Seattle City Full Council 1282019

It must have been their father, because...

Good afternoon, everybody.

Thank you for being here in City Hall.

The January 28, 2019 City Council meeting of the full Seattle City Council will now come to order.

It's 2 o'clock p.m.

I'm Bruce Harrell, president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Herbold.

Here.

Johnson.

Here.

Juarez.

Here.

Mosqueda.

Here.

O'Brien.

Here.

Swatt.

Here.

Bagshaw.

Here.

President Harrell.

Here.

Six present.

Thank you very much.

If there's no objection, today's introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.

And hearing no objection, today's introduction and referral calendar is adopted.

And hearing no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

The minutes of the January 14th, 2019 City Council meetings have been reviewed, and if there's no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are being signed.

Presentations we have a presentation from Councilmember Bagshaw who is here just in the nick of time and please let the record reflect that she is in fact here.

And secondly, I believe you want to talk to us about National Wear Red Day, and so the floor is yours.

Where are my American Heart Association folks?

Very good, thank you.

I'm going to just read a couple of things, and I will invite you up, and I understand you want to spend 30 seconds addressing the audience.

So I want to say thank you, everybody who is here.

This coming Friday, We are all encouraging each other to wear red in recognition of American Heart Association efforts, particularly focused on women's heart health.

Cardiovascular diseases, many of us know, are the number one killer of women in the United States.

And a frightening statistic is that one woman dies every 80 seconds in the United States from this kind of disease, but 80% of the cardiovascular diseases can be prevented, which is why we're bringing attention to it.

We know, and this is what our, I think we talked about this last year, this is what our moms and grandmothers have told us, to eat smart, don't smoke, exercise, do the right things.

And with that, we'll all be healthier, and I appreciate the good work that the American Heart Association is doing.

So, this week, the City of Seattle encourages all citizens to show their support for women and the fight against heart disease by commemorating, it'll be this Friday, February 1st, by wearing red.

By increasing awareness, speaking out about heart disease, and empowering women to reduce their risk for cardiovascular diseases, we can save thousands of lives each year.

So with that, Council President, I would like to present this proclamation, if I may, which is the National Wear Red Day on this Friday.

If there are no objections, the rules are suspended.

Hearing no objections, the rules are suspended, and please proceed.

We'd love to hear from the guests.

And I think Lindsey Hovind, you're here, and Kami Sutton, Hieronymus, both?

Great.

One, two, three.

Thank you for having us today.

My name is Kami Sutton-Heronimus.

I am a congenital heart defect survivor, and over my 30 years, I have endured 19 heart operations, and through the work of the American Heart Association, the research and the medical advancements through that awareness and fundraising has gotten me to where I am today.

Although it wasn't preventable in my case, it is preventable in 80% of cases, and Lindsey has some tips for everybody.

So Councilmember Bagshaw has already covered it for us, so I'll give you the time back.

But thank you so much for reminding us to eat healthy, move more, get our numbers checked, and just encourage everyone to wear red on Friday and remember that there's ever so much that we can do to stay healthy.

So thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilmember Bagshaw.

Thank you very much.

Our pleasure to have those guests.

And we have one other presentation, and I'm just going to remind Councilmember Herbold, who will present present the next proclamation that many of us may have things to say, too.

Council Member Herbold, you have the floor.

Thank you so much.

I have the honor of presenting a very, very special proclamation today, and I think it might be a little bit of a surprise.

This is a proclamation honoring Patricia Lee.

Patricia Lee has been with the City Council and City Council staff for 20 years.

Her last day is Thursday.

January 31st, 2019. This proclamation that I'm about to read came from input from the legislative department, the Seattle Department of Human Resources, and the city clerk as well.

It's really important, I think, that we take this moment to recognize a life and career that has been dedicated to public service.

And I have had the pleasure and, again, the honor of working with Patricia on many of the issues that are really near and dear to my heart.

specifically labor issues, issues related to priority hire, and education issues.

Patricia was one of the very first women of color to serve on this council central staff.

And I think we all can agree that she has helped us all in countless ways over the years.

And if I can be indulged, may I?

Please.

All right, great.

Rules are suspended.

Whereas Patricia Lee started her distinguished career at the City of Seattle supporting the Chinatown International District as a Special Review District Coordinator.

And whereas prior to joining the City of Seattle, Patricia served as the Executive Director of the Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs and a member of the Seattle Women's Commission.

Whereas in 1998, Patricia joined the city council central staff as an analyst supporting the council review of neighborhood plans, and whereas over her 20 years working for the city council, Patricia has ably, thoughtfully, and thoroughly supported the work of over 30 council members.

on her time working for the city council patricia has been provided invaluable guidance to council members on a wide range of issues including four education levies over one hundred laws countless resolutions and the ratification of over a hundred contracts with city labor unions and whereas her work for the council in her work for the council patricia was instrumental in the creation of the fifteen dollar minimum wage paid parental leave benefit for city employees, nation-leading secure scheduling requirements, the establishment of the Office of Labor Standards, priority hire for construction workers, paid sick and safe time, a Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, and the Office of Employee Ombud.

whereas Patricia has mentored, counseled, and listened to hundreds of council employees over the term of her service, and whereas Patricia is particularly treasured for her keen insight and understanding of the balances and trade-offs, as she has often reminded me.

Involved in issues related to workers rights in city employment contracts Whereas the City Council would not be the same without a honey badger sporting a trend-setting asymmetrical haircut changing the landscape of fashion at Council forever and now therefore Be it proclaimed by the City Council that January 28th 2019 is Patricia Lee Day

Hello, Patricia.

I am truly surprised and honored, having written many of these proclamations and resolutions.

I want to thank you for taking the time and it has It has truly been my privilege and honor to work on issues that will hopefully change people's lives for the better, make this a better neighborhood, a better city, and that we treat each other with a little bit more compassion and caring.

So thank you for having shared these 20 years, my 26 years in the city, most of my adult working life, I honor all of your commitment and passion and hard work and thoughtfulness and dedication to the struggles that you come to work every day and work on.

So thank you very much.

Ms.

Lee, I tried to signal to the chair that before that we're going to try to squeeze in a few words, but would any of my colleagues like to say any words about Ms. Lee?

I may see a few.

Council Member Begshaw.

I'll just be very quick.

You have really earned this time off for good behavior.

And it's hard to imagine putting up with as many council members as you have, but I personally want to say thank you for the work that you've done, whether it's labor issues or education.

the work that you've done on women's issues.

Patricia, you've been a great ally and I just want to say many thanks and Godspeed.

Thank you.

Patricia, I know I've only worked with you for three years, but I am really, really going to miss your nerdy memos, your wonky memos, your ability to take analysis and distill it down, your quick wit.

But I am serious about your memos.

I actually think you're one of our best writers that we've had.

And I'm really going to miss your briefing us and keeping us up to date on everything.

But more importantly, I'm going to miss that you're just a kind person.

And I've enjoyed working with you.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Council Member O'Brien.

Patricia, you have an amazing group of colleagues, many of whom are standing around here today.

And despite that, I honestly don't know how we're gonna survive without you.

You have done such amazing work for me and for the city, and it's not replaceable.

And we'll do our best without you, but you're gonna be missed.

Thank you, Council Member O'Brien.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr. President, and as the newest member of Seattle City Council and the Chair of Labor, it was my incredible honor to work with you all throughout last year, especially as we passed the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights, and your creative thinking about how we could be the first city in the country to make that possible lives on.

We are going to start appointing those individuals very soon, and that body of work was only really possible because you made it possible to pull people together.

I just want to say at the national level, we get calls almost every week about secure scheduling, minimum wage, sick leave, wage theft, and your fingerprints are all over those.

So thank you for not only improving the lives of workers here in Seattle, but really your work continues across the nation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Patricia, best wishes for everything that you undertake in the future.

I do not for a second believe that you're going to have a quiet retirement because luckily for us, you have a very, very active and intellectual brain that will no doubt continue to be engaged in all the issues that you have worked on, everything from workers' rights to renters' rights.

and to indigenous people's rights.

And I should also say on behalf of my staff, thank you very much.

And I know that Ted Verdone from my staff is really sorry he couldn't be here.

He was in a bike crash and so he's at home recovering.

But he has asked me to send you his best wishes as well.

Patricia, we haven't worked together, which makes it a rarity, I think, for me to be able to say, it's gonna be sad for me to miss you as a friend, because Council Member Herbold had mentioned all the different folks that you had mentored, and I count myself as one of those mentees.

You came to work every day with such professionalism, but also such a wonderful, welcoming way about you, and I think That is something that I've tried really hard to emulate.

And while many of these folks have had wonderful things to say about your work, I just want to leave everybody with what a wonderful person you are and how wonderful it has been to work with you.

And I hope that you don't disappear from all of our lives forever, because I think we're all better for having known you.

So Patricia, knowing your style over the years, this has to be pure torture for you right now.

This kind of attention, and that's exactly what I want to say is that it's in my impression working for you and with you that you just genuinely care about these issues.

I'm going to date myself a little bit with this old show called Dragnet.

Remember that?

The Lion and Dragnet.

The facts, ma'am.

Just give me the facts.

And we used to always ask you for the facts and the law and the application of law.

and not the emotional piece.

But I think you've reached that perfect balance of when you genuinely care for something and still you're able to do that sort of hardcore analysis.

And what a model for a central staff person.

So particularly when we worked on the ban the box or the fair chance employment legislation, the minimum wage legislation, all the critical issues that you really sort of gravitated toward.

and genuinely cared.

So we'll miss that about you.

And I know you're still gonna garden and do the things in Beacon Hill that you like to do.

You're still one of my constituents.

And so I look forward to getting your emails from your home now about the Beacon Hill issues.

But thank you so much, Patricia.

It's been an honor to work with you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee.

Okay, so now that we've embarrassed Ms. Lee enough, we're gonna move on to public comment.

And bear with me, I have to read a script and then I have to say a few words, because we have a little bit of a novel situation here.

So we're gonna take public comment on items that appear on today's agenda, our introduction work, introduction referral calendar, and our council's work program.

And if things go well, we're always scheduled for 20 minutes according to our rule.

We'll see how that plays out at two minute, minutes of public comment.

However, as I said that, there has been an appearance of fairness doctrine challenge to seven of the nine councilmembers, with the exception of councilmembers Herbold and myself.

And so at this time I'm going to request that central staff join us at the table to provide recommendations on how to publicly respond to this challenge.

And so again, we have some critical votes this afternoon, and because of this challenge, we'd like some public explanation on how we should proceed.

