Seattle City Council Briefing 31819

Good morning everybody.

Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled March 18th briefing and We'll just sort of dive in I'll dispense of the president's report I'll just say a few things once we do the preview of today's full council action So why don't we just dive into the state legislate legislative sessions?

Session update and have the team come forward I'll remind you that this Thursday, we have Council Lobby Day, and we'll depart Seattle around 8.30 a.m., and we should plan on leaving, some of us will, and leave Olympia around 3.15, returning to Seattle around 4.30, 4.45, as traffic permits.

Why don't we do it with introductions and just dive in.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Karen Cargill, State Director.

Christina Postlewaite, State Lobbyist.

Good morning, welcome back.

We have crossed some major hurdles at this point through the legislative session, and we have a lot to cover with you today.

Although we have passed the House of Origin floor cutoff, we are also nearing the opposite house policy cutoff on April 3rd, fiscal cutoff on the 9th, and then the opposite house floor cutoff on April 17th, with the legislature ending on April 28th.

We look forward to working with you all this Thursday.

I believe many of you are coming down and I believe Council Member Bagshaw will see you on Tuesday as well.

And I'm going to turn it over to Karen for a quick session overview and an update on some of the Lobby Day logistics.

So still working on some of the logistics.

We know Council Member Johnson is available to travel with us as we head down to Olympia, but we haven't heard from the rest of you.

So if you do want to ride, please let us know.

Otherwise we'll anticipate seeing you on Thursday morning.

And we are in the process of finalizing the schedules.

I have your draft schedule already with your office and we're doing a little bit of adjustments to it.

We have a couple of additions.

And I'm very happy to stay for dinner later this morning on Tuesday.

Thank you.

But still finalizing some of the scheduling for Thursday.

And hopefully we'll have something to send around on Tuesday so we can make travel plans.

And let us know if you need anything else on our part to help you guys prepare.

We'll be doing a little briefing memo for you and give you bios for the legislators that you'll be meeting with.

So if there's anything else that would be helpful, please do let us know.

Lily covered all the cutoff dates.

So last week was the end of floor action, so it was really, really busy.

But now we have switched back into committee hearings.

So bills now that have left the opposite, their house of origin are now in the opposite house.

So everything they went through in their house of origin chamber are going through the same process again on the opposite house.

This will be a much more condensed period.

It's about three weeks, two and a half, three weeks of the policy committee hearings before they move into the fiscal.

So things will really start ramping up at this stage before they go back to the floor and as we approach sine die.

Next week, we should be, we'll anticipate seeing the budgets.

The House will be releasing theirs.

We're looking at the 25th.

And we typically send out kind of a high-level overview of items that are in the budget.

And if you guys had specific items that you had been working with us on, we'll highlight those for you.

But if there's anything in particular you need help locating, please do let us know.

It's a large document, and we do our best to cover as much of it as possible.

But if there are certain things that you're looking at that aren't highlighted, please do let us know.

So I'm going to jump into the education section.

This bill isn't listed in here.

It did not pass with the school bonds.

This was that the bill that it was a bill and Senate joint resolution that was working to change from the 60% requirement for voting on school bonds to a simple majority that actually moved to the Senate floor last week.

But it did require a two-thirds vote of the chamber.

And so that would mean that there were 33 votes that would have been required, and they only received 28. So it went out on a party line.

So unfortunately, we'll not be advancing.

But it did move to the floor, and it was a very interesting debate.

I'm happy to send a link to them.

to the actual, to the debate if anyone's interested.

On page three, I wanted to highlight the college promise bill.

This moved off of the Senate floor on the 9th with a vote of 27 to 8. And this is a new concept that's being put forward by Senator Palumbo.

And this would be replacing the state need grant.

And it would be providing free college tuition for families and for students who are making 100% of the federal poverty line or less.

And so that would be an income level about $28,000 a year for a family of four.

And then if there is any money that's left over, it would help go to other students of lower income levels on kind of a tiered status.

So it is dependent on revenue that would be provided by the legislature through the budget.

So we're still working on that.

There is no revenue source identified as of right now, but it would be highlighted in the budget.

So the bill is advancing, but it would be contingent on revenue being provided.

So that's still being worked on as part of the bigger package.

So it is scheduled for a house hearing tomorrow, so we'll be monitoring that.

And additionally, I know that we've covered quite a few of the school levy bills.

There are four that are highlighted in the bulletin this week.

The 53-1-3 is receiving a public hearing on the 21st, actually when a lot of you are down here, so down in Olympia.

So we are continuing to monitor that, but again, unnecessary to implement the budget, so it doesn't meet the, requirements of the current deadline.

For the child care bills, 1344, that one's scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate today.

So I just wanted to highlight before Councilmember Mosqueda and Councilmember Gonzalez, you've asked about that.

And then if anyone, last year there was quite a few questions on student debt and higher education student debt.

So I did want to highlight on page four, Senate Bill 5774. This is the Student Loan Relief and Reform Act.

And then there's an income share agreement pilot program that's being established, which is, It's an interesting concept.

Senator Leis is working on this one, but up for a public hearing on Wednesday.

So what's, can you talk a little bit more about what the proposal is?

Yeah, I can give you, I'm not prepared to talk.

High level.

Yeah.

So I think the really interesting component is the income share.

So I know that there are a lot of other states that have this concept so that you come into an agreement with someone.

for who you would be going to work with, and it's like 5 to 7%, I think, is essentially some of your income that would go back to repaying the tuition.

So that's one of the big pieces that I've read the most on.

But happy to get you some more of the specifics on what's being covered on that.

But that would be helpful.

Thank you.

Moving on to the environment section.

Karen, before you move on, can I ask another question?

Can you talk a little bit about the ECAP eligibility bill?

So that's Senate Bill 5437 on page 3. 5, 4, 3, 7. It talks about expanding eligibility to the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program.

Do you have a sense now?

I don't have the notes in front of me, but I can get that to you as well.

It would be helpful to know how the eligibility requirements are being proposed to be modified part of the work that we did in our resolution accompanying the passage of the Families Education Preschool and Promise Levy.

include a direction from City Council to deal to explore leveraging opportunities with the state by, for example, purchasing additional ECAP slots that would continue to address some of the child care needs in the city.

So it'd be good to know what those proposals are so that we can make sure a deal is following them and taking them into account in their analysis.

Yeah, I did highlight this one.

I know Diehl did provide quite a bit of feedback on that, so I'm happy to share that with you as well, just so you can kind of leverage the information that we have on what the bill does and how Diehl's interpreting what it will be doing.

Super helpful, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Environment, one of the really big bills that moved off of the House floor last week was the Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 1110, which is the transportation fuels, the clean fuel standards that Representative Fitzgibbon has been working on.

This has been many years in the making.

We were very, very thrilled to see this one move off the floor.

It was on the 12th.

It was a very long debate.

I think it was about three hours, 53 vote, 53 pro, 43 against.

So very excited to see this one advancing, and it is scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee this week.

So continuing to monitor that one, but can't highlight enough how much of a win this was for Representative Fitzgibbon and for all the environmental community working on this issue.

If I may, Karen, just to highlight one additional point.

If this bill were to pass, we are currently the only jurisdiction on the West Coast that does not have a low carbon fuel standard.

California has one, Oregon has one, Province of British Columbia has one, we do not.

