Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 5521

meeting of the transportation and utilities committee will come to order.

The time is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Chair Peterson?

You might be on mute, Chair.

Here.

For present.

Thank you.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Chair's report.

Thank you for all being here for another full Transportation Utilities Committee meeting.

Our agenda includes voting on some items that we began discussing in previous meetings.

We also have our first look at an update to Seattle Public Utilities Stormwater Code, which is required by state and federal regulators.

We have two bills related to the Madison bus rapid transit project, which we're all very familiar with.

And then we're going to hear for the first time three new surveillance impact reports related to the Seattle Police Department.

We'll also be discussing the vehicle license fee and the amendments to that.

We are seeing about 33 people sign up for public comment.

So what I'm going to do is we'd like to have everybody get a chance to speak.

So we're going to limit them to one minute.

We'll extend the public comment period to 35 minutes instead of the usual 20. At this time, we'll open the remote general public comment period.

I ask that everybody please be patient as we operate this online system.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process of public participation.

There remains a strong intent of the city council to have public comment regularly on meeting agendas.

However, the city council reserves the right to modify these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system's being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings.

to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period, as I said before, it's normally up to 20 minutes, but I'll extend it now to 35 minutes because we have about 33 speakers signed up.

So each speaker will be given one minute to speak.

I know that's difficult if you've prepared two minutes and you have to quickly edit to one minute, but we want to give everybody a chance to speak and also get through our full agenda today.

I'll call on the speakers two at a time and in the order in which registered on the council's website.

If you've not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to council's website at Seattle.gov forward slash council and the public comment links also on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that is their turn to speak and the speaker must press star six to begin speaking, star six.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six.

We're going to hear first from Jonathan Hopkins and then Alice Lockhart.

Go ahead, Jonathan.

Jonathan, go ahead and press star six.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.

I'm Jarlon Hopkins, Executive Director of Seattle Subway.

I'm speaking today to urge the Council to earmark VLF funds for SDOT this year to create a multimodal transportation master plan.

This must include a transit component that produces a citywide light rail plan.

Our current master plan is outdated and Sound Transit has no clear long-range plan past SD3.

Sound Transit's in the middle of a two-year process to make decisions about a second downtown tunnel.

While there's capacity for new lines, the current plan imagines that areas like the Aurora-Greenwood Corridor or Georgetown or Sarth Park will never be connected to light rail.

To solve this problem, the City of Seattle needs a credible light rail plan for the future.

That allows our SD board members to advocate for us and ensure that branches, the literal junctions for future lines, are built into that second downtown tunnel.

The result of inaction by us today will be a downtown tunnel that forever, forever operates at half capacity, and a bunch of neighborhoods that wish council had been watching out for them here today.

For these reasons, please follow FSTOT's recommendation for planning head funding to enable a transportation master plan, including a citywide light rail plan.

We thank you for your time and dedication to a more sustainable, equitable, and connected Seattle.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Next up, we have Alice Lockhart, followed by Anne-Marie Dooley.

Go ahead, Alice.

Good morning.

I'm Alice Lockhart for 350 Seattle transportation team.

And we were aghast that council would think of ditching the transparent and inclusive vehicle license fee spending process, throwing out 73% for climate friendly infrastructure maintenance and planning in favor of 75% for bridge repair in all years after 2021. If by any chance Council thought was that this would provide more jobs in a post-COVID economy through bonding, Council should bear in mind that bike and pedestrian capital projects create 30% more jobs compared to bridge repair.

I've sent Council the source for that figure.

We urge council to go ahead with the VLF without Amendment 1, leaving this small revenue stream for bridge and climate-friendly infrastructure maintenance intact, and as part of this year's budgeting process, do the hard work to find the appropriate revenue stream to bond for a big and bold Green New Deal transportation and jobs package.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up we have Anne-Marie Dooley followed by Ben Go ahead, Anne-Marie.

My name is Anne-Marie Dooley.

I'm a doctor and a member of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Today, you're going to see an amendment that would move 80 million funding from safe to bridge repairs, and I'm asking you to oppose it for the simple reason that this amendment will allow unnecessary deaths to continue on Seattle streets.

An hour ago, I spoke with doctors at Harborview who see and treat trauma patients.

And one of those patients last week was a two-year-old hit by a car, now with permanent brain injury.

I have no doubt that the amendment, if passed, will allow the continued flow of severely injured people to Harborview.

And I have no doubt it will maintain the flow of phone calls from Harborview to distraught family members.

You can interrupt that flow by allowing the original funding plan to stand.

One of the things I know about Seattle is that we innovate here.

Medic One is a good example.

A city of the future will allow people to move around safely by foot and bike and Bellevue where I practice is ahead of Seattle right now in that innovation.

So please, for the sake of safety, please oppose this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we've got Bren Brasemley and followed by Robin Briggs.

Go ahead, Ben.

Good morning, Chair and members of the committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm Ben Brazemly, and I ask the City Council to champion light rail service for the entire city, especially future crosstown service.

Please earmark VLF funds for this year for SDOT to create a multimodal transportation master plan.

That master plan must include a transit component that produces a citywide light rail plan by the end of 2022. The city needs far better crosstown travel options.

If we don't build the new downtown tunnel correctly, we'll never be able to expand light rail service to the Madison Corridor or the King County Metro Route 8 Corridor.

As we return to normal, the Route 8, for example, will continue to be a very important crosstown route that is both full and forever stuck in traffic, especially on Denny Way.

Like all of our city's difficult crosstown travel paths, the Madison and Denny Corridors are already approaching pandemic gridlock.

If our city had a plan to add crosstown light rail, we could seamlessly connect our entire city, so so many more people can conveniently, safely, sustainably travel east to west.

Thank you, Ben.

Next up, we've got Robin Briggs, followed by Rich Bojan.

Go ahead, Robin.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Robin Briggs.

I'm asking the council to approve the original SDOT spending plan for the CARTAB revenue.

Transportation is our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and yet we proceed with a business-as-usual transportation strategy.

We need to improve alternatives to driving.

The original SDOT spending plan does this while still allocating money to maintenance.

Of course, we need our bridges to work, but this money is not going to be enough for that.

A rush plan for a levy is likely to have the kinds of problems that the move Seattle levy had, which would diminish public faith in the city.

It conveys the appearance of activity without much real benefit.

We need better SDOT planning.

The original spending plan allowed for an updated transit master plan.

We're almost certainly gonna want more link lines running off the downtown tunnel in the future.

An updated transit master plan could also detail a path for restoring our transit service back to 2019 levels.

This committee is responsible for overseeing 58% of Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions

Thank you, Robin.

Next up, we've got Rich followed by Ingrid Elliott.

Go ahead, Rich.

And Rich, you want to press star six.

Rich, we can get back to you, unless you're able to press star six now and start speaking.

Okay, we'll come back to Rich.

Right now, we'll go to Ingrid Elliott, followed by Heather Kurtenbach.

Go ahead, Ingrid.

Hi, my name is Ingrid Elliott, and I represent 350 Seattle, a climate justice organization.

I'm here today to oppose the amendment to the Vehicle License Fee Spend Plan.

I'd like to remind you that transportation accounts for 45% of our climate pollution in Washington state.

Infrastructure for low or no carbon mobility, like biking and walking, is crucial to a healthy climate future.

And it also makes our city a better place to live now.

This is particularly true for the one in four residents who don't drive.

350E supports the original SDOT proposal that invests 75% in walking, biking, and transit projects, and 25% in bridge repair.

Council Member Peterson's proposal to invert these investments is the opposite of what we need.

This proposal steals funds that are crucial for the safety and accessibility of people cycling, walking, and rolling, and it doesn't come anywhere close to solving our bridge problem.

Given the restrictions on gas tax money in Washington, it's very hard to get.

Thank you, Ingrid.

Next up, we've got Heather Kurtenbach, followed by Matthew Stevenson.

Go ahead, Heather.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

For the record, my name is Heather Kurtenbach.

I'm a business agent and the political director for Iron Workers Local 86, representing 1,500 journey-level workers and 600 apprentices, 40 of whom are women.

250 are minorities.

I'm here today for the Ironworkers strongly supporting the proposed bonding amendment.

It's clear we have a diverse membership and we provide good living wage jobs in Seattle.

We feel that one of the best ways we can address inequities is to provide jobs.

The amendment still honors SDOT's process by implementing recommendations from the stakeholders group which I was a part of.

immediately and then by generating tens of millions of dollars for similar projects faster which will have a bigger and better impact than dividing seven million into six small buckets every year.

Providing much needed jobs for our underserved communities now.

Let's be big and bold coming out of this COVID recession.

Lastly while some advocates want more funding bicyclists and bus riders rely on bridges to cross Seattle just like cars and trucks do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Heather.

Next up, we've got Matthew Stephenson, followed by Billy Hetherington.

Go ahead, Matthew.

Yeah, hi, I'm Councilman Peterson.

I'm one of your constituents in District 4. I live on the edge of Magnuson Park.

I have two young kids, so I'm teaching at a bike and getting, let alone up and down on the The sidewalks, with the lack of sidewalk cuts around here, it's really hard.

And I'm an avid biker, and I moved here 10 years ago to be able to bike to work every day.

And that's dangerous.

I have to come back and tell kind of horror stories of near misses on a monthly basis to my kids.

And that's just not something I want to deal with.

It's not made a lot of progress in 10 years.

In the next 10 years, the original proposal for the $20 levy was, it's going to help a lot.

And it's not just for avid bikers, it's for ADA compliance and other safety factors and equity factors, especially downtown.

But three of these roads are in your district that are earmarked for the Vision Zero.

And I think cutting

Thank you, Matthew.

And for those, since the time is one minute per person, so we can get through all 35 people, please do send your comments to us at council at seattle.gov.

Again, that's council at seattle.gov reaches all nine council members, but we are listening carefully to what you're saying and getting the thrust of what you're saying.

So we appreciate people taking time to call in today.

Next up, we have Billy Hetherington, followed by Katie Wilson.

Go ahead, Billy.

Morning, Chair and members of the committee.

I'm Billy Hetherington, Political Director for Labor's Local 242 and Chair-Elect of the Washington State Good Roads Association.

I would like to speak in support of the proposed amendment to bond the VLF funding to prioritize the backlog of bridge maintenance in the city.

Bonding to tackle a glaring need that was spelled out by the City Auditor's Report not only creates living wage jobs coming out of a pandemic, but access to those jobs in the most vulnerable areas through Seattle's Priority Hire Program.

Representing a local that is over 50% women and people of color, this upfront investment can ensure that these cross-sections of our membership have access to living wage careers as we navigate what a post-pandemic economy in the region looks like.

Thank you for your time and consideration of this amendment.

Thank you, Billy.

Next up, we've got Katie Wilson followed by Arvia Morris.

Go ahead, Katie.

Hello, council members.

Thank you for hearing our testimony today.

This is Katie Wilson representing the Transit Riders Union.

Just want to quickly add our voice to everyone supporting FDOT's plan for spending the vehicle license fee revenue, which was developed with community input and opposing the amendment.

This funding is a drop in the bucket when it comes to what's needed to address our bridge problem.

but this funding can make a major difference to Seattle's Vision Zero program to active transportation.

People are dying on our streets unnecessarily.

Bike lanes and sidewalks create good jobs, too.

In fact, they'll probably create more jobs.

If we're going to consider bonding this revenue, there needs to be a clear vision of what projects will be enabled that could not otherwise be built.

We haven't seen that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Katie.

Next up, we have Arvia Morris, followed by Janice Traven.

Go ahead, Arvia.

Hi, Arvia Morris, 43rd District Environmental Caucus.

Please put the amendment CB1242 on hold.

The caucus would be thrilled to work with the city to secure state and federal funding for bridges.

We fully support SDOT stakeholder allocation funds and fully support immediate spending on updating the Seattle Transit Plan.

VLF funds are inadequate to address the bridge work and there are opportunities for sufficient funds from the state with the transportation package that is sure to come or with federal funding and the national infrastructure package.

Poaching VLF funds with the amendment jeopardizes real progress with public safety for pedestrians and cyclists, especially in less wealthy parts of the city where fatalities and life-changing injuries are on the rise.

The amendment threatens funds for updating the Seattle Transit Plan, which must get done by 2020 to ensure public investment in infrastructure.

Should no sources of bonds for bridges become available by 2033, revisit.

Thank you, Arvia.

And next up, we have Janice Traven, followed by Tad Somerville.

Go ahead, Janice.

Hi, I'm Janice Trayvon.

I'm speaking in favor of Amendment No. 1 to CB120042.

It's been 20 years, 2 months, and 7 days since the Nisqually earthquake reminded us of how fragile the physical connections are for our communities.

This beautiful city, with its topographic challenges, depends on its multimodal infrastructure to be able to withstand being shaken but not stirred.

In my experience, the city and SDOT have been fairly effective at identifying problems, but they focus on keeping it small, applying blue tarp solutions or just kicking the can down the road.

This is why I'm thrilled to see this big, bold, bonding proposal that rises to the moment and leverages funding today for strong bridges and structures.

We have big challenges, and we need to build back better.

Please approve this.

Thank you, Janice.

Next up we have Tad Somerville followed by Jordan Royer.

Go ahead, Tad.

Tad Somerville here commenting on SPU, a strategic budget.

I'm requesting that due to the eviction moratorium, multifamily buildings receive an exemption, not a deferral, but an exemption from a planned SPU rate increase until the eviction moratorium is lifted.

Due to this eviction moratorium, the city expects apartment owners to accommodate non-rent paying tenants, yet still make the necessary repairs and improvements to keep the building systems and structure in good working order.

That's really difficult.

The council considers both SPU services and the housing that multifamily owners provide vital.

But why are apartment owners handcuffed by an eviction moratorium that reduces monthly revenues and increases expenses?

yet SPU receives a prime opportunity today to ask this committee for more money.

Something is terribly wrong that's not equitable or fair.

In closing, please provide apartment owners with an exemption from any SPU rate increase until the eviction moratorium is lifted.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chad.

