Seattle City Council Briefing 9418

Let me make sure my microphone is amplifying very good.

My name is Bruce Harrell, president of the council.

We're here for a regularly scheduled council briefing.

I think most of you know we've been on recess for two weeks, and so we're trying to get our sea legs back.

So thank you for being here.

Before we get into our our usual description of today's full council action.

I thought we'd take the, what are going to be our get engaged appointments first.

And that's these fine young folks.

I shouldn't say young, they're grown adults, very mature in their own way, but they are get engaged appointments.

And so what we thought we'd do rather than have it at each applicable committee, is we would have us see them so we could actually be prepared to pass the legislation that actually appoints them.

So just sort of do a one-shot kind of approach here.

And we haven't quite worked out all of the logistics since we've been on break, but I'm going to sort of wing it a little bit.

So if there's anyone from the mayor's office or any of the appointees, come on forward and maybe we'll have a brief discussion and join us here at this time.

And for the appointees, be prepared.

They might have forewarned you.

Sometimes I do things a little on the fly here.

So I am going to ask you to state your name and the commission by which you would like to be appointed to.

And then you could sort of free mic it.

If there's an issue on that board or a reason why you chose that particular board, you could feel free to share that with us.

And you can pass, as I learned in law school, if you get a difficult question, you say, I pass.

So if you don't want to say anything, that's fine.

But this is being recorded on cell channel 21, part of our permanent history.

So we welcome the conversation.

So why don't we start with introductions and tell us a little bit about who we have out there this morning.

So good morning.

I'm Evan Phillip.

I'm the boards and commissions administrator for the mayor's office.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Jeff Lindstrom.

I work at the YMCA, and we partner with the city of Seattle and the mayor's office to run the Get Engaged program.

And so I will kind of let Jeff give a background on the outreach that the Y did to get a poll of candidates this year.

Cool, yeah.

Well, thanks so much for having us.

We're excited to be here as always, and I'm sure a lot of folks know a lot more about the Get Engaged program than I do, as I'm still relatively new, and Evan's new, and I know that there's a long partnership of the city and the YMCA working together on this program, so thanks for having us and keeping the program going.

Yeah, and in watching last year's video, Terrell mentioned that we have the best and the brightest.

And I think that that little phrase came up a few times.

And I hope that we continue that tradition.

And I'm really excited about the class that we're bringing in this year.

honestly didn't do as much outreach as we would have liked to.

I think we did a good job.

But we had a staffing gap and like a staffing turnover right as recruitment for the Get Engaged program started.

So I was kind of getting my sea legs as recruiting started and it was a bit of a rat race.

But I think we did a decent job.

We reached out to all of the area community colleges and universities.

We targeted specific programs and focuses of study at the universities.

So we would send the Get Engaged posting to the political science department, for example, at the University of Washington or the School of Social Work at Seattle U. We also focused on communities within the schools that were pockets of diversity.

So we targeted the TRIO programs at the community colleges, EOP at UW, for example.

And the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity, things of that nature.

We also obviously at the YMCA, we do a lot of gym and swim and workout programs and things like that.

But the YMCA branch that the Get Engaged program is based out of is our social service focused branch.

So we have a lot of partnerships with a lot of the local players on the non-profit scene, whether it's El Centro de la Raza or Youth Care or Roots Shelter.

And we reached out to a lot of our partner agencies and organizations to spread the word as much as possible.

Again, wishing that we could have done more.

And I think when it comes to, you know, trying to recruit people from diverse backgrounds and have representation that's reflective of our city and our changing city.

There's always a little bit of work to go on that front.

So looking forward to next year and doing a more robust effort.

But again, I think we did a fine job.

I have some demographics from our class coming in.

We have a lot of our applicants are from District 3. 52% are from District 3. 10% are from District 4. District 2 and District 6 respectively.

We're waiting to hear for D5.

Yeah, I didn't hear that, but I'll let that go.

We have 14% from 7 and 5% from 5.

And in watching...

What do those numbers translate to people?

The percentages are great, but how many...

I don't have that broken down off top, but we have 21 young folks coming in, so 52% would be 10, 11.

And I'm curiously browsing through all of the clerk files.

Any from District 1?

None from District 1, unfortunately, this year.

Let me know next year.

Cool.

I think that's an important thing to recognize, is that all of us are helping and wanting to reach out to constituents in our districts.

So if you'll just put a note to yourself next year about the time that you want to recruit, let us know so we can help.

Gladly.

Yeah, and I, unfortunately, I watched the, this meeting's video after the recruitment efforts, and yeah, it's just, it's busy.

And so, yeah, I remember that from last year, and I certainly want to do that, and hopefully I'm around for more than one year.

I know the seat that I'm sitting in has had a little bit of turnover.

So, yeah, that feedback is very well taken, and I'm very much in alignment with that.

Let me just say something.

I don't mean to jump on the district bandwagon.

Not a problem.

But just because what I'm what I'm mostly but no actually I'm not going to.

I think West Seattle should have some representation in here.

I'm mainly focused in the fact that these are young folks 18 to 29. And this is an opportunity to learn the skills of leadership in city government.

And you never, in some of the groups that we look at, they're not gonna have access unless it's a program like this, where you're focusing on such a critical age, where people are trying to decide what they're doing with their career, how do they wanna get engaged, how do they plug into the city network, the state network.

And so we need that representation.