So it would create a unified position up and down the West Coast, which would be a giant market signal about the direction that the world is headed on low carbon fuels.

Thank you, yes.

Our transportation electrification bill, that's on the bottom of page four, substitute House Bill 1512, that also moved off of the House floor on Tuesday last week, went out with a vote of 64 to 33 and scheduled for a public hearing on Wednesday.

So that was actually the first time we've had a vote on the House floor on that bill, so pretty excited about that one, too.

So public hearing in the Senate?

Correct, on Wednesday, on EAT.

Oh, sorry, the Environment, Energy, and Technology, also known as EAT.

So those are the ones I wanted to highlight in environment.

There's still quite a few that are active.

I know we talked about straws last week.

There's a lot of plastic packaging and things like that.

So again, take a look at some of those.

If you're wanting more information, happy to follow up and get you more details on those.

Reuben Carlisle's clean energy bill in the house now, where?

So that's on page six, Engross Second Substitute Senate Bill 5116. It's scheduled for executive session this week.

It had a public hearing last week.

So still working through that, but it is still moving.

So I think it's currently it's set up for two days right now.

It's only marked here as one day, but potentially, but tomorrow and then finance public hearing on Thursday.

So that one requires quite a few, I think, of the fiscal committee public hearings.

General government, that's starting on page 8. On page 9, I just wanted to highlight the prepaid postage for ballots.

We have an executive session scheduled for that on Friday.

Additionally, I also wanted to flag the wrongful death bill at the very bottom of page 9, scheduled for a public hearing tomorrow.

And then on page 10, second substitute Senate Bill 5376. It's the consumer data bill.

This is representative, or sorry, Senator Carlisle's really large data privacy bill that he's working on has a It's quite extensive, but it provides a lot of rights to consumers about how their data is being used, how they can work with people that are selling their data, having data removed.

So it's very, very, very extensive.

And again, happy to provide a longer detailed list of information about what's being worked on.

But it's based off the European Union General Data Protection Regulation and was a big lift for him in the Senate.

So we're continuing to monitor that one as well.

And I'm going to hand this off to Christina to talk about healthcare.

I wanted to highlight a few healthcare bills that are really exciting.

So the one that's very top, 1039, that's the governor, it's on page 11, I apologize.

It's one of the governor requested opioid bills and it focuses on treatment and recovery, pregnant and parenting women, opioid overdose reversal medicine.

So, Narcan and people with opioid use disorder involved in the criminal justice system.

So, this Senate version was, Senate version of this passed on the 7th with a vote of 47 to 0. So, great vote count there.

Scheduled for a hearing in the House Healthcare and Wellness Committee on the 19th.

The House version did not pass in advance of the cutoff last week.

So, that is considered dead.

The Senate version will be the primary vehicle moving forward.

I can ask you a question about, and you just mentioned this about jail and prison to have a planned, is that part of this bill?

Because it's, and you're right up here, I don't see that.

Yeah, so this is part of the overall bill.

So the overall bill does kind of works on pregnant and parenting women, how opioids interface with the criminal justice system.

It's a multifaceted approach to tackling this problem that we're all facing.

Great.

I can get you more details specifically.

What I'm specifically interested in is that if somebody is brought into jail and is on some kind of an opioid, we need to have a plan from the day they arrive to the day we release them.

Because what happens is that they'll go in, maybe they're They're there just for a few days or a week.

They're right back out on the street.

They're right back out looking for the stuff that doesn't help at all.

But if we can get them on a health plan that includes buprenorphine or maybe methadone, if they're going forward on a methadone, that they have to have that while they're in jail and be prepared when they get out.

That's going to make a difference.

So I don't know if this bill does that, but maybe we can talk about it before I come down.

Yeah, definitely.

We'll make sure to get you that information.

And we'll talk also in advance of your meetings on Tuesday.

I think the treatment plan needs to not only include what happens after the person's released.

It also needs to include what happens while the person is in custody because there have been instances recently of people dying because of withdrawal while in custody.

So it's really important that we look at this.

Related issue, not so much about in custody and addiction issues, but last session, I think it was, there was, and I can't remember the name of the person the bill was named after, but there was a bill related...

Ricki's Law?

Ricki's Law.

I was going to say Randy's Law, but yeah, Ricki's Law.

And part of the, one of the components of the bill, this is a bill that is similar to the law that allows if a person is demonstrated harm to themselves or another who has mental health issues, that person can be put into custody into mental health treatment.

Ricky's law expanded that to addiction issues.

But it had a component that it could not, Cities could not begin and counties could not begin to use it until a certain number of beds were brought on.

And I'd be interested to know for another time where we're at on that.

Are we hitting the goal that we need to hit in bringing new beds online?

And where are we at on being able to use that tool?

And beds at the county, Council Member Herbold.

All throughout the state, but I do think a county facility, there are like three facilities that they set as their target.

Yeah.

Of note, the person who was really pushing for Ricky's law, she is now, she's an elected state representative, now Representative Lauren Davis.

So she is continually down there fighting for all of the issues related to this too.

So we're lucky to have her down there.

Moving on, I wanted to talk about vaccinations.

So that's the bottom of page 12. Very much a hot topic still.

We still see supporters and detractors of this down in Olympia quite often.

So I just want to let you know that this would have repealed the personal belief exemption for the MMR vaccine, measles, mumps, and rubella.

It passed out of the House floor with a vote of 57 to 40 on the 5th, and it's been referred to the Senate Health and Long-Term Care.

committee for further discussion.

We anticipate seeing quite a bit more media coverage about this and, you know, more of the specifically detractors showing up.

On behavioral health, which is the bottom of page 13, this is the last one for this section, so, it's the, this is the 5444 and 1513. Again, governor requested legislation for the True Blood Settlement Agreement.

This is the language that was agreed to by both of the parties in the lawsuit.

It would, excuse me, by the parties in the lawsuit, it would provide timely competency evaluations and restoration services to people who are suffering from behavioral health disorders within the forensic medical or mental health system.

The Senate version passed on the 7th with a vote of 48 to 0. Those are some of the numbers we love to see.

And it's scheduled for a hearing in the House Civil Rights Judiciary on the 20th.

So the House version did not pass, but we've got a really solid Senate version moving through the process right now.

Moving on to housing.

I wanted to highlight a few here.

So in the middle of page 14, this is 1219, this is related to REIT 2 affordable housing sunsets.

So this would allow cities and counties to use REIT 2 funds for affordable housing and homelessness projects.

The House version passed on the 5th with a strong vote, 74 to 24, and has been scheduled for a public hearing in the Housing Stability and Affordability Committee on the 20th.

So this bill, what it would do is remove the existing sunset and cap on using REIT II funds revenue for affordable housing and homelessness.

Without this bill, the existing flexibility will expire.

This bill also removes some of the hurdles in the current authority, such as the requirement to certify all other capital projects are funded before beginning these.

We're excited to continue tracking this one through the process.

It'd be really helpful for a lot of communities.

I'm sorry, when will the, if this bill doesn't pass, when does that flexibility expire?

I unfortunately don't know the answer to that, but I'll make sure to let you know.

Is it next year?

I don't know, I apologize.

Yeah, I'll have to get back to you.

Yeah, thanks.

Related to that, is the idea of a REIT 3, 4 housing, is that dead?