Next up, we have Jordan Royer followed by Hester Serebin.

Go ahead, Jordan.

Hi, this is Jordan Royer, and I live in District 5. I'm also a board member of the Washington Maritime Federation and the Manufacturing Industrial Council.

I'm urging support for the amendment today.

Our bridges are vital parts of our infrastructure.

All you have to do is look at the failure of the West Seattle Bridge, the Magnolia Bridge, or some of our many drawbridges that are in need of urgent repair.

And I would remind everybody that if the bridges fail, the Coast Guard orders them in the open position permanently because maritime traffic takes precedence.

So it's really important that we get going on this.

We have a lot to catch up on, and I would just urge your support.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Jordan.

Next up, we have Hester, followed by Kathy Tuttle.

Go ahead, Hester.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thanks.

Hi, my name is Hester Sarabren.

I'm the policy director at Transportation Choices here in support of the stakeholder-led BLF spend plan.

Thank you for providing more time for public discussion.

CCC participated with diverse stakeholders in developing the spend plan.

The plan maximizes job-creating projects that build, repair, and improve the city's infrastructure, prioritizes neighborhoods with lower access to opportunity, and makes transportation safer and more sustainable.

We know there are pros and cons to bonding.

Going forward, it would be helpful for stakeholders to get clarity on when it is and isn't strategic to use bonding as a tool.

But on the whole, we felt this was a very strong and equitable process.

Last night at the Levy Oversight Committee, we had the chance to hear from Council Member Peterson and his interest in doing broad participatory budgeting across more of the SDOT budget.

This recent process was an excellent pilot of that.

We should definitely support it now to help maintain and build trust between government, its constituents, for future expanded processes.

Please honor the work of SDOT and stakeholders by implementing the original spend plan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Hester.

Next up, we have Kathy Tuttle followed by Patrick Taylor.

Go ahead, Dr. Tuttle.

Kathy Tuttle here about vehicle license fees.

Good morning, council members.

Please adopt the spending plan that the Seattle Department of Transportation and the community recommended.

It's a good way to provide good-paying union jobs.

According to several academic studies in American cities multimodal road improvement projects like sidewalks crosswalks and bike lanes create at least 10 jobs for every $1 million invested.

Good paying union jobs are decreased with road and bridge repair projects and increased with walk bike transit projects.

Why is this.

The main reason is that the ratio of labor to materials for more fine grained projects increases and a greater proportion of the project budget can be spent on high paying union jobs.

Smaller projects also employ more local firms and use local materials.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says the new American infrastructure plan is not just about roads and bridges, but is looking to the future and helping long-term job growth.

Council members, you can look to the future and support long-term job growth here by supporting the ESSEP community spending plan for vehicle licensing.

Thank you, Kathy Tuttle.

Next up, we have Patrick Taylor, followed by Cynthia Speaks.

Go ahead, Patrick.

Hi, my name is Patrick Taylor, and I'm commenting on the VLF.

I'm co-chair of the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board and the representative on the Levy Oversight Committee, but today I'm speaking as an individual.

Transportation and equity stakeholders were asked by SDOT to participate in a council-mandated public outreach process on how to spend the VLF money.

At the end of the process, A plan was produced to spend 75% of the money on walking, biking, and transit, reflecting both the feedback that was given as part of the outreach process and aligning with our city's values as embodied in numerous adopted policies.

The proposed amendment today would disregard both these values of the city and the work of citizens.

While the amendment is just a request to study the change, we know that the goal is not just to study it, but to lay the groundwork for switching VLF funding priorities, and so it should be voted down.

I'm asking the council today to not ignore the work of stakeholders, and please accept the spend plan as proposed by SDOT without amendment.

This will support the health and safety of Seattle residents, reflect our climate commitments, provide jobs for the community, and help fulfill unfunded commitments the council has made.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Patrick.

Next up, Cynthia Spies, followed by Deb Barker.

Go ahead, Cynthia.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Spies.

Regarding the three SPD surveillance technologies, the city is not engaging in an honest dialogue with the public on these.

At the group three public engagement meeting, most of the public's questions went unanswered, with a reply either, We'll look into it and post the answer online or submit a PRA request.

Five months later and still no answers have been posted.

City departments should not be allowed to dodge oversight and accountability by avoiding answering the public's questions.

Multiple use of technologies are examples of militarization of the police.

Roughly half of all SPD uses of Guardian One in 2018 were in the South Precinct.

Guardian One is overkill for SPD.

This will allow the use of Guardian One and only allow Guardian Two, which is only for search and rescue.

If that is unpalatable, then heed the alternative recommendations I emailed.

At least three of the manufacturers from the situational awareness cameras, sir, do indeed produce cameras which support audio and or video recording.

SPD has still not provided the model names and numbers.

Don't allow secret devices.

Please see my email with concrete steps to take.

Thank you.

Thank you, Cynthia.

Next, Deb Barker, followed by Philippa Webster.

Go ahead, Deb.

Hello, this is Deb Barker.

I'm a West Seattle resident.

I was not invited to the discussion that occurred to form the Council Bill 1200. But I am in complete support of Amendment No. 1 to this Council Bill.

Since the West Seattle High Bridge closed over 400 days ago, commute times via detour routes towards north and east have crippled.

This creates hardships on families as well as businesses which are struggling to survive.

And not only that, the neighborhoods through which all the traffic has been seen, hours and hours of drive-by traffic backups, side street drivers endangering pedestrians and bicyclists, and increased pollution in areas that already suffer the city's highest illness and mortality rates.

It is important to understand that the failure of bridges and other infrastructure doesn't just affect vehicles, cyclists, scooters, and pedestrians.

They impact the city's connectivity and public health.

Please adopt the amendment number one, fund bridge repair and maintenance.

Thank you, Deb.

Next up, Philippa Webster, followed by Iris Antman.

Go ahead, Philippa.

Hi, my name is Phillipa Webster, and I'm a member of the 43rd District Environmental Caucus.

I want to add my voice to all of those opposed to bonding the BLS funds.

This will only pay for a tiny fraction of what's needed for our bridges, when instead these funds could be used to provide real ongoing improvements to the safety and accessibility of our streets and to the availability of easy walking, biking, and transit options.

In Seattle, passenger vehicles account for more of our greenhouse gas emissions than any other source.

We need to do everything we can to give Seattle residents safe and convenient alternatives to driving.

In terms of climate, we all benefit directly from every person who bikes to work or walks to the grocery store.

To me, this is a no-brainer.

Either we use the VLF money for things that move our city closer to a sustainable, livable home for everyone here, or we watch the money vanish into a bridge fund which will be paying off with interest for the next 20 years while our sidewalks and bike lanes remain hazardous and inaccessible and our climate emergency gets steadily worse.

Thank you for calling in.

We're going to go back to Rich.

Sorry if I'm mispronouncing.

Rich, go ahead and press star six and you can go next.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Yes, Rich, we can hear you.

Okay, great.

My name is Rich Fogart and I am opposed to the amendment that takes $80 million from walking, biking and transit projects to pay for bridge repair.

Were you not listening during the protests last summer?

People are fed up being marginalized.

They want their voices to be part of the decision making process.

You, the Seattle Council, asked SDOT to engage with the community regarding the VLF.

This amendment is a dangerous precedent that cannot be set.

Times have changed.

You cannot ask for equity input and then dismiss it.

Will this happen when the Seattle Green New Deal Advisory Board presents its recommendations?

You need to stand with the city's stated priorities of safety, climate action, mobility, justice, and equity.

Please don't financially cripple a climate-friendly program with community input to divert Thank you, Rich.

Next, we have Iris Antman, followed by Dennis Shaw.

Go ahead, Iris.

Hi there.

This is Iris Antman.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council.

I'm with the 37th LD Environmental Caucus and lots of other groups.

And clearly, these are complicated issues.

and I think people want what's best.

However, I'm in opposition to the amendment.

I think that it's out of alignment with SDOT's list of projects, and as importantly, out of alignment with the input from the community and stakeholder input on how to prioritize the VLS funds.

We need light rail in more neighborhoods.

We need a plan for restoring transit service to 2019. We must do all we can to get people out of cars.

We need to pay attention to the climate issues.

Otherwise, no one will have jobs.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Iris.

Next up, we've got Dennis Shaw followed by Ryan Packer.

Go ahead, Dennis.

Hello, this is Dennis Shaw.

I'm speaking towards the opposition to the DLF amendment in support of adopting the original SDOT plan.

As a physician, I'm really focused on the public health impact of the infrastructure.

And these have been touched on.

They support both the safety issues that have been mentioned earlier, as well as the impact of pollution and who it impacts.

As well, I think that the facilitation of movement outside of cars and that is part of a reversal of the trend in recent decades that have made things and life less healthy.

And I guess on a personal standpoint, as I age and become less nimble as I drive by traffic and such, I appreciate more and more bike lanes and the safety provided when they're available.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dennis.

Next, we've got Ryan Packer followed by Jared Moore.

Go ahead, Ryan.

Ryan, go ahead, press star six if you can hear us.

Well, we'll go ahead, we'll come back to Ryan.

We'll go ahead and hear from Jared Moore, and then we'll try Ryan again.

Go ahead, Jared Moore.

Hi all.

Thanks for having this meeting today.

My name is Jared Moore.

I teach artificial intelligence and do such research at the University of Washington.

I'm speaking here individually today, but I'm going to echo what Cynthia was talking about previously with regard to CB 1200535455 on surveillance technology.

I mean, in general, the police is going to be rushing these things.

There's a lot of information that hasn't been followed exactly.

I think the council members should really all look at the community surveillance working group recommendations and attachments to each of those documents.

The technologies have not been specified appropriately.

I know from my experience in the field, a lot of these things can be misused.

They're going to be portrayed as being a lot simpler than they actually are.

And the kind of surveillance implications disproportionately affecting communities of color, like we heard all year, is going to be very significant, not to mention the militarization of helicopters and facial recognition technology late in many of these technologies.

So, I mean, there are concerns.

Thank you very much, and just a reminder to folks, you can continue to email us at council at Seattle.gov.

That reaches all nine council members, council at Seattle.gov.

Let's try Ryan Packer again, and then our last speaker would be Joe Riley.

Go ahead, Ryan, press star six.

Hi, thank you.

Sorry for that.

Thanks, council members.

Like many on the call, I don't support the amendment that would lock us into holding a critical revenue stream for one purpose mostly that would not even prevent another major bridge closure.

I just have one request before you vote on such a measure.

Actually invite the SDOT Vision Zero team to your committee.

You've not received an update from them since you formed the committee over a year ago.

So far in 2021, 10 people have lost their lives on our streets.

because of the deficiencies of our transportation system.

Eight of them have been walking and biking.

These should be red alarm bell numbers for four months of the year, but we're here talking about bridge maintenance.

That's my one request on the amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ryan.

Our last speaker is Joe Riley.

Go ahead, Joe.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Joe Riley, calling in from Seattle's Wedgwood neighborhood, and I'd like to speak against bonding because it prevents us from using the VLF to fund SDOT stakeholders suggested planning ahead funds to update our transit master plan with a rail corridor identification component.

Bridge maintenance, while essential, can wait, and a TMP cannot.

Seattle City Council must codify light rail corridors before 2022 for sound transit to be permitted to make these tunnel changes.

Seattle voters will ask for Sound Transit 4 and ST4 will require expansion from this specific tunnel.

So let's do the work ahead of time for very little money so the Seattle Times won't have to write a future article about how a lack of forward thinking now forces us to spend a few extra billions and shut down the new downtown tunnel between West Seattle and Ballard.

Lastly, ST4 will outstrip bridge maintenance jobs in the hundreds of thousands like ST3 already has.

Please don't bond.

do fund the TMP, and thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Colleagues, that concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

Now we will move on to our first legislative item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 120044. An ordinance relating to the stormwater code update amending chapters 22.800, 22.801, 22.803, 22.805, and 22.807 of the Seattle Municipal Code for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

This is Council Bill 12044. It's the result of a long process updating Seattle's stormwater code.

This update is driven by science-based changes in the applicable federal and state Clean Water Act requirements.

And as you will hear during the presentation from Seattle Public Utilities, there was extensive outreach and it was an iterative process with the State Department of Ecology leading to these specific proposed changes.

The revisions will have significant environmental benefits over time at a relatively low cost to a number of impacted city departments, including Seattle Department of Transportation, Seattle City Light, Parks Department, and, of course, Seattle Public Utilities.

We'll go ahead and first, as usual, we'll check in with our City Council Central staff.

In this case, that's Brian Goodnight.

If you want to have any introductory remarks before we turn it over to Seattle Public Utilities.

Good morning, Brian.

Good morning.

Thank you.

I think you did a nice job of summarizing it, and I don't really have anything to add, so I'm happy to turn it over to the experts at SPU.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

Welcome, everybody, from SPU.

And for the viewing public and for council offices, Brian Goodnight did put together a central staff memo, which is helpful for setting the table for this entire stormwater code update.

But welcome, General Manager Hera and your team from SPU.

We'll turn it over to you now.

Thank you very much for that excellent introduction.

Good morning, council members.

Thank you very much for considering this proposed legislation to update the city's stormwater code.

As Council Member Peterson mentioned, the purpose of the stormwater code is to protect people, property, and the environment from damage caused by stormwater runoff.

And the stormwater code updates are required every five years as part of our Department of Ecology permit.

which requires the city to address pollution from point sources into surface water, such as rivers, lakes, and streams.

And SPU has been leading the joint effort on the update with Seattle Department of Construction Inspections to update Seattle Stormwater Code, and also the joint SPU-SDCI Stormwater Manual.

SDOT and Parks have also been part of the update team.

This effort began in late 2019, so quite a while ago, and as Councilmember Peterson mentioned, with significant outreach and public involvement.

And we are required by Ecology to complete the stormwater code update process by July 1st to maintain permit compliance.

Cheryl Ehlers is SPU's lead for the stormwater code update, and she's here to walk all of us through the proposed policy changes and code modifications And all of us look forward to your questions and feedback.

Thank you for your time.

Great.