And so if there's no objection, the rules will be suspended to allow Ketel Freeman and Eric McConaughey to address our council to address this issue.

So the rules are.

Suspended, and we'd like to hear from you gentlemen on the issue that's been raised.

Sure.

So, Ketel Freeman, Council Central staff.

So, as you all know, this morning the Council received an email from Ted Tenassi challenging seven Council members for violating the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine by receiving briefings from the Office of the Waterfront.

and the Friends of the Waterfront.

So this relates to the LID legislation the committee will be taking up today.

I'll just read Mr. Tenassi's email to you, and then we'll talk about how the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine applies here and what cures are available to the Council.

So this is from Mr. Tenassi's email from this morning.

Ladies and gentlemen, I recently reviewed the following document, which shows violations to the ex parte communication limitation of the LID.

has a link to the council agenda.

He's linking to a disclosure document that's on the agenda.

Based on this violation, I request that the city council members who had ex parte communications immediately disqualify themselves from LID discussions and voting.

The two members not mentioned in the article are Harrell and Herbold, therefore they are permitted to participate.

Two points.

One, it is illegal and irresponsible for council members to receive lobbying from the city, Office of the Waterfront, but not from property owners included in the LID.

Two, If I had been allowed to lobby the Council members, I would have made these two points.

A, from the perspective of the City, this deal is the worst of all worlds.

While they get $160 million of LID money, they legally obligate the City to build what is now estimated to be an almost $1 billion park.

They handcuff themselves in future City budget priorities as they cannot significantly deviate from the design upon which the special benefit assessment was based.

By using an LID, they cannot reprioritize or downsize.

They are on the hook to finish it as designed, regardless of cost.

There are already a lot of iffy sources for the money, and any budget overruns haven't yet been taken into account.

it will crush future budgets.

B, the $160 million in LID funds can, slash, should be raised by alternative means, for example, naming rights for the waterfront and or park, similar to what T-Mobile has completed for the baseball park, landing fees for cruise ships, one-time fees for new buildings constructed in the LID area, One-time fees for new businesses starting in the LID area.

Sunday parking fees, small, two and a half percent increases in parking fees, et cetera.

Respectfully, Ted Tenassi.

So that was the challenge that came this morning.

Just to remind council members, the briefings from the Office of Waterfront are disclosed and the disclosure document that is linked to the agenda.

Maybe I'll just take a minute here to talk a little bit about the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine for those folks who aren't familiar with it, and then talk a little bit about the prudential approach the Council has taken here to applying the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine to LID decision-making, and then walk through what cure is available for the Council members that have been challenged.

Sound good?

So what is the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine?

It's a codified common law doctrine that applies when a legislative body is adjudicating an individual's rights, usually rights in land, and the doctrine is there to prevent undue influence.

It's essentially an anti-lobbying statute.

The council has chosen to take a very prudential approach to decision-making on the lid and has chosen to apply the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine earlier in the process than the council might have otherwise done, according to the council's quasi-judicial rules.

and essentially the pending point for application of the Appearance Fairness Doctrine was with passage of the resolution that the council passed this summer.

So the cure to the challenge here is fairly simple.

Pursuant to the council's quasi-judicial rules, council members must respond to the challenge in one of two ways.

A council member can agree with the challenge and disqualify him or herself from the vote and deliberations.

Alternatively, a council member can disagree with the challenge and state on the record why the council member believes that there has not been an appearance of fairness violation and state on the record why he or she believes that he or she is not biased about this decision.

So before we get into disclosures, we can do that either here or in advance of votes on the legislation.

I'll remind council members about what constitutes an ex parte communication.

So essentially what Mr. Tenassi has alleged here is that the council members had ex parte communications with the Office of the Waterfront.

The cure for ex parte communications is disclosure.

So the memo attached to the agenda is the cure for any ex parte communications that may have occurred with the Office of the Waterfront.

But to remind council members about what constitutes an ex parte communication, it's a direct or indirect communication between a council member and a proponent, opponent, or party of record that is made outside a council hearing or meeting, and that concerns the merits of a quasi-judicial action pending before the council.

So a communication that is about procedure is not an ex parte communication, but a communication about merits is an ex parte communication.

So as I mentioned, the disclosure memo cures issues related to the ex parte communication itself.

If council members want to supplement that with additional disclosures, they can do that prior to the vote.

But it does not cure a challenge for bias.

It is not actually clear from Mr. Tenassi's email that he is explicitly alleging bias, but to cure the potential for bias, we will follow this process.

Each challenged Councilmember will be asked to respond to the challenge by either agreeing that he or she is biased about this decision and potentially future decisions, including decisions about individual assessments.

If a Councilmember agrees that there is bias, a Councilmember must recuse himself or herself from votes on the LID here and also on votes on individual assessments later.

If a council member disagrees that a council member is biased in the decision-making about the LID today, then the cure is stating on the record why he or she believes that he or she is not biased.

Do you have any questions about that?

It's kind of lengthy.

I don't have any questions.

I will announce how I would recommend we proceed, but I'm not sure if you're finished with your explanation yet.

Are you finished or?

I'm done, yeah.

Eric, did you?

Just a small clarification that the quasi-judicial, this matter is a quasi-judicial matter.

Again, it's pending status as of July 13th.

That was the first day of the public hearing.

This is just a small clarification from what Ketil was saying.

Thank you very much.

So unless any of my council members have any questions of central staff at this point, I'll sort of recommend a plan of action, Kato, that I want to make sure it's consistent with what you just advised.

What I would rather do is take it up when the legislation is in front of us, and then each council member can state their position on whether they have to believe they had a conflict or not.

I think you're asking that we comply with One of two options whether we've been a violation or not correct on the record in an open forum, correct?

That's correct Okay, so what what may be helpful for my colleagues is I don't know who all has this documentary staff prepared this document This document is a June 8th 2015 document from Martha Lester that cites the appearance of fairness doctrine.

I don't think anyone else has this.

So what I think that I will do is have copies of these made for each council member could see it.

It sort of walks you through your choices on.

Yeah, I think what you probably have in front of you is a page from the council's quasi-judicial rules.

Correct.

Would that be the right document?

So for example, each council member can state on the record why they believe there's no violation of the appearance of fairness doctrine or why the Councilmember believes that he or she is not biased or prejudiced.

They actually have a choice.

And so I think this may help them with their testimony on the record when we get to the legislation.

Right.

And just to be clear here, the challenge is to all the Councilmembers except Councilmember Herbold and Harrell.

Correct.

Also, Councilmember Sawant, a disclosure in the in the disclosure memo indicates that Councilmember Sawant's staff met with the Office of the Waterfront It may be the case that there was no communication between staff and Council Member Swann.

If that's the case, then you won't need to cure.

Okay.

So, I'll add an abundance of caution.

We'll clear up the record and Council Member Juarez will take this up after you've introduced the legislation and before we decide our position on it.

Okay?

Does that work for you, Ketel?

No.

Okay.

Thank you very much for that explanation.

And sorry to bore everyone with that technicality.

But we're gonna move into public comment now.

And at this time, I'll read your names out in the order with which you've signed up.

And we'll start off with, I'll read three names and let's get both mics in play here.

So Bob Holly, you're in the middle.

Wes Shear will be over here.

And then Linda Constantine, you'll be back in the middle after Bob.

So Bob, Wes, and Linda.

Okay, thank you.

I'd first like to address the three retiring council people, Sally, Mike, Rob and Bruce.

Thank you for your years of service and now is the time to think about your legacy.

How do you want to leave this city?

I'd like to thank Mike O'Brien for co-sponsoring this legislation.

and especially Council Member Sawant for her passion, even though she can't get a single vote out of our district.

I don't always agree with you, but you need to be on this council as a counterbalance.

So thank you.

Deborah, you have done some great things in D5, and you've shown an ability to go up against the stack deck and succeed.

The hockey thing that was going to go to Tukwila is in D5, because you could go up against insurmountable odds and beat it.

And I want to see the same tenacity coming from you to do this.

Today's vote is only part of this.

That's the first step.

You're going to be working with Rob Johnson's committee and with the rest of the council to pound this thing through, to preserve an island of affordable housing in a sea of gentrification.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you.

My name is Wesley Shearer, and I've lived in Halcyon Mobile Home Park since 1999, and my parents have lived there since 1970s.

We don't really have a neighborhood like you have a lot of houses around, and usually you don't even meet your neighbor unless he's mowing his lawn.

But at Halcyon Mobile Home Park, we have lots of neighbors, and they live all over the park.

and we get to know them quite well.

We listen to them, we take them places that they need to go and help them out if they can't get there.

And it's really safe for everybody.

And I do security with them, and also I change the lights at night when they're out.

But the most thing I'm here concerned that my mentally challenged granddaughter is safe in the park, that she can rely on other people in the park, and they take very good care of her, and they see to her needs.

She seems to enjoy it very much there.

And I hope that you will see our needs and keep us there.

Thank you.

Thank you for your help.

Linda, before you proceed, let me read out two more names.

Isabel Dickens will be over here.

Isabel Dickens and then Kylan Parks will follow Linda in the middle mic.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Linda Constantine and I'm a resident at Halcyon Senior Center, senior community.

I'd like to ask you today to vote yes on the mobile home moratorium.

But I also want to address an issue that came up over the weekend.

I'm seeing articles full of misinformation about us, the park, this moratorium and council members who won't.

They're saying that she has gotten us worked up and is stoking our fears.

I'm here to set the record straight.

When we were informed by park managers that our community was up for sale, a community we were all promised would never be sold, and then told again by management, that the bank had a developer that was interested in the property, that is what stoked our fears.

We contacted city council members, and Ms. Zawant was the one who came to our aid.

Far from getting us worked up, she and her aides, Jonathan Rosenblum and Nick Jones, have calmed our fears and helped us to save our homes.

I think I speak for all of us when I say we have nothing but the greatest respect and gratitude for Kshama for going to bat for us.

We are forever in your debt.

As for this vote, yes, we've been taken off the market for developers.

But without the moratorium, the trustees could change their minds at any time.

We desperately need this year to put our plans into action to save our homes, to save our community.

I urge you to vote yes on this moratorium, keeping in mind we all vote.

Our families and friends all vote.

And all these supporters and their extended networks vote.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council President and members of Seattle City Council.

My name is Isabel Dickens.

I've been working with manufactured homeowners for over 32 years, first as a volunteer at Broadview Community Church, then as a community organizer at the Tenants Union, then as a legal aid attorney, and finally as the director of the National Manufactured Homeowners Association.