That's mainly what I'm focusing on is there's a broad spectrum of 18 to 29-year-olds that are going to be our future leaders.

And this is kind of the well where we will go to and look at and hopefully help build their resume, whether they go college, you know, grad school, law school.

So that's the kind of mentorship I'm looking forward to.

So when I look at your boards and commissions, like, you know, of course, the parks, the CL Center, the LBGT Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission, people with disabilities.

I really want to focus on people where this is their passion and give them that access to me and to our committee and all the other committees.

And particularly now I'll go to my district because in our district, particularly two high schools, there's a marker.

when you have a lot of young folks that get free lunch or reduced lunch.

And so we focus like with the Mayor's Promise Program.

Again, we're focusing on that age group to catch them young, to get them in the queue, to start seeing themselves, you know, as moving into government or professionals or whatever that passion is.

So that's really my focus is the 18 to 29-year-old.

That's a real sweet spot.

I think intellectually and, of course, socially.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, that feedback's also well taken.

I'm 100% in alignment.

It's an interesting exercise.

I think I learned a lot during this process.

I think that as much vetting as we do and as much emphasis as the YMCA and myself personally has on diversity and representation and social justice, there's a lot of dynamics that we are balancing, right?

So, you know, there's obviously my subjectivity and the organizational capacity that we have.

And then there's the just, you know, who you're going to, who's going to apply and, you know, But during the interview process and as we did initial vetting of the applications, Evan and myself and all the liaisons that we brought in really tried to keep that lens as we were going through reviewing applications and interviews and making offers.

And it's difficult because, you know, there's just, it's such a unique fit.

The young person has to be a fit for the program itself, be in a position both professionally and personally where they're not able to learn and grow from the program but contribute.

And then each liaison has their own perspective on who's a good fit and whatnot.

So there's a lot of people that are in the mix, but I certainly hear that.

in agreement of what you said.

Thank you.

Yeah, we, just to finish up really quickly on demographics, we have 57% of our applicants identify as female and 43% identify as male and 48% of our class identifies as white or Caucasian and 52% identify as people of color.

So, certainly a lot of room to go on the diversity side of things and on the recruitment side of things, but I'm not ashamed at all about the class that we're bringing in.

I think they're really, really excellent and I think that we did a decent job on diversity and representation as well.

Very good.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just to follow up on the geographic issue, I noticed that two of the nominees are not City of Seattle residents.

Can you remind me of what we look for in those instances where somebody is seeking to serve on a city commission but does not live in the city?

Is there an expectation?

They have to work in the city.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

And I'd say generally speaking, we try to select people that do live in the city, but under certain circumstances, if they work in the city, that's okay as well.

I think you might want to take a look at your website because it says you must live in the city.

So if you want to correct that to say live or work, that might be good for next year.

Yeah, good catch.

Thanks.

Any other questions for many of our colleagues before we move on So here's what we're going to try to do and we'll see if this works or not.

I have a roaming mic and again I'm just going to ask these potential commissioners to state your name, the commissioner with which you like to serve, and perhaps your interest in just a little bit about yourself.

And again, I'm just going to pass it.

And if you're uncomfortable with the mic, just pass it to the next person.

I don't want anyone to get anxieties about having to say this.

But we just want to get to know you.

We'll actually be voting on this today, I believe.

It's on our docket.

So we want to know who we're voting on.

So I'm going to grab the mic, and we're going to work through this.

OK.

Test 1, 2, very good.

Okay, someone raise your name if you're a potential commissioner, and then I'll let you guys decide.

Who's a potential commissioner?

Raise your hand.

Very good, you're gonna start.

I figured that would happen.

My name is Carson Hartman.

I am a City of Seattle resident and I am hoping to serve on the East Design Review Board.

I currently work at the Research and Policy Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

We do research and GIS analysis to show the contributions of older buildings to cities across the country, including Seattle.

Like I said, I grew up in Seattle.

I've been here for four years after graduating from college.

I'm really excited to join the board.

I think it will be a great learning opportunity, and I'm applying to grad school in this year, so I'm hoping that will be a great booster, both in terms of knowledge, but in terms of reputation, I guess, as well.

Thank you, Carson.

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for having me today.

My name is Matt Oshetsky.

I'm a candidate for the Get Engaged program for this year's Design Review Board, serving on the downtown district.

I'm currently an economic development specialist at the Downtown Seattle Association.

I think this is a great board that really got me interested a lot.

One, for the collaboration on the district teams, getting an opportunity to work with development specialists, to a landscape architect, to an architect.

It's great mentorship and great steering towards my career as I go down.

And I'm also looking to the UW programs as well.

But a lot of my work that we do at the DSA is most noticeably on the streets of Seattle as well as in our parks.

Many of you may be familiar with our metropolitan improvement district services from outreach to clean team, safety, to our efforts in Westlake and Occidental Square.

So that's most notably that you can find our work at.

But being a part of the Design Review Board, I had a chance to serve for BIA back east as well, where I'm originally from.

And as new buildings come in downtown, it starts to redefine the street.

And we've got to keep in mind that our street isn't from curb to curb, it's from building facade to building facade, from side to side.

And having a say in how these buildings work and how mixed-use buildings and commercial buildings are being built in downtown is a big deal.

And I hope to have a big voice on the community outreach piece and also the design piece as well.