Thank you, Mommy.

Thank you for having me here today.

As Mommy mentioned, I'll be going over the stormwater code update.

And for today's agenda, I'll cover the background related to the stormwater code, including why the city is updating now.

Just give me one moment so I can actually see my screen.

There we go.

Oops.

There we go.

Including why we're updating now and what's currently in the stormwater code.

Mommy gave a good overview of that already.

And I'll then go over the outreach and feedback we received on the project, as well as highlight major changes.

And finally, I'll review the remaining project schedule.

And at the end of the presentation, there'll be an opportunity to ask questions.

But as I'm presenting, feel free to let me know if you have any clarifying questions.

As Mommy mentioned for background, Seattle has had a stormwater, well, stormwater coast since 1979 prior to any federal or state requirements.

In 1987, under the Federal Clean Water Act, a stormwater permit for discharges from municipal stormwater systems to the receiving waters, such as Lake Washington and the Duwamish River, was required.

In Washington state, this stormwater permit is administered by the Department of Ecology.

There were various requirements under the first stormwater permit, but under the 1995 permit, for the first time, requirements for municipalities to regulate stormwater runoff from development and land use activities was added.

Subsequently, we've had multiple permit reissuances generally on a five-year permit cycle with added requirements over time.

Mainly due to these permit reissuances, the stormwater code has been more recently updated in 2000, 2009, 2016, and now is required again in 2021. under the current permit, which is effective from 2019 to 2024. In addition to the requirements to regulate stormwater runoff related to development, Seattle's stormwater code also has requirements for source control, such as oil spill kits and sweeping for businesses to prevent pollutants from coming in contact with stormwater.

requirements to maintain stormwater facilities installed on properties and other minimum requirements, including the requirement for all projects to extend the public drainage system.

Generally, the stormwater code applies to both private property and the public right-of-way with many of the requirements focusing on reducing pollutant impacts.

It also has a large component associated with mitigating development impacts as noted.

Administering the stormwater code generally falls between SDCI and SPU, and SDCI is responsible for administering the stormwater code for private property development, and SPU's responsibility involves development in the right-of-way, as well as enforcing other provisions that are non-development related.

To help the city administer the stormwater code, the city also has a stormwater manual that includes the technical details and implementation requirements for the code.

This manual is a joint director's rule administered by SPU and SDC, DCI, and is over a thousand pages long.

So why are we doing it?

Why are we updating the Stillwater Code now?

Under our 2019 to 2024 stormwater permit, as Mommy mentioned, we must have new requirements added to our code by this July 1st.

And this date is really important because if Seattle misses it, we'll be out of compliance with our permit, which could mean the city facing fines up to $37,500 per day per violation.

and maybe more importantly jeopardizes our relationship with ecology and EPA and our ability to negotiate with these entities as well as other third parties.

So it's very important that we don't miss this deadline.

In addition to meeting the regulatory deadline prescribed by the state, this is also an opportunity to incorporate policy changes and to improve usability of the code as well as the stormwater manual.

In addition to meeting the regulatory requirement with ecology, the team also considered how the existing code and any proposed changes would be in service to three other goals, which include improve and or maintain the city's drainage and wastewater system, rate payer affordability, and how to clarify and simplify the documents for those that use the stonewater code and manual, including the development community and city staff.

For goal number one, improve or maintain the drainage, the city's drainage and wastewater system that team considered downstream impacts related to projects, including the ditch and culvert system, as well as the combined long term operation and maintenance associated with infrastructure maintained by the city.

and continuing to build resiliency within the city, especially related to climate change, flooding, and impacts to the combined sewer system, and meeting the associated consent decree.

In looking at goal number two, rate payer affordability, two parts were considered.

One is building the right solution in the right place.

This goal looks to harmonize the codes so that environmental impacts are addressed by putting the right solution in the right place to more efficiently address development impacts.

While the city projects effectively use both rate payer and taxpayer funds to manage stormwater runoff and address missing drainage infrastructure.

We also use this concept in evaluating developers' costs and evaluating efficiency of requirements versus installation costs and defining thresholds for requirements.

The other part of affordability is the concept of growth pays for growth and not burdening intergenerational rate payers.

This includes installing infrastructure at the time of development for both private development and city projects instead of relying on rate payer funds to install.

The team's third goal was to clarify and simplify the requirements.

We've often heard, why is the code so gosh darn complicated?

And as you know, the city has a complicated system due to annexations, combined sewers and creek basins.

To try to simplify the requirements and to align thresholds where it makes sense, both from an engineering perspective and also from an applicant plan review perspective, we propose revising thresholds so that they are more consistent across the city.

This results in more similar development costs throughout the city.

This effort also includes documenting standard practices for consistency and transparency.

In October of 2019, the team started the public review outreach and feedback process.

This public process included one in person, which seems so foreign now, and four online public meetings that were conducted to inform interested stakeholders about proposed updates and solicit input.

Even with COVID, it has gone well.

Having meetings online has seemed to increase participation compared to in-person meetings.

These meetings included representatives from the development community, environmental advocacy groups, and engineering and consulting firms, including those that represent affordable housing.

Prior to today's meeting, the public process has included three public comment periods.

Additionally, announcements have been sent to interested stakeholders through both SDCI and SPU listservs, and articles have been included in SDCI's Building Connection newsletter.

There's also been information shared at Master Builder Association meetings.

Through this outreach, we've received over 200 public comments, many of which have been incorporated.

Others were not due to ecology requirements or policy decisions.

With that, no significant outstanding concerns have been identified with the stormwater code update.

Thank you.

Cheryl, I think we have a question from Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you.

Chair, it was on the last slide.

I believe that I already know the answer.

The question was regarding investing in infrastructure and systems, what connection that has to the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.

My sense is that it doesn't connect, but I wanted to ask the question to clarify.

Before we get to that, I'll just editorialize because we're on the outreach and feedback.

I am incredibly impressed with the number of years and the number of meetings and the amount of outreach that you have completed to engage in this project.

I guess a follow-up question there is, oftentimes the city engages in outreach in a one-directional engagement.

They'll meet with a group, listen to their feedback, and never return to that group to provide how their feedback informed the decisions.

Could you help me understand what feedback loop was created to ensure that stakeholders knew that their feedback was being incorporated?

I would say that the feedback loop includes just the multiple options that we had for outreach.

And so that it was, and we're very clear on red lines and showing what had changed over between the different review periods.

So I would say that's the main loop that we had.

Also, we met with master builders and got some feedback from them and have incorporated that their language in the director's role that I'll be mentioning.

And while that hasn't been posted yet, we did hear from them and it's a much better document because of that.

And as far as your question about the ship canal, I would say As far as infrastructure, a lot of that is focused on conveyance requirements when I was mentioning that, but it also talks about for development and looking at the size of detention, especially in the combined and ensuring overall and through the city that we are, the size of the detention system is adequately mitigating the development impacts and before and analyzing that it wasn't.

So I would say that that's how it ties in with the ship canal, but also with our combined sewer in general and flooding and other issues as well.

So, yes.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

It looks like and your slide describes it that with the first review and the third, second public review and third review that there is an ongoing engagement.

It is not a we came to meet with you once, heard what you said, and moved on.

You engaged multiple times and in multiple ways.

Yes.

Good work.

Thank you, Cheryl.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Cheryl, could you circulate to the committee members the language that you incorporated from the Master Builders Association?

I'd be curious to see what that was.

Oh, sure.

I'd be happy to.

Thank you.

Yes.

Yeah, it's Cherelle.

It's Cherelle, by the way.

Cherelle, I'm sorry.

No, it's OK.

I get it all the time, so.

Thank you, Cherelle.

Yeah.

So I think I was done.

I will continue where I left off.

And as far as the stormwater code updates, I'll start there.

The high level summary includes adding exemptions for certain land disturbing activities to facilitate construction of stormwater projects.

This is to aid the city, especially SPU, in installing stormwater retrofit facilities, but also applies to other voluntary stormwater retrofit projects by third parties.

So just trying to get more projects in the ground and not have the stormwater code get in the way of that.

Clarification was added regarding alternative compliance for regional facilities.

Basically, again, having the right solution in the right place.

Definitions have been clarified and added, mainly associated with the stormwater permit equivalency requirements.

And for subdivisions and other closely related projects, added requirements to make sure projects mitigate impacts and to address possible piece filling of projects.

And then also rules clarifying preliminary drainage review requirements for master use permits was also added.

Other items include clarification of the existing mainline extension requirements.

The current stormwater code already requires all projects to extend the public drainage system.

If one is not in front of the property, regardless of project size, And the proposed update now clarifies in the minimum requirements for all projects the size of the project that is required to extend the public drainage system instead of all projects.

Additionally, caveats or outs to mainline extensions will now be documented in a separate SPU director's role instead of relying on standard practice.

So there's more transparency and predictability for the development community and clarity for drainage review staff.

This new rule also clarifies what is and isn't a public drainage system to help prevent adding more stormwater to the combined sewer system.

And this rule also aligns with the mainline extension requirements documented in Water 440 rule.

To expand the toolbox for green stormwater infrastructure and to address comments heard from users, updates were made to the onsite management list for all project types, including revisions to rainwater harvesting for buildings.

And to help simplify the code and have more similar costs throughout the city, there are proposed changes to requirements of the stormwater volume and rates of discharges for both private development and projects in the right of way, as well as more consistent thresholds for projects across the city.

In working with parks and to help reduce pesticides and fertilizers that are used on the site, Allowance of a landscape management plan as an alternative to water quality treatment was added for natural turf and landscape areas.

And finally, preliminary drainage review plan requirements were added for subdivisions and short flats for clarity and consistency.

So it's been a long project.

We're getting towards the end, but And this is the same schedule you saw previously.

But before I move on, I just really, to the final schedule steps, I just really like to acknowledge the extended team effort that involved multiple city departments with big lists by not only SPU members, but SDCI and SDOT, as well as parks to get us where we are today on updating the stormwater code.

And I want to thank the entire team for the efforts on the project.

As mentioned, we started the public input and review process in October of 2019 before coming in front of the committee today and have done outreach that has led to receiving many thoughtful comments from stakeholders, many of which we were able to address.

We've also worked with ecology to ensure that our requirements are equivalent with the state.

And as far as timing, though, there is some urgency around having this ordinance signed into law sooner rather than later.

And one reason, of course, is to be compliant with Seattle's stormwater permit so that Seattle does not miss the required effective date of July 1st.

The other is to be considerate to our stakeholder states as it takes a fair amount of time to adequately prepare development plans prior to submitting to the city for review.

For good customer service, both internally and externally, we'd like to give as much notice as possible to these stakeholders.

If this legislation can move out of committee today and things continue to go smoothly with the mayor's signature, stakeholders would have approximately 45 days to adjust to this legislation.

You're probably wondering overall, what will the code update mean for project costs within the city of Seattle?

Every product is unique with its own opportunities and challenges, but overall, we're anticipating lower costs for many smaller projects.

of which there are more of, and some cost increases to large projects due to the need to detain more water on their site before slowly releasing it into the system.

What we hear most frequently from our development partners are concerns for the cost of mainline extensions, but note that mainline extensions for projects are already a requirement in the existing stormwater code.

And for city projects, transportation and SPU project costs are more or less neutral over the four to six year planning horizon, but O&M costs will decrease and the cost to build stormwater retrofit projects are also expected to decrease.

Further stretching our rate dollars to help curb pollution and control flooding while ensuring we are building the right project in the right place.

And with that, I'll conclude my presentation and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to present the proposed No Marta Code changes to you today.

And for your consideration of this legislation, let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you, Sherelle.

And Brian, good night.

Did you want to add anything at this point?

I know we can look at your memo as well.

Thank you.

I don't have anything to add, Chair.

OK.

And General Manager Hera, did you have anything you wanted to add before we jump into any questions and talk about scheduling?

No, just to reiterate, our thanks for everybody's consideration and time.

OK.

Colleagues, we can ask questions now, and I just wanted to pitch a scheduling idea is that what we can do, because this is a complex update, it sounds like we can see what a great job Seattle Public Utilities has done by bringing stakeholders along through this process.

They do have a July 1 deadline.

So because it's so complicated, what I'd like to propose is that we if we're comfortable with it, to vote it out a committee today, but instead of it going straight to full council on Monday, May 10, it would go on the 17th of the 24th.

We can work out with the council president's office, based on how full those schedules are, but don't anticipate any amendments from other colleagues, but instead of it just going straight to full council, because it's so complicated, have it skip a week, basically.

Councilmembers, are there any questions about the meat of the proposal here of updating the stormwater code?

Councilmember Herbold, and then Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you so much.

On the slide that I believe is slide five on the, it's the why update the code now slide.

It refers to one of the intended objectives is affordability and ensuring that growth pays for growth and encouraging intergenerational equity.

And I'm just wondering, can you speak specifically to how the code updates as recommended address that goal?

I would say that The and looking at affordability, just looking at long term where ratepayer funds are going right now in the current code, especially for roadway projects and city projects, it requires installation of tanks within big arterials and not necessarily in the right spot or the right place.

It hasn't been analyzed.

And so looking at um, instead, um, having especially city projects work on the infrastructure that's missing without, uh, throughout the city, um, when they're updating, uh, when we're updating projects in different parts of the city and really, um, relying on SPUs expertise, um, to, uh, find the right project in the right place to, um, mitigate, uh, stormwater impacts and, but also with development and city projects building infrastructure at the time the projects were going in instead of relying on rate payer funds.

And I don't know if if mommy or maybe Andrew wanted to add to that at all and how we look at that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, Council Member, I would say that the overall code enforces, you know, as development happens or as construction is happening, having the developer pay for it.

What we've found is that when that doesn't happen, then the eventual homeowner might have costs that they have to incur down the road, or the rate payers end up paying for it.

And the rate payers did not profit, obviously, from the development that occurred.

So that overall principle is reinforced in this code update, and that's what helps preserve that intergenerational equity and make sure growth pays for growth.

understand the problem, I'm asking how the code update addresses the problem.

What's different?

What's different?