I think that, well, you never know what's going to happen.

A lot of the REIT-related bills did die before cutoff.

However, there's always a possibility these could be brought up as necessary to implement the budget.

I keep hearing that might be the case on some of them.

So we're continuing to track that and push for that, too.

There's been a strong presence by the realtors before and during session with some paid campaigns and we're just monitoring kind of how that might impact the conversation as well.

So moving on to our favorite bill, also on page 14, it's the bottom, it's the local option bond bill.

This is something that we worked on last year and we spent a lot of the time in the interim working on to make sure the language is beneficial to more than just counties.

So we have an agreement with the counties to have simultaneous access to these funds.

So an AWC estimate of what this could look like, it could generate $16 million per year in King County, allowing for a $200 million bonding capacity.

It's really exciting for a lot of what our needs are for for behavioral health and for affordable housing.

And just so everyone is aware, sorry, I apologize, this passed 66 to 32 out of the House, and it's been referred to the Senate Housing Stability and Affordability Committee on March 20th for public hearing.

So, just so we know, the revenue collected or bonds issued can be used for acquiring, rehabilitating, or constructing affordable housing, including some new units of affordable housing within an existing structure that provides assistance for individuals with mental or behavioral health disorders, or just operations and maintenance, which is what a lot of our facilities really do need assistance on, too.

So under the current bill who gets to operate that who's making the decisions this passes who makes the decisions on?

So said so if we on this council, so we really want this to go into mental health housing for additional beds or as we're talking about opioid addiction treatment facilities where people, who gets to make that decision?

You know, I think that's up to individual jurisdictions.

I haven't seen specific language around that.

I do know that's limited, the limitation of having cities and counties having simultaneous access is limited to those cities that have a demonstrated effort towards providing funds, like our longstanding housing levy is an example of that.

There are quite a few other communities who do have housing levies in their own jurisdictions.

And that is really helpful because there are at times cities who are more eager to spend on affordable housing and supportive services than their overall counties.

So this bypasses the need to go through the county to get some of these funds.

So I don't know the clear answer on who gets to make that decision.

We're really hoping we get a great outcome on this and we can kind of But I will make sure and read through the language again to see if there's some kind of delineation of where that would be made for you.

But it's really been a great team effort on this bill.

We're really excited to see it continue moving.

And AWC and the county companion organization are hand in hand on this.

Very supportive.

Yeah, that was AWC really wanted to make sure we had that language about simultaneous access in there, as did we, but it's powerful to have organization representing more than one city pushing for that.

So we're really thankful for their help on that.

They've also been just great at organizing people for panels.

We will have Emily Alvarado from Office of Housing coming down to testify in support of this.

She has testified in the past on this, too, and it's just been a great addition to the panels showing the breadth of the need for this to go through.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I wanted to touch on, I know we've had a bit of conversation relating to property tax exemptions for service-connected disabled veterans and senior citizens.

That's the Senate Eddinger Bill.

It's at the top of page 16, 5160. So this passed out of the Senate on the 11th with a vote of 37 to 11. There's a public hearing scheduled on the 21st in the House Committee on Finance.

be welcome to having you join in the committee, or just coming to see what's going on.

There's a lot of support for this.

So this bill would help the vulnerable populations, including low-income seniors, individual disabilities, and disabled veterans afford to stay in their homes.

So the current income thresholds in the bill do not serve the entire state.

They don't really make sense for some of the higher income areas, or just you might have a higher property value, such as in King County, as we all know.

I wanted to also touch on briefly minimum density.

I know some of you guys have been very engaged in this.

This is the Representative Fitzgibbon bill in 1923. It's the bottom of page 15. This passed out of the House on the 13th, 66 to 30. So that continues to chug along.

Thank you for continuing to track this bill and ensuring that this is a high priority for the city of Seattle.

I think with a vote of 66 votes out of the House, it signals that this is a bipartisan bill.

And I hope that the folks at the Association of Washington Cities understand that this bipartisan bill is a huge priority for the city of Seattle and for cities around the state.

I plan to talk to them when we go down and have had conversations with Peter and the team.

I think it's worth a follow-up conversation with our colleagues to make sure that we're all speaking from the same sheet of paper.

But this is a really exciting opportunity, especially on the, you know, the precursor to the discussion that we're having later today for all cities to step up.

I also want to just shout out our friends at the National League of Cities in Washington, D.C. They just put out a report that was embargoed last week, but that will be coming out this week that talks about local action that cities can be taking and partnerships that are necessary with state legislators.

They used the example of adding legislation at the state level as a great way to show that we don't always say no at the city level when the state tries to set a new floor, that especially when it comes to issues like labor standards or safety, it's important that the state help be a good partner in setting new floors.

So both the ADU legislation that Palumbo is working on and I think it's Macri in the house that's the sponsor of that bill.

And then Fitzgibbon's bill on Gregerson.

Sorry, thank you.

Mia Gregerson, our good friend.

Sorry about that.

The ADU legislation coupled with Fitzgibbon's legislation on 1923 are great examples of where our state is acting as a partner in helping to raise that floor because we are never going to be able to piecemeal our approach out of this to address the housing crisis.

So I'm glad that you guys have been very vocal and supportive of 1923. I appreciate that.

And I'll share that report because I think it's a new frame for cities to think about partnerships with the state in that way.

Go ahead.

Before we move on, I just want to go back a little bit.

For the ESSB 5600 and the other one, I just had it right here.

Oh yeah.

ESHB 1453. I believe 5600, the Senate bill, is the stronger bill because it also addresses, in addition to the issues that they both share, which is extending the three-day notice period to 14 days, giving the judge discretion in an unlawful detainer around non-payment.

The Senate bill addresses a number of things that We on this council, via resolution, have identified as really high priorities.

That is the requirement to provide information about advocacy resources to tenants who are facing an eviction.

So the requirement of the landlord to provide that information.

It also requires that the court consider reasonableness of late fees and attorney's costs.

I believe earlier, as it relates to the late fees, they had actually agreed on a percentage of what's owed.

I don't know where that is right now.

The Washington Multifamily Housing Association was actually really supportive of limiting late fees, which I'm really happy that we have their partnership on this.

But as it relates to sort of between the two bills, I would really hope that those elements in the Senate bill And I think it would be wonderful if we could have a bill get included in whatever gets passed because, again, this council, through resolution, has talked about enacting our own legislation to address those issues.

And it would be wonderful if, again, as Councilmember Mosqueda said, that we had the state set in the floor.

And I was actually going to touch on both of these bills because I know you're very interested in them and have been really engaged on the process.

So the good news is that both of them are still very much in play.

So the Macri Bill 1453, which is the other than, it's different from the bill you were just referencing.

That one has just been referred to committee.

There's no actual date on when that will be heard.

So that means there's a good amount of time to really start negotiating and pointing out some potential flaws if we see them.

So that would be really great.

We'd love to get your help on that too.

And I think I have done enough housing.

So unless anyone has specific questions on.

I was just gonna say that Council Member Johnson looked up quickly the bill around REIT and the flexibility will be lost as of June 30th, 2019 if this bill is not passed.

So that has right escalated the level of urgency in my mind around seeing what kind of role we can play at the city to support the efforts underway.

And I think, too, this one, I feel like the last time it was in 2017 when this was expanded, so it was just two years.