And so I'm really looking forward to working with all my colleagues for the mentorship going forward in my career, as well as have a voice in the designs that will be servicing our streets for the years to come.

So really excited for this opportunity and looking forward to working with everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you, Matt.

Hi, my name is Ronnie Hanstead, and I'll be working on the Community Involvement Commission.

I'm a longtime resident of Seattle, was born and raised here, and recently moved back here after being in California for my undergraduate studies.

I currently work at a nonprofit called Equal Opportunity Schools that works with high schools around the country to help them create more equitable access to their upper level courses.

including AP and IB classes.

So I'm really passionate about making sure underrepresented communities have equitable access to all sorts of places in society, especially equitable access to participate civically.

And I think being a part of the Community Involvement Commission is really going to, really aligns with those values.

And I'm excited to be on a new commission.

I know it's only a year old.

And so I think there's a lot of, it's really exciting to be a part of something new.

And I'm looking forward to learning and contributing to the commission.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Emma McIntosh, and I am hoping to serve on the Pioneer Square Preservation Board.

I am currently a master's candidate at the University of Washington in the art history program, which I also just graduated from their BA program.

My interest in this board lies within the intersection between art, the public sphere, and how that informs us as a community and how we represent ourselves as a community through our visual culture and the choices we make going forward to preserve our historic culture as well as, you know, having it reflect who we are as a city and continue to grow.

And I look forward to creating a practical application of such a very academic discipline as art history in serving on this board, and continuing to interface with the public and how they perceive our history and our visual culture as a city.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Emma.

Hi, I'm Alan Guo, and I am the candidate for the Landmarks Preservation Board.

I'm a lifelong Seattleite, and I went to UW for my undergrad.

I currently work at a private civil engineering firm where we do a wide range of work, including public infrastructure work and private developments.

And I'm hoping to be the candidate for this board because I think it's important to preserve the cultural history of Seattle through our buildings.

But I also understand that development is important for the city, so I want to find that balance between the two.

Thanks.

Thank you, Alan.

Hi, my name is Lucas Simons.

I'm hoping to be appointed to the Transit Advisory Board.

And I've worked a lot in transit activism in the past.

I'm currently in grad school for urban planning and public administration and interning at Seattle Public Utilities and just finished an internship at King County Metro.

And so I hope I can bring a lot of my experience to help the board and also learn a lot from it.

Thank you, Lucas.

Hello, good morning.

My name is Minette Stam.

I also go to U-Dub for Urban Planning and Design, and I'm a candidate for the Pedestrian Advisory Board.

I'm really interested in pedestrian design and kind of re-evaluating public space for all modes of transportation and highlighting pedestrians in that.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Smriti Chandrasekhar.

I moved to Seattle about a year ago, and I'm a lawyer by training, working on my license in Washington state.

I work as a privacy analyst with a local firm that works on privacy and data security.

I'm hoping to be appointed to the Community Technology Advisory Board.

My interest in working for the board is because of what I believe human rights as important as they relate to technology, especially privacy.

And I hope to advance this interest while working with the board.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Alejandro.

I'm a Spokaneite turned Seattleite, and I'm looking forward to, and I'm a candidate for the LGBT Commission.

I'm looking forward to being a voice in, you know, being part of this human rights conversation happening at the municipal level, and looking forward to learning what issues are affecting my community, and perhaps issues that I'm not aware of yet.

Thank you, Alejandro.

Hello, my name is Jose Ochoa.

I've been here in Seattle for about five years now.

I work for King County's local hazardous waste management program and also teach part-time at Seattle Central College.

And so I'm a candidate for the Board and Parks Commission.

And what draws me to that really has to do with a lot of my lived experiences, my community's lived experiences around public spaces and access to that.

And so what I'm really hoping to bring to that commission is a voice for folks who have historically been denied access to a lot of public spaces, but also how to make it more accessible for.

Individuals with disabilities, individuals with, you know, lack of transportation.

How do we make these resources much more available in all the forms that they come in?

And with that, I just really hope to be, again, a voice for historically oppressed communities and hoping really to maybe push the board or, you know, influence the board in a really positive way where they start thinking about, and acting on issues, again, regarding racial equity and other kinds of issues that really can advance Seattle's strategic racial equity plan and really advance an opportunity or give an opportunity for anybody who wants to access those public resources as well.

Thank you.

Hi, my name's Faralee.

I'm hoping to be nominated for the Seattle Renters Commission.

And my interest in that actually came from working with renters in the past and actually giving them advice.

And I had one person tell me that they felt so powerless before.

And I hope to serve on this committee so I can expand that power and give people a say in what's going on in their lives.

Thanks, Bonnie.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Diana Im, and I'm hoping to be selected for the Seattle Women's Commission.

I did my undergraduate degree in sociology with a focus on the conditions of inequality in urban cities in America.

And from that I really developed a passion for the idea that really in order to address the social issues that we have in our world, it's going to take a collaboration between public private sector.

I work at Microsoft now and I'm leading a couple efforts around increasing hiring among women and retention.

And so I'm excited to bring my voice to the Seattle Women's Commission.

Hello, I'm Leah.

I am a candidate for the people with disabilities.

I am a person with a disability.

I've also spent three years with an organization called the International Association for Geoscience Diversity, which is a program for geologists with disabilities to be able to go out into a field and have fully accessible field projects.

I've done two field projects in Arizona and in Ireland, and in November I will be going to Kentucky for another one.