The difference is instead of those projects, the roadway projects that I was talking about, instead of installing those giant tanks in the middle of the road, the individual projects are going to look at the system and make sure that the system itself has the parts that are there if any drainage infrastructure is missing that is installed and sized adequately if it's undersized now.

So the code was somewhat silent on that before and just really enforcing and looking at the big picture of switching the emphasis on stormwater management.

And it sounds like maybe you said that this change would only affect city projects, public projects.

It's not a change that affects the projects that private developers are building.

It does.

It could, in a sense, affect private development as we work through the implementation of this infrastructure and installing culverts and different downstream infrastructure where there may be missing infrastructure.

We're looking at a phased approach with that and making sure that we're not, that we're getting our ducks in a row working with city projects and then eventually looking forward to development and their impacts and making sure that they're not causing flooding downstream of their projects.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

I had questions along the same line, so I won't re-asked the same questions asked by Council Member Herbold, and my thanks to you, Council Member Herbold, for picking up on that particular thread.

That's the thread I was most interested in as well.

Related to the issues of affordability and private projects, I heard a concern from a constituent recently who is developing some property with the Goal of participating in the mandatory housing affordability program and I was wondering if it, if you could talk a little bit about how this impacts.

Private development for those.

Developers who are looking at participating in either voluntarily or otherwise in our mandatory housing affordability program and whether SPU has taken into account or done any analysis of how these code changes and potential increased costs may impact participation in that affordability program.

I would say directly, there hasn't been a direct comparison or analysis between the two, but we are aware that any cost to affordable housing can be a detriment to that.

I think we overall are considering the long-term impacts of development and having the development mitigate its direct impacts.

And so there's increases to some projects because of the impacts and the requirements will cause increases because of that.

but it also is looking at the direct impacts of that project.

So I can't, I don't have a great answer for you, obviously.

Yeah, no worries.

I think that in light of the proposed schedule by Chair Peterson related to this legislation, I would find it helpful if in the two week interim, SPU could work with Brian Goodnight from our Council Central staff to just help me understand a little bit more deeply the potential impacts to project costs for those projects who are participating in the Monetary Housing Affordability Program, particularly for those projects that are intending to build the affordable housing on site.

I think it's a different issue in terms of whether there's sort of pain as opposed to building.

But I'm specifically asking questions about the project costs associated with these co-changes for those projects in which developers CCCCO, Rm 630 – Jack Scott Conference Room, Vickery Hall, OSBT you know, increasing these project costs so significantly that then people have another reason to not build affordable housing on site right away.

And so if that's what we think is going to be in effect, and we don't intend that to be the effect, then I think there's a policy choice for us to make about the scope and the applicability here.

If I may, we would love to find out more details, especially about that particular development, because I think every development project ends up being so different in terms of what the costs are that are incurred.

I do want to reinforce what Sherelle said.

You know, when we looked at a broad scale, smaller projects, generally speaking, the prices for code compliance actually went down.

And that was because of some of the thresholds that we changed to make everything more consistent.

Sherelle did mention that some of the larger projects, costs may have gone up.

However, I want to reinforce that it was actually a pretty marginal increase, so it wasn't significant.

The one situation that gets highlighted for us quite a bit is when developers have to do extensions of storm drain infrastructure, because that involves potentially costly work out of the right of way, right?

And those can be in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.

And the one thing that Cheryl pointed out earlier was that for those projects, the existing code, even without any code change, already requires them to do those extensions.

So that's not actually a result of this particular thing.

What we did is we clarified that to make it a little bit more clear to developers, you know, what those conditions are.

And so, but again, would be happy to look at kind of the specifics of that particular case and also respond to your general question about, you know, mandated sort of affordable housing.

Okay, so Andrew, what you're saying is that this, the stormwater infrastructure code updates that we're discussing now do not, there is no relationship between these code updates and the requirements related to extensions.

It's not a new requirement.

That's right.

It's not a new requirement to do extensions that didn't exist in the previous code.

That's the same.

Okay.

So if the concern from this constituent is specifically about the mainline extensions, that is a concern because it is costly, but it is not being triggered or exacerbated or worsened by virtue of the council's consideration of the stormwater code updates you're proposing.

Yeah, that's accurate.

OK.

That's helpful.

That might have actually been what the concern was, was around mainline extensions and a conflation between that and these stormwater code updates.

So if we can just sort of, I'll follow up with you all and get you a little bit more detail just to make sure that this conversation here is still applicable and relevant to that particular constituent's need, but I'll make sure to follow up with you all offline.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

And Brian, if you do end up expanding your memo a bit for the benefit of us and the other council members, if you could also look at any exemptions, make sure we're taking full advantage of any exemptions that exist under state law.

As I understand it, the RCW does provide some exemptions for affordable housing.

It may be how they're defining affordable housing that is key to this.

So just want to make sure we're maximizing our exemptions for affordable housing.

Because making growth pay for growth, it may be fine passing that on to for-profit developers in some cases, but we want to make sure for affordable housing we're exempting the additional costs when we can.

Thank you.

Any other?

Council Member Strauss.

Okay.

Thank you, chair and.

Cheryl.

Now you have any second guessing if I'm saying your name, right?

Did I get it?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And that is because chair colleagues, I spent a very long time.

We went way over the typically allotted hour.

That SPU gives me for asking hundreds of questions in some sense, And Sherelle, you did an amazing job being responsive to the questions and following up with the answers that we didn't have at that moment.

What that briefing provided for me is the understanding is that what this code codifies is already in the code.

And what codifying what is already being done is providing clarity.

It's providing clarity with the exemptions that we have in place.

It's providing clarity with what is required as is what is intended to be required.

And it provides clarity with the exemptions that have been historically made yet not in code.

So Chair, typically, I am of the mindset that we need to have two committee meetings for a bill with the responsiveness that SPU has provided me between the briefing and now and the need to ensure that we don't open ourselves up to liability because we did not receive this.

This bill was not transmitted to us in time.

I feel comfortable with your proposal of passing it out of committee today and holding it for two weeks until full council.

I guess I just really want to again raise up that this code change clarifies what has already been required, clarifies the exemptions, and just provides more clarity through and through.

So thank you, Cheryl.

Thank you, Andrew.

Thank you, Director Hara.

Kevin and Brian, I really appreciate all the time you provided me before this committee.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions?

All right.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 12044, which is item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

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

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 12044.

Gonzales aye.

Herbold yes.

Morales yes.

Strauss yes.

Chair Peterson yes.

Five in favor none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to a future city council meeting for final consideration, not May 10, but May 17 or May 24. And we'll look forward to getting more information from central staff working with SPU.

Thank you, everybody.

And I know we're going to hear from some of you again here about another important bill from SPU.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two, resolution 3200, a resolution relating to Seattle Public Utilities adopting a 2021 to 2026 strategic plan, strategic business plan for Seattle Public Utilities for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

At our two previous committee meetings, we discussed at great length the strategic business plan and rate path for Seattle Public Utilities.

So we plan to vote on the corresponding council resolution at committee today.

As we know, SPU's strategic plan has been endorsed by the rigorous customer review panel.

At the previous council or previous committee meeting, we heard both from the customer review panel And from our central staff analyst, Brian, good night.

Fortunately, the average SPU rates are expected to be lower than what was originally promised back in 2017. Keeping rates low is important because rates are regressive with lower income households paying a larger percentage of their household income for utility bills.

There was a thorough article earlier this week in the Seattle Times about the strategic plan and rate path, which explores the various cost drivers, including inflation, pass-through rates imposed by King County for wastewater, environmental protection costs required by our state and federal governments, labor costs, and even the utility taxes charged by our general fund.

This is resolution 32000. It would adopt the strategic business plan.

There are four separate utility services, water, wastewater, drainage, and solid waste.

These business lines, each of them have their own rate structure.

The business plan is not the utility rate ordinance, but it does include the rate path for the first three years and a rate projection for the last three.

Do in part to COVID driven delay in preparing the plan, the rates for 2021 for all four services have already been set.

So, Brian, good night.

Would you like to introduce this item?

Thank you.

I'll just note, in addition to the fact that it has been considered at the previous two meetings, as you suggested, that the plan that would be adopted by the resolution contains, just kind of at a very high level, summary level, it does contain the new mission and vision for SPU.

It identifies SPU's focus areas, describes their long-term goals and short-term strategies, and does project the rate path, as well as highlighting representative initiatives and investments.

So in addition to adopting the plan, the resolution also requests that the executive submit budgets and rate legislation when it's appropriate, that absent justifiable circumstances is consistent with the plan.

The section four of the resolution contains a table that shows the projected rates for each of the lines of business for all six years covered by the plan, as well as the overall combined average rate increase of 4.2%, as you noted.

And per Council direction, SPU typically reviews and updates the plan every three years.

And although this one was delayed slightly by COVID, the next update is scheduled to occur in 2023. Thanks.

Thank you.

And just a shout out to Council Member Herbold who chaired this area before I did.

And a lot of that working with General Manager Hera and others at SPU really set us on this good path where they were able to come in at a lower increase than expected on average.

General Manager Hera, would you like to take it away?

We would just like to thank everybody on council for all of their consideration.

This has been a long process.

It's been several years in the making to bring our rate path down and to come to this place.

We always welcome further ideas to further lower our rate path as we go along our commitment.

is to stay below what we have projected as far as possible and to continuously improve our practices in order to do so.

So just thank you again for your consideration of passage of our strategic business plan.

And council members, just as a reminder, there was a presentation at the previous committee meeting where we went through the PowerPoints and those are online still.

Were there any final questions?

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

A couple things, a statement and then a question.

In Brian's issue ID paper, really appreciate highlighting some options for us to consider.

Want to highlight that although we aren't pursuing any changes in the utility tax structure, which is, you know, it's a driver of rates as well.

I want to just highlight the work that the utility did as a result of the previous strategic business plan to at the very least create some transparency around the utility tax, and that is now shown on rate payers' bills.

So really, really appreciate the utility's commitment to that work in the past.

I do have a question, though, about the sort of the rate smoothing question or option that Brian included reference to in the issue ID paper as it related specifically to drainage and waste water rates.

I'm wondering, Brian, can you Because we aren't suing an amendment to the rate path to reflect rate smoothing at this point.

Can you sort of talk through the pros and cons of that?

Because I do know that we did do some significant rate smoothing on the city's line of business in previous years, and just wondering sort of what the barriers are in doing so for drainage and wastewater.

Thank you, Council Member.

I don't know that there are necessarily barriers.

I think that in this case, the rates that are proposed in this SBP aren't as volatile as the ones that were proposed the last time around.

So I think that the issue is slightly less urgent.

There is also movement on the King County wastewater treatment rates.

I'm sure you recognize there right now, the executive, the King County executive is proposing, as opposed to the previous proposal was gonna be 10.3% and then 0%, then 10.3% and 0%, and it's every other year.

So just in the last week or so they've proposed to actually do smaller annual increases as instead, and that will actually have impacts on it will reduce the volatility of SPS rates as a as a significant driver of the especially wastewater but also drainage as well.

I don't know that we need to react to that necessarily right now in this because this is just a plan.

Assuming that the King County Council and all of the regional bodies do approve of that using the annual rates that are slightly less volatile, that would be incorporated into any rate packages that SPU does submit to the council.

So in actuality, it would be smoothed over time.

that's super helpful as a member along with Chair Peterson on the Regional Water Quality Committee with King County.

I know that many of us have been advocating for rate smoothing, but had not heard that King County was coming back with a different proposal to do so.

That's great.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thanks.

that time.

If I may, I would like to extend my sincere appreciations to Council Member Herbold and Council Member Peterson for their many long hours of work on those committees, and therefore their advocacy on behalf of ratepayers.

You know, volatility is something that we aim to avoid, and that was probably the most significant driver.

So thank you very much.

That was, you know, that really bore fruit.

Thank you, appreciate that.

And, you know, as we, SBU has pulled a lot of levers to keep the rate increases as low as possible and to come in lower than previously promised.

I think as we look at the strategic plan three years from now, we have to do a lot of work, even starting this year, thinking about that.

Like when we look at the fall budget, being mindful of that utility tax that we charge, it's about 123 million that the general fund we're going to be looking at that more as we prepare for the next, because a lot of the levers have already I think we need to look at the utility tax and whether it is phasing or tapering off of some of that, and then system development charges.

Are we optimizing those options?

I will be looking into those for sure.

I will go ahead and move this.

One moment.

Okay.

So council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of resolution 32000, which is item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the resolution.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve resolution 32000.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the resolution pass as amended will be sent to the May 10 City Council meeting for final consideration.

Thank you everybody from Seattle Public Utilities.

Aye.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item 3, Council Bill 120045, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department declaring certain real property rights to be surplus to the needs of City Light and authorizing the general manager and chief executive officer of City Light to execute an easement agreement with King County.

allowing the temporary use of a portion of City Light property to resolve the encroachment of an existing structure located on the west side of Bowen Field within the northeast corner of Section 29 Township 24 Range 4 and the southeast corner of Section 29 Township 24 Range 4 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, that's a very jazzy title for an ordinance, but really what this is the Georgetown to South Park trail it's another important piece of that Council 12045. This is a temporary lease for a small triangle of land along that route.

After adopting this ordinance, we expect to see the final actions authorizing construction of the trail project later this summer.

The total project cost for the trail, creating an important connection between District 1 and District 2 is about $7.5 million, which includes $5.2 million this council added to the project as part of our budget process a few months ago.

We have our City Council Central staff, Eric McConaughey here with us as well as Seattle City Light to talk about the legislation.

Eric, did you want to introduce the legislation at all?

I'll just add that, as we've heard in other meetings of this committee, there's a certain number of legislative pieces or build kind of like blocks, adding up to ultimately the petition for vacation of a property near where City Light would like to have some more room to work in a diagonal way.

And part of that would be the transfer of this property that we're talking about today, the encroachments on this property to the Parks Department, ultimately to lead to the trail.

So it's been methodical and straightforward in a certain way, but there's multiple pieces that sort of clean up the books, make things ready for the ultimate move that you described.