This current version will extend it to 2026, so there'll be a longer long run way before we have to redo this.

The June 30, 2019, that's literally months away.

That produces a lot of anxiety for me in terms of our ability to be able to use these flexible dollars for what is clearly an ongoing and continuing need for affordable housing in our community.

So we'll continue the conversations with our key stakeholders on this issue, two have all been pushing for this.

And if there is a really good opportunity to have one of you weigh in on that, we'd love to take you up on that too, just to be another voice other than the same ones they've been hearing from most of the time.

So I'll follow up and I'll connect with you about that.

That'd be great.

And yeah, we'd love to get some help as well, just elevating the issue in legislators' minds.

Great, well, thank you.

If you're going down Thursday and I'm going down tomorrow, maybe this is an area where you can connect us to some of the key leadership.

And I think you've got me going at one.

I can go sooner, earlier than that, if you need to.

Yeah, we have a debrief meeting after this, and we'll be coordinating what has been said at this meeting, along with how we would love to take the opportunity to use your voices to push on some of these.

We're working on it and just making sure that your time is well spent on there.

Thank you.

And thank you again for coming.

Just one point of clarification.

I really appreciated Councilmember Herbold's point between the Senate bill and the House bill on residential tenants.

I was reading somewhat about the passage of the Senate bill on March 9th, but When we go down this week, I'm trying to sort of understand, I thought that was a pretty good bill that had come out of the Senate, but this new one that was just referred to the House, you said it's just created, Councilman Herbold sort of described it a little bit as not being as protective, but is that our opinion at this point?

I thought it was...

the opposite, but.

I think both bills have a lot going for them and that this issue has become front and center for a lot of people in Olympia, which it takes a lot of effort and talking to make that happen.

So I don't think there's a flaw that means that one needs to be killed.

I think both operating, both moving forward are great.

And there's a lot of time and opportunity to make these bills into the most effective tool they can become.

So that'll sort of be our speaking points then.

I was trying to just convert it to our speaking points for this week.

Okay.

And we'll help provide more detailed speaking points as well.

Thank you.

And I'm going to move on over to the public safety section if there aren't any additional questions in housing.

Starting at the top of page 17 and talk about a few significant pieces of legislation that are moving.

But I want to start with the bad news first on some issues for council that I know are important to you all.

Both the assault weapons and the high capacity magazine ban, both of those are no longer moving forward this legislative session.

So.

Possibly be true.

So while there is still a huge swath of firearm responsibility policy and victim protections, many of those things are moving.

As you all know, a lot of the time, you know, when issues become controversial or polarizing and votes are being counted quickly and we're coming up against, you know, cascading deadlines, it may not be for the lack of energy around an investment in a proposal.

about timing and how much time things take up on the floor and what that would mean other things that don't pass.

So I don't sense that there is any lack of energy from the legislature to continue to work on those issues.

But for this legislative session, those two policy bills are no longer moving forward.

And then for some better news, on the top of page 17, I'll highlight rape in the third degree, House Bill 1002, sponsored by Representative Orwell.

that would eliminate the requirement that a victim clearly express lack of consent in order to prove rape in the third degree.

That passed the House unanimously and made it out of Senate law and justice and has already moved to Senate role, so that is advancing very quickly.

And just to kind of characterize a lot of the movement around this part of the portfolio, we are seeing a tremendous amount of bipartisan support.

So I think we'll continue to see movement in this area in future sessions as well.

The sexual assault kit notice, House Bill 1016, we had a lot of correspondence with Council Member Herbold about this.

It's a bill sponsored by Representative Caldier that would connect survivors of sexual assault to appropriate providers and put monetary penalties in place for hospitals that do not comply.

Council Member Herbold had expressed some frustrations about just why weren't the bill drafters just looking at complete, you know, a requirement for hospitals with those stronger enforcement provisions.

And so we're in discussions right now with some of the advocates.

And I know you guys are also working on some potential local policy opportunities to address that as well.

Absolutely.

And for our public health board members, I have learned through an inquiry to central staff.

Oh, yes, you too.

The public health boards have the jurisdiction and authority to regulate in this area.

So I'm just putting that out there.

That's nice.

Yeah, we do that.

Seriously, can we work on this?

I can put you in touch with the advocate that I've been talking with that has also been very active in the rape kit legislation at the state legislature and has a bill with Patty Murray in Congress as well.

Super, and Council Member Jeannie Cole-Wells is now chairing that committee so I think among the three of us here and Council Member Cole-Wells that we ought to be able to move something pretty quickly.

We will, she says.

Thank you.

That'll be a great partnership kind of between what's moving at the legislative level and the local level as well.

I'm also going to highlight, and I want to stress how amazing this is to see movement around sexual assault, House Bill 1166 on the bottom of page 17, a representative Orwell proposal that would address the backlog of untested sexual assault kits in Washington state.

The level of support for that is remarkable, given there is a very significant fiscal note attached to that, and I know for many of you, prioritizing a revenue source that does not penalize victims was very important, and so this would not do that.

And that passed the House unanimously on March 6th, which is incredible, and has been referred to law and justice, so that is still moving forward.

And then, domestic violence, law enforcement, House Bill 1225 on the top of page 18, a representative Jenkins proposal that would require law enforcement officers secure firearms when responding to domestic violence incidents passed the House 60 to 38 on March 5th and has been referred to Senate law and justice.

And Bill, Council Member Juarez has been very involved in Native American women on the top of page 19. House Bill 1713, sponsored by Representative Mosbrougher, notably a Republican, would require training and liaison positions be established to improve best practices and protocol relating to missing and murdered indigenous women.

That also passed the House unanimously on March 5th.

Congratulations.

And is awaiting executive action in the Senate State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee.

I'm going to move on a bit under safety net and civil rights, moving to the top of page 22, and start with certificates of discharge.

This is a Representative Hanson proposal called the New Hope Act.

It's House Bill 1041 that would address issues many of you have highlighted as priorities for the city in terms of eliminating barriers that present obstacles for employment and housing and kind of other social justice implications.

This would do so by expanding the eligibility to vacate certain nonviolent criminal records.

And that passed the House 95-0 on March 1st and is scheduled to be heard in Senate Law and Justice on March 21st.

I'll then move to, on page 23, Agency Employees Harassment, House Bill 1692, that would put disclosure protections in place for employees reporting sexual harassment.

And that bill passed the House, again, quite a vote, 98 to 0. and will be heard in Senate State Government and Tribal Affairs on the 22nd.

Wage and salary information also on page 23, House Bill 1696, sponsored by Representative Dolan.

This would expand on last year's Equal Pay Bill by prohibiting employees, excuse me, employers from asking about pay history.

And that passed the House 56 to 40 and has been referred to Senate Labor.

Not quite as unanimous as some of the other ones.

Was there a bill run this session related to wage transparency?

I know that this includes, if you request, there is a requirement that the employer provide kind of the pay scale to employees, so I think that those provisions are included in this bill.

With wage transparency, I'm referring to several states have laws that say that employees can share their wages or their amount of wages with other employees and they can't be punished for it.

And I thought that there was a bill that they were running this session to do that.

I believe that that, and I can double check that for you, but I believe that was part of the Equal Pay Opportunity Act, that you could not retaliate against employees for sharing what their salary information is with other people.

Absolutely.