I'm also working with the Science History Institute.

I will be part of the official history of science as a person with a disability now.

So this is actually my first step in any sort of government setting, and I'm kind of excited to get my toes in and see what else I can help spread with accessibility for everyone.

Thank you, Leah.

Hi, my name is Florence Williams, and I'm a candidate for the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board.

I'm a youth counselor for youth care and have been for the past three years or so.

But my passion for this board in particular comes from, I've been a bike commuter since I was 16, which started as an effort to reduce my CO2 footprint at that time.

But since then, I've really seen the potential for cycling to be a really low access or accessible, low barrier form of transportation.

And I want to increase its accessibility to everybody, including underserved communities.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Annie Dimitris, and I'm the candidate for the Human Rights Commission.

I recently completed my master's in human rights, during which I focused on migrants' rights and human rights at the local level.

I did research on human rights cities and other innovative policies city governments have implemented around the world to protect rights of residents in their cities.

I've since returning to Seattle after my master's.

I've done a lot of work with immigrant and refugee communities.

I worked for a local resettlement agency, and I currently work for the Washington State Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance, which oversees the refugee resettlement program statewide.

Good morning, my name is Nila Faraj-Pekar, and I am a candidate for the Seattle Arts Commission.

I am a recent Seattle transplant after growing up in the Midwest and graduating from university there.

I currently work as a program manager at Microsoft, and my interest in this commission comes from my background as a lifelong musician.

and how I use that training and how I really think that that has developed me into the engineer that I am today and kind of spreading that importance of access to the arts despite which careers or which lifestyles people are in today.

I also appreciate the Seattle Arts Commission focusing in on equitable access to the arts as well as access in youth programs.

I think that that's, as you were mentioning earlier, that we are expected to be the future leaders of the city.

I think this is a great way to access and provide exposure to possible future leaders in the arts who may not have had that exposure otherwise.

Hi, I'm Veronica Gunther, and I've been working at the, oh, and I'm the appointment for the planning commission.

I've been working for the city of Bellevue for almost a year now as a land use planner doing primarily permit development review, but also some policy work in green building in coordination with King County.

I grew up across the lake in Woodinville, but I have worked or lived in the city of Seattle for the past five years, starting when I went to the University of Washington for a double degree in economics and urban planning.

Yeah, and the city has seen a lot of growth, we all know, and that's been beneficial to our economy and beneficial to some more than others, but it's also created a lot of strain on our infrastructure and our systems and also ourselves.

I think we all feel.

But I also see this growth as an opportunity to redevelop in a regulatory environment that prioritizes affordability, environmental sustainability, and multicultural inclusion.

So that's something I'll be looking out for on the planning commission.

Hi, I'm Johnson Nguyen, and hopefully I'll be appointed to the Immigrant and Refugee Commission, but I'm a lifelong Seattleite, originally born in Vietnam, and currently I'm a graduate student at the Evans School at UW.

But what really drew me to the Immigrant and Refugee Commission was I think I really wanted a taste of local government.

I'm regrettably a little bit uninformed and unengaged with that.

But through my work at Hoa Mai Vietnamese bilingual preschool, which is one of the Seattle preschool program preschools from a few years back.

You know, I felt that that was a piece of legislation that really worked to better not only the children, the families, but the teachers.

I got a pretty nice pay raise from the Seattle Preschool Program.

But just overall, you know, I believe in building power and building capacity in immigrant and refugee communities.

And I just see this as both an opportunity to better my knowledge of city government and to really build power in those communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Should I stand or can you see me?

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Rickarius Jeter.

I work in landscape architecture here in town at GGN.

I'm a candidate for the Seattle Design Commission, and I chose to apply for that position because of my passion that I have for design.

As a landscape architect, we really work daily to figure out why a person would want to use a park or a plaza.

We really try to find the soul of the space just understand what's going to attract a person to this park or plaza, as I said earlier.

And so I hope to bring that critical eye to the Seattle Design Commission, because I think as Seattle continues to grow, we have to have public space that reflects the identity of the city, and we have to have you know, places that celebrate culture, you know, ethnicities and everything that, you know, it's like a large melting pot.

And so I hope to advocate for, you know, great, you know, capital improvement designs that really advances Seattle to the next 20 years.

So, thanks.

My name is Sam Russell, and I'm a candidate for the Seattle Center Advisory Commission.

I work as a construction manager for Pine Street Group on the new Washington State Convention Center addition.

And I'm an MBA student at Seattle University.

And so I hope to take what I learned in my MBA program, as well as professionally, contributing a meaningful way to one of the focal point key centers in the city of Seattle.

So I'm really excited about this opportunity to contribute during this transformational time, especially with the key arena development going on.

So thank you.

Thank you, Sam.

Do we cover everyone?

One person is absent, Bonnie Lay, but Sandra, she's the liaison, she can speak on Bonnie's behalf.

Okay, very good.

Hello.

So my name is Sandra Pinto de Bader.

I staff the Urban Forestry Commission, and I am here to introduce Bonnie Lei.

Unfortunately, she's not able to be here.

She's traveling for work.

But she holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Harvard, and she holds a master's of management of global affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing.

She is currently working as a project manager for Microsoft, but she has worked in various fields and in various roles in different countries around the world, including China, Myanmar, Uganda, and the UK.

So she brings her experience ranges from wildlife preservation and conservation to strategic partnerships and strategy development.