So with that, I think I'll just step out of the way and let the experts at City Light do their presentation.

Thank you, Eric.

Welcome, Seattle City Light folks.

Go ahead and get started, and then we might have some questions for you.

Good morning, council members.

Deborah sends her regards and apologizes that she was not able to make today's meeting.

As was mentioned, this item is really clarifying property rights in an area, as we've been working on a couple of different items of that.

So Tim Kroll's here to present the issue for you.

Thank you and more is bringing up the PowerPoint.

We can be very quick with this considering the committee's agenda busy agenda today.

So, next slide more.

So, as the chair Peterson and Eric mentioned, ultimately, we want to develop an off leash dog park and a trail segment.

a segment of the Georgetown's South Park Trail that's related to a street vacation request City Light is making up in Soto, near our South Service Center.

But first we need to resolve this bit of unfinished business that there's an encumbrance on the property, an encroachment by a King County building.

And we want the authority from the council to issue a temporary easement for the life of that building.

The ownership is really clear when parks comes into possession of this property.

Next, please.

And so this shows where our South Service Center is by the West Seattle Freeway and Fourth Avenue.

And down at the south end of that, there's a little section of street right away that we're looking to, we're going to request to vacate.

Next slide.

As council members are well aware, every street vacation needs an offsetting public benefit.

And the main part of our public benefit is the transfer of this piece of the red there, this piece of property in Georgetown to SDOT and to parks for their different uses to build community amenities.

So our public benefit would be the transfer of this property plus some city-like financial support for the development of those projects.

Next, please.

And there you get an idea where, again, where the, the segment of the trail fits in with the overall SDOT plan to have the Georgetown to South Park connection trail.

Next, please.

Okay, zeroing in, we see a little building that seems to be sticking over the fence line, and that is the encroachment.

It's been there for decades.

It's a rousing total of 158 square feet, but got to take care of it and get all the paperwork right.

Next, please.

So we're proposing to council that you authorize us to issue a temporary easement for the life of the building to King County.

King County is going to be moving the fence that's not related to the building.

There's another area with a fence and there's a floodlight, moving all those things back to the property line, taking care of that.

And we're not gonna, it's not our practice in these types of situations to ask the property owner to tear down a permanent structure.

Instead, we offer these temporary easements.

And next slide, please.

City Attorney's Office, of course, recommends that this ordinance be legislated prior to your consideration of the street vacation and the transfer of the property to parks.

Things get a lot more complicated once property is transferred to parks about addressing these types of encroachments.

The future of property transfer would be subject to the terms of the temporary easement.

You council members will remember that at the last TUC meeting, there was a public hearing.

There were no commenters.

Public hearing is required for these types of actions, but that's been taken care of.

And that the city council consideration of the street vacation property transfer ordinance would be this summer, expected to be this summer.

And that's, next slide, basically any questions you might have.

Thank you, City Light.

Council members, any questions for this item?

Okay, I know we'll have more discussion later when we talk about the trail when it starts to come together.

Council Member Strauss, do you have a question or Council Member Herbold?

Thank you, Chair.

Just signaling again, Seattle City Light spent more time than I think they desired Bill and Tim, I really appreciate all of the questions that you answered for me about these properties and the adjacent properties.

It was very interesting to understand that this flume property is because the original steam plant that the flume went to was on the bank of the Duwamish before the river was rerouted.

won't spend unnecessary amount of time talking about land use and land history in our area.

Just want to thank City Light for spending so much time with me and answering all my questions.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, did you have a comment or question?

I just wanted to extend my thanks as well for the work you're doing, right?

For the work you're doing in bringing forward the necessary steps for this really important to both the Georgetown and the South Park Communities Project.

So really appreciate the speed with which you are sort of ticking the boxes I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a great idea.

Thank you to moved and seconded recommend passage of this bill will the court please call the role of the committee recommendation to approve Council one 2, 0, 0, 4, 5, I.

Yes.

5 in favor not opposed.

Excellent.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the May 10 City Council meeting for final consideration.

Thank you, Seattle City Light, for being here.

Okay, Councilmembers, we have a few items left here.

We've got the VLF item, then we've got the rapid ride.

I think we will go quickly because it's just acceptance of the federal grant and a couple of easements that are minor.

And then we will have overviews of the three surveillance technologies.

But then we are not going to vote on those technologies.

So let's keep going here.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Item four.

an ordinance amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021 to 2026 Capital Improvement Program, changing appropriations within the Transportation Benefit District Fund, revising project allocations for certain projects in the 2021 to 2026 CIP, and lifting a proviso for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues and the public, just a reminder, City Council approved an additional $20 vehicle license fee as part of our fall budget process a few months ago, and a majority of Council members directed SDOT to establish a stakeholder process to recommend ideas for spending those funds.

I want to repeat my thanks to the Seattle Department of Transportation for conducting that outreach and again to all the people who participated in those four plus meetings that they had to discuss how to invest those dollars.

Today our committee plans to vote on the proposal from SDOT, Council Bill 120042, that suggests how to invest the dollars.

Our committee had already heard and discussed this item, as well as amendment, what's called amendment number one, from several council members, including myself, that we sponsored and introduced a couple weeks ago.

Estat's bill in front of us, and we'll hear from Calvin Chow, and we also have a new amendment, which we'll discuss, amendment number two.

And I think we'll be able to take care of all of this today.

SDOT's bill in front of us proposes to divide the $7 million into six different categories.

We discussed it a couple weeks ago.

And then Amendment 1 asks SDOT to provide a list of infrastructure projects that could potentially benefit from $100 million in bond financing if we chose to bond against the vehicle license fees to generate more money faster.

I want to thank everybody who's called into the public comment periods.

We've gotten lots of emails about this topic as well.

So thanks to everybody for taking time to do that.

There appear to be some confusion and misinformation about the three-page amendment number one, which it actually does not issue bonds, but rather asks SF to come back with a list of infrastructure projects, which I think they should have.

They should be putting this together anyway.

The meat of that amendment, amendment number one, would have them come back by September 30th so that we can discuss it during a budget process.

So as we know, our state legislature accomplished a lot during the last four months.

They were not able to finish a transportation package.

We were hoping to get additional funds for the West Seattle Bridge from that process.

I believe this is further evidence that Seattle should consider going bigger and bolder now and getting SDOT to put together these lists and present them to us in the bigger context of their $700 million budget.

that one of the speakers alluded to the fact that this stakeholder process that they went through could be used as a model for their entire budget, not just for the $7 million.

It was sort of an unusual situation where this $7 million was created, authorized by us, and then We wanted to explore how to spend that quickly and it was put to this process, but I think SDOT could benefit from applying that lens through their entire budget.

So if we have an infrastructure list that we could potentially bond against, we could discuss it all in the fall budget.

I think this is ultimately leading to a positive thing for the city council to have good information to make good decisions on our transportation infrastructure.

amendment one was discussed at length previously it's been out there for a while we do have central staff with us and also the sponsor of a new amendment amendment number two which is crafted by Councilmember Strauss and was circulated to the committee members and we're going to be discussing that and you know I had a chance to look at that amendment number two and And I'm viewing this as a relatively friendly amendment toward our overall efforts to punctuate the priority of Seattle's aging infrastructure.

And I'm pleased that this is shaping up to be a collaborative legislative process among council members, which we try to achieve whenever possible.

And this will help lead to us, this will lead to constructing transportation priorities we can all support.

Any amendment that prioritizes our aging infrastructure and considers how to leverage money faster is a strong step towards stronger bridges so we can address the alarming audit of our bridges.

I think this amendment number two still successfully intensifies our commitment towards safety and sustainability of multimodal bridges that connect our communities, keep our economy moving.

Council Member Strauss speak to this further, but Calvin Chow from our central staff, did you want to introduce anything at this point about?

No, Council Members, I think I will just be on hand to answer any questions or help the discussion in any way I can.

Okay.

So I think what I'd like to do as chair is to turn it over to Council Member Strauss so he can speak to amendment number two, which takes parts of amendment one, but refines them and targets them.

So Council Member Strauss, Why don't you go ahead and discuss your amendment and then we can make motions potentially just talk about incorporating your amendment to into the full council bill.

Thank you, Chair.

And I want to thank everyone who's been working on Amendment one and to all the stakeholders for their important work.

Before I speak to my amendment, I do want to just highlight something that I did hear In public comment and that, as I have been reviewing all of this, has really stood out to me that we have not updated our transit master plan since 2012. This is the oldest plan in our files.

The transit master plan that we have on our books today does not include Sound Transit 3. So there are many neighborhoods within our transit master plan that are not included.

because we have not updated it within the Transit Master Plan we have.

It relies on high-speed trolleys.

I haven't seen one.

If you know where one is, please let me know.

This just highlights the importance that we need to update this plan because Sound Transit is in the process of making decisions about the downtown tunnel, which is 100-year infrastructure, and we need to have that 100-year vision for our city.

The current master plan, being a decade old, the decade that has occurred since then, Seattle has had the most growth since the gold rush.

And so if we are not updating this plan, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

I do want to again thank by thanking all the stakeholders who worked to create this VLF spending plan.

We at council asked you to provide us feedback on how we should spend this money.

While keeping bike lanes cleared of leaves isn't a blue ribbon any of us can cut, it is a service that people rely on.

The same goes for potholes on freight routes.

There's no press release for a smooth drive or the rock chip that never happened because we filled the pothole that could have bounced a rock off a truck bed into your windshield.

These are services that we need and these are the services that the stakeholder group really suggested we fund.

I'll also make it known for the record the importance I put on bridge maintenance, repair, and infrastructure investment to ensure that we have the connections we rely on for buses, freight, bikes, pedestrians, and cars.

This is why I started the Ballard-Interbay Regional Corridor Work Group that has led to state funding and hopefully more state dollars in the written but not yet passed transportation package at the state legislature.

What I know is that we must dedicate city funding to the work of investing in our bridges that is matched by state and federal dollars.

We need to have a more accurate and detailed understanding of our maintenance and investment needs.

And we need to use this information to raise the correct amount of bonds at the right time to invest in our infrastructure rather than taking on unneeded debt before we're ready to use it.

My take on Amendment 1 was that the only binding function of the amendment is positive, asking SDOT to provide a list of projects that could be funded by the VLF funding source or any bonds, and that the non-binding language in the whereas clauses set us up for failure by asking and setting bonding amounts before we know the scope of what we need to address.

Additionally, the only binding section lacked requesting the schedule for projects and bond issuance.

We know the three most important words in large projects are scope, schedule, budget.

Amendment one, as written, leaves with a partial budget that is not informed by schedule and asks for what should be driving this work, the scope.

As written, Amendment 1 asks us to raise bonds without knowing the scope, schedule, or full budget needed to address all of our infrastructure needs.

If this non-binding language was acted on today, we would raise bonds without shovel-ready projects.

This means we would be paying bankers' interest on dollars we would not be ready to spend today.

I've heard these bonds could also pay for the planning documents we need to have these projects be shovel ready, whether it's the type size location or other planning and design documents.

To put in simple terms, this would be akin to taking out a home loan to pay for our groceries.

These outstanding questions and known unknowns is why the non-binding language does not set us up for success.

I want to raise up the intent of the that the intent of the author authors of this amendment 1 is good intent.

We all want to know what our bridge infrastructure needs are.

We all want to use every possible dollar to match state and federal dollars.

We all want to ensure our bridges are ready to receive federal investments.

And this is why my amendment 2 retains much of the non-binding language contained in amendment 1. It contains the language that we support funding the stakeholder plan for this year and the background about the urgency and need for bridge investment.

My amendment removes three whereas clauses outlining the framework of bonding and the specificity of bonding.

It does replace those three whereas clauses with the line, the council may wish to consider bond financing as part of the deliberations on the 2022 budget.

This is important because it does not, it still sets us up to be able to bond if that is the right decision at the right time.

It sets us up to still keep bonding as part of the conversation.

And my amendment retains the only binding clause that was included in Amendment 1, and it adds specificity to it.

It adds that this list should identify the anticipated schedule of capital expenditure by project to inform when bond issuance would be necessary.

This is critical because we need to know when we need to raise the bonds.

Otherwise, we are raising bonds and paying interest on dollars we can't spend.

I hope the committee finds this amendment in the way I proposed it.

as friendly, to support the stakeholder process, which we at council ask for, without throwing out their suggestions at the first possible moment.

It retains the binding aspect of Amendment 1, which requires the information we need to make good decisions here at the city, and that that information is shared with us in a timely fashion.

And my Amendment 2 keeps us on the path to raising the bonds we need to invest in our bridges that whether the fund, whatever the funding sources, whether it's VLF or another funding source, it asks us for the important information we need to understand how many, how much bonding authority we need to raise to address these infrastructure investments.

Because our bridges connect freight, buses, cars, bikes, and pedestrians across our city.

And with that last comment, separating out freight, buses, cars, bikes, and pedestrians, It should be clear that each of us rely on freight.

If we go to the supermarket or Martel's or anywhere, we're relying on freight.

Many of us use the bus and drive a car and ride a bike and walk places.

So outlining each of those different segments is not to separate people.

Rather, it is to demonstrate the bridges are a connection point for all of us, and many of us use all of these different modes.

Thank you, Chair.

I hope that I can earn everyone's support on committee today.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And Calvin, I don't know if you're able to share screen to show that amendment or if Council Members have questions for Council Member Strauss on amendment number two.

Council Members, I've got a red line version that shows the changes between the previous amendment one and the proposed amendment two.

Thank you.

I'm going to go back to the amendment.

Councilmember Estrada said it takes amendment one, strips out some of the whereas clauses which seem to signal more of a binding nature and then I believe added some additional requests to the meat of the amendment which is to talk about So Council Members, I would encourage you to ask questions about Amendment 2, because I think what we may do is just, when I move the bill, I'll probably ask it to be amended by Amendment 2, just to skip over Amendment 1. Again, I think that Any amendment that prioritizes Seattle's aging infrastructure and considers how to leverage more money faster is a strong step towards stronger bridges and other infrastructure.