The city could have solved this issue in the late 1980s when it first enacted or voted on a moratoria to look at the issue of preserving manufactured housing communities in Seattle.

There were nine of them at the time.

So let's do the right thing for the homeowners of the two remaining manufactured housing communities in the city, both in North Seattle.

Please give your full support to the proposed one-year moratorium, and please, Planning and Land Use and Development Committee members, move forward with all due speed to recommend and adopt a long-term preservation solution.

If these two communities were allowed to be developed, the city would lose its last remaining opportunity to provide an affordable home ownership option for seniors and low-income families.

I've worked with elected officials in Tumwater, Lynwood, Marysville, Spokane, and Snohomish County, as they have all researched and ultimately voted to enact local zoning ordinances to preserve manufactured housing communities in their jurisdictions.

I'd be happy to work with you on a similar guarantee of long-term security of tenure for manufactured homeowners in Seattle.

Please feel free to reach out to me at any time.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council and Council President.

It is a pleasure to be here to address this issue.

My name is Kylan Parks.

I'm the Vice President of the National Manufactured Homeowners Association and an organizing consultant for the Association of Manufactured Homeowners, which is a Washington State-wide organization.

As you heard last week, I have been a victim of a displacement or a thinking of a displacement when my community sold 12 years ago and we fought hard to save our homes and we were the lucky ones.

I now have the great fortune of working with these wonderful people and helping them organize and form an association and work on strategy on how to do that.

I feel very strongly that this moratorium is necessary We should be protecting nine communities.

Unfortunately, we're only protecting two.

There's no reason to wait on enacting a manufactured housing community zone.

There are three nonprofits I've been in touch with that are very interested in talking about purchasing this community as a nonprofit and that way it would be saved affordable housing.

My concern is that they are are going to sell it maybe as a mobile home park, but to an investor owner that will then continue to rise the rents, force the low income people out, put nicer homes, and there you have a senior community for the high income.

That is not what Seattle needs right now.

Please, please institute this moratorium and zone.

Thank you so much.

The next speakers are Linda McCoy, Karen Guylin, and then Alex Zimmerman.

Linda, Karen, and Alex.

Good afternoon.

I want to talk about money, win-win situations, and why we need your help.

Blue Fern has pulled out, and it is clear that our Halcyon Mobile Home Park sits on land that does not lend itself to any kind of significant development.

However, we still need the one-year moratorium on development.

It will provide a safety net where we don't have to be nervous about possible development.

The moratorium is in alignment with Blue Fern's findings that the site isn't developable.

and it will protect our sister mobile home park, the Bellaby, right next door to us.

Our goal in the coming months is to establish zoning that makes it clear these properties are not available for development.

We need this for our security so we don't have to go through this kind of panic again, but also we need it so that the real value of the property is clear and will not be inflated.

According to the broker Kidder Matthews, it's likely that Halcyon will be sold as a manufactured home park.

The buyer will be buying Halcyon Mobile Home Park, Inc. to operate as a mobile home park.

The good news is, that is good news up to a point.

But the threat to us is this, the problem of increasing monthly rents for spaces in Halcyon that will force most of us out of the park.

Almost any sale increases the cost of operation of whatever business or endeavor was sold.

Whoever buys Halcyon will have current operating costs plus the cost of paying off the purchase price or making a profit over and above the purchase price.

As it is now, as far as I know, there are no outstanding loans on Halcyon mobile home parking.

It is critical for the survival of our most vulnerable residents, homeowners at Halcyon that our monthly rents are not pushed up by a change in ownership.

This can happen best if we have city council protection of the one-year moratorium and a limited rezoning of these properties as limited use of manufactured home park.

Regarding ownership...

Linda, can you wrap up?

Your time has exceeded.

Let me just quickly give you a rundown here.

The assessed value is $4 million.

Basically, the amount that has been going to the scholarship fund, basically the profits every year, if you average them over the past several years, is about $25,000, maybe a little bit less.

If you divide $25,000 into $4 million, it is 160 years.

Thank you.

We need your help.

Karen, before you start, don't start our time yet.

Alex Zimmerman and then Patty, I think it's Zeitlin.

Okay, so Karen, Alex, and Patty.

I'm a retired condo owner living on Western Avenue.

At the new LID rate for the new waterfront park, I will pay more than the value of a year's worth of property taxes as my share.

Throughout Seattle history, parks have been funded by citywide taxes.

In fact, the citywide park district levy is currently funding ongoing development of new parks, park renovations, and improvements across the entire city.

The nearby property owners are just as likely to see their property values rise as we are but they are not being forced to pay a levy for this benefit.

I ask each of you to consider how the voters in your district would feel if the rest of the council decided to tax you and only you for a project meant to benefit the entire city.

You heard overwhelmingly negative input during your council meetings last spring about the impact of the lid on the affordability of living or operating a small business downtown.

The testimony to the hearing examiner was equally as overwhelmingly negative.

Only when commercial property owners threatened to protest the lid did the city sit down to address long-term operation security and conduct issues.

The issues of affordability and unfairness of penalizing downtown residents were never addressed.

When you're thinking about your ex parte response, you have to remember that the legislation that you are asking or looking at approving today was a deal made with as few as 100 of the large downtown property owners to waive their right to protest the lid.

They make up a majority of the value of the lid property, but are less than 2% of the actual property owners.

By making this deal, you have blocked all other property owners, including 4,600 condo owners, from having a voice in the decision.

Renters and business tenants were never even considered in the process.

Those of you who plan to run for re-election need to examine your motives.

Ask yourself if you want an affordable, livable city for all of your constituents, or are you only interested in what a very few business owners and developers want?

Their success is important to the city, but not if the collateral damage drives everyday people, including families and seniors, from their homes.

Thank you.

Sieg Heil, my lovely Fuhrer, a Nazi social democratic mafia.

My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I've been in the low-income business for 30 years.

In 1996, I brought a class action on behalf of 500 low-income senior citizens disabled, and I won this class action eight years later.

I've been in the King Country Housing Authority for the last ten years a hundred times.

Situation what is we have with this right now, it's very simple.

And you guys, what is I know you for many years, you're pure masturbator.

You masturbate everything.

You never change fundamental for people.

It's normal.

So, right now, it's only one chance.

Bring these people forever.

It's by like Section 8 or similar situation.

King Country can buy, Seattle Housing can buy.

Federal can buy.

Buy here, that's it.

When this will be a private property, its people will be move out five year from now, two year from now.

Who know how price in Seattle go up.

You never respect poor people in Seattle.

Why?

And I explain to you this very simple.

For five years, you never stop in Amazon.

No one from you for five years talking about stopping Amazon.

Amazon in downtown is key to everything.

When we stop in Amazon, for example, ever now, don't give them hire another 10,000.

people, price will be go down, many problem will be fixed.

It's good for low income, it's good for 50 percentage people who live in Seattle in king country.

We're talking about one million people.

What is need 250,000 houses, low income houses, affordable houses.

You never did this because you by definition crook.

Front is only one example.

A multimillionaire in a crux with Nazi Gestapo principle.

I right now speak to everybody, stand up America, stand up Seattle.

We need to cleanse this dirty chamber from this fucking crux.

So following Patty will be Marilyn Reed on the middle microphone.

My name is Patty Zaitlin.

I'm 82. I've been in treatment for cancer.

I've been at radiation.

treatment because that's why I haven't been to the previous council meetings.

I live at Halcyon Mobile Home Park.

I've been there for 23, 24 years now.

And if it weren't for my living in this park, I would be in nursing care or homeless, really.

I, because of living in the park, I have neighborhood church members.

I'm very active in my church who come to help me.

I have a couple of other caregivers through Medicaid and neighbors in the Noble Home Park.

I really want you to support us having a permanent affordable home, please, and go through the steps that are essential for that.

One thing that comes to mind is that when I was a kid, we didn't have a nice living room, so I couldn't invite my friends over.

That's what every kid wants, don't they?

But now, I've got a whole clubhouse.

I've had friends come there.

I'm the vice president of the Seattle Storytellers Guild, and we've had storytelling events, and our board meets there, and it's really precious to me, this home.

Please protect it.

Thank you.

Following Marilyn will be Renee McCoy and then Joanne Crocker.

My name is Marilyn Reed.

I live in the Halcyon mobile home community and I've been there for about eight years.

Thank you council members for listening to our cause and a special thank you to Sowant for helping us to get organized and to create solidarity amongst the members, and then begin to draw in support from the community.

I would like to show that all these letters have come in as support.

Our cause is getting larger and larger every day as we speak.

More and more people are concerned about our case and really wanting us to have a place that is safe, comfortable, and secure.

I'm just going to read off briefly the groups that have mailed in their letters of support.

The Vietnamese Senior Association of Seattle, the Trinity United Methodist Church, the Aerospace Mechanics Industrial District Lodge 751, the Hospitality Union of the Northwest Local 8, a huge slew of different letters from different unions, members, and leaders.

The Church Council of Greater Seattle, the Associate Minister's Center for Spiritual Living, and the Office of Professional Employees International Union.

So I think this is the time to allow our situation to have a one-year moratorium so that we can look into legal protection and possibly get our place rezoned and begin to create a place that is also maintained for stable living.

Our park has been neglected for many years and is in need of repairs.

And I could see this place becoming spiffed up and just being a wonderful community in Seattle.

Thank you.

So Renee will be followed by Joanna Crocker and then Robin Ng.

Good afternoon council members and I am here to stand with solidarity with this Hallison community and all of those that are 55 and over, all of those that are disabled, and all of those that are middle and low income.

Sometimes I wonder how many people die of a broken heart.

Because what I've seen in Seattle since I've lived here for 32 years, and I had to cut down a lot of my democratic and social involvement because of my health several years ago.

I had to let go of the PCO position.

But what I wanted to do was come down to Seattle here to be a voice for people to have a roof over their head.

The word affordable housing is being misused.

So to cut it short, please put the temporary moratorium on this community so that they can make the legal stances to get this rezoned and so that they can live there forever.

Because the supply and the demand right now, the supply and the demand of the people are not being met, that cannot afford it.

And it's heartbreaking that we have to keep being so cold-hearted and ignoring the needs of everyone.

So, thank you for your good work.

And I hope that this can stay forever, not just a year, but forever.

And I will say, my mom in Vancouver, Washington, also lived in a, God rest her soul, she passed in July, but she was in a 55 and over community just like this.

and it's so wonderful and they remind me of what Seattle used to be when we helped each other, you know?

And now people don't even look at each other and say hi on the street anymore.