Her professional interests pretty much focus on global affairs and environmental policy.

So we're very excited to welcome her to the Urban Forestry Commission if Council decides to appoint her.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for that.

I thank all of you for the description of your passion, your interests, and your backgrounds.

I'm just not feeling this group, I've got to tell you.

The intellectual capability is just not there.

What an outstanding group.

Would any of you like to advance any questions toward any of our potential commissioners?

Council Member Bekshaw.

Thank you.

To the three of you on the front row there, Alan and Emma and Ronnie, Would you mind calling my office?

I would love to sit down and talk with you, not only because of the kinds of things that you're doing.

I'm delighted.

I'm technically your sponsor, so I'd like to have an opportunity to get to know you better.

But the work you're doing around Pioneer Square and some of the things around landmark preservation, and preserving Pioneer Square, as well as CIC, big deal, something I very much support, but I'd love to meet with you.

So I'm Sally Bagshi, if you'll just call my office and see if we can get it together sometime in the next month.

Thank you.

Okay, very good.

Are all my colleagues satisfied with this new class?

Jeff, I just wanted to mention to you, you're certainly a breath of fresh air.

You're honest in your candor that I think the results were still outstanding, but it's always refreshing for someone who says, but we could have done better.

So that'll serve you well, I think, in life.

So very good.

So we look forward to the legislation this afternoon.

We'll advance this at two o'clock this afternoon, and again, In all seriousness, it's just so refreshing to see both the intellectual ability, but the commission, the passion for this city and what we're trying to do here.

So thank all of you for signing up.

And did you get the memo about the compensation of these positions at all?

Oh, it's before it's coming, so.

We actually got a few questions about that.

I won't share who, but.

OK.

A good firm handshake is, yeah.

But thank you very much.

And with that, we're going to go through our ordinary briefing, so it's not necessary for any of you to watch this.

This will probably put you to sleep.

Or it may not.

It may be of interest.

But we're going to go through our preview of today's full council actions.

But thank you for being here this morning.

Yeah, thank you.

Council President, I just want to say thank you for this format, passing the microphone, getting an opportunity to hear from them and see them as a class.

Very helpful.

Very good.

I'll just start off by saying that in Councilmember Juarez I'm glad you're sitting next to me because this Friday we do have a special meeting of the Select Committee on Civic Arenas and I'll let you talk about that.

I just want the viewing public to know that that's forthcoming.

Nothing for vote this afternoon from the Governance, Equity, and Technology Committee and I'll sort of just stop from there and Councilmember Juarez lets you get into the two bills that are on the instructional referral calendar on Civic Arenas today.

That's great.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

Okay, so there are no items on the full council agenda from the Civic Development, Public Assets and Native Communities Committee today.

However, the next Civic Development, Public Assets and Native Communities will be tomorrow at 2 o'clock.

We'll be considering two bills and one presentation as follows.

The Jefferson Lawn Bowling Club Management Agreement, the Seattle Park District's green spaces, and then we have the Burke Consulting Firm giving us the recreation evaluation report.

It came out, we hired them last year, they finished the report and it's 180 pages and a wonderful PowerPoint and it's online or I can certainly provide you with a copy of it.

We are in the final stretches for evaluating the key arena redevelopment project and will take action on the transaction documents.

That's the deal itself.

There will be two select committee meetings to discuss the deal.

The first select committee will be, let's see, September 7th.

Yeah, that's right.

Civic Arenas will be Friday, September 7th at 930, and we'll receive a staff presentation and we'll be reviewing the transaction documents that were recently transmitted for their consistency with the MOU that we voted on last December 2017. These include, of course, the lease agreement, the development agreement, and the integration agreement.

The committee will receive presentations from Director Kirsten Arstad, from central staff, Marshall Foster of the Office of the Waterfront, and Robert Nellams, Director of the Sales Center.

A briefing notebook containing information for these discussions is being prepared today, and we'll get it to you as quickly as we can.

You received a preliminary briefing packet from the Director, Director Arstad, prior to recess, which will be included in the briefing notebook.

The second meeting, that will be, let's see, the second meeting is September 14th at 9.30 a.m.

That's a Friday.

We will discuss and vote on possible amendments and then vote on the transaction documents as amended.

We're aiming for a final and full vote on Monday, September 24th.

So basically a recap, you're gonna get tired of me.

So we have Friday, September 17th, September 7th, I'm sorry, at 9.30, where we have a presentation.

Friday, September 14th at 9.30, the select committee will vote on the transaction documents.

And then Monday, the 24th, full council vote.

So that is the lineup for what's going on with the Civic Arena presentation and votes.

I'd also like to report that we have made progress on affordable housing.

King County has reissued a new RFQ for the transit-oriented development project at Northgate.

We expect a final decision on the developer to be made in early 2019. I continue to push for affordable housing development throughout the Northgate urban village.

Northgate Mall redevelopment plans also include housing.

Other property owners in the area are looking at redevelopment opportunities which include affordable housing.

and continue to argue and push for transit-oriented childcare to be part of the development at Northgate Village as well as hopefully a grocery store and other critical important amenities that reflect the needs of the community.

The timing on that is, I just had it in my head.

I'm sorry, I did not note it.

It just got released last week and the deadline, I forgot, I can't tell you off the top of my head, I'm sorry.

It kind of caught me.

I just got a copy of it when I was walking out here today.

