that work together.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Saka, anything?

Thank you, Chair.

Sure, absolutely.

When have I turned down the mic?

Well, First off, thank you Interim Director Panucci for being here today, second time.

More importantly, along similar lines of what Council President just mentioned a moment ago.

Really appreciate your responses to all of my questions.

Particularly, it's easy to spot the questions that came directly, originated from my office, because it highlighted the sort of tension between the executive and legislative branches, and there's a few questions that did exactly that.

But, so appreciate the thought you put into those, but more importantly, the one-on-one conversation that we had and will continue to have as we share out the priorities for me and my district and the communities that I represent, which by the way, are also the same communities and constituents that the mayor represents and the mayor is citywide.

and I know the mayor had conversations directly with the mayor about sharing our various priorities.

It's very clear there's some tight alignment there.

Sometimes the devil's in the details in terms of like how we get there.

But in any event, looking forward to continuing to have those conversations directly with the mayor, directly with you in this capacity and the mayor's office.

because it's clear we have so much in common.

My default is not to find ways that we disagree.

Is it gonna happen?

Probably, absolutely, yeah.

But my starting point is those areas of overlapping interests and attacking those first and aligning on those first.

doing our best to harmonize and resolve to the full extent possible those areas of seeming non-alignment, because they're seeming at first.

More discussion, more engagement, everything is possible.

So in any event, all that is to say thank you, look forward to supporting your nomination today, and more importantly, getting a chance to work alongside you to do this work on a going forward basis.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Socket.

Director Puneach, anything to share?

Thank you.

Fair enough.

Well, thank you, Interim Director.

I know 60 days into the job, I'm giving you an earlier deadline than maybe previously used to for our city, which is in the past, we have had delays with receiving bills such as the mid-year supplemental, the grants acceptance, and any of the true ups.

These bills have come to us usually transmitted in June at the earliest, but we've received them July as the latest, putting some of these deliberations of mid-year supplemental up into August, frankly for me too late because how do you spend that money that year, number one.

Number two, we're running right into the budget session.

And so this is, I'm not gonna put you on the record of saying when you're gonna deliver these bills to committee.

I just ask that May is the right time to transmit these bills because it is, and I know that that's even shorter timeline because you've been here for 60 days and we're turning around to May being in about 90 days.

but I put this on the record as we need to keep moving.

If we do receive bills after July 5th, we will likely not hear them this year.

So I'll just flag, I hear you.

Resolution 32116, which was a resolution that central staff and CBO worked on closely together in 2023, and I believe I was key in working on that legislation, very intentionally set out specific deadlines for the cadence of those those bills.

If that is not working, that's probably a conversation to revisit, but for the mid-year in particular, it's by June 20th that that legislation needs to be delivered.

We've set out our calendar with departments for the year, so backing up much behind that would be difficult.

I'm definitely open to conversations with you in terms of future years and potentially even this year, but I will say that the intent was that that bill was delivered in time for it to be introduced and have two committee hearings in July with central staff when we did that legislation.

So if those decisions need to be revisited, it's worth a conversation, but those deadlines are set out and were established previously.

And so that's what we've built our calendar on.

this year with direction already out to departments.

So let's talk more offline and think through options.

Sounds like we found our first work product because following that scheduled two committee meetings in July means full councils voting on it in August, which has been a tension that is not worked necessarily.

So let's come back to that.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, any final questions before we move this bill?

Seeing as we have no final comments, I move to recommend confirmation of appointment 3442. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 3442. Any final comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on appointment 3442?

Council President Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Aye.

That is four in favor, zero opposed.

Thank you.

The committee recommends the appointment 3442 Interim Director Ali Panucci be confirmed and sent to the February 24th Seattle City Council meeting.

Congratulations, Director Panucci.

We will now move on to the second item of business.

And I understand we've got a hard stop at 1045 for, and we'll lose quorum at 1045. So colleagues, we're gonna be here potentially until then.

I know that the mayor has scheduled her state of the city speech for 1130, very thoughtful.

And so we will try to move through this, but at the same time, I ask that we don't rush.

because what we have before us here is really last month's committee meetings got a little out of sync because the first week we were right back in here.

The second meeting was, I was at Association of Washington Cities.

And so we are now moving into our regular cadence where we will have Francesca Murnon walk us through and direct us through different points and places in our city that we are working on building out indigenous infrastructure within our city of Seattle.