So I'm here because I care about them and I hope that you do too and you have the power.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, I am Joanna Crocker, and I'm a board member of the Homeowners Association at the Englewood Shores Manufactured Home Park in Kenmore, and I'm retired as the manager of Chris Bailey, former King County Prosecutor's Family Office.

When the ground under Homes in a Park is sold for other use, the homeowners suffer.

Their homes instantly become worthless.

They lose all equity and any and all improvements.

There are no places to take these homes anywhere around here.

They may be charged up to $12,000 or even more to demolish their homes.

There are no places for them to go and restart their lives.

Tax-paying citizens then become an unwanted relative or even homeless.

And here's something that I have not heard in any of these meetings, that each person that becomes homeless, especially the senior citizens, They start on this negative cascade of effects in which they may cost the system as much as $35,000 a month for each of these people who get displaced.

So if Halcyon closes, that will stand as just another nail in the coffin for the Seattle area's middle class.

Please do your best to help resolve this mess.

Thank you so much, each and every one of you.

Thank you.

Robin?

Robin Ng?

Mr. Provenance, Seattle Waterfront Park lid is an unfair and unwanted levy of involuntary taxes on a minority of downtown condo owners such as myself.

Directly after you approved the start of the lid, the sales have gone downhill for my small retirement condo three blocks from the freeway far from the waterfront that I bought many years ago to afford Seattle after 37 years of being a Seattleite.

Your lid has forced me to search for a lower cost and more welcoming place to live in Nevada, Texas, even outside the USA, or even considering doing like the mobile camper tent type of situation, as I will be forced to move out and either charge the high rents necessary or otherwise sell my small old condo in order for you guys to unfairly levy taxes against a very small number of condo owners such as myself.

Please finally listen and do not vote to kick us out of Seattle.

That's what you guys are basically doing if you vote for the unfair lid that is levying this unwanted tax across a wide swath of a small number of downtown condo owners such as myself.

Thank you.

So we've exceeded by 10 minutes or a lot of time for public comment.

We do have more people that have signed up.

So unless there's objections, I'm going to take the time down to one minute.

We're gonna listen to the next 10 speakers.

We do have 11 agenda items on our agenda.

And I know a couple of council members have conflicts that start pretty soon around the four o'clock hour.

So I need to sort of move through the agenda, but let's take 10 more speakers at one minute.

I'm gonna read the names.

Imogene Williams.

I think that's a breach of contract, Bruce, sir.

Against we, the people.

We pay you.

I'm going to warn you that you're being disruptive right now, sir.

And if you continue, I'm going to have you removed if you're disruptive.

Okay, so I'm going to ask you to have a seat.

I'm going to have you have a seat.

Otherwise, I'm going to hold you in contempt for being disruptive, sir.

So I'm going to ask you to have a seat.

Please, Mike, I don't want to have to do this again.

Just chill for a minute.

I really don't want to have you removed.

Thank you, Mr. Fuller.

So our next three speakers, Imogene Williams, Sarah Jane Siegfried, and Merle Adler.

Thank you, Honorable.

Honorable, please don't block the microphone, sir, because we'd like to put that one in use as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm asking you to vote yes on this moratorium.

This is 85 people that have worked all their lives.

They are productive citizens.

They don't deserve to be evicted and thrown out.

And some of them will be shivering in a tent.

I wonder how many thousands of people that are shivering in tents have worked hard all their lives and contributed to our communities.

Because it's thousands, isn't it?

Seattle has beautiful scenery.

Seattle has millionaires and billionaires, but it doesn't have affordable housing.

Tell me why.

Thank you, Ms. Williams.

Hi, Sarah Jane Siegfried.

I'm speaking today for Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action.

And thank you so much for supporting this moratorium that I believe you're going to vote for.

Meanwhile, the sixth income seniors that live in Halcyon won't feel safe until their homes actually have permanent appropriate mobile home park zoning.

So I urge you to look ahead to that.

This is the only home ownership option that low-income seniors and working people in Seattle have, and we actually need more of it.

We used to have four.

We've lost two.

The one on Lake City Way, those townhouses, row houses are now selling for $700,000, $800,000.

Not affordable to anybody who has, you know, working class people.

So think about finding places that would be appropriate that are otherwise not buildable, maybe on the Duwamish tidal lands.

It would be possible to change the use of one of the four golf clubs in Seattle since golfing has gone way, way down in the last 20 years.

and use a land trust, retain the ownership, and that way you could guarantee the use of the park as manufactured homes forever.

So think creatively, think about this zoning, add this zoning to the maps in the MHA, The MHA as we have it now has no three-bedroom family housing, it has no preservation provisions, it lacks affordable home ownership, and it lacks sustainable trees.

All those things can be provided by this creative zoning.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Merle Adler, Eloise Mickelson, and then Tara Miller-Berry.

I'd like to suggest perhaps that we're not going to be seeing a zoning that might help out these people but what we need to be doing is something then the Great Recession that we did was which was to try to pass a eminent domain process to use the city's powers to address this disaster in essence by way of acquiring these properties looking at the situation as a foreclosure and acquiring these properties so as that we can give them back essentially to the manufactured homeowners at the pennies on a dollar that these banks normally turn, in a desperate economy, turn over to the servers.

The servers only perform a function of of collecting again on these mortgages after a new owner takes it over.

And what this would do is allow us to take that property and to have it put into the possession of people who are the homeowners that live on this property.

And in that way, address the situation as other cities were thinking of doing in Richland, California, in Newark, New Jersey.

to affect this kind of a principle, that you would use the city's power to turn this property over and away from the Washington endowment, which we seem to be having to take this property from.

Thank you.

I'm Eloise Mickelson and I live in the Halcyon mobile home community.

I'm so thankful that you're listening to us again today.

I want to give special thanks to Suat and Mr. Johnson.

We know that you are going to receive whatever conditions we create here today.

And I just want to say to the full council, we thank you for your support.

We thank you.

And I'd like to ask you to help us to restore our faith and give us hope, hope for our future, not just for us, but for seniors, grandparents that comes after us, by showing your humanity in your vote today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tara just one sec.

I want to read a couple more names up after is Tara correct Tara Tara Tara Tara Tara Deborah Cohen Bogan Cohen and then Birgit Kayali Kayali Slaughter that go ahead

Okay, good afternoon.

My name is Tara Millerberry and I'm a staff member of Faith Action Network as well as a member of Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard.

Faith Action Network and Trinity stand with our Halcyon neighbors and ask that you approve the moratorium on the redevelopment of existing mobile home parks in Seattle.

When so many are struggling to either find affordable housing or maintain the housing that they have, it should be no question whether our city takes measures to preserve the stability of its housed residents.

We have a large enough task to provide affordable housing to our thousands of residents currently experiencing homelessness.

We cannot create further avenues to displacement and homelessness by putting the residents of Halcyon at the mercy of money-hungry developers, who most certainly would sweep their homes out from under them.

Look out among the beautiful people wearing green today.

We ask you to stand with them, to choose them over the big developers by voting to approve the moratorium on redeveloping mobile home parks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Deborah Cohen.

I'm a downtown condominium owner, and I read frequently in the newspaper that there will be a new passenger pier downtown and that there will be many more cruises going from Seattle to Alaska and other places.

I'm asking you to consider seriously taxing cruise lines and not unfairly singling out one group of condo owners to our detriment.

Thank you.

Just one sec Richard Gamble will follow you then and who will follow Richard will be Delvin Silvernail Thank you.

My name is Birgit Kayali.

I was born and raised in Seattle.

I have many friends at Halcyon and I'm a supporter.

We need to maintain some affordable housing.

I have three friends right now who are on a waiting list for low-income housing and they're elders and they can't get on.

Please take a good stance, a stance for the people.

And please, in the future, changes like this, we need notice.

They didn't get notified until July.

And it takes a while to figure it out when they thought it was a trust and it was fair.

We ask the city council to start helping the people who are losing their homes.

Help them, one, if you have to, or many.

Thank you very much.

Hello, my name's Rich Gamble.

I'm pastor at Keystone United Church of Christ in North Seattle.

30 years ago, I was a volunteer organizer with a community of mobile home park dwellers.

We appeared before the city council.

We asked for a moratorium.

We were given a moratorium.

The city council members were very thoughtful in giving us the moratorium.

And then they renewed it.

But really all we got was time.

And at the end of that, at those moratoriums, we didn't have anything else to add to it.

So I would urge you to pass a moratorium.

That mobile home park, National Mobile Home Parks, sat at 125th and Aurora.

Right now, there is a big box hardware store sitting there, conveniently located just a few blocks north of a big box hardware store.

I think we can do better.

Thirty years ago, the number of homeless people in this city was much smaller and we called it a crisis.

We need to do better.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

My name is Devin Silvernail.

I'm a member of the Seattle Renters Commission.

I'm also Executive Director of BeSeattle, an organization that works with homeless folks and with renters.

Here today in support of the Halcyon homeowners.

I'm also just here to remind you that our city has been talking a lot over the past couple of years about affordable housing.

Here's a really great opportunity to preserve some affordable housing, especially for seniors who we know you know, that if they're forced out of their homes, they're going to be put in a really precarious situation.

You know, I just wanted to see really how many people here who have ever had to worry about where they're going to be living next month, because that's where a lot of folks are at right now.

So just wanted to leave you with an idea.

Harvey Milk said, without hope, the us's of the world will give up.

That's all of us.

And like Eloise Mikkel said, they need hope.

So please give them hope.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dan Kavanaugh.

Dan Kavanaugh.

That's our 10th speaker.

Hi, my name's Dan Kavanaugh.

I'm a food service worker and a member of Socialist Alternative, and I'm here to support the moratorium for the Halcyon residents.

And I just wanna say, this wouldn't even be on the agenda if the seniors at Halcyon hadn't banded together and fought back, and now I think we're on the verge of winning this.

And yeah, I just wanna thank all of you because I think it really shows that when ordinary people band together and fight back and build a movement.

There's power in that, and we can really make change.

And, you know, a victory for you guys is a victory for everyone in Seattle who struggles to afford living here.

I want to thank Councilmember Sawant.

I want to thank Councilmember O'Brien.

And I also want to say, you know, Rob Johnson, we know that if this passes, it's going to go straight to your committee.

So, you know, just want to let you know we're going to be keeping an eye on you and making sure that you'll be doing the right thing.

So let's keep up this movement for, you know, Permanent protection for the halcyon residents and for rent control and affordable housing and all these things we desperately need.

Thanks.

Thank you So I'm gonna conclude public comment we extended once again and we're gonna move to the payment of bills So, please read the title So we had about some speakers that didn't make it, the Honorable.