I'm sorry to ask the question.

No, it's okay.

I had just asked my staff when you, oh, it's right here.

It's the RFQ right here.

There you go.

I think it's, does it say it on there?

Why don't you just read it back to me?

Isn't it up on front?

Due date is October 29th of this year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

2 p.m.

Yes, October 29th.

I just got that as I was walking down the hall.

And I actually just got a chance to finally review it this morning.

So basically, we are looking at this density in D5.

We're focusing on Thornton Place.

Of course, the Metro site, the original RFP put out 1,200 units.

We now know that Northgate Mall is going to do redevelopment at about 1,200 units.

Northdale College is looking at 300 units on the campus.

And we are continuing our discussions with other profit and non-profit developers and encouraging them to participate in MHA.

And that's anywhere between 100 and 200 units.

Those are kind of still in flux.

So I guess our focus has been and will continue to be because we have light rail coming in and it is going to be a rich transit spine.

that our discussions have been focusing on that whole thing we've all been talking about for three or four or five years, some of you much longer, transit-oriented housing and development and workforce and other amenities that reflect the community needs.

Is there anything on there I should say, Council Member Baxhaw, besides?

Thank you.

I'm just reading it.

No, you're doing great.

But I appreciate that the county is working on your multifamily residential retail transit on this property.

And if you read my note on front, because it says, okay, thank you.

Just because, without going into what happened in the history of the first one, So the first one came back with 1,200 units with 200 units below 60 AMI and 20 units below, I think it says 50, 20, I'm sorry, yeah, oh, below 50 AMI.

And I haven't had a chance to see, I just got the RFQ, and I haven't had any more discussions with the county yet on what their process is.

I'm hoping some of the developers that responded to the first one respond to this one as well and that we hopefully have the same amount of 1200 units and focusing on the units below 200 units below 60% below AMI and then of course 20 units below 50 AMI.

So I'm hoping for that.

Thank you.

Can I just acknowledge one thing, Council President, and that is Council Member Juarez has done a phenomenal job of working with the county and with the folks at Northgate to not only encourage transit-oriented development but coordinating with the local college as well.

And I think it's making a huge difference.

Your focus on that is getting people's attention.

So I just want to acknowledge that publicly and appreciate the work you're doing.

Thank you.

And I think one thing that we, and this is just from a former life, I think sometimes we lose sight of that we really can do public-private partnerships, that we can work with the private sector, that we can work with for-profit developers as well as non-profit developers.

But what's been exciting for us and for me is being able to say we do business differently now, that we have these, my new word, charrettes, that these are organic community-based decisions about how their community should look.

green space, parks, grocery stores, child care.

And I want to commend some of our for-profit developers who've been sitting down with us and doing those, notably Simon Properties and a couple other developers as well.

And encouraging some of these other developers along Northgate Way that we've been talking to because they're going to want that growth that they participate in MHA.

I can't stress that enough.

So that has been my focus within the Northgate Urban Center.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Council Member Bryant.

Thank you.

The Sustainability and Transportation Committee doesn't have anything on this afternoon's agenda.

We do have a committee meeting on Friday afternoon at 2 o'clock.

We will be taking up a number of appointments, a couple to the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee and a few to the Seattle School Traffic Committee.

We will also have an update and report back from the Sugar Beverage Tax CAB with their recommendations for the remainder of 2018 and for all of 2019 budgets.

As a reminder to folks, A long process went through last year leading up to the implementation of the sugar beverage tax.

And one of the commitments we made through that process was establishing the Citizen Advisory Board to provide ongoing recommendations to how we invest the revenue that that tax generates to make sure that those communities most impacted by the health impacts of sugary beverages, disproportionately impacted by obesity, diabetes, other types of diseases caused by sugary beverages, and that they would be guiding the set of investments we want to make back into communities to make sure that the very households that consume disproportionate amounts of sugary beverages are actually get the investments to have better access to healthy foods, with the ultimate goal of having healthier outcomes in their lives.

And so we look forward to hearing those set of recommendations, especially in advance of budget conversations we'll be starting later this month and into the fall.

We'll also get a presentation from the Office of Sustainability and Environment about a food access pilot.

This is part of the slide that was adopted last year.

We will have another discussion about pre-tax benefits for commuters.

So just a reminder to folks, we've had a number of conversations in committee and we now have draft legislation before us.

that would make it a requirement that businesses with 20 or more employees in the City of Seattle provide their employees the option of having a pre-tax deduction from their payroll to pay for transit passes.

And we've had a number of discussions about this, but the Employees can have a significant benefit up to, you know, depending on the tax bracket, you know, 25 to 35 percent savings on their transit passes over buying them by themselves.

And the employers also get some tax savings because they don't have to pay certain payroll taxes when employers do this.

So we've been working closely with Commute Seattle.

Commute Seattle's done great work working with a number of businesses and business organizations throughout the city.

to really make sure that we have an understanding of how this may impact businesses and make sure that we're doing this in a way that has a, is literally a win-win for everyone in this.

And so we'll have another discussion, no plan to vote on this this Friday, but depending on how things go, we may vote on that on our second meeting this month, which is on September 18th.

The last thing we'll take up on Friday is a Amtrak term permit.

That's it for the Sustainability and Environment Committee.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Brown.

Council Member Benshaw.

Thank you.

We have a big meeting of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee on next Wednesday, September 12th, I believe.