And so as I was providing in the chair's report last week, I had the opportunity of traveling with Council President Emeritus Deborah Juarez to the National Congress of American Indians, where we got to learn a whole lot in breakout sessions and attend a lunch empowering Native women leaders.

as well as I was able to meet with the council members and chair people of the Swinomish, Upper Skagit and Sox, Seattle tribes last week and was able to visit the Sox, Seattle tribal reservation and wonderful lunch with them and it's always great to continue building relationships.

With that, I think I've stalled long enough for the presentation to be set up.

Francesca, we'll be seeing you once a month minimum, possibly twice a month here on out for the rest of the year.

And today you've brought our friend Tim from OPCD.

I'll turn it over to you for introductions and then I'll ask you to just, we'll get through your presentation and we'll come back for questions at the end.

Mayor Strauss and members of the committee, we're pleased to be here again today to dive a little bit deeper in one area of work with tribal governments and native communities that's happening across our city every day.

I am Francesca Murnan, I'm a citizen of the Shawnee Tribe and of the Cherokee Nation.

I work in the Office of Intergovernmental Relations as the city's tribal relations director.

So I work with many departments on supporting engagement with tribal governments specifically.

and pleased to be joined by Tim Lehman.

I'll let him do an introduction as well as he dives into his presentation on indigenous planning.

This is a relatively new body of work across the city of Seattle.

It began around 2018 with some early discussions, panel discussions here at City Hall.

around the power of Indigenous planning and later turned into a full-time staff position and a wonderful body of work that engages both tribal relations work and engagement with Native communities.

And I'll hand it over to Tim.

Hi all.

You can hear me all right there on this?

You can move that microphone.

I usually have an issue with- Move the microphone closer to you.

Being heard because of my voice.

There's that a little better.

Here we are.

Thank you.

Well, thanks for having me here.

My name's Tim Lehman.

I'm Northern Arapaho from Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

A little background.

I moved out here full-time.

Grew up in the Mount Lake Terrace area.

Went to UW for four degrees.

I've been around.

and so with that, my background is in urban planning and design and landscape architecture.

I've designed and planned for Native communities across the United States and more than a handful here in Washington State.

As Francesca stated, this work really began to start in 2018. My office, OPCD, started with a indigenous intern, a college intern, which I was asked to mentor, and later, you know, kind of forcing them to create an actual position to have in-house to help that intern out.

So to start out with this presentation, just kind of a little idea of where I sit within the organizational chart as I sit under the deputy director, currently Sarah Bells, and report to her on what I've been doing.

To start out, this all really started about almost three years ago.

The end of March is when I started in 2013 with what was really going on then and still is now was the comprehensive plan.

So the idea was to indigenize that plan.

Fun fact is that our previous comprehensive plan mentioned Indigenous five times, four times describing the acronym BIPOC, and the fifth time describing Indigenous people, a people of the past.

So not really necessarily something hard to surpass when it came to my work, when it came to Indigenize it a bit.

I had about two months from when I started to really start getting stuff in the plan, so I didn't necessarily get all the one-on-one that I would want with tribes and community.

However, this work did start in 2018, so we had tons of minutes to take from outreach from all the interns and Dakota Murray, who was actually on staff at the time, indigenous staff with EDI.

So kind of culminating all those notes and putting in recommendations together, we were...

I did a bit of outreach in terms of what this was, but what we got in there, we got...

43 solid policies for indigenous community and tribes.

And a lot of additional policy there got watered down a bit to be a bit more inclusive because it just applied to all community.

And with numerous narrative in each section.

and it was also the first time that we actually hired someone from community to write the introduction to arts and culture, and that was Owen Oliver, a really beautiful piece in explaining the importance of arts and culture in our community.

On report back, we received comment from five of the six tribes.

Those six tribes that we were outreached to were the Muckleshoot, Puyallup, Stillaguamish, Suquamish, Snoqualmie, and Tulalip tribes.

Five of those, we got letters back, some saying thank you for the outreach, and a few really giving us some really good input to be taking consideration for updates.

and with this work is the regional center planning work along with the comp plan work.

We, I hope, are close to finishing the downtown and Northgate work.

With that, we focused on downtown with native businesses and native orgs and how they kind of fit within that regional center's planning.

In Northgate, we more look to evaluate community in the north end, and also what is missing from this landscape that will help out community.

The current 2026 work plan on regional centers planning will be the university district and the Ballard regional centers plan.

For the university, we'll be focusing more on the native students at UW and surrounding area, really trying to incorporate that importance of generationalities in native culture.

with the Ballard Regional Center Plan.