So I'm very open to this.

Customer Herbold.

Thank you.

I just want to signal that I really appreciate Council Member Straus' email.

It captures the intent of Amendment 1 by requiring a project list from SDOT, asking for more information regarding the scheduled projects contained within the list, and again, removes some non-binding language, allowing us to be more flexible with our funding approaches when we receive the project list.

I would like to say thank you to the city auditor for the work that they have done.

It's work to begin to develop a strategic asset management plan for its bridges and that we've heard about in previous meetings and the recommendation that the city should develop and implement strategies to fill the bridge maintenance funding gap.

Again, the auditor's report makes very clear that Seattle needs to increase investment in maintenance of our bridges.

As I've spoken to before, a really glaring reason why this is needed is for the development of the next version of the move levy in a few years.

If you recall, the 2015 move levy was developed before The council members in this meeting took office and it directed a much smaller proportion of funding to maintenance than the 2006 bridging the gap levy did.

This levy runs through 2024, so planning for the next levy will likely begin in 2023. And given that the levy is typically the single largest long-term source of city transportation funds, it's really clear that we need an estimate of how much funding will be needed to maintain the bridges going into that discussion.

But we also need, I believe, a financing mechanism to do more now before the development and proposal of a future levy.

Just lifting up some quotes from the auditor's report.

According to knowledgeable SDOT officials, the city is not spending enough to keep its bridges in good condition and avoid costly repairs.

The audit reports the SDOT's interim roadway structures division director saying that based on the rate at which the condition of Seattle's bridges deteriorate, the age of the bridges, and the bridges' current replacement value, SDOT estimates that the city's annual budget is far below what is needed to maintain all bridges in a state of good repair, and the estimated replacement value of our bridges over 60 years old serviced by SDOT is $3.4 billion.

According to the analysis done by the city auditors, SDOT spent on average $6.6 million per year on bridge maintenance since 2006, but we need to be spending a minimum of $34 million per year.

So, um, I'm.

Bully on, uh, on everything we can as a council to provide, uh, financing to allow to respond to the city auditors, um, recommendations to.

I also want to just signal the the move levy projects that had to be delayed, specifically 16 bridge projects for seismic work, that there were five of those 16 projects that are high priority for seismic work were being delayed.

And so that, I think those are, for me, high priority projects, both because they've already been identified as high priority projects, but also because voters, when they voted to pass the move levy, did so with the understanding that that work would be done.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for this amendment.

I think it goes a long way toward addressing some of the concerns I have.

And I do want to first thank and acknowledge SDOT for the really important work that they did, engaging community in a way that is different for them and wasn't wasn't an easy task, but I think it's really important to acknowledge that work.

They engaged with folks who aren't traditional transportation or transit stakeholders, reached out to communities of color, to low-income communities, to communities that don't speak English, and all of that is really important to honor.

One of the things I hear a lot from community is that the city asked them to engage and spend a lot of time in community meetings and then the recommendations get ignored.

So I don't want to do that.

If we're going to ask people for their time, we need to respect their lived experience and what they're offering to the city.

That said, I also acknowledge that we are a city surrounded by water.

We need our bridges to be in good working order.

And so You know, my hope is that we don't see these two things as mutually exclusive.

We need bridge maintenance and we definitely need to be moving toward our Vision Zero goals for pedestrian safety.

Auditor's report, I do want to make a couple notes about that, did cite the $34 million bridge maintenance, but that figure is just sort of an estimate based on 1% of replacement value for the bridges.

So that estimate is the 3.4 billion.

What they didn't do was provide specific spending recommendations.

It was really highlighting just the general need for us to focus more on bridge investment.

What the report does do is recommend that SDOT develops a strategic bridge preservation program based on some updated asset management information.

So I think it is worth asking for that list, asking for information about where we need to be making investments.

And I think it's important that we give SDOT the time to do that, especially given that so many folks are working on the West Seattle Bridge.

issue right now.

So my hope is that, you know, the September timeline that we have here is at least a marker for when we would expect to see something like that.

But I do think it's also important not to constrain us as a council to making a decision about bonding when we aren't sure whether that list will be ready and if it is, whether there will be anything on it that we could actually bond for.

So So I want to thank my colleagues for raising the issue, for thinking proactively about how we can be strategizing for bridge investment, and for being willing to, you know, not sort of box us into a particular kind of financing mechanism until we have more information.

So thanks to Chair Peterson and to Council Member Strauss for your work.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any other council members who'd like to comment on Amendment 2?

So what I was going to do is move the underlying bill, and then was going to recognize a motion to amend it with Amendment 2, and then we can vote on that and incorporate it potentially into the bill and then pass it, amend the bill out of committee.

Okay, so council members, I move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120042, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

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

I'd like to recognize Chair Strauss, or Council Member Strauss, if you'd like to move your amendment to.

Thank you, Chair.

I move Amendment 2 to Council Bill 12042.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented as Amendment 2. And we've already discussed it, but are there any further comments before we vote on the amendment to the bill?

Okay, well, let's go ahead and will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of amendment two.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the amendment number two is adopted.

Any additional comments on this bill as amended?

OK.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 12042 as amended?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Stroup?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation is that the bill pass as amended, will be sent to a future meeting on the city council.

It can go as early as Monday, May 10. We'll want to publish on the agenda as well the amendment, too, if it's not already online.

But I want to thank everybody for their collaboration on this and raising the profile of these infrastructure issues.

All right, will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record.

Agenda item five, Council Bill 120062, an ordinance relating to the Madison Bus Rapid Transit Rapid Ride G-Line project, authorizing the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation to acquire, accept, and record on behalf of the city of Seattle a signal pole and trolley wire easement from Seattle University.

a Washington nonprofit corporation situated in a portion of lots 1 through 6 miles addition to the City of Seattle together with a portion of vacated East Spring Street vacated 11th Avenue and vacated Madison Court and an easement for public sidewalk from Casita Grande LLC a Washington limited liability company situated in a portion of Block 6 addition to the City of Seattle as laid off by D.T.

Dunney guardian guardian of the estate of J.H.

Nagel.

for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, colleagues.

Today we have two items related to the Madison Street Bus Rapid Transit, RapidRide G Line.

The first one here is Council Bill 120062, which accepts two small easements.

And then next, we'll have Council Bill 120063, which will accept two grants totaling $65 million, which have been expected from the U.S.

Department of Transportation, for which we are grateful.

I'll just speak to both items together, because it's to move ahead with the G line.

The capital improvements to that bus corridor, which are in City Council Districts 3 and 7, they include over $26 million of city government dollars that we have already approved, including an additional $5 million that we approved last fall.

The total project cost for this single corridor is $133 million, approximately.

and this was all adopted in the capital improvement program of the city.

Buses travel up and down Madison Street, but this project hopes to improve speed and reliability and also connects to the light rail downtown.

The revised construction start date is this fall of 2021, and our Seattle Department of Transportation hopes to complete the changes to the streets and sidewalks by 2024. Because those items cover an existing project we've already approved and funded, we should be able to dispense with these items rather quickly.

We'll go ahead and ask Calvin Chow, our transportation expert on central staff, if he has any introductory remarks or comments before we hand it over to SDOT.

No, Council Member, as you say, the specific legislation in front of you is generally ministerial, and I know that SDOT has a bit of a project update to share with you, but the specific legislation is rather minor.

Thank you.

And we'll hear from SDOT now.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Eric Twight.

I am the project manager at SDOT for the Madison BRT project, also known as the Rapid Ride G line.

With me is Gretchen Hadle, who will speak to the permanent easements and the ordinance to accept those.

And I am waiting for the presentation to come on screen.

I think Shauna is bringing that up.

Sorry, I'm having minor technical difficulties.

Just give me one second.

I can do it if you like.

All right, great.

Thanks, Calvin.

If you can just go to the next slide right away.

We just want to point out that the Madison BRT project will advance SDOT's core values by providing faster, more reliable transportation to people in growing neighborhoods, including downtown and neighborhoods in central Seattle, east of downtown.

Next slide.

Just an overview of the project, and then we'll talk about those two ordinances.

I'll move on to the next slide.

I think Chair Pierson, you did a good job of briefly describing the project.

It is about 2.3 miles long corridor, a lot of bus rapid transit improvements funded both by Move Seattle and Sound Transit 3, both voter approved initiatives.

as well as the federal funding that we're going to be talking about today.

This project includes transit-only lanes in the most congested parts of the corridor to move people along faster and more reliably, as well as things like raised platforms and off-board fare payment to make getting on and off the bus easier and faster.

It also includes signal priority for buses and people traveling on Madison, pedestrian and bicycle access and connections to the existing network, New sidewalks in some locations, as well as new ADA ramps, making the overall corridor more accessible and opening up some existing crosswalks that were previously not accessible.

And importantly, pavement throughout the entire corridor, so full paving.

And the utilities, both City Light and SPU, will be taking advantage of this project to enhance some of their infrastructure as well.

Next slide.

King County will be operating this project as part of their RapidRide system.

This will be RapidRide G. We'll have frequent service throughout the day, seven days a week.

The project also includes the purchase of nine 60-foot door, five-door buses for loading on both sides of the buses at the Central Island platforms that go through First Hill and Capitol Hill.

Next.

And just a little bit more at each station and stop includes real-time arrival signs, as well as the orca readers that I talked about before.

Next.

Then I'm going to turn it over then to Gretchen to talk about the two permanent easements needed and acquired for this project.

Right.

Hi, thanks, Eric.

There are two easement acquisitions that are necessary for the construction of the Madison Rapid Ride G project.

One is a permanent signal pole and trolley wire easement granted by Seattle University, and the other is an easement for public sidewalk purposes granted by Casita Grande LLC.

Next slide, please.

The permanent signal pole and trolley wire easement is approximately 875 square feet and is necessary to the project to Construct, repair, replace, and maintain two traffic signal poles and related equipment.

The existing signal poles will be replaced at the same locations on East Madison Street at the intersections of East Seneca Street and 11th Avenue.

And attach and maintain the trolley bus wires to the two traffic signal poles.

The Madison BRT RapidRide G buses will not be using the trolley poles and wires because they will run on diesel electric hybrid power.

Due to channelization changes in certain segments of this project, such as between 11th and 13th Avenue, the trolley bus wires will need to be repositioned to accommodate existing bus routes that are powered by them.

Next slide, please.

The six foot wide easement for public sidewalk purposes is approximately 668 square feet and is necessary for the project to widen the street for Center Island Rapid Ride bus station and maintain an eight foot wide sidewalk.

The deck at Pony Bar has already been modified to clear the easement area in preparation of construction.

And with that, I'll turn the presentation back over to Eric.

Okay, moving on then to the funding part of this, we are definitely ready for a Small Starts Grant Agreement, ready to start construction.

A reminder that in 2020, the FTA's Project Management Oversight Consultant concluded that SDOT is ready to deliver the Madison BRT project, and the FDA has confirmed that.

Also, the City Council approved changes, an increase in the CIP, and the Sound Transit Board approved a funding agreement to meet our local funding commitments.

The next step from there was for the allocation of funds from the FTA Small Starts program to this project.

That finally happened on April 5, and we are now working with the FTA to finalize the Small Starts grant agreement for execution.

Next slide.

So this slide shows the overall budget for the Madison BRT project.

The grant acceptance ordinance will accept that $59.9 million Small Starts grant.

as well as a $4.76 million DMACC construction grant, both federal grants, and a big over half of the project budget.

Next slide.

So with that, I'll just go through our next steps.

We will be ready to advertise this month.

And working with FDA, we see executing that Small Starts grant agreement near the end of June, in time to award a contract for construction in July.

Construction would start in September.

This is a long and large project and complicated.

It's about two and a half years of construction.

Outreach, both to prepare the community and stakeholders for construction is important, as well as keeping people informed during construction so they know ahead of time when, for example, an intersection is going to be closed, more specifically to property owners where we are going to be having to impact access to a garage, when that's going to happen, and how we can manage traffic and access for them during construction.

Those kinds of things will be ongoing during construction.

So with that, We are ready for questions.

Thank you very much.

That was very thorough.

And for the viewing public, lots of information about this project on SDOT's website as well, in addition to this PowerPoint update.

Council members, any questions for SDOT on accepting these two easements?

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

I will not ask the questions that I had about how can we make more improvements to increase reliability, because we know that for us to be able to rely on our transit network, we need to be able to rely that buses will arrive in a regular amount of time and that we have the same amount of travel time.

every time we're on the bus to get where we're going.

I just want to take this moment to highlight that the extent of this project is so large because it is more than a transit project.

It is a water sewer electrical.

This is an infrastructure project combined with transit and so My other question is, can we move faster?

And I can only assume that Eric is going to tell me we are moving as fast as we possibly can.

So I just want to thank SDOT, King County Metro, Seattle City Light, SPU for all of your work so rapidly.

And I don't think I need to answer that.

That was somewhat of a rhetorical question.

But yes, we are moving as fast as we can.

And in fact, advertising ahead of the Small Starts Grant Agreement, we really are now confident and ready to get going on this project.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions before we vote on this council bill accepting the easements?

Council member Herbold.

It's not a question, just a shout out to a former colleague.

Want to just recognize the work of prior council member Sally Bagshaw on this project in the past.

All right, council members, let's vote on this and then we'll discuss the second item related to this.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120062, item five on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 120062. Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass it will be sent to the May 10 City Council meeting for final consideration.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item six, Council Bill 120063, an ordinance relating to grant funds from the United States Department of Transportation for the construction of the Madison BRT Rapid Ride G Line Project.

for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Council members, we really heard an overview of the project with the previous item, and the PowerPoint was related to both items.

Are there any questions for SDOT about this bill, which is accepting the two grants from the federal government?

This is Council Bill 12063, item six.

Okay.

And Calvin Chow, anything to add specifically to this bill?

No, nothing to add.

Okay.

Anything from SDOT to add?

That's a rhetorical question.

No, I'm just kidding.

Okay, thank you.

Again, this bill is related to the Rapid Ride G line.