And there will be a lot of items on that, including Council Member Mosqueda's disposition legislation.

We'll have a quarter two supplemental budget and three director appointments.

And Allison in my office wanted me to remind all of you, if you've got any questions that you want to have included in those director appointments as far Andres Matias, Sue McNabb, and Calvin Goings.

If you have any questions, please get them to her today, and we will fold that in so that they have an opportunity to respond.

So today in the committee we have, you just met them, Alan Guo, the Landmarks Preservation Board, and Ronnie Honstad, and CIC.

I think those are the only two items from my committee on this afternoon's agenda.

But I do want to acknowledge and say thank you to Department of Neighborhoods that the Community Partnership Fund Awards, the summer cycle, were announced last week.

I think you probably got a notice from Andres if you were still looking in your inbox last week.

And congratulations to District 1, had a couple.

District 2, it looked like you were the big winner with like four or six different awards.

And unfortunately, D5 and D6 were not represented in the awards this summer cycle.

So I just bring that to your attention not because we're Yeah, that's right.

Not because we're trying to make fun of anybody.

It's just that I think that on some of these, knowing that they're coming up with the cycle is that we can help our communities just know about them and what's coming up.

And I do want to acknowledge that my buddy John Pearson got yet another grant.

in your voice, your choice.

And he's been working on Market to MOHAI for the last several years.

And the amount of money that he has raised and the community involvement has been most impressive.

So I just want to say congratulations to him.

May I just offer to help assuage a little bit of guilt, Council Member O'Brien, one of the District 4 winners was actually a District 6 winner.

The Green Lake Elementary School PTSA was misidentified as District 4 when it is actually within the boundaries of District 6.

He's feeling a lot better.

Sorry to hear you.

I just wanted to make sure I was clear.

There may have been others.

There could be other mistakes, who knows.

But anyway, thank you for bringing that up.

And I actually want to say something here to my colleagues.

I'm really glad to be back with you.

We've got a lot of work to do on budget and with our select committee on housing and human services and all the work that you've been doing on ARENA.

It's going to be a busy fall, but I'm very happy to be back with you.

Thank you for that.

Customer Herbold.

Thank you and good morning.

We have several items on today's full council agenda.

Most of them are appointments.

We've got two appointments to the LGBTQ Commission, one appointment to the Commission for People with Disabilities, one appointment to the Human Rights Commission, and five reappointments to the Seattle Women's Commission.

The council bill that we'll be voting on in full council today relates specifically to wholesale water rates in the southwest subregion.

The city of Seattle sells water on a wholesale basis to over 20 suburban cities and utilities districts, and the cost allocation rates are set through water supply contracts.

Last fall, the council adopted all of the other wholesale water rates, and the southwest subregional surcharge was delayed.

delayed basically because of changes in metering equipment and the need to complete a rate study.

So we've got that before us today.

We've got no meeting of the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee this week, but we do have one next week.

We have a regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday morning.

And because the second CRRETA meeting of the month would fall within budget, we've rescheduled it to be on Friday, September 21st.

And I want to take this opportunity to give advance notice of a public hearing in the CRRETA committee on the legislation to create a 10-month period to study the expansion of the Pike Place Market Historic District to include the Showbox site.

You may recall that under state law, a hearing is required within 60 days of passage of the legislation.

And we are going to be also using that opportunity, that public hearing, to have some discussion of the companion resolution proposed by Councilmember Gonzalez and co-sponsored, I think, by myself and some others.

to talk about next steps.

And again, this is the evening of September 19th, 6 p.m.

in Council Chambers.

And that's all I have today.

Oh, wait, one more thing.

I just wanted to make an announcement of an event this week.

Sound Transit's Neighborhood Forum for West Seattle is this Saturday, September 8th at the Seattle Lutheran High School Gym at 4100 Southwest Genesee at 9 a.m.

Thank you, Councilor Harbaugh.

Councilor Johnson.

Just a couple of quick things for my colleagues this morning.

This afternoon at full council, we've got two PLUS related items they relate to.

Development that has happened just off of Alki Beach in West Seattle several years ago, a developer applied to redevelop a single parcel, and this is the final step that is legally required to subdivide that single parcel into 12 individual parcels for sale.

The project's completed, the buildings are constructed, this is the legal requirement that the Department of Construction and Inspections and Department of Transportation require us to adopt in order for those parcels to go for final sale.

So that'll be this afternoon.

I'll walk you through that clerk file and council bill and the appropriate actions required.

Tomorrow morning, we've got a regularly scheduled Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee meeting.

We are going to do a hearing, briefing, and discussion and possible vote on the extension of the moratorium on certain land use types in the Aurora-Licton Springs Urban Village, A Love neighborhood.

Folks may remember several months ago, maybe a year ago, a proposed development of what would be a very suitable site for apartment buildings was proposed in the Alove neighborhood to be a safe storage facility.

The community came to us and asked for a moratorium on that.

an important anchor in the ALOVE community doesn't become sort of a dead zone of safe storage and instead could be apartments.

So this continues that extension on that moratorium.

We'll continue our discussions about the Draft Tree Protection Ordinance.

That is likely going to be some large part of tomorrow's discussion with continued opportunities for my colleagues to weigh in on the direction of the bill and where it's headed so far.

I do have a meeting with the law department tomorrow that seems to indicate that this may not get wrapped up before budget.