We're going to focus on the story of salmon, the cultural significance that has had in the past and currently has, and that applies to multiple cultures in that space, so that'll be really fun to look at.

And also, how can this be reflected in the public realm and the availability of access to water?

Native neighborhoods started in 2018, 2019 with the first round table discussion with our first intern who was Owen Oliver.

And this idea of Native neighborhoods came out of that.

So it's really kind of developed into a concept that looks to incorporate multiple nodes throughout Seattle that is reflective of our Native indigenous populations.

Those nodes will provide housing, services, programming for our community that also reflect and promote, will have spaces of healing and belonging.

That's been an issue for our indigenous community in Seattle.

It's just having space that represents that overall large community of folk.

Stationary planning, of course, is in my office along with SDOT.

And we'll be looking to incorporate Indigenous cultural narratives, kind of taking that as community story, create a design toolkit that can be used throughout the process where these light rail stations will be throughout West Seattle and beyond.

Developing a process for researching and developing and sharing neighborhood with Native, Indigenous, and tribal narratives that can be used to inform planning.

So a lot of my work looks to really incorporate narrative into things of the importance of why this work needs to happen.

That way other offices, and not just folks in obesity, other offices can use that as well as some precedent to be moving forward what the work that needs to be done for Native and Indigenous community in Seattle.

And then we'll hopefully, as always, provide some potential recommendations for policies and actions that reflect the priorities of Native and Indigenous community.

Of course, we have EDI in our office, and with that, we have the petitionary budging work, Native Youth Past-Present, which is the capital project.

The RFP is done, it'll be out next month, finally.

There's just been a lot of back and forth on all of that, and now I think I can confidently say that that's going to be released.

I was initially a part of RFP, but it more went under the umbrella of EDI, so they're way better at contracting than I am, so letting them take care of that.

In the future, I will be part of the site pre-development feasibility analysis, along with preliminary design.

and if we get to that point, final design and engineering approvals.

Along with just only some collaboration, this is, we're working on, with collaboration with OED, we're working on an Indigenous Economic Development Center.

There was, after the Northgate sub-area plan, there was need for something in Northgate and this was an opportunity.

OED had some funds, wanted to take a look at this.

We look to have already an indigenous economic equity nonprofit looking to want to lead this process and kind of operate the center for a point in time.

And this is just something that looks to establish a bit more culture in an area that is really lacking in our community, which is just in the economic development and overall.

So this will be something important moving forward.

I sit on with the Fort Laudan housing team.

I serve as primary point for OPCD and my background is in landscape architecture and urban planning.

and I've done a lot of large development projects.

I help facilitate an indigenous engagement along with OIR and hopefully more of that will continue as this work starts to progress.

And I will serve as a program manager for the creation of housing and programming when the acquisition occurs.

more collaborative work with Department of Neighborhoods and Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Getting used to all the acronyms still.

We're collaborating on a native food force to be located in Barton Woods in North Seattle College.

This is a great location, Lincoln Springs has large cultural importance for community, as well as Chief Seattle Club will be putting low income housing in the area as well.

And we already have a Native community partner in line to do the design installation work.

We're just working now with North Seattle College.

the site is is an interesting one because it is under archaeological protections for the Japanese family that used to live there and it was an old farm so looking how to navigate what that process is which more importantly down the line will be important working with tribes and native community on more of these spots on just the importance of preserving those protections on you know cultural and archaeological importance and down the line, there's just always engaging with community.

Right now there's been a focus with Chinatown International District with Seattle Indian Health Board and the Seattle Indigenous Services Coalition.

Both of them are trying to do some big things there in the little Saigon area with the Pearl Warren building and then the property across the street with Seattle Indian Health Board on housing and programming and just overall establishing a native hub in that area.

A lot of work going on with the Northern Lights, Northern Aurora Initiative with the Community Action Plan and that's Annika Olson leading that work, working with her on just indigenizing it a bit and bringing in more community to have some voice.

And continue to have interface with not only community, nonprofits and tribes, just continuing on pushing a narrative and what's important with these communities each year.

and that's it.

Tim, thank you for that in-depth presentation.

We'll go back to slide two in just a minute, but the question for me that really stands out is how do you do all of this?

And a follow-up question to that is, how do people know about your work?

And I say that because here's a city that is named after a chief with a caricature of a Plains Indian for a Northwest native's name.

and you're doing a lot of the important work to heal some of the harm of the past.

In the conversations with tribal leaders this last week, it was really, it's a statement that I make regularly that time does not heal wounds, actions of healing heal wounds.