So we didn't make it because we ran out of time.

We have to get on with our agenda.

Our first agenda item is the moratorium.

And so we're proceeding.

And I'm sorry we couldn't hear your testimony today, sir.

It's not a conspiracy, sir.

It's just my discretionary call.

Okay, so we're gonna proceed, and the Honorable, you're gonna be disruptive, and I'm gonna have to have you removed.

I've just warned you, you're gonna be disruptive.

Okay, okay, Honorable, thank you, sir.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Okay, all right, sir.

All right, brother.

Okay.

I know you are, sir.

Go ahead and read it.

The more you wait, the more I have to listen to this.

Council Bill 119452, a property mine to pay certain claims and ordering the payment thereof.

Thank you very much.

I moved to pass council bill one one nine four four five two.

It's a moved and seconded the bill pass any further comments Please call the roll on the passage of the bill her bold.

I Johnson war is Mosquito O'Brien so what?

Big shot president Harold I ate in favor none opposed the bill passes in the chair of Senate, please read the first Wait a minute But that was just the, that was the warm-up act.

That was the warm-up act, we're almost there.

Now this is the legislation you want.

Please read agenda item number one.

The report of the City Council, agenda item one, Council Bill 119451 relating to land use and zoning, adopting a moratorium on the finally acceptance, processing and or approval of applications for development in areas currently used as mobile home parks, declaring an emergency and establishing an immediate effective date all by three-fourths vote of the City Council.

And I apologize, I was not clear on my order of the agenda.

Council Member Swant, you have the floor.

Thank you, President Harrell.

And let me just say, I don't blame you all for not knowing that it was not the legislation, because this is parliamentary procedure.

Why would you know it unless you absolutely have to?

And even then, it can be very confusing.

Thank you.

So everybody who's been paying attention to the question of the Halcyon mobile home crisis knows what this is about, but I just wanted to share two or three quick stories of what we've heard from our community members at Halcyon.

And one of them is Renee Higgin, who's a retired bartender and member of Unite Here Local Aid, who told us about being homeless for years Having lived in a tool shed with no heat or electricity or running water, before finding a home at Halcyon, where she now tends a garden and grows vegetables for her neighbors, she told us she will likely be homeless again if the developer succeeded in evicting the mobile homeowners.

And she says, for seven years, I've had the security without worry, and now they're going to take it away.

Eloise Mickelson, whom you heard from just now, the retired machinist and member of the machinist union, is a painter, musician, and grandmother who has lived at Halcyon for 16 years.

She says, this is a caring community.

We look out for one another.

Some of us really would have no other place to go.

You heard from Wesley Shearer, a former Teamster who's raising a granddaughter who has special needs.

Halcyon is a neighborhood where Wesley and his family feel safety and trust.

He says, help save our community because that's all we have.

We know that what happened, as the community members have said, was this property went on the market for $22 million.

Kirkland-based corporate developer named Blue Firm filed pre-application.

The residents have known about this because they got letters in the mail, and they got organized.

They contacted my office, and we had an incredibly moving committee meeting on Friday, January 18th, where we had all these testimony and where not only the residents, but so many of their supporters, some of whom spoke today, demanded that council take action.

As it was said earlier, this demonstrates what you can accomplish by building a movement, and when that movement has its own voice in city hall.

This is what you can accomplish.

You can actually win victories.

And let me just say also, it is nice that UW is now saying that they will ask US Bank to sell the property to someone who wants to run it as a mobile home park, but the residents of Halcyon, as those of us who have fought for housing justice for years know, talk is cheap.

The residents were promised that their homes would be safe in the past, but then they were surprised by a notice on their doors last fall saying that the park was being sold.

So we know not to trust empty words.

We know we have to continue fighting, right?

Do we?

And we also know that because of our activism, Blue Fern, that developer, has backed off for now, but we know better than to take promises and intentions at face value when a 22 million property sale is on the line.

So if UW intends to keep this property as a mobile home park, then they will have no problem with council passing legislation flowing from this moratorium to designate this region, this property with a manufactured home park designation.

And as we've said before, Seattle will not be the first city doing this.

The city of Portland has already done that.

The Portland City Council unanimously voted last summer to have a manufactured mobile home park designation.

to their mobile home park communities because there was a widespread demand from ordinary people, let's preserve existing affordable housing.

I wanted to, first of all, there are a lot of people to thank, but I wanted to, first of all, congratulate the residents of Halcyon themselves.

Can you please give yourself a big hand?

And look at this Seattle Times cover page.

This, my dear friends and fellow activists, this is a testimonial to the kind of power you can build when we get organized collectively.

And this has happened because we did that, not because any one person championed your cause, but you do need your own voices at City Hall.

As Lynette Chase in the article says, there are a million sites where developers can build.

There are only two mobile home parks in this city.

This is housing for people who don't have a lot of money.

This is working class housing.

Let's preserve it.

And as Ishmael Dickens said in the article, it shouldn't take a crisis for you to do something.

It shouldn't take people with gray hair crying on your shoulders.

While these people with gray hair are done crying, they are now fighting.

Thank you, Council Member O'Brien, for agreeing to co-sponsor the legislation.

Thanks also to Ketil Freeman and Ted Verdone, who did a lot of the work on this, and also Kirsten Aristead, as usual, the Council Central Staff Director.

Special thanks to Nick Jones from my office, who spent a lot of time with you all.

He's right there.

and Jonathan Rosenblum and Sasha Somer.

And I wanted to join the others who have already said in thanking Unite Here Local 8, OPEIU Local 8, IAM Local 751, the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action, the Vietnamese Senior Association, Trinity Methodist Church, the Faith Action Network, Reverend Angela Ying of the Bethany United Church of Christ, so many.

spoke in support of the preservation of this affordable housing.

I really thank everybody.

I also wanted to note Paul Bigman is here, a longtime member of the labor movement, who's been here at every meeting with you all.

You have a lot of support, but let's not stop here.

Let's win this moratorium, and let's make sure we keep fighting.

I do have some closing remarks at the end before we take the vote.

So I'll stop there.

Thank you, Council Member Schwan.

Council Member O'Brien.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant, thank you so much for your leadership on this.

But I really want to give so much credit to the residents of Halcyon for your work to make this possible.

In addition to everything that Council Member Sawant said, we have a lot of work to do to protect the remaining two mobile home or manufactured home parks in Seattle.

And we have a lot of work to do to ensure that we have enough affordable housing for everyone in our city who needs it.

And one of the things that you reminded us all again in your testimony today and last week was this is not just about housing.

This is not just about a roof and a wall, but it's about community.

And the power of your community has really showed up in amazing ways.

And as we continue to build more and more affordable housing, we need to make sure that we're also creating spaces where communities, powerful communities like yours can form, because that's what we need in our city.

So thanks for your leadership and work.

Unless there are any other comments on the base legislation, I believe Councilmember Johnson has an amendment, and we could come back to the base legislation for comments as well.

So Councilmember Johnson, you'd like to describe your amendment.

Thanks.

I appreciate that, Council President.

As my colleagues saw this morning, and for the benefit of the public who have heard this a couple of times, I'll just repeat it.

The amendment that I'm bringing forward this afternoon would make a change to the fifth section of this bill.

And it would insert two key concepts.

The first concept is that a set of recommendations will be developed by the Office of Planning and Community Development and the Department of Construction and Inspections about what a set of long-term proposals could look like for something beyond the moratorium that is being proposed today.

And secondly, that that legislation will be transmitted to the committee that has jurisdiction over it, which is currently the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee.

So those are the two substantive changes to the amendment.

I'm happy to answer questions, but I know that our clerk would like me to read the official movement into the record so that we have this officially in front of us.

And that I will do now.

I move to amend Council Bill 119451 by substituting Section 5 as presented on the proposed amendment in front of you.

Okay, Council Member Johnson has been moved and seconded and has made the amendment.

Are there any questions just on the amendment only?

Any questions on the amendment only?

Would you like to say any closing remarks on the amendment, Council Member Johnson?

Council Member Juarez has some remarks.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank Council Member Sawant and her staff for bringing this very important issue.

to City Council and I also want to thank Councilmember Johnson for working with me on doing the Making this this amendment.

I am proud to co-sponsor this amendment And I also want to thank of course the residents and the 47 people that showed up Today and on January 22nd to let us know about the concerns about what goes on in the manufactured home mobile park some of the comments that I'm making now I made this morning and I We want you to know that we understand how important it is for this city council and any legislative authority to look at protecting the stock of homes, that is, manufactured homes and mobile parks, and that we know how important it is that we protect the use of such property.

We had an opportunity to look at the law and run these issues by law.

We had an opportunity to review the legislation to protect the use of such property over 30 years ago.

We had an opportunity to look at the Linwood Model and the Tumwater Ordinance and to understand how the federal courts have upheld the city's rights, the legislative rights to protect the use of such property.

Our goals here today are to address the lack of housing for our elders, disabled and marginalized communities.

We believe that this is an emergency.

Things today are not like they were 30 years ago, obviously.

I think it's important that the people that showed here today, particularly the residents, that this has never been an us-against-them attitude.

This has always been about that we care, that we want to know the facts, we want a legal posture, and we also want to know where we are on solid ground to make sure that it isn't just a moratorium, but that we work towards protecting the land and its use.

I want to share that, something today that I read, and actually last night, and I thought about you folks.

You know, being on this job, you make difficult decisions, but this was not a hard one for any of my colleagues, quite frankly.

But I want to share a quote, and it's really important for me to share this.

Democracy cannot survive in a swamp of mutual contempt.

I don't know this country can survive if we all continue to despise each other.

You don't have to change your mind about something.

You don't even have to like me.

You just have to realize that the person you're talking to is a human being.

And sometimes we don't do that.

So this issue today has always been about being supportive of particularly our elders.

I've been at the Halcyon Park.

My staff has been out there.

Your circumstances have never been lost on us.

And so again, I want to thank Councilmember Sawant and her staff.

I want to thank, more importantly, the residents.

I know you guys chartered buses to come down here.

I want to thank my staff who did all the research and the University of Washington, the people that we spoke to to make sure we understood.

I want to thank legal for giving us the analysis that we need to make sure that we can make a sound decision that lasts.

And of course, I want to thank my colleagues that have come into my office to ask questions.

Council Member Bagshaw was out there Saturday, I believe.

And you really do have a council that cares.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

But I want to address just the amendment right now.

There's been an amendment and it's been seconded, so I'm going to call on that vote.

Would you like to say some more words on that, Congressman Johnson?