That's also my recollection based on my conversations with Representative Senn who was the primary sponsor of the Equal Pay Opportunity Act last session.

I'm excited to see that this is being layered on top of that.

I do think it's an essential component and I just want to confirm that the bill applies to government agencies as well as private employers.

I believe so.

I'll follow up on that just to make sure.

It would be helpful to get an understanding of that.

Obviously we at the city have done a lot of work around wage transparency, pay transparency, and I led those efforts a few years ago under a different mayoral administration, and now that information is being published regularly.

I think we just had our second cycle, maybe our third cycle of publishing that information would be really important to make sure that we layer on top of that for our hiring practices, not asking for pay salary histories.

It doesn't seem like tracking people into pay history discriminates between private and public sector employment.

And in the initial read of the bill, I did not see any differentiation between that.

So I'm assuming that that is the case, but we'll double check that and make sure and let you know.

But yeah, a great extension of a huge success last year.

So exciting to see that moving.

The LGBTQ Commission on the top of page 25 would establish this commission within the governor's office and is still moving, having passed the Senate 34 to 14 on March 6th and is scheduled for a hearing in House State Government on the 20th.

And lastly, congratulations on that as well.

I'll highlight immigrants in the workplace, Senate Bill 5497 on the bottom of page 25, otherwise known as the Keep Washington Working Act.

This is a response to some of the challenges that we face with the federal government and would put limitations on data sharing with federal immigration authorities without a judicial warrant.

And while the House bill is no longer moving, the Senate bill passed 30 to 16 and is now in the House Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee.

And I will now turn it over to Christina to finish with some of our transportation priorities that are still moving forward.

Unfortunately, I have to start with some bad news, and that would be related to the automated enforcement bill.

There was quite a bit of support around this, but this is the block the box and bus lanes.

And we, you know, this is by far the furthest this concept has made it through.

Unfortunately, it wasn't far enough.

So we're, you know, talking with other stakeholders and just kind of evaluating next steps on this one.

We are very disappointed in this.

We are in conversations now about options moving forward, which is challenging certainly, but we'll happily keep you all updated as those discussions continue.

My understanding from just media accounts is that The reason why it didn't move forward is because of concerns that the ACLU has about the use of the technology.

And I'm just wondering, how does that differ for these automated cameras from the other automated cameras that are already authorized?

It doesn't.

And we are working to follow up given the level of the unanticipated level of opposition around that to sit down with them and go through both with our surveillance ordinance and other protections that are in place.

how we could address those concerns moving forward, looking at, you know, hopefully moving into a partnership next session.

They were strongly opposed late in the stage.

And so we are going to sit down with them and are looking for a better understanding of what those concerns stem from.

And we may have things in place that we can relate to them that are already in place to protect people.

you can do to help.

Let us know.

Oh, yeah.

We will keep you posted.

This is, I think, the one that we all poured a little bit of our soul into this year.

So we're really eager to see some form of this go through.

And Representative Fitzgibbon has been amazing in this process.

He has fought for this just kind of with all of his being.

So we're really thankful to him for all of his efforts around this.

And like I said, we're continuing to engage with stakeholders around this to see if there's a possible next step.

But so that was my bad news.

I wanted to also just touch briefly on an issue that a lot of you are really tracking, which is the scooter bill.

So it's the middle of page 26 in your bulletin.

1772 passed the House, 85 to 13. They're still working on issues related to indemnification, but it is moving forward.

So it's been scheduled for a public hearing in the Senate Transportation Committee on March 20th.

So we know conversations are very actively still going on, but we will continue to track this and let you know when it would be a great opportunity to weigh in.

I'm going to go back a little bit on this automated bus lane bill.

I'm really disappointed in the outcome there, and we had some conversations with folks over at the ACLU of Washington when it looked like things were getting tenuous, and so I think we have a really important role to play in trying to negotiate with ACLU and others who have some privacy concerns.

I think that we here in the city of Seattle made a lot of advances in terms of addressing their concerns when we considered the surveillance technology ordinance, for example.

I'm curious as to why that wouldn't apply in this scenario to adequately address some of those privacy concerns.

I suppose my only regret here is that I didn't have an earlier indication that this bill was in this much trouble, and I would have appreciated having had more advanced notice and a more realistic diagnosis of the tenuous nature of where that bill was at.

So I just wanted to flag that in the future, I hope that you all could share a little bit more of that granular detail with us around the politics of some of these bills.

I know things are moving really fast, but we have been mobilized in the past in this session as well that required really fast attention to things that are priorities for us.

And so I think you've seen from this council that there are several council members who are willing I just wanted to say that.

And then lastly, I'll end by saying that I really putting himself out there on this.

I think he gave it a very valiant try and effort, and I think we would be remiss in not expressing our collective gratitude for his efforts in this space.

It was a clear priority for the City of Seattle, and we were the motivation behind the introduction of this bill, and I just want to thank Representative Fitzgibbon for reintroducing this again and fighting the good fight and making the arguments and the debate for us as this was one of our top priorities.

And it's gonna continue to be.

Absolutely.

I would ask, given how strong the opposition became suddenly, it would be very helpful to follow up with you in the very near future, perhaps to engage in a discussion with The ACLU, I think that would be very helpful in us paving the road for future success, maybe next session.

I'm happy to have that conversation.

That would be great.

your points there Councilmember Gonzalez.

I also want to publicly thank Representative Fitzgibbon.

Frankly a lot of folks in the Seattle delegation have been doing some amazing work for us down there and it's really great to see folks standing up and fighting for some of the things that people live and work in Seattle need.

So that's been outstanding to see.

On the specifics around this bill.

I'd also be willing to be to engage if we're closely with you on our surveillance and privacy work here.

And I think this is going to be something that continues to come up.

From a functioning city perspective, it's just not going to ever be practical to place a sworn police officer on every corner, which is essentially how we would otherwise have to police block the box and blocking sidewalks and bus lanes.

So we need to have some sort of automated enforcement, and I totally understand ACLU's high-level concerns about privacy.

I believe the city has put in place a really robust set of plans and requirements on our agencies to require the transparency and how we manage that data.

I do think that it's on us to continue to demonstrate to the public that we are living up to the standards we set on the bill, and we need to probably continue to do some work there.

I hope that Senator Carlisle's bill statewide encompasses some of the things that we've done at the local level because this tension between privacy rights and our ability to enforce the law is a tension that will continue to exist.

And they're not mutually exclusive.

We can navigate that, and I believe Seattle has shown leadership in that, which is why it's kind of disappointing that this bill is where we are because of all the work we've done.

But I think we just need to double down those efforts going forward to show how we can use technology to make us more efficient and not at the expense of people's privacy.

And given the level of trust and collaboration around that with the ACLU, I do think we will take you up on that in terms of following up.

And I did want to highlight just because you talked a little bit about the kind of the law enforcement angle there, Chief Best has been so amazing.

engaging with committee members at a drop of a hat through the weekend, making calls, emailing.

She has been such an advocate for this as well.

So many, many departments, but in particular, Chief Best at SPD has also been really engaged.

Yeah, and just the frustration when you have, you know, talk radio hosts saying, I violate these laws all the time because I think they're stupid.

And, I mean, it's just absurd that folks think it's actually funny to violate bus lane laws when we are trying to move people through our region.

They are actively undermining it and undermining its legislation from a kind of far right wing perspective.