And so if we were to just sit in a place of constant from our past, that harm that has been created here would not be undone.

And I see that also in a generational change, and for our city, having Council President Emeritus Juarez leading a lot of this work, and I was speaking with Chairman Maltos, the second, and his dad, former chairman, current Council Member Maltos, You know, Councilmember Maltos grew up in a situation and had to live through a situation of a fair amount of tension.

That tension still exists today.

And my response to a number of his questions were, and it is up to me and your son and your daughter to fix these harms or at least do our work to repair them.

Because again, time doesn't heal that pain it is through action that we create that and so even from today where we were before Council President Emeritus started her work we now have Francesca here we now have the IAC here we have you here and so first and second question is how do you get all of this done and then how do people know and I say that because in my conversation with Francesca over the past two years we've had kind of the conversation of is it more important to get work done or to present out about it?

If we spend all of our time presenting, we get no work done, right?

And so those are my two questions to you just in my reflection from that in-depth presentation.

I 100% appreciate your perspective on it.

My thesis that I used to get two master degrees was based on historical trauma and what that means, especially for community.

All communities of color, honestly.

Being able to work that, but provide space to heal through the planning and design process of what that means.

Having a lot of that interface with community that me and Francesca do on a regular basis.

Giving voice to community that's never had it is something always important.

And you brought this up, the understanding that there are a lot of laws, a lot of policy left in place to hurt Native community.

It just still exists.

So being able to unpack that and in a safe space, unpack that and understand what that means for community.

for a city in a world where tribal politics are a thing and understanding that push-pull with just community versus that sovereignty versus identity and being able to give everybody voice within that realm and what that means.

How do I get it all done?

Collaboration.

A lot of interacting, you know, from all this work, right?

It's housing, OSE, OED, SDOT, arts and culture, waterfront.

You know, I put myself out there.

Believe it or not, I'm the first that I know of indigenous planner for a major municipality, period.

That's huge, especially for being to hold ourselves accountable for some of these laws that are in place and sticking to what treaties are there in place to be helping out tribal community.

So collaboration for one, just really trying to get this done.

I don't have a budget working on that.

So I'm trying to just borrow from what offices do, collaborate in a meaningful way and donate time when I have it to do so.

But also bringing in the right community partners to express the importance of this work and being able to articulate in a way that I can.

I'm more of a hammer.

They're able to put a little more nuance to it, which is always nice.

Second question.

What was the second question?

Sorry.

How do you do it?

And then how do you let people know?

How do I let people know?

And I look at that and saying, you have a direct line to the director of your department.

You are one of thousands of city employees.

You're the first doing this work.

So it's a territory uncharted necessarily, but how do people know?

Well, I rely on Director Karen Dongo, who doesn't shy away from a microphone like our Mr. Socket here, right?

And on you all, right?

On the importance of this, the importance of work with community, being able to express the needs of all your community members.

We're embedded everywhere in each district.

Just gotta go out and find them.

Normally they don't speak, but when you give them the opportunity to, they will, a lot.

And they have a lot to say.

But in that, again, using Francesca and other community partners on work that we can help out with, because it's still very foreign to the community, the idea of built environment and the occupation of planning and design.

So being able to just, you know, get a coffee with, you know, say, Chief Seattle Club or, you know, Seattle Indian Health Board and, you know, help them through, you know, maybe there is some permitting that they need help with or, you know, right button to push for some folks.

Just being able to just operate in small ways like that, YAHAUT's Indigenous Collective.

being in to help them plan things out with that large property they have out there by Kubota Gardens.

It's the small things that matter, especially in our community.

And it's really all about momentum.

And so I think that snowball is starting to get bigger and word is getting out there on the work that we've been doing.

Wonderful.

I might add to Francesca's monthly presentation in this committee, just an update to what has Tim done this month?

and that's a way that we might start being able to pump it out to either our newsletters, every council member has a newsletter that we like to send out.

If there are small updates, especially like the garden at North Seattle College, things that are opening or in progress, I don't need to necessarily send an update that you were working on something, but when you do have those moments of success, we'd love to share them out.

Love that idea.

I think we've discussed that in the past of being having a monthly update of kind of just the happenings within the city.

Yeah.

Colleagues, I can tick through a couple other questions.

I want to make sure to prioritize you to see if you have questions, seeing as we are at 1026 with the hard staff in about 14 minutes.

City Council President and then Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and I just had a quick comment.

Might turn into a question, but there are two when I, first of all, thank you for this presentation.