Just briefly, you know, I want to offer that as part of public testimony, it was mentioned that people were going to be keeping a close eye on me and my committee and when we're planning to take this up.

It's our intention stated in this proposed amendment that we ask for a preliminary list of options to be delivered by April.

So if, in case people aren't clear enough that we're keeping this as a front burner issue, we're expecting at least a draft list of recommendations to come to us in April with the goal of adopting something before the end of our sort of policy calendar year, which is generally in the September or so time frame.

And that's going to include a broad list of options.

Many folks have talked about the Portland model, which allows for current property owners to transfer their development rights to other properties.

There have been lots of discussions about the access to funds out of Olympia for people to be able to purchase the land that they sit on for what would effectively be a homeownership opportunity, an HOA-type situation.

There's a lot of options available to us, so we're going to be discussing this more and looking for recommendations coming as soon as April.

Thank you, Councilmember Johnson.

Okay, so it's been moved and seconded.

All those in favor of the amendment as articulated by Councilmember Johnson, please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say no.

I believe the ayes have it.

So now we are back to our base legislation as amended.

Would Councilmember Baxter like to say a few words?

A quick thank you to all of you.

I did get a chance to visit on Saturday again, and I just want to very respectfully say thank you for coming and putting your arms around each other, because you've created a caring community that really is a model for others, and I'll be honored to be voting yes for this moratorium and working with Councilmember Johnson to find the options that will really protect you long-term.

Thank you, Councilmember Bagshaw.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just really quickly I want to just sort of give a nod to your vigilance as somebody who used to herself be an organizer with the Tenants Union as Isabel Dickens was once and I think Reverend Rich Gamble, I don't know if he's still in the room, was a founder of the Tenants Union.

Vigilance is really important and a lot of times, so many times, the folks who are out there in the community, in this case in your community or in other cases in apartment buildings, really know more about what's going on than city government does.

And so we really rely on you and your expertise and what you're hearing on the ground from your property managers or or from what you're seeing from talking to one another.

I think it's really important and thank you because it's really what's allowed us to act.

If it was not for your vigilance, we would actually be very limited in how we could act if this had gone on much further.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I will say a couple of comments, and Councilmember Swan, I'd ask that you close the debate on the issue.

I'll simply say, number one, thank you.

Thank you very much.

I think that your story has resonated throughout the city, and I think that the entire city sort of looked at what you're going through and what you shouldn't have to go through.

So I'm excited about the discussions that will take place in the Councilmember Johnson's committee.

I also heard that there was a park that has not been kept to the standards that should be kept and some other things.

And so I'm going to anticipate that during our budget deliberations, we'll also look at not just fighting for status quo, but what we can do to be a better partner to you, your fine residents and fine Seattle folks.

And so it's our honor to work with you.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Council Member Swant, for your leadership in bringing this to the city's attention.

And with that, Council Member Swant, please close the debate.

Mr. President, may I make a comment?

My timing is always off, but Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, and I know Council Member Sawant wants to close, so I'll just say a few words.

You know, I want to lift up some of the comments that Council Member Johnson also mentioned in terms of the longer-term vision.

As we work on a comprehensive plan, it must be comprehensive for every family, for every retiree, for every artist, for every activist in Seattle, so that we have affordable housing for those who are currently here, those who've retired here, and for future families who we want to welcome here as well.

I think this conversation today is just another reminder that we need to make sure that we're not only investing in more rent-restricted affordable rental units, but that we're creating more affordable home ownership options for everyone, including mobile units, including first-time homebuyer options, including the ability to turn apartments like mine into our first-time homebuyer options and creating more affordable units as we create solutions to address the restrictive zoning that has limited our ability to have home ownership options.

I think that we at the city level have been pushing our friends at the state level as well to get additional revenue in hand so that we can build quickly and respond more effectively to the fact that we don't have enough housing in the city, housing for our lower income and working families, and we don't have the opportunity to have lower cost home ownership options through affordable condominiums.

This has resulted in people getting pushed into the streets.

and people getting pushed out of our city.

So I look forward to working with all of you as we talk about scaling up the type of housing that we can create in our city, scaling up to make sure that we're a more inclusive city, creating more affordable housing for all working families, and that we look at this through a holistic approach to make sure that we are not responding parcel by parcel, but that we have public policies that reflect the values that working families and retirees ought to be able to live in the city.

I'll also be working with you as we respond to the question of why.

The good sister who just left, she asked, why are we in this situation where we don't have enough affordable housing in the city?

And part of the reason why is because we've had our hands tied for far too long.

With restrictive lawsuits and dragging feats, we have not been able to respond to the crisis of housing and homelessness.

And I think what you're seeing here is not just a response to say protect the existing housing, but actually make sure that we have permanent affordable housing for everyone.

So let's make sure that this is the impetus that we need, as someone said, so that there's not an island of affordable housing in the mix of expensive housing and that we actually create affordable housing throughout the city.

I'm excited to work with you on some of the pieces that Council Member Johnson mentioned regarding transfer rights, regarding HOA opportunities, and I'm going to be introducing legislation in the next few months that will be the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act so that when apartments like mine get sold while I'm living there, we get notifications so that we can have the opportunity to come together and purchase together, and we can have assets to those resources to make sure that folks have the opportunity to stay in place so that we can afford our homes.

I'm really excited to work with you on all types of affordable housing and to use this as the impetus for longer-term, more robust solutions across our city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Esqueda.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

So we know that we have come this far to win the moratorium, but as you yourselves have said, that is not going to be enough.

We need to make sure that the manufactured home park zoning designation goes through, and that is not going to be automatic.

We're going to have to fight for it.

And let me tell you, I've been through this routine many, many times in five years now, where it starts a fight, the fight for some sort of justice, whether it's housing justice, renter justice, or workers justice, starts with ordinary people demanding it, one or two council members supporting it, lot of, you know, pushback from a lot of corporate politicians, but when they recognize they cannot, then it's all, well, we always wanted it.

So let's be very clear that we're not going to have to, we're not going to be able to stop fighting just because we hear a lot of grand speeches today.

We know what we're up against.

We're up against a city hall that is primarily still, let's be sober and not complacent, primarily still dominated by politicians who are you know, serving corporate interests for the most part and then are pushed into doing the right thing.

So let's make sure that we keep building our movement to do the right thing.

I really thank the Association of Manufactured Homeowners.

I specifically wanted to thank Kylan Park for all the organizing effort she has done.

Not just, but Kylan, not just in this battle, but you've all already fought a lot of battles, and I really urge you all to continue your work in forming your own homeowners association.

In reality, this homeowners association will be like a branch of the tenants union, because you are fighting for working-class homeownership, similar to Tenants Union fighting for the rental rights of working-class people.

I really wanted to also thank the Tenants Union and Be Seattle and Devin Silvernair who spoke, which really shows that we need to unite working people, whether they're homeowners or renters, we need to unite us.

We need to get united because our enemy is not each other.

Our enemy is a corporate developer-dominated city, a billionaire-dominated city, as Imogene said.

And also, The fact is that a lot of politicians will talk about humanity.

Well, whose humanity gets lost in all of this?

The humanity of ordinary people gets lost because when we lose our affordable housing, when we lose our rights, it's our humanity that is put to the test and put to question, and that's why we should continue fighting.

We should not apologize for fighting because that is the right thing to do, and let's wear it like a badge of honor.

Would any of my, I was gonna close debate, but implicit in your comments were, I think, baseless insults.

If anyone would like to respond to it, I'll let you respond.

Otherwise, I'll just call for the vote.

Okay, so we're gonna call for the vote.

Please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill.

Herbold?

Aye.

Johnson?

Aye.

Juarez?

Aye.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

O'Brien?

Aye.

Sawant?

Aye.

Begshaw?

Aye.

President Harrell?

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passed and the chair will sign it.

Please read the next agenda item and you can read the short title.

The report of the Civic Development Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

Agenda item 2, Council Bill 119446 relating to the Department of Parks and Recreation and Seattle Public Utilities transferring partial jurisdiction of portions of parkland and park boulevards within Discovery Park.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

So this is the Discovery Park.

This bill transfers partial jurisdiction of portions of parkland and park boulevards in Discovery Park from Department of Parks and Rec to Seattle Public Utilities for maintenance and repair work.

The bill also meets the requirements of Ordinance 118477, which adopted Initiative 42. The Committee on Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities made a unanimous recommendation on January 24th that the City Council pass the council bill.

Thank you very much.

Any comments on this bill?

If not, please call the roll on the passage of the bill.

Herbold?

Aye.

Johnson?

Aye.

Juarez?

Aye.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

O'Brien?

Aye.

Zawant?

Aye.

Bagshaw?

Aye.

President Harrell?

Aye.

Ayton?

In favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair was signed.

Please read items 3, 4, and 5. You can read the short title and then I'll say a few words before Councilmember Juarez speaks to the items.

Agenda items 3, 4, and 5. Council Bill 119447 relating to the Central Waterfront Improvement Program and the LAD improvements.

Identify her in establishing local improvement district number 6751 and ordering and carrying out of the proposed LAD improvements as a component of the Seattle Central Waterfront Improvement Program in accordance with resolution 31812. The committee recommends the bill pass.

Council Bill 119448 relating to the funding operations and management for central waterfront improvements identifying philanthropic funding for construction and operations and maintenance and safety and security of public spaces on the central waterfront.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Council Bill 119449 relating to the protest waiver agreement between and among the city, the waterfront park conservancy and certain property owners affected by the proposed waterfront local improvement district.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Juarez, let me say a few words before we introduce the base legislation.

As we all know now, there has been an appearance of fairness doctrine challenge to seven of the nine council members.

You do have at least one document in front of you that sort of gives you some ideas on how to respond to this and I think we've been briefed by central staff on how to respond to it.

If necessary I can bring central staff back to the briefing table if necessary and we can suspend the rules for further clarification.

If not what I planning on doing is going down the dais starting with Councilmember Johnson, since Councilmember Herbold was not alleged to have a violated doctrine, and have each Councilmember then say on the record their position regarding the appearance of fairness challenge.

And again, if you have any questions, I can suspend the rules and we can have that.

If not, Councilmember Johnson, how would you like to respond to the appearance of fairness challenge?

Thank you, Council President.

There are two issues in the memo related to myself.

The first of which is a series of briefings that council members entered into as part of the LID formation ordinance.

This was a set of briefings I received by city staff related to the Office of the Waterfront around the revision of the total local improvement district amount the commitment from the private philanthropy, as well as the framework on the operations and maintenance and other elements related to the proposed legislation.