And it's not just, you know, sort of the impact to moving a massive quantity of people through our city through the use of dedicated bus lanes, which, in my mind, have finally been accepted as the standard and the norm and the common sense solution of how to use our right of ways in the city, and it took us a long time to even get there.

But it's also the issues related to what happens when people clog up those lanes and how that impacts accessibility for people who have mobility issues or sight issues in our city, who just, I have personally seen people be trapped on one side of the street because they cannot get through because their bus lanes are so clogged up and they're trying to get through and they're being put in situations that are severely limiting not just the mobility of the people in the buses and other cars on the roadway, but of other people trying to get around with different modes, including by foot.

And so I know that the disability community is extremely disappointed in the failure of this bill.

They had made this a top priority for them, for their community.

in the state legislature and I just think it's unfortunate that we weren't able to find an opportunity where there could be consensus found to deal with some of the legitimate reasonable privacy concerns while also addressing some of the other complex intersectionalities that exist as it relates to this particular issue.

I will also say on that point, Rooted in Rights was really helpful in this.

They put together an amazing video that actually we heard swayed quite a few legislators on this and helped get the bill to where it went.

I'd encourage all of you to check out the video that Rooted in Rights put together.

It clearly illustrates the struggles of people who are disabled to get around downtown.

They showed that quite a few times of having to actually take the wheelchair out completely into traffic or go into traffic and go an entire block down while you're in the traffic lanes to be able to access the sidewalk.

So that was a really powerful voice and they were incredibly helpful in this conversation.

One more question about this bill.

It was my understanding that the reason why the ACLU is opposing it is not because of the privacy concerns contained in this bill, but that there is another bill that was moving forward that would allow law enforcement agencies to use the images captured in automated cameras for other law enforcement purposes, and that bill failed.

But the parking, the parking bill, there was a parking bill that was, it was...

I think it was a Caldeir proposal and that bill is dead now.

I think what we, it would be helpful, we don't, I think it would be helpful for us to get a clear understanding from them of, you know, I read that in the paper as well, but I do think us collaboratively working to understand the crux of, yeah.

I'm just hoping it's not too late.

And whether or not there's a way to do that this session rather than waiting for next session.

Understood.

I'm happy to follow up with you offline on some ideas that we're exploring currently.

And we'd really appreciate the willingness to engage at that level as we have a stakeholder we partner with oftentimes who hopefully we can address their concerns.

I think that's all we have for you today.

Sorry for the mixed news.

Well, I think you got a good flavor for our positive anticipation of that passing.

And so I think to Councilman Gonzalez's point, the sense I sort of have is I wish we could have done more had we known that.

I actually thought I was fairly optimistic about that bill.

But I'm not blaming you, just saying that.

understood.

We'll brief you more on Thursday when you're down talking to legislators and we can explore some of the options that we're looking at with you.

Well you all are doing phenomenal work and there's a lot of information so we look forward to working with you this week so thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Looking forward to seeing you guys.

One more question, Mr. President.

Catherine Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Just one more bill that I'm hoping you guys can help resurrect before the end of session.

Bill necessary to implement the budget, House Bill 1053. This is Representative Reeves' bill on the tampon tax.

You know, since it does have a budget implication and hopefully it will be not a big budget implication.

I really do think that this is an equity issue that this council has expressed support for in the past to get rid of that tax.

Originally, I think a few years ago, there was a fiscal note tied to this that indicated there would be tens of millions of dollars in terms of impact to the state if this tax were repealed.

The good news is that their latest fiscal note shows that that fiscal note was wildly off.

Thanks to Eric Sun from our central staff who's broken down the data for us.

Really the impact on cities is only $600,000 roughly, and the impact to the city of Seattle would only be about $100,000, just slightly over $100,000.

So with that budget dust impact, I really am hoping that House Bill 1053 can be resurrected.

We'll look into that and let you know.

Thank you so much.

Christina, I'm sorry.

The video you referenced that would be helpful.

Can you describe it or link it to me?

I'd like to get it to our clerk actually.

I'm happy to send it to you.

And who did you say produced that?

Rooted in Rights.

Okay.

If you could send us a link, I'll send it to the clerk who's listening and that might be a good exposure for us in the meantime.

We'll do.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

And we'll see you down there.

Okay.

So very quickly, we're going to go around the table and go over our preview of today's full council actions.

Let me just say a few things on what I have, and then Council Member Juarez, you have sort of a compressed schedule, so I'm going to go there and then come back to Council Member Herbold.

So we just have two things, if I may, from the from our committee, and that would be the appointment of Saad Bashir as our Chief Technology Officer.

Many of you have appeared in front of the committee several times, and I'm looking forward to that appointment process this afternoon.

And we have an appointment of Richard Short to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, and I think he's quite a catch, and we've had a good time going over his resume and his background as to why he would like to serve on the Ethics and Elections Commission.

So we have those two items for full vote this afternoon.

And Council Member Orrish, you have the floor, ma'am.

All right.

Good morning.

Thank you for letting me go early, Council President.

I appreciate that.

The Civic Development, Public Assets, and Native Communities Committee has nothing on this afternoon's agenda.

There'll be a CIPNA meeting on Wednesday, March 20th at 2. At that meeting, we will discuss four matters, a property transfer between parks and Seattle Public Utilities for a water quality project on the Ship Canal, a renewal of a permit for use of DNR land, excuse me, for a community park and water access in Lowellhurst, renewal of a permit to use DNR land for water access in the Arboretum, and the Soundview Playfield Master Use Permit for Field Lighting.

In the District, last week the Office of Community Planning and Development held the first in a series of community meetings to plan for the development around the 130th Street Light.

between Northgate and Linwood.

I believe there are four plans, so this is one of four.

So we're gonna start doing the charrettes about how the community would like this light rail station, what they would like to see.

The open house was at Ingram High School, and staff from SDOT, Sound Transit, Department of Neighborhoods, and our staff as well, we had a booth there.

It was a huge turnout, well over 100 people, and as expected, people were discussing transit-oriented housing and development, transit-oriented childcare, issues of walkability, green spaces, age-friendly, livability.

and how they would like to see this proposed light rail, this rich transportation spine used for the community.

In addition, I'm really excited to share this with my colleagues.

Thanks, our office, Tyler Emske and our staff, they drafted a resolution which was passed by the 36th District, the 32nd District and the 46th District in that we ask that the 130th stop be built concurrently with the Linwood Link in 2024 rather than 2031, which means that we were asking that 130th come in seven years earlier.

We've had really good discussions with Sound Transit and Mr. Rogoff about the, just the common sense of building the 130th Street at the same time as Linwood.

Besides saving millions of dollars, I mean, you only want to move dirt once.

We don't want to disrupt traffic more than once.

And we also, which I learned from public comment up in the 32nd and the 36th, is a lot of folks were talking about using the same workforce in preparing to work with labor in the city on employment and scheduling, et cetera.

So those were the reasons.

And so we will, I'll be presenting to this council, hopefully after Sound Transit, your yes vote in moving forward that we move light rail seven years earlier on the 130th stop.

Normally, I don't talk about awards I get, but this award I got, and it really means a lot to me, from the Seattle Indian Health Board.

It's the Adeline Garcia Community Service Award.

And we had a luncheon Friday.

I want to say the Four Seasons, but it's not the Four Seasons anymore, right?