We'll go ahead and move this.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120063, item six on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 120063. Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the May 10 City Council meeting for final consideration.

Council members, we're ready for the last three items.

We're going to read all three into the record.

This is just a briefing and discussion today.

So will the clerk please read the titles of the next three agenda items into the record?

Agenda items seven through nine.

Council Bill 12053, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2020 surveillance impact report and 2020 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of forward-looking infrared real-time video.

Council Bill 12054, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2020 surveillance impact report and 2020 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of situational awareness cameras without recording.

Council Bill 12055, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2020 surveillance impact report and 2020 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of video recording systems for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, the City of Seattle, as you know, we've got a very strong surveillance ordinance.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez, for your work on refining that ordinance.

It's designed to provide greater transparency to City Council and the public when the city government operates or acquires technology that meets the city's definition of surveillance.

A surveillance impact report is submitted by the department that uses the technology.

They submit that to our Seattle Information Technology Department, which completes a thorough review, along with a rigorous review by the community surveillance working group and there's a public engagement process as well.

As you may recall, we're working our way through the groups of surveillance impact reports as required by the surveillance ordinance.

We recently amended and adopted the so-called Group 2 surveillance impact reports for some of the existing technologies already used by Seattle City Light, the Fire Department, and the Police Department.

Today, we're going to discuss group three, which are three existing technologies from Seattle Police Department.

And they're contained in these three council bills.

Our city council central staff analyst, Lisa Kay, posted her memos on the committee agenda.

There also is the executive overviews, which are very helpful.

And then you can dig into the surveillance impact reports as well.

The existing technologies are a forward-looking infrared real-time video used by King County helicopters, the non-recording situational awareness cameras used during crisis events, and the video recording systems at SPD facilities.

Our committee will need only two meetings to consider and approve these three surveillance impact reports.

We'll get our overview today.

We can start asking questions.

Lisa Kay is always available to us.

And we'd like to get amendments by Monday, May 10. if there are any amendments.

Her memo suggests, has some ideas there.

Because we need to provide sufficient time for review by our city attorney's office, including whether any amendments to SPD technologies would have a material impact on the federal consent decree.

So let's...

I'm going to turn it over to our central staff analyst, Lisa Kay.

We also have the information technology department with us and we also have the Seattle police department with us.

Why don't I turn it over to our central staff analyst, Lisa Kay, first if you want to introduce anything.

Great.

Welcome, Omari.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Peterson and members of the committee.

I'm Omari Stringer with the Seattle Information Technology Department.

I'm here to discuss the group three surveillance impact reports as introduced.

So we can hit the next slide.

Just to give a quick overview, we've been working on this project since 2017 when that amended surveillance ordinance took effect.

I won't run through the whole backstory here, but as you can see, we've come to this committee several times in this last year alone.

really moving forward on getting these retroactive reviews of these technologies completed and approved.

So as mentioned, we just went through the Group 2 technologies from City Light, Fire, and Seattle PD.

Now we'll be moving on to Group 3 technologies, specifically from the Seattle Police Department.

So, in this grouping of 3 bills, I'm just going to introduce really quickly as discussed.

We have the floor before looking infrared, real time video on the King County Sheriff's office, helicopters, situational awareness cameras without recording and the video recording systems that are currently up for review.

I also wanted to acknowledge that you'll see in the next grouping group for a, there's a couple of technologies there that are currently undergoing their public review period now.

So those are.

up on the website, seattle.gov slash surveillance, if you want to take a look and get a preview of what's going on for group four, we're opening the public engagement for that now.

But you will see those portions of those in August, and then the newer technologies in December, followed by group 4B, which will be the public engagement will be completed later this summer.

And you will be seeing those in December as well.

As we go to the next slide.

I want to quickly highlight the public engagement because that was the last piece of the kind of SIR review process that we do.

So this actually took place in the latter end of 2020. In October, we had a online public engagement event.

Again, this is the first grouping that we actually had an online public engagement event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

So this did require some adjustments and how we normally structure our public engagement.

But we did kind of utilize some of the same methods including having an online survey, having an inbox open to receive emails or letters, and then having that public meeting where the department presents and the public has an opportunity to provide comment or ask questions.

This is also advertising we use one page flyers about the technologies kind of summarizing them that are translated into the seven tier one languages here at the city.

Although we weren't able to kind of do our going to the community, normal public engagement we did post these on our website and have social media about these trying to utilize this as many digital platforms as possible.

And the nice thing about these digital platforms are they are recorded and the meeting can be posted online so that folks can Do it.

This was the first time that we did this.

So we, there were definitely some bumps in the process and we are taking a look at what that feedback that we got from this round.

And as we will be conducting group for online, we will be doing making some modifications, including hosting more than one event.

at different times of the day so that folks are able to attend those different meetings, and then also making sure that they're posted online a little bit quicker than they were.

I believe they got posted right at the end of the public engagement period for group three, so we're going to want to make sure that we have those posted in a more timely fashion for group four, because these are getting into some of the more sensitive technologies.

So with that, that's a quick overview of the public engagement and the technologies.

If there are no questions, I will hand it over to Captain McDonough from the Seattle Police Department to give you an overview of the technologies.

Thank you, Omari.

Welcome, Captain McDonough.

Thank you, Council Member.

Appreciate the time, Omari.

Thanks for that quick introduction and overview of everything.

Obviously, for the sake of time, we'll try to go through this, but I want to make sure that I answer anyone's questions that might come up.

Obviously, the Seattle Police Department mission is to prevent crime and enforce the law, but really support quality public safety by delivering respectful, professional, dependable police services.

And as you know, that's quite honestly what we try to do each and every day.

And I think the troops do a pretty good job with that.

Obviously, there's also some oversight that I'll mention as we go through some of these that play into maintaining that high standard that we have.

Go ahead and go with the next slide.

Sorry, didn't mean to catch you off guard.

So the first one I'd like to talk about is the forward looking infrared.

And as it says here, it's a they call provides a platform for aerial photography.

The helicopter does that.

It's attached to the helicopter.

It's provided by King County Air Support Unit.

The next one I'll talk about will be the situational awareness cameras and OK, situational awareness cameras in the video recording systems at the SPD facilities.

And so we'll go ahead and go to the next slide for forward looking infrared.

So what it is, is King County has helicopters with the forward-looking infrared camera on it, and it sends real-time video to the ground, and it uses a video link to send it to the system.

And this platform is specifically used for situational awareness quite often, both at a disaster scene and or search and rescue, but also crime scene.

So crimes in progress, if they're flying and they can get there in time, They have the ability to respond and support us.

We also have the ability to request them.

In the event that someone on scene says, hey, it'd be great to have Guardian One, that request is reviewed by a supervisor or a watch commander to ensure that it's applicable to the crime in progress.

So there's a little bit of oversight there.

Why do we use this technology?

Quite honestly, that aerial view is very, very beneficial to provide information to understand what's really happening out in the field.

if it's a natural disaster crime scene or a missing person search and rescue for us or a fire, that information of where they may or may not be able to see activity.

And I'll talk about some of how they show that to us or how they see it and how we might be able to get the evidence in a second.

But that bird's eye view lets you take in the big picture of what's going on, so to speak, and be able to assign resources to specific areas that may or may not need something to be done.

FLIR, what it does is it's a thermal imager, and so it identifies heat sources.

Obviously, the human body gives off heat, the street gives off a different level of heat, and they're able to detect that.

And you're going to be able to see that in the next slide.

We were fortunate enough to have City IT put in a couple images here, and I'm going to talk about the images first so that you understand what it is.

These are all captured from Guardian One, and they show what Guardian One sees, or if we actually request the FLIR imaging, This is what we would have for court purposes.

So on the far right, you can see that it shows the human shape kind of an outline, et cetera.

The middle one, if we could zoom in on that a little bit, those are two people hiding behind cars.

And so there's really not much more than the heat signature there and nothing really identifiable.

The one on the far left is actually a distant shot of a subject on the far side between two buildings that they were looking for.

So what it is is, King County was able to secure these through some grant funding, and they offer it to support for the region.

Now, as such, Guardian One isn't readily available for just SPD, and so they have their own flight schedule, et cetera.

And it was brought up a little bit later, earlier, but I'll talk about it now, that it may be disproportionately applied, and I'll be able to talk about some of those numbers of deployment, but it really is contingent upon whether they're in the air flying, what the crime is, and if it's approved, and can they get there in time to support us?

So those variables all factor in, even on a very serious crime.

And the crimes that we use it for, for the most part, are robberies, felony assaults, vehicle pursuits, because it's much safer to pursue from the air and not have the vehicles close behind them, wait for them to stop and then try to apprehend them as they flee.

We do a lot with search and rescue.

I know Seattle Fire utilizes it when they can.

Most recently, or at least one case they had recovered and identified a couple of kids that fell off the embankment at Discovery Park.

So we use it for those kinds of things in an effort to tell us where there's activity or a fleeing subject.

Obviously here it shows the heat emitted by the individuals, but most importantly, the two pictures on the left show you that it can't look inside a house or other structures.

It's just, it registers heat that's available to the human eye.

which we can't register, but this camera can.

So go ahead and go to the next one.

These are all the policies that governance use.

Obviously, SPD has very, very strict policies, and those are audited by the Office of Inspector General, and then internally to the SPD that we can look at those ourselves and make sure that we're doing it.

And major incidents are reviewed by command staff, so if there's any inappropriate actions or deployments, they can take care of that.

The issue that I talked about earlier regarding deployments, we supplied one year, 2018, for deployments with Guardian One that we were able to identify occurring within the city.

And people were saying that there was a large amount in the South Precinct.

And again, going back to what I told you, it depends on where the crime occurs, whether Guardian One's in the air, if they can get there in a reasonable time, and if their resources would benefit us in that search.

So in that case, yes, the South Precinct had more deployments than the other precincts.

But most recently in 2019, North Precinct had the most, by far, almost three times as many than any other precinct.

And in 2020, Southwest Precinct has had more.

So obviously during COVID, 2020, we had less calls for service, but it's still showing that it really depends on where the crime occurs and then the availability of Part E1 to be available to deploy to support our efforts.

Council Member Peterson, I'm not sure.

Do you want to ask questions now or do you want to wait till the end?

Council members, would you like to ask questions about this bill and this technology or hear the other two first?

I think we'll just keep going.

Very good.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Situational awareness cameras that do not record.

And what you see there is a picture of a remotely operated vehicle.

And these cameras, depending on how they deploy them, go inside a residence, but they only go inside when there's exigent circumstances, meaning a life safety issue, and there's no other way to get in to identify if there's a threat to human life, and or they have a search warrant.

So if there's a barricaded person or a hostage situation, under a hostage situation, if time allows, we'll try to secure a search warrant even before the situation is resolved.

Knowing that state law allows us if the hostage situation be deteriorating, we can also take immediate like safety actions to protect the lives of the people inside.

But the other thing is it does is it protects actually the subjects inside the house, because if we know where they are, we can call them out.

Hey, you in the blue jacket with the blue tie, you need to come outside and talk to us, those kind of things.

And it lets us set a stage to allow for successful surrender.

But it also allows to protect themselves in the event that the subject is inside and we've had those, where they're literally waiting with a firearm for someone to come inside, this gives that early warning and then we can avoid that.

And oftentimes we use these to be able to talk to the individual from the outside, yell at them, hey, we know you're in there, we see you behind the sofa, why don't you come out?

And that makes it safer for everyone, including our community.

Again, there's situational awareness cameras.

We do not record on any of these.

I'll show you, not yet, but the next slide will show a couple of different things.

But in terms of that, the pole cam there on the right is just a camera on the end of a stick, comes back to the monitor.

There is a slot to be able to record.

However, it's not utilized by SPD.

We don't record any of that.

And the same with the ROV.

The ROV does not have the capability to record.

Some ROVs do, but this one does not.

And so we also have little ones that we can throw inside and they land.

Those aren't recorded either.

All they do is send an image.

So we are deliberately not trying to collect data that we don't need.

We're just trying to find out on a life safety issue if we can do it.

And these cameras can be utilized for everything from a barricaded person or to a hostage situation.

I know in some jurisdictions they've been used to support search and rescue in unusual venues.

So young kids trapped in pipes to see if they're in a pipe or behind some debris or something, they can also be utilized for that.

So those are the things that we do there.

And I think that's the end one.

I'd have to flip my slide here for that one.

Obviously there's the same policies in place and the Office of Inspector General has open access to all the information, to all the deployments, all the uses, and what we have retained for different cases.

They have the ability to look in there and quite honestly, complete a very, very thorough audit.

So that's in there.

I'm gonna go on to the next one for the sake of time.

Yes, please.

The next one is, oh, I'm sorry.

Sir, did you have something?

Yes, please go ahead and we'll do the third technology now.

Thank you.

Very good, thank you, sir.

So these are the video recording systems that we have within the Seattle Police Department facilities.

In those areas where we have contact with subjects who may or may not be under arrest, they may be detained, such as juveniles or physical arrest.

And we have camera systems in different places, the holding cells, the sally port, the breathalyzer processing room, or called the BAC room, and then the lineup rooms.

And again, this technology is designed as a safety precaution.

They're fixed cameras, you can't pan, tilt, zoom them, excuse me.

And that information goes to a server that we'll talk about here in a second that records it for a specific period of time.

And in there, this is a checks and balance for both the community to know that the officers aren't doing anything that they shouldn't be doing in these areas when the subject is in custody.

It's much like our body worn cameras and in-car video, which also has a camera that videos the back seat so that if there's an allegation of force, we can go back and say yes or no to that allegation.

Over here on the left, it just says it prevents disputes about how interviews are conducted, et cetera.

It's trying to be as transparent as we legally can in terms of our interactions with subjects that are already in custody.

And as it says there, it enhances the accountability because it's all recorded.

And if it's going to a case, it goes into the case file, And if there's a complaint, the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of Inspector General have access to it.

And this is one of the areas that was also addressed, as Council Member Peterson said, by the Department of Justice settlement.

Next slide, please.

So we have two different systems.

Excuse me.