The Office of the Waterfront, by nature, was giving me technical information that I felt was necessary in order to make an informed decision.

I was not stating an opinion of fact one way or another, either in support or in opposition to the formation of the Local Improvement District, but rather, giving me, to use your phrase from earlier, a just-the-facts man kind of an approach.

In addition, I disclosed that earlier on this year, in a private communication from a personal friend, that personal friend sent me a note in the mail here to my council offices and that note expressed condolences about some issues that have been happening in my life and in the middle of that note happened to also mention this friend's desire to see the LID not move forward.

They are a rate payer in downtown, and they did not want to see the LID assessment pass.

I never engaged in any follow-on communication with that individual, but passively received that information.

Based on advice from our council, they believed that it was important for me to disclose that passive receipt of that information, which I've done so as well.

Based on these two issues, I don't believe that I should be conflicted out of these deliberations in this vote today, but wanted to cure these matters as was advised by both legal counsel and our central staff earlier today.

Thank you, Councilman Johnson.

So am I hearing you state that you believe there's been no violation of the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine or

the alternative and or i should say that you believe you are not biased or prejudiced is that what i'm hearing you saying sir yes sir um i believe i fall into the former category as opposed to the latter okay very good um council member bagshaw thank you i would like to build on what council member johnson just said i have a unique experience uh because i am in district 7 i am within The local improvement district, as proposed, my condominium is, as I've said, at ground zero at first in spring.

This has been known.

I have done my best to disclose it at every meeting that we've had.

I also have been advised by our ethics board and by Wayne Barnett.

Prior to June 1st of this year, I was not able to participate in the meetings, nor could I vote.

But as effective the 1st of June, our Council Bill 119254 changed our rules allowing those of us who are elected by districts particularly if we had a financial interest, to disclose that financial interest, but to make sure that if I were to be taxed, it would be in the same proportion or percentage as everybody else within the designated area, and that is in the case of my husband and my participation in this going forward.

Like Council Member Johnson, I have been briefed by our city staff.

At no time have I talked to proponents or opponents, and any emails that I have received have been subject to public disclosure and turned over.

For those reasons, I do not believe that I am prejudiced on this.

I will be taxed like others should this pass, and I do not have any bias or prejudice or preconceived notions coming forward on this.

Thank you, Councilmember Baxter.

Councilmember Johnson.

I mean, sorry, Councilmember O'Brien.

Thank you, Council President Harrell.

Similar to the first point that Councilmember Johnson made, I did take meetings with city staff.

Councilmember Johnson adequately described the content of those meetings, and I disagree with the challenge because I believe that I am not biased because of those meetings.

I was gathering information and asking questions.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant.

I did not personally have meetings of this nature.

My staff had them, but that information was not communicated to me to the extent that it would violate the appearance of fairness doctrine.

Thank you very much Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much Mr. President.

I disagree that I don't have the right to vote in this so I very much want to explain the conversations that I had out of an abundance of caution.

I recognize that this is a quasi-judicial matter and as such I have only had conversations relating to the operation and maintenance legislation which again is one piece of the legislation that we will be discussing today.

I've had conversations related to aspects of my support for the OM&M legislation to include language around inclusive representation across the city on the board, the role that labor should have, the ability to have child care subsidies for those who are serving on the board.

None of that relates to anything related to the assessments or any of the quasi-judicial aspects.

Again, I want to be really clear, this is a conversation I've had with members of the community because I am a labor advocate.

I am not bought by corporations and I will continue to make sure that those voices have a role in sitting on all of our boards and commissions as a principle of myself as a council member and I believe shared by many other councils up here.

So, there has not been a direct conversation about the LID assessment legislation or any other aspect that has been quasi-judicial.

But out of an abundance of question, I wanted to share that with you to be transparent.

Thank you, Councilmember Miskada.

Councilmember Miskada, I was just taking notes.

Mental notes, I should say, not physical notes.

We are short of the A and B options on how we're dealing with this.

And did you say that you just believe you're not biased or prejudiced because of the contact?

A, I want to state on the record that I do not believe there has been a violation of the requirements that we don't, appearance of fairness doctrine.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do you need me to restate that for the record?

No, I think we're fine.

I think we're adequately fine.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Council President, I disagree with the challenge, and as chair of the waterfront, I can confirm that this council member, myself, I believe that there has been no violation of the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine because I've not had any quasi-judicial or substantive conversations regarding the assessment with any of the property owner community or the office of the waterfront and or the executive.

I've spoken to no proponents or opponents.

All discussions have been on the record in accordance with the Open Meetings Act.

I've had meetings with city staff regarding, as Councilmember Johnson said, just the facts.

And as you know, I've been shepherding this legislation in my committee for three years.

And I can honestly and fairly state on the record there has been no violation of the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine.

Thank you very much.

So what I've heard from six of the seven council members that were challenged, that they disagreed with the challenge and they stated their reasoning and their basis for disagreeing with the challenge.

And for that basis, I'm concluding that we can proceed with a vote.

But as Council Member Juarez describes the base legislation, I would encourage members of the central staff to signal to me that I've messed something up and I can pivot in a minute.

So unless we are comfortable proceeding, Council Member Juarez, please introduce the legislation.

It has been read into the record and the short title is correct.

Yes.

Council Member Warrish, you have the floor.

Thank you.

In regards to item number three, Council Bill 119447, Formation of Ordinance Number 6751, what I'll do is I'll read, talk about all three of them, and I'm assuming we'll come back and vote.

This is the first of three bills that complete the proposed waterfront legislative package.

This ordinance creates the waterfront lid.

That's the local improvement district.

The city has proposed at least 6,751 LIDs, or Local Improvement Districts, which is where that number comes from.

LIDs are commonly used for funding a funding tool governed by the state law, by which property owners pay to help fund the cost of public improvements that directly benefit their property.

The waterfront is Seattle's gem.

If passed, the city will not only be able to see the waterfront park, but also fully enjoy what the waters of the Salish Sea have to offer to our city.

This ordinance allows the waterfront to serve all of Seattle and will include 20 acres of public space and an elevated pathway that reconnects the Pike Place Market and downtown to the waterfront.

This ordinance creates the account in the city treasury to manage the waterfront-led funds.

This ordinance also allows the use of bonds for financing.

The Committee on Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities made a unanimous recommendation on January 4th that City Council pass this council bill.

I'll move to item number four now, Council Bill 119448, Operations and Maintenance.

This ordinance lays out stipulations of the agreement totaling $712 million.

Officer of the Waterfront provided a helpful chart that explains which stakeholder is responsible for which amount of the $712 million pie.

It also includes a two-year pilot agreement in preparation for a long-term agreement with Friends of the Waterfront to operate and manage this public space.

The committee recommended unanimously that City Council pass this Council Bill.

Item number five, Council Bill 119449, Protest Waiver Agreement.

This public-private partnership provides a protest waiver agreement allowing a 30-day protest period upon potential adoption and the Mayor's signature of these items also followed by with a 30-day appeals period.

I apologize for that.

This creates the Waterfront Conservancy, a Washington not-for-profit.

It's a corporation for the property owner's rights to enforce obligations while also protecting legal representation for this group.

Similar to the functions of friends of the waterfront for the city This is another example of the public of this public-private Partnership serving a complex yet thorough and balanced agreement for all parties to move forward in a waterfront for all I want to thank central staff and the office of the waterfront for thoroughly briefing members of my committee and separate Committee together and separately of council for a thorough examination of each ordinance and how it impacts our city and its people I've been working on this legislations since I got elected three years ago.

My understanding is Council Member Bagshaw has been working on this for 15 years.

The Committee on Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native American Communities made a unanimous recommendation on January 24th that the City Council pass this council bill and City Council pass all three bills.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Bekshaw.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez, let's just start off by saying thank you to you and your team for both your legal and procedural sense.

I know that it has been a lot on your shoulders, as you have also taken many other things that have to do with our civic projects this year, but you've done a super job and I want to say thanks.

I also want to recognize the people who are in the audience.

I mean, I could just go left to right in the front, starting with Council Central staff.

Thank you for that, Dory and Angie.

I appreciate it.

Marshall and Joshua, my goodness, what you have done, the number of meetings that you have attended this year, I think there's people hiding back behind it.

Heidi, thank you, Heidi Hughes and Jessica Murphy for the work that you've done, and not just the seawall, but activating the waterfront.

I am truly grateful for what you have done, what I have been seeing.

And I know Maggie Walker, I don't think she's back there, but appreciate.

what she has done around philanthropy at the Waterfront community, bringing them together.

And then the Wayback Machine, and this really does go back to 15 years when I first started working with Allied Arts and chaired Waterfront for All.

David Yeaworth taught me the phrases like, we prefer green over gray.

And the idea that we really were making this for all ages and abilities, and looking for a revenue package that came together.

I know that we have heard comments this morning, or this afternoon, a number of my neighbors have let it be known.

And of course, all those are subject to public disclosure and have been turned over.

that they're unhappy with having to pay additional taxes, that their property values are going up, and they think that is enough.

I understand.

I know how people feel.

Yet I will say that the vision for what these 20 blocks are going to be like, both impressive, acknowledging these natural resources that we have, Once this viaduct comes down, first of all, we know how much quieter it is the last three weeks.

But building this waterfront for all is something that, frankly, I'm going to look back on and think my time on this council and as working with Allied Arts on that is one of the highlights of my career.

And I do want to acknowledge many of the architects that did this for free in 2004 when we first did our design charrettes.

And I'm just, you know, just picking out a few, Alan Hart, and Matt Rowe, and Leslie Bain, and Stephanie Bauer with her amazing illustration pen, and John Fite.

These folks were dedicating their time, their energy for free to show us what this could look like.

And once I saw those illustrations, I knew that this was something that people would want to have.

that words don't convey what the illustrations did, and that vision.

And I want to recognize people like Bob Donegan and Bob Davidson down on the waterfront.

I mean, they have worked tirelessly, and I know that it's been hard as we've moved the seawall, and we've moved the roadway, and we brought Alaskan Way from one place over to another, and now they're going to go through another year of having the viaduct come down.

But that said, It's going to be astonishing for businesses for the aquarium and connecting the aquarium to Pike Place Market and all the way up to Melrose.

I can just envision what our city is going to look like when people can walk and be separated and have that green space that we want.

And I do want to acknowledge that we taxpayers who live down there aren't the only ones who are paying for this.

The state put billions of dollars in.

The city has put in millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The port is also involved.

The county has stepped up.

And this local improvement district is a piece.

And I know that $160 million is a significant piece.