It's the Fairmont, I think.

Yeah.

And the reason why this is important, at least for me, because it comes from community, but a lot of people were there.

We had, who's our Director of Board of Health at King County?

Patty Hayes.

Yeah, Patty Hayes sat at our table which was great.

Oh, I forgot Patty's name.

All of a sudden, I blinked.

The Adeline Garcia Award is so special because I knew Adeline Garcia.

She was one of the original founders of the American Indian Women's Service League in the 1960s.

I knew her along with Tilly Cavanaugh, Ella Aquino, and Julie Johnson, who's still with us and chair of the Native American Caucus for the state of Washington.

And I'm honored because Adeline, Auntie, was wonderful.

And she was one of those aunties where I hated to have to get up there and say she was a wonderful woman, but she was mean.

She was an auntie.

She did grab you by the back of your neck and tell you when you were messing up.

As a foster child in the 70s, Adeline was a, she was like a second mother to me, so it really meant a lot to get that award.

Second, and I want to thank Council Member Baggio, I know she tried to make it but couldn't.

In our district, as you know, we have a mosque.

And Saturday I participated in what's called a cup of tea, which our mosque does anyway, but we wanted to really, they sent out more information to the Idris Mosque to get to know your Muslim neighbor.

And there was a huge turnout with press about the shootings that happened in New Zealand.

And it was just, you know, I've driven by that mosque at least 30 years.

I've been in that mosque three times and worshiped with the imam there.

We've gone to the feasts there.

But having everybody of just about every faith pack the mosque Saturday, it was really, really wonderful.

And it was nice that people came together to talk not only about being neighbors, but about caring for each other and about really talking about loving thy neighbor.

So we had people come from everywhere, and it was packed.

My understanding is that tonight, the Muslim Association of Puget Sound is holding a solidarity event at 7 o'clock to honor the victims of the New Zealand shooting.

I understand that the mayor sent out a statement as well, as did our office.

And I'll end with that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Morris.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes, I first wanted to start my briefing with information that you may have already received.

A constituent has contacted me to let us know that at the 2 o'clock meeting today, there will be members of Patriot Prayer and 3%, specifically, I believe, Matt Marshall and Joey Gibson.

The security is aware, but they are, I believe, planning to testify at our full council meeting today.

As far as what I have on my committee agenda today, or up on full council, there's a reappointment to the LGBTQ Commission.

It's a council reappointment.

There is no CRUADA meeting this week.

We do have Regional Transit Committee on Wednesday for purposes of public notice because we signed the proclamation in between meetings.

I just want to, for public notice, recognize that we did as a council sign a proclamation presented yesterday to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year.

We're joined by Council Member González, and as far as major events that are coming up for me next week.

We've got Wednesday morning, Neighborhood House 113th anniversary event.

It's also a big week for arts events.

There's Wednesday's Arts Fund Luncheon.

There also will be the opening for the Office of Arts and Culture, its new office at the King Street Station.

And then Friday, there is going to be an Arts Corps Gala in Fremont.

I have on my list something that Council Member Mosqueda is going to, just the anti-displacement luncheon.

I look forward to hear more from you about that.

Appreciate that this is happening and just, yeah, that it's good stuff.

Happy to be there and we're going to have to make up time with the state delegation.

Very good.

Council Member Bryant.

Thank you.

Sustainability and Transportation Committee does not have anything on this afternoon's full agenda.

But we do have a meeting tomorrow afternoon.

Four items on tomorrow's agenda.

The first, as folks at this table are certainly aware, this coming weekend will be the end of buses in the bus tunnel.

I guess we'll have to rename that tunnel something else now.

The train tunnel.

And that, as you all know, will have a significant impact on as hundreds of buses will move to the surface streets on traffic.

So part of the kind of ongoing challenges for the next couple years, this will mark the next phase of it.

So in committee, we're going to get a briefing from SDOT on just an update on some of the pieces they've put into place to address that.

So I look forward to hearing that update.

I will use that as an opportunity to get an update from SDOT on their progress on the connected downtown bike network.

We passed a resolution last year prioritizing making some of those investments.

A lot of the work is going to be happening in the coming months and so I want to make sure that that's on track too.

We will get a briefing on street ends.

So SDOT manages Oh, sorry.

SDOT manages the street ends, shoreline, and so they're going to brief us on making, historically some of those street ends have been, landscaped in a way to not feel like public park, or they've just been overgrown in a way that people can't use them to access shorelines.

And so SDOT's working proactively to make sure that those street ends continue to be a public right-of-way and access to shorelines.

And we will also have friends of public street ends at the table to talk about some of the work that they're doing.

Karen Daubert is going to be part of that conversation.

We will have a public hearing on a proposed comp plan amendment relating to transportation impact fees.

So we are trying to add a transportation project list to the comprehensive plan, which is a prerequisite towards considering transportation impact fees.

The original intent was to do that at the end of last year, but it's currently going through a challenge with a hearing examiner.

That hearing examiner challenge has been pushed off for a couple more months, so it's probably not gonna be till late spring or early summer that we actually hear that.

But the notice had gone out to do this public hearing, which is a requirement, 30 days notice to do a public hearing.

And so we're going to proceed with that.

But just want to be clear that we were considering later today comprehensive plan updates for the year.

And this obviously will not be in that.

It could be in a future comp plan update if we find a path for that.

But we're going to go ahead and check off the public hearing on that.

what we can.

And then the last thing, a resolution we'll consider voting on to support the University District Station Area Mobility Plan.

This has been a community-led visioning process about making the rebuild of Northeast 43rd Street a pedestrian-friendly environment.

So we'll have a discussion on that and hopefully pass that resolution.

Very good.

Thank you.

Well, we have our city attorney colleagues here.

I just want to acknowledge many of you heard that Carlton Sue passed last week, and I want to say blessings to all of you.

I'm so sorry.

He was such a good friend and a wonderful attorney, so I want to acknowledge that.

Thank you, city attorney's office.

I have not heard that yet.

I knew he was ill and so my sympathies also go to Carlton's family and the entire city attorney's office and our city attorney.

It's a big, big loss for the city.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate the fact that I got a call Friday.

Thank you.

We have a couple of things, actually four things on the agenda this afternoon.

I want to say Council Member Gonzalez, thank you for being with my committee.

Last Wednesday, we had some complications and I do want to say special thanks to Lisa Kay that what happened, we've got some materials and they were actually stapled backwards.

So at the table, we were trying to get that straightened out.

We did.

Lisa was very helpful.

I just want to acknowledge the fact that it was complicated.

Things are in good shape.

We've got two ordinances and a resolution.

that we will be voting on today that correct and amend some errors in coding at the end of our 2019 budget.

So last December, as we were passing some of the ordinances.

So this is just proposing a few adjustments.

They're minor for the most part.

I'll explain it more this afternoon.

But again, I want to say thanks to Lisa.

It was a bit of a...

a circus there for a few minutes.

Also, we have the Hilt Lakata Agreement, which is about Pike Place Market, the vendors' agreement.

We do this every 10 years.

And what was delightful at my committee meeting is that the Pike Place Market leadership, including some of the vendors, were there saying how much they appreciated the approach and it was inclusive.

So they're moving forward with that with smiles on their faces.

This coming Friday, we have two special committees.