It was very intentional, and you can tell that the work that you do is not like just, you know, checking boxes, right?

It's very relational, and I think that is incredibly important, just building that trust amongst folks.

One of the things that when I had a great conversation with, and I might mess up, the Suquamish tribal leaders, and we were talking about the waterways out here and their relationship to the port.

And this is just like, because I was so tunnel vision on thinking about, oh, what's the relationship with the port?

and their specific comment to me was, you know, oftentimes we look at, the city looks at the waterways as transportation and we look at it as food source.

And just that like piece right there just made me think, oh, like, you know, that is a food source for people.

We need to start protecting our waters way different than just thinking about transportation or the Muckleshoot tribe when we're talking to them and they said, hey, we just want to thank you all for keeping the parks clean and keeping them open.

And, you know, it's just great just to see that vibrancy.

And it put it in perspective for me, understanding like being caretakers of this land and how we just have to do better as a city because there are folks that were the original caretakers of this land and they see it now and they're like, hey, what are you all doing to protect that and integrate as we're growing as a city?

So I just really appreciate the intentionality behind the work that you all do and us figuring out how do we go beyond the land acknowledgments like Council Member Juarez always tells us, beyond the land acknowledgments, beyond the signage, beyond some of the visual pieces that we do that are incredibly important.

but that integration as well in our community.

Like you were talking about, meeting with Chief Seattle Club or different groups to make sure that they can continue to develop their property or integrate in what we're doing.

I just wanted to highlight that because the work that you were doing, I think we really miss for planners and development in our city.

We're drawing lines, we're just thinking about it that way and not really thinking about how does it, I use the word integrate a lot, because I think that interwoven with our community.

So I just wanted to highlight that and thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilman Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just really wanted to, well, plus one on Council President's comments.

And Tim and Francesca, just to thank you not only for being here today to give updates because it's really important for us to get these updates.

Otherwise, we don't know all the wonderful work that's happening in the departments and more importantly in community.

So thank you for being here.

and also for doing all the work that you're doing because this is really, you know, the relationship that we hold with our tribal partners is so important and to see all the great work that's being done toward that, you know, this really meaningful relationship is really important.

So really just to say thank you, not only for being here, but for doing all the work and I'm just so pleased to see all the different pieces that are happening in this space.

So it's really a true, you know, we're not just saying we're doing things or we should do things, we're actually doing things.

So thank you for that.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Colleagues, other questions, I'll take on to just one more while I've got Tim here.

If we could take back to slide six.

We can go even back one more just as, so colleagues as a reminder, these are the regional centers.

So this is the highest level of density.

Ballard currently has the, land use code on the books that could qualify for a regional center.

However, we don't have the designation.

That part is going through right now.

And if you wanna go on to the next slide, you noted focusing on the story of salmon and cultural significance.

in our conversation, noting that this is one of a number of places where there were tribal villages since time immemorial, right down there on Shil Shoal Avenue.

That's Shil Shoal is of the people there, right?

And so how you are, here you are the first indigenous planner of a municipality of our size.

You're taking on new regional center designation in a place where people have lived since time immemorial.

How are you approaching it?

What are the things that we need to be paying attention to as we move through and forward with this?

And how do we help heal some of those harms through actions and not words beyond acknowledgements?

We have a great community partner that does our work for regional centers.

They'll be looking at it from a, we'll be picking through this with a fine tooth comb, so to say, on what that history is and was.

We have a bit more time on this, so we can do a lot more tribal outreach along with that, a lot more community outreach, a little more locally.

on what that village was, more of a deep dive and how that space can be reflective of that.

I think that's that second bullet point really is how do you create connection to water in a space that it was meant to kind of fragment that up with just the profession in general that is currently there.

and Shilshul Ave there of not being the safest street to cross and we have multiple street ends.

So what does that relationship begin to look like with the regional center, which is just a couple blocks up from there and being able to make connections.

It's all about connections.

It's all about looking things holistically, right?

bringing it to incorporate not only the salmon, the people, the culture, histories, but again, looking at it in a lens of healing.

What is that?

Because it's in dire need.

Just to give a little shout out to Mulkshoot, they don't allow salmon to swim through the Lake Washington Ship Canal anymore.

they literally pick them up and put them in water tanks and bring them back up the watershed.

And then when they're time to hatch, they just put them back in those tanks and they dump them out right after the locks.

So this body of water is pretty rough.

I've done a lot of work on floating wetlands and mitigation to help that out and what that is, some of the working Green Lake and stuff that mimic that.

So this is a really fun space, honestly, to look at.