So this may be one that we come back around to in December based again on the appeal, SEPA appeal issues that may come up.

We're going to have, oh please.

Your meeting is noticed as a public hearing.

Is that for the moratorium or for the tree ordinance?

We had enough changes proposed in the tree ordinance that I believe it's going to require us to have a second public hearing just on the ordinance itself.

All right, that's helpful.

Thank you.

We're going to continue having a briefing and discussion on Southlake Union design guidelines which have been in the works for a while.

We'll have a report, Council Member Herbold's request on vacant buildings from the Department of Construction and Inspections and their vacant building monitoring program and the work that's been happening there.

And then we'll wrap it all up with further discussions about our UW major institution master plan process.

That is another big body of work that we're expecting to try to conclude before the budget process.

But as a reminder, the UW major institution master plan is slightly different than most of our other master plan processes.

A bill that may come out of committee would actually be coming out in the form of a resolution.

That resolution would get adopted by the council in theory before the budget and then get sent to the university regents for their review and comment.

And then we would come back after the budget process likely in December or again after the first of the year for final action of a council bill as opposed to the resolution that we might draft.

as a result of the action out of committee.

So we've got several discussions under our belt on the MMP and a couple more to go.

We don't have any more select committees on mandatory housing affordability as we continue to await the hearings examiner's decision about that appeal, which some have called the longest appeal in the city hearings examiner's history.

We may well be at that point, because it'll be about one year from when the appeal started in November to when we might actually hear the results in this summit this coming November.

I believe that's it, unless there are further questions or thoughts from my colleagues.

Yeah, I just wanted to say a few words about the vacant building monitoring program presentation that you have graciously agreed to have on our committee agenda and just some background.

Folks may remember that a year ago, a year ago this month, The council voted on legislation to make it a little simpler for SDCI to require abandoned buildings, vacant buildings that are in poor condition to be demolished.

It occurred to me throughout the conversation around this change, around making it easier for poorly maintained vacant buildings to be demolished, that we weren't talking very much about how we can make sure that vacant buildings do not get to the point where they can be demolished.

And so we had, as a part of this passage of this legislation, we asked SDCI to inform us about the existing vacant building monitoring program and what we could do to enhance it because we have over 434 complaints about vacant buildings throughout the city, but only 40 of them are within the vacant building monitoring program.

So, SDCI themselves has provided for us really good information about what can happen when a building is vacant just for over the course of a year.

It can go from a perfectly fine, secure building to, you know, something, a building that is dangerous to the neighborhood, is easily accessed by people who would either create vandalism or live in those buildings.

And so we really need to figure out what we can do to better ensure that buildings don't get to that condition and require this sort of drastic step of SDCI requiring the owner to demolish the buildings.

I mentioned there's 434 buildings throughout the city.

West Seattle, yeah vacant buildings in West Seattle alone has about 90. The highest number District 2 is the second highest number so this is really something that I'm hoping we can get on top of and would love your support.

The concept of where you're going here, how do we move that toward more housing or utilizing it for some of the affordable housing efforts and the measures to get people inside?

Is there something we can do as far as the city to either buy the property, lease the property, but make it available to us for these purposes?

Well, some cities have used vacant building programs to disincentivize property owners for leaving their properties vacant.

So there's, you know, having our vacant building program be more robust and have it be a fee associated with the monitoring of the building is one way that you can potentially disincentivize owners from leaving those buildings vacant.

Another approach that I've been working with SDCI on is working with Weld, which is an organization that does matchmaking with developers who have a building sort of in the development pipeline, a vacant building.

but they're not ready to move on it yet.

And WELD identifies caretakers for those buildings.

They're usually folks who are recently released from prison.

And by having a caretaker in the property, you're serving two purposes.

You're giving somebody who, you know, our formerly incarcerated population has a very high rate of homelessness and housing insecurity.

So you're both providing that housing for that individual, but you're also providing the neighborhood with a service by making sure that there's somebody watching the building.

Yeah, great.

I would just add, I think a lot of the rationale here is very appropriate for us to talk about saving the structure of many of these buildings.

As Council Member Herbold mentioned, there's some really great visuals that SDCI has about The deterioration, rapid deterioration of buildings that are left vacant.

But for many of those buildings, there are also real safety hazards that the fire chief and other public safety officers are constantly responding to.

So this, the 434 complaints may not translate to 434 units that are available for folks, but there are appropriate numbers that matchmaking that Councilmember Herbold talked about started with us matchmaking with Weld and SDCI to begin with.

to open up those conversations, and that's extended to other institutions like Sound Transit as well.

So there is, every little bit helps, and there are ways that we're helping there, but there are also real public safety challenges for some of these facilities, too, that does require a fee and does require them to get torn down.

And through our research, I'm really surprised at the number of properties that are on sort of the police department and fire department's watch list, but are not on SDCI's vacant monitoring program.

And I think that's a real key issue that we need to resolve to make sure.

Because the work that the fire department is doing to monitor those buildings is not being compensated, whereas with the vacant building monitoring program, we can have a fee that pays for the monitoring of the property.

So preview of what you'll see tomorrow morning at the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee meeting at 9.30 a.m.

Interesting.

Very fascinating issue.

Thanks for that work, both of you.

I look forward to it.

Okay, we're all finished, and I'll see everyone at 2 o'clock this afternoon.

Everyone have a great rest of the morning.