One is our Select Committee on Homelessness and Housing.

It's at 9.30 a.m.

We had one last week.

I will be chairing this one.

We're going to be discussing two things I think of interest to everybody.

One is how we I mean, the collective, we, that city, the county, nonprofits, and some of our corporate assistants helped with the homelessness response in the recent February snowstorms.

And I've reached out to our human services department, to Metro, to our emergency services planners.

We have a pretty sharp emergency plan for roads and for buses now.

It's been 10 years in the making, but it worked better than it has in the past.

We saw that this time.

What we don't have is the same kind of emergency response for people who are outside, people who are homeless.

So I'm really going to be pushing for that this year.

The Metro response has been great, as has Parks.

I want to acknowledge Christopher Williams and his staff, Jason Johnson and his staff.

We know that we did some things well, but everything could be improved.

And special thanks, I don't know what all of you know about what Marty Hartman did during the snow response.

She stepped up, opened up some other facilities.

Starbucks brought food.

Vulcan opened up yet another, facility, and it all happened in a matter of hours.

And we knew the snow was coming, but to have that orchestrated and organized in the future I think is going to be very important.

So that is something we will hear more about Friday.

We're also going to hear an update from our client group on the regional governments.

Tess Colby is going to be here, and Mark Jones, many of you remember.

having met Mark, so he will be here talking about his report, what his recommendations are, and how we can move that forward.

And it all boils down, as we have been saying now for I don't know how many years, it is about housing, that we have to have places for people to go, and the continuum for people with very low income, people who need support around mental health and behavioral health, and to get that moving.

So we're also working with municipal court, and I want to say thanks to our presiding judge, Ed McKenna.

He and his team were over talking with us about 10 days ago about how they want to be included in this as well.

So progress, we'll be hearing that 930 this coming Friday.

And I also have a special finance and neighborhoods committee at 2 p.m.

on Friday that's just a makeup from a delay last month, and I'm going to be gone the last week of March for a few days.

So we're going to have a special committee 2 o'clock Friday.

And lastly, I'm bringing a proclamation forward this afternoon on the National Safe Place Week.

This is a program that connects runaway and homeless youth ages 12 to 17 to services.

Big thanks to Melinda Giavengo, from youth care, and also Benjamin Warren will be there from youth care.

And we have, I think Jody Waits is going to be there as well today.

So thank you for your support.

Also YMCA is involved.

So we'll just be signing that proclamation.

I think I've got it here to circulate.

Thank you very much, Allison, for reminding me.

So we have two copies.

So thank you for getting that started.

Council President, I'm done.

Thank you very much, Council Member Baxter.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Good morning.

First, I'm really excited because today is MHA Day.

So with everything that we're talking about, I also just want to acknowledge four years in the making plus.

Thank you to Council Member Johnson for your stewardship in getting us here and all the council members who've been having this discussion for far too long.

I'm just really excited about today.

I don't have anything else to add to today's council agenda from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee, though I do have a resolution that we began working on a few weeks ago with all of you, with members from our departments, with folks from the change team and silence breakers, and with the mayor's office.

This is the resolution that includes a direction and guidance and our hopes for the confirmation process of city department heads in the future.

This resolution includes many of the edits that we received from all of you, from the mayor's office, and from some stakeholders.

And we will send out the final version.

Oh, I should make sure that you get the one that I passed out because I think I've got one in also.

Thanks to Monica.

I appreciate the clerk's office going through this.

Thank you.

So thank you so much again to Monica from the clerk's office for working with Councilmember Bagshaw to send in some suggested edits as well.

Again, this resolution is to ensure that the council has a solid understanding of our expectations as we move forward with potential appointments and nominations and a good understanding of the process the executive used to put forward her nominees or his nominees in the future.

In some cases, we also understand that our departments are various sizes, various scopes, so there may not be a need for the process as outlined in the resolution.

So the resolution is really, I think, flexible.

It recognizes that there's different sizes, scopes, levels of engagement with our community.

But the selection, the confirmation, and the re-confirmation process afforded in this resolution make sure that the public has an opportunity to understand what our goals are on council and what the mayor's goals are and the vision is for the department, as well as to make sure that we all have a transparent understanding of what qualifications are, experience, accomplishments, leaderships, and other qualities that we want to make sure we consider as we consider as various new department heads.

The resolution also helps ensure that the process incorporates a racial equity analysis and that folks who are directly affected by department decisions have a opportunity to engage in the process.

So I do think that with the amendments that you've all included, the ongoing process that we've engaged with over the last few weeks, that this is really forward-looking.

It ensures transparency, inclusion, and an understanding that we need to ensure that we're taking in different perspectives and backgrounds, especially with some of our folks who are most affected by the direct work of the department.

I hope that what you see here helps solidify what we want to think of in the future.

Again, this is forward-looking, and we'll make sure that we send out an electronic version of this copy so that you all have it on time.

Mr. President, what's that deadline again?

Is it 11 or noon for consideration at 2?

I think it's noon.

Okay, thank you.

I have an hour and 10 minutes, so we will get that in your inbox.

But for you, 11 o'clock.

Oh, no.

All right, so thank you so much.

If there's any last-minute changes, we'll make sure to flag those for you.

But again, thank you to all the council members for your really hands-on work with helping to edit this.

Just want to see if anybody has any comments on that.

Any comments?

Thank you for working with all the parties that are looking at this process.

And so I think we're okay.

We'll get it posted before noon.

Appreciate that.

Should be ready for vote this afternoon.

Excellent.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I do have one more handout for you.

As Councilmember Herbold mentioned, we do have a Lunch and Learn later this week.

It's at noon on March 21st.

And this is really taking off sort of what we're gonna discuss today.

I'm calling this MHA, now what?

MHA gives us the opportunity to build after four years of intense conversations with community in really only about six additional percent of the city that's not currently zoned for this type of density.

So we know that density is one element of how we create an inclusive and affordable city.

We also know that we need to do things like make sure that there's more family size units, make sure that more folks are able to have first-time home buyer options, that we're doing more to protect tenants, that we're thinking about what affordable housing looks like and how to protect existing housing as we bring in new housing.

So I call it the ingredients in the cake that we're trying to bake here and really look forward to working with all of you as we think about what the next steps are.

Folks who are invited to the table at this brown bag at noon on Thursday include Puget Sound SAGE, Ringnear Beach Action Coalition, the BCIA and Catholic Community Services, the Housing Development Consortium, Homesite, and Washington Community Action Network.

So it'll be a nice conversation for at least an hour and gives us a chance to sort of tee up some items that I think are in various committees going forward.

In my committee on March 21st at 930, we'll have three items.

One is four appointments to the Domestic Workers Standards Board, two appointments to the City Light Review Panel, and lastly, the Seattle City Light Skagit Environmental Endowment Commission budget.

And then we'll also begin a briefing on Initiative 124, which a lot of you were very supportive of its passage as our great city attorneys.

I'm looking out there, continuing to defend initiative 1 to 4 related to hotel worker protection safety and health We're gonna have a briefing in our committee as well to see what else the council may do in the meantime Last Friday.

I just want to say I had a great visit in district 3 we went and did office hours at an amazing bakery owned by a Mexican immigrant who is an incredible ally of ours and I'd love to get there and I want us to do a field trip there so we can all have a hands-on art experience together.

tomorrow speaking at