It'll be interesting to look at.

We have a bit more time to do it because, again, it doesn't have that designation.

Our office has to wait a bit, but we are still moving on planning on what that is gonna look like.

Just being inclusive as possible on multiple interpretations of that village and that space, and being able to reflect and share multiple histories, because they're gonna be shared throughout our tribal indigenous community, and being respectful of that.

I don't necessarily know that we have something written up that helps us get there, but in the process, we will.

again, to have some precedent of how this interfacing should be working with community, with tribes, on a particular place that was important for multiple folks.

Thank you.

If we could move on to slide seven and then 12, and these are more statements.

This one's a question really of has the native neighborhoods been put into practice?

If so, where, how has it worked?

Or is this something that we need to put more robust teeth on?

I don't know necessarily, no, no, not yet.

I don't know necessarily if it needs robust teeth yet.

I think we're just waiting for community to catch up, to understand where they want us to kind of stake claim.

Again, we have Seattle Indian Health Board, we have SISC, Seattle Indigenous Service Coalition, now looking to put in housing to create some of these nodes.

We're looking to put in that Economic Development Center with OED in Northgate.

It takes time for attraction and understanding indigenous community and tribes, things take time.

And I think people have a bit more now that kind of COVID is behind us, hopefully for a good while or something additionally like that, a pandemic.

Communities, more settled now after getting a whole bunch of funding and then not, I think folks are understanding their capacity to be taking on these.

I can plan and try to create all these spaces I can, but it's community that needs to run and operate it.

It just can't be a city thing.

You know what I mean?

We can provide the monies, we can provide ideas, but ultimately there needs to be ownership.

So it's really in time will be coming from community and is.

Not huge teeth, medium teeth, and just in time.

Fair enough.

Well, if you need any help, just don't be shy.

Last question on slide 12 regarding economic development center.

I don't know if you heard, but in the trial, you were there cause we had interactions there.

The tribal nations summit, there was a call for an economic summit either this year or next year.

This would be something that I'd love to have presented in there.

So any work that's been done up to there, anything that you need to help us get this economic development center going.

I say this because in, granted we're in the 17th largest municipality in the nation.

We are the largest city in the Northwest in America and in rural areas, tribes are the leading jobs and economic development creators in rural America across the entire nation, right?

And so once you get out of municipal boundaries, it is the tribes that most, for healthcare, for education, for jobs, for everything, tribes are the number one provider.

And so being able to funnel that energy into our municipality so that folks who are either visiting here from their communities or are living here have the access to what they have access to at home.

Any thoughts on the economic center?

I know that we're getting late in the meeting.

No.

I think we're there.

Honestly, I want this to be a safe-to-fill space, incubator space, if you will, that just has some programming there, but also office computers, copiers, plotters, large plotting type things, but also along with that, a place where folks can come and sell goods.

There's a lot of ideas around this.

The report, I needed to come out.

I needed to get done.

It'll be there for you whenever you need it.

And yes, I would love to be a part of that as much as you'd want me to.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you, Francesca.

haven't said a lot, but that's not because your role is to help facilitate in these spaces.

So just wanna provide you an opportunity to share anything before we close out.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

We appreciate the opportunity to do a little bit deeper dive because this work is happening across the institution at many levels and it's happening across large spans of time.

And it's important to take this opportunity with you all to shed some light on things that are ongoing and we'll be sure to come back when we hit some other markers of success.

We're getting closer to releasing the summary report from the 2025 Tribal Nations Summit about next month is what we're aiming for.

So it'll be a good opportunity to revisit some of the commitments we've made there and how we plan to actualize them as city departments.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any final comments for the day?

Tim, anything else to share?

I, you know, just commemorate Francesca of all the work, being able to, again, promote all of this, again, where we do a tightrope walk along multiple boundaries and feelings and all of that and being able to navigate that.

She really gives voice to everybody and including us in the city.

Yeah, Dakota Murray with EDI doing her thing.

Yeah, and to you all, anytime you need perspective, a voice, a listener, I'm always here.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you for your work on behalf of our city.

With that colleagues, this does conclude the Tuesday, February 17th Finance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting.

The next committee will meet on Tuesday, March 3rd.

And while this is the Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee, it is Black History Month and it was sad to lose Jesse Jackson this morning, founder of Rainbow and of PUSH.

He was focused on economics, hope and action and that's how we'll end today with working on the economics, seeing the hope and making action because feelings and acknowledgement don't change our history.

With that, there's no further business and we are adjourned.