The Gentech video system is really in our interview areas, and they're just very small rooms where we bring someone in and interview them in relation to a crime.

That is retained as evidence.

So it follows case law and state law, and in some cases, federal law, in terms of who gets access to it and who doesn't.

Basically, for us, if you're not involved in the case, you don't get to see the evidence.

It is retained, sent on to the prosecutor's office after charges are filed.

Theoretically, it could become public information, but it's all part of the case and therefore legal for us to report.

In the holding cells, the processing area, and the BEC rooms, we use a milestone video management system.

Again, these are fixed cameras, and that information is retained on site for a short period of time, and then it's put up into the cloud.

And with that, these cameras have done everything.

I was personally involved in one where a subject had secreted a firearm and then tried to kick it into the corner of the holding cell.

Obviously, we retained that as evidence.

But as it again said, it's available for OIG, OPA, and both prosecution and defense.

So everyone has access to it when it's used for case files or for a complaint.

The signage there that you see on the right-hand side, oh, can you go back one, is currently up there.

It's in English, and it says that there's videos in progress.

I checked on the status of that, and we are exploring which languages and how to put it up there and hopefully even use visual graphics to be able to say that there's video and audio processing in that area so that those under arrest understand that.

More often than not, the officers, the young officers are so tech savvy, they remember to say, yep, it's audio and video recorded the whole time you're here.

But if not, then these signs that are posted are gonna be in more languages.

That was brought up during one of the community meetings.

And so, I've been told that that should be coming out fairly soon.

Next slide, please.

So this just explains kind of what we're doing.

In the interview room, it's obviously evidentiary.

And so it's put to a court-approved CD, and then it's retained on the device.

And then there's only one master detective that has access to be able to delete those.

So no one else can get access to those files once it's been burned to the CD.

And those are deleted after 90 days.

in terms of the milestone, that's in accordance with law, milestone of VHC holding rooms.

This one is a little bit longer, and it's longer because the Office of Police Accountability, the DOJ monitoring team, wanted to be able to hold that video of police-civilian interactions longer in case there's a complaint.

And that way they have the ability to go back and check it.

So as you see here, a minimum of 120 days, maximum 217 days.

if it's used in evidence.

So if it's been flagged for like the gentleman that tried to slide a gun in the holding cell, we'll retain that.

And so that's kept a little bit longer.

But those are the retention facility or timelines for our BDO.

Next slide, please.

So those are the policies.

Obviously they're in there.

Our policies are updated by the DOJ settlement agreement.

And those are very, very strict as to who accesses who does it, when and where it shall be done.

And again, we don't have any objection to it, first of all, but we didn't have a lot of insight into it.

They said, this is what we think you need to fix.

So we in fact did that.

We do do cloud storage and we follow City of Seattle's IT.

The unit works really, really closely with City IT and they do a great job protecting our data.

So in terms of that, I would have to defer any technical questions to City IT just to give some of the IT people a heads up.

And I think the next one, Omari, were you gonna cover the public?

Oh, that's right, we moved that.

Okay, any questions?

Council members, we can also, we can ask questions now.

Captain McDonough or IT or Lisa Kay can go through her memos.

Council Member Herbold, whichever you'd like.

I do have questions for Captain McDonough, but I think it's my understanding of what Lisa Kay is going to do in going through her memo.

She's going to talk about some of the work group recommendations.

Is that correct?

And so I think there might be an opportunity with Lisa going through the work through recommendations for us to, at that point, ask Captain McDonough what the proposed policies say about those recommendations and just confirm that we're not receiving recommendations that the department has already anticipated and included in its proposed policies.

Well said.

Yes.

Let's go through Lisa Kayes and then we'll jump in and ask SPD questions if we need to along the way.

Thank you, Lisa.

Hello.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Council Member.

And I just wanted to thank Vin for graciously offering to help on the projection today.

So things will go smoothly.

So in the interest of time, I'm gonna just quickly highlight some of the information in the staff memos.

Next slide.

So the three bills that the committee has before you would approve the continued use and accept the CSRS for these technologies.

The committee will be asked to act on these at the May 19th meeting, and the chair has requested that members get proposed amendments to me by May 10th.

I'm just going to briefly review the surveillance impact reports for each bill very quickly, and I'll pause for questions after the summary of each surveillance impact report.

Let's go ahead to the next bill.

Let's skip to slide four, if you don't mind.

Let's go, yeah, let's go ahead and jump to this one and just talk about the technology.

So this forward-looking infrared real-time video technology is abbreviated as FLIR, just to rhyme, I think, as council member, or I'm sorry, I just promoted you, captain.

Captain McDonough mentioned this technology does produce thermal images from devices installed in the sheriff's helicopters that help locate or track people on the ground.

Let's go ahead to slide six, please, Ben.

The surveillance working group has flagged several issues with this technology, including the need for policies that define allowable uses of the technology, the need for policies pertaining to data collection and storage, concern about privacy impacts on people who are not related to the investigation, and a lack of historical data.

I would note that the Chief Technology Officer did find that the SIR generally addresses each of these concerns and did provide the 2018 data that Captain McDonough mentioned.

Captain McDonough also noted the 2019 and 20, or referenced the 2019 and 2020 data that I sent to you earlier in this week that does show that the distribution of deployment doesn't seem to be concentrated in any particular precinct.

Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Herbold?

or the council adopt in the ordinance language that makes it very clear that the use of this technology is restricted to the defined specific purpose and those allowable uses.

And so just want to confirm that the proposal does that.

It says that there must be policies in place to ensure that These technologies are not being used disproportionately.

Surveilling communities of color want to confirm that the proposal addresses that issue.

And then thirdly, there's a requirement or there's a question of whether or not there's a requirement to redact or delete information collected that may compromise the privacy of individuals.

Oh, Council Member, with your permission, I'll go ahead and speak to the uses and introduce the notion of policies about the disproportionality and the requirement to delete extraneous information or about individuals who are not part of an investigation.

The allowable uses of the technology are all cataloged in the executive overview, which Council will also be adopting.

And that is, that does, that document constitutes basically the operational technologies can be used.

The notion, I will just mention that the policies that restrict disproportionate surveillance really are found in the policies about bias-based policing and the requirement to delete information from, that is not related to the investigation.

I'm gonna have to defer or ask that one to Captain McDonough.

horrible.

And if you don't know off the top of your head, we'll get back to you.

Yeah, I do know that we do not retain anything that doesn't relate directly to the crime.

And so I can't quote you the points there, but we can get that.

We don't retain it because it's not evidence.

So therefore, it would just we would not keep it, and it would fall under the

Sorry, sorry, if I may add from my understanding of the use of the evidence collected from this technology, it's not record doesn't have just a dump of data.

They request a specific time frame from King County related to an investigation or.

a crime that they will say, hey, King County, do you have, you know, was Guardian 1 in the air at this time?

Do you have evidence from, you know, 1800 hours to 1830?

Then that would be captured as evidence on SPD's behalf.

But King County actually is the one that maintains a lot of the data and decides if they have information to provide to SPD, if that helps.

Yeah, and I guess my question is about what is retained by SPD.

And for what length of time if it determines it is not information is not useful to a specific investigation or a specific search.

I also just have a question sort of like about the sequencing of the recommendations that we get from the work group.

Are we getting those, are those recommendations coming after the proposal, the proposed language, or is it beforehand?

If it's coming after, then there seems to be still a disconnect from workgroup participants on what is, how their feedback has been incorporated in the proposed language.

So I can the the draft sir documents provided for public comment, and that's outlining, you know, since these are all retroactive, how the technologies are being used, what are the policies and procedures around the use of that technology as it is once the public comment is completed, then that.

bundle is provided to the working group to provide their assessment on do they find the policies adequate?

What are recommendations that they would make?

And then that is provided back to the CTO to kind of respond to their recommendations and saying we believe that this has already been addressed in policy or has not.

And then I believe that kind of rundown is what Lisa kind of outlines in her staff memo about What is the current policy, what is the work group recommended, and how does the CTO feel that has been addressed in the CER through a lot of these operational policies, if that makes sense?

Yeah, and just thinking about the last group, my recollection is that the response that we got for everything was CER generally addresses each concern, and we found out subsequently that the working group did not feel that the SIR addressed the concerns.

Particularly, I think we made some significant requests to the department for changes around, again, around retention of recordings.

So I'm just, I'm having a hard time understanding, like, how do we find out how the working group really feels about what has been proposed?

So, okay.

And I would just mention just for this particular technology, that is an instance.

Also, then if you could show slide seven here in the policy considerations, I did note that while the SPD policies do explain how an officer can request air support, And this is an issue that was flagged by the working group.

The policies don't specify the types of incidents for which an officer is allowed to request air support or use the technology.

So the information, I'm basically looking at what the working group has said, looking at what the chief technology officer has said, and basically flagging issues for council where, you know, I guess in my professional judgment, the working groups recommendations haven't been addressed.

That's super helpful.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Chair, if I may, just one more thing on this one.

Yes, please.

When I asked the question about the use of this technology to disproportionately surveil communities of color, Lisa, I think you mentioned the city's anti-bias policing policies.

And my recollection is that those policies were flagged on the next technology, but they were not flagged as being relevant to this technology.

I don't have that particular slide right in front of me right now, but that's what I remember seeing, is that the bias-free policing policies were named specifically for the situational awareness technology, but not named for this one.

My finding, I believe I found that policy 5.140 was referenced in the racial equity toolkit section of the CERF for the forward-looking internet technology, but I'd be happy to check back again and make sure that that's true, but that's what I found.

Council Member, if I can weigh in there, your first question was, do we keep information about potential third parties?

If it's evidentiary and there's something on the side, then yeah, by law, there's a whole bunch of rules there that we're required to keep it because defense can use it to say that their client actually wasn't the one, so he's over here or something like that.

So in terms of that, we're very careful not to take anything that we don't think is evidentiary, but if it becomes evidentiary, then we retain it with the case file.

Yeah, my question was not if it is evidentiary.

If it's not, if you end up with it, because maybe, yeah, I understand that you're saying that you're limiting what you're getting from the third party to things that are related to a specific investigation or search.

But I'm just thinking there might be, and just tell me I'm wrong if this never happens, but there could be a situation where when you request it, you think it is related or could be related to a specific investigation or search and then you determine that it is not related.

With a complete understanding that yes, there absolutely are requirements for you to hold on to that information that is related.

I think that you probably have a case where there may be something in there, but to be completely honest, pretty rare.

And then also, we'd have to work with the prosecutors and make sure that our legal standards are met to make sure that we're not getting rid of evidence that potentially could preclude somebody from being charged.

I mean, stop them from being unjustly charged.

So in terms of that, I think we we follow case law.

and state law, right?

So in terms of that, I think there's protections in place, but you have to understand that we answer to those other entities, and therefore we're required to follow them.

Thank you, Captain.

Let's go ahead then, with chair's permission, let's go to slide eight then.

So the second technology before you are the situational awareness cameras without recording.

As Captain Donna mentioned, these are used to get images from a safe distance.

Let's go ahead, go to slide 10, if you would, please, Ben.

For these cameras, the situational, I'm sorry, the surveillance working is a concern.

focus on the need for additional policy language to define allowable uses.

Again, that is cataloged in the executive overview.

Also, the desire to prohibit the police department from using cameras that have facial recognition or recording capabilities, and the desire for safeguards against downloading or streaming images off these cameras to other devices.

The Chief Technology Officer found that the policies and training at SPD and the limitations of technology themselves adequately mitigate the working group's concerns.

Let's go to the next slide, please.

And I found that yes, there are a number of policies that address allowable methods to collect and protect these video images.

But as the working group did note, the CER doesn't include policies that define the appropriate use of these technologies.

Specifically, there is language that says SWAT is trained in the appropriate use and application of the cameras, but they don't specifically say how there aren't policies that say when you should use them.

The policies also don't address the working group's recommendations to limit acquisition of cameras with prohibited capabilities, such as facial recognition, or to prevent the use of footage streamed from the cameras.

Also, and this was an issue, I don't know that I mentioned this, but for all three of these technologies, the same issue arose as with group two, that the equity metrics haven't been developed yet for the CTO's annual equity assessment.

So I would pause there to see if people have questions about the situational awareness cameras.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I'm going to have to sign off.

I do want to just ask a process question.

I remember the last bundle of amendments that we offered, they were written in such a way that We were not actually changing the requirements.

We were asking the department whether or not they could change the requirements consistent with our policy objectives.

Is that the same limitation that we're going to be working under with this particular set of technologies?

Yes, the constraint really is in the charter that the council is The charter is very strong about the police chief's authority and limits the council's ability to dictate operations at the police at that level.

And so I'd obviously be working with you on language that would, you could ask the police department to develop some policies.

You could ask them to report back, things like that.

So that's good.

And if the policies were developed, then those could be added to the SIR.

And is that specific to the charter authority and powers of the police chief, or is it for all of the executive departments?

This is specific to the police.

So for technology that is operated by, for instance, SDOT, we can just make the change in the legislation.

We don't have to ask them to make the change.

I think it might depend on what it is, but my understanding is, yes, there are different rules of the game.

Okay, super helpful.

Thank you.

And understand that we're working under a May 10th deadline.

So we'll work to get some to be appreciated.

Thank you.

Happy to work with you here.

Yes.

I also have a 1230 meeting that I need to attend.

I think that if I leave, though, that we will not have quorum any longer.

So rather than just signing off and canceling and ending the meeting immediately, I wanted to give you a moment of awareness.

Yes, thank you.

Council members, thank you for your patience and staying with us all the way until 1230. We have the, we appreciate the police department and information technology department, as well as our central staff briefing us on these three technologies.

We're not voting on them today.

So Lisa Kay, thank you so much.

Your presentation is online for us.

So council members, please reach out to Lisa Kay on central staff.

We'll go ahead and wrap it up, wrap up the committee now.

and we're available over the next few days if we put together amendments.

So thank you, Council Member Strauss for that.

Everybody, this concludes the May 5, 2021 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

The committee plans to meet again on May 19. Thank you for attending and we are adjourned.

Thank you, Chair.