And to those of us who will be living down there and the businesses who are there, we're going to have a front row seat on this regional asset.

So I think connecting the waterfront to the Pike Pine Corridor to Queen Anne to Pioneer Square to West Edge, and creating those green public spaces and improving the habitat along the waterfront, it's well worth paying for.

We're also separating and making it a safe place for pedestrians.

I know many of you have heard me talk a lot about age-friendly Seattle, about making our city someplace safe for all ages and abilities.

This is an exciting opportunity for us to do just exactly that.

I do want to do one word of warning.

I can tell you that we will probably hear from developers who would be very interested in taking some of the remaining blocks down there and going higher than the 170 feet that it is zoned for.

I'm going to argue strenuously that in order for us to keep a waterfront for all, we cannot allow ourselves to get psyched into building buildings that are hundreds of feet higher than what is zoned, even for the best of all causes.

I have been fighting assiduously to keep this from looking like Miami Beach.

We truly need to have the step downs, which we have been talking about for the last two decades, to actually happen.

So with that said, I believe that this is fair.

It's reasonable.

Those of us who are paying the tax are going to be getting more.

And I look forward to paying my share and I want to thank all of you who have been part of this vision to make this happen.

So saying that, I'll be voting yes.

Thanks.

I just briefly want to expand on some of Councilmember Bagshaw's talking points.

In the late 1940s, when we first started construction on the Alaska Way Viaduct, it's baffling to me that we would have chosen to build a highway on our waterfront instead of connecting people to that waterfront.

And it's a wonderful thing to think that, you know, 75 years later, we might actually finally have the chance to have that waterfront be a place where people can congregate, where people can share, where people can talk to one another, as opposed to be a place where cars can drive quickly through and past.

And while I know many mourn the loss of the view on the top of the viaduct while you're traveling in your single occupancy vehicle at 55 miles an hour and trying to make sure that you're keeping an eye on the road while also keeping an eye on the view, I myself will be glad that so many more people will be able to enjoy that asset.

And I think Council Member Bagshaw, you would agree when I say that this won't just be a regional asset.

It'll be a national and international asset as we finally turn over our waterfront back to the people as opposed to a place that is very loud and for cars.

So I'm excited for that to really begin in earnest and look forward to several years from now when we finally completed this, what a vision we will finally be able to accomplish and what an asset this will really be for all of us.

Thank you, Councilman Johnson.

Councilman Juarez, you'd like to clarify something?

Yes, I would.

Thank you, Council President.

I just wanted to say, and I apologize for not sharing this in my notes.

I just realized I...

Anyway, so we know that this is a $712 million project, and I think it's important to note that, yes, there is a local improvement district for $160 million, but the state is putting in $193 million, the city is putting in $249 million, and the philanthropy group, Friends of the Waterfront, will be raising $110 million.

And so I think we're doing something phenomenal in this city that we haven't always been able to do, and that is to grow 20 acres of new and improved public space.

And again, getting back to, like we did with Seattle Center and the Space Needle, this is a gem.

This is an icon.

It will reconnect us with the Salish Sea, originally how it was to be.

And with that, I'll be voting yes, and I hope my colleagues join me.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, for that clarification.

Okay.

Council Member Makeda.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I want to thank Council Member Juarez and her team for being incredibly inclusive of our conversations as of late.

I understand that I'm the newest member to this discussion, but I want to thank you for all of your work and especially Nagin for working with us as we thought of a few additional ads.

to lift up the voices of workers on the board and ensure that our city was represented in full at the table that we're creating.

I also want to thank the Friends of the Waterfront and the labor members of the Martin Luther King County Labor Council who have been working with the Waterfront folks to make sure that union jobs are created and that we're not just talking about union jobs as we create the new facility, but that as we clean the facility and maintain it, we also have good living wage jobs.

Really excited about that language that has been included.

I also want to thank my staff, Michael Maddox.

This is an opportunity for me to thank him on land use, housing, energy issues, et cetera.

But this is a great example of where he was able to quickly work with the council to make sure that those values around labor and inclusivity were part of this solution.

I think as we think about this new entity being a public property we want to make sure that we keep our eye on long-term costs and having those jobs be in-house is a really great example of how we can make sure that they're good living wage jobs and we're keeping an eye on costs.

Often we think about outsourcing as a way to save money but in the end we end up underpaying workers and costing ourselves in the long term.

So here's a really great example of where from the beginning our partners were interested in this strong labor business community dynamic, and we ensured that this project was reflective of those values.

I also want to thank folks for all of your participation on the upcoming board.

We know that it's not a very exciting time.

thing that we're asking you to sit on, but the 19 members who will be sitting there, if you do have child care needs, we have now included language to try to figure out pathways forward so that potentially child care could be compensated.

We know from other boards and commissions that often child care costs are one of the main reasons that we don't I'm excited to see a lot of participation especially from communities that are underrepresented in public policy making so really excited to have that voice there as well.

And I just really look forward to seeing this vision that you've been working on for 15 years, Council Member Bagshaw, play out.

I'm excited to be voting yes with you all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Esqueda.

I think that concludes our

So please call the roll on the passage of Bill 119447. Herbold.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

O'Brien.

Aye.

Sawant.

Aye.

Bagshaw.

Aye.

President Harrell.

Aye.

Aiden, in favor, none opposed.

Bill passed and the Chair will sign it.

Please read the roll on Council Bill 119448.

Herbold.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

O'Brien.

Aye.

Sawant.

Aye.

Bagshaw.

Aye.

President Harrell.

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passed and Chair was signed.

Please call the roll on the passage of Bill 119449.

Herbold.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

O'Brien.

Aye.

Sawant.

Aye.

Bagshaw.

Aye.

President Harrell.

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Bill passes and Chair was signed.

Very good.

Lot of body of work.

Please read agenda items six through eight.

Agenda item 6 through 8 appointments 1235, 1244 and 1245 appointments of Sean M. Lotz and Matthew McBride as members of Seattle Park District Community Oversight Committee for term to March 31st, 2020 and reappointment of Dewey Potter as members of Seattle Parks District Community Oversight Committee for term to March 31st, 2021. The committee recommends the appointments be confirmed.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Council President.

What I'll do is I'll read.

Council President, do I do each one and then we vote or would you have me just talk about all three and then vote?

You could you could read all three and then we can vote all at one vote to cover all all of them.

Okay Thank you.

So we are excited that we have mr Sean Watts from district 5 Sean attended his interview at our committee meeting on January 24th Sean's educational background in environmental science and a passion for community building will serve as an asset to the Oversight Committee He has a strong commitment to in background in bringing communities of color to the table Item number seven, Mr. Matthew McBride, comes from West Seattle.

Matthew is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, so they would represent district number one.

I'm sorry, did I say five?

No, you said one.

I said one, okay, good.

He has a breadth of management experience and understanding of city operations with a specialty in emergency response and disaster recovery.

I'd like to defer to Councilmember Herbold if she'd like to add anything.

I just would like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to put forward an individual from District 1 who has a long history of public service and very much wanted to serve on this entity, so thank you.

Thank you.

All right, so we'll move along to item number eight, and that is Ms. Dewey-Potter.

This is a reappointment.

Ms. Dewey-Potter is sponsored by Councilmember Johnson from District 4. She has an impressive 36-year history with the city.

She has a diverse breadth of experience and knowledge of how the city runs, including the Department of Parks and Rec.

I should add all three appointees receive unanimous vote to make sure that they're appointed to the board.

And with that, I would defer to Councilmember Johnson if he wanted to add anything.

Okay.

With that, I would move that this council adopt all three, two appointments and one reappointment.

Very good.

Thank you, Councilmember Morris.

Any further questions?

Those in favor of confirming the appointments, please vote aye.

Aye.

Those opposed vote no.

The motion carries and appointments are confirmed.

Please read the report of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee.

The report of the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee, Agenda 9, Appointment 1246, reappointment of Angelique M. Davis as a member of the Civil Service Commission for a term to December 31, 2021. The committee recommends the appointment be confirmed.

Thank you.

Angelique Davis has been serving on our Civil Service Commission now for many years.

This is a reappointment.

She's a respected member of the bar, both here in Seattle and in Washington, D.C., and she is a distinguished educator and full-time professor in the political science department at Seattle University.

She is a resident of District 2, Council President Harrell.

And currently is the director of the Global African Studies Program, pre-law program at Seattle University.

And we're very pleased to reappoint her to the Civil Service Commission and ask that her appointment be approved.

Very good.

Any further comments?

Big fan of Ms. Davis, so I look forward to support this.

Those in favor of confirming the appointment, please vote aye.

Aye.

Those opposed vote no.

The motion carries and our appointment is confirmed.

Please read the report of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

The report of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, agenda item 10, Council Bill 119353 relating to the City Light Department declaring certain real property rights surplus to the city needs of the City Light Department authorizing the sale of an easement for sidewalk purposes to Snohomish County and accepting the payment of fair market value for the easement.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

As you heard, this ordinance declares a certain piece of property no longer necessary for transmission line purposes and authorizes an easement to Snohomish County to build sidewalk over state-owned property in exchange for payment of fair market value.

I want to highlight again for the council that this parcel is not large enough for housing purposes and as such is not being retained under our disposition policies that the council passed last year, which would ask our council and the city to look at every parcel of surplus land and determine if housing can be built.

If it can, then we would retain that property with the goal of creating affordable housing on that property.

And this parcel is so tiny, it cannot accompany that.

So we are asking for your support in passing Council Bill 119353. Thank you very much.

Any further questions or comments?

Annette, please call the roll on the passage of the bill.

Herbold.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

O'Brien.

Aye.

Sawant.

Aye.

Bagshaw.

Aye.

President Harrell.

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

Bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Please read agenda item number 11, the short title.

Council Bill 119354 relating to the City Light Department accepting statutory warranty deeds.

Committee recommends it will pass.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

This legislation authorizes Seattle City Light to accept a series of deeds in exchange for previously appropriated funds for environmental conservation and salmon habitat protection.

This continues our commitment and City Light's ongoing effort to procure and preserve environmentally critical lands across Washington for permanent preservation, good for the environment, and good for our city.

Are there any further questions or comments?

If not, please call the roll on the passage of the bill.

Herbold.

Aye.

Johnson.

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

O'Brien.

Aye.

Siwak.

Aye.

Bankshaw.

Aye.

President Harrell.

Aye.

Eight in favor, none opposed.

The bill passed and the Chair will sign it.

That concludes our agenda.

Is there any further business coming before the Council?

If not, we stand adjourned and everyone have a great rest of the day.

Thank you for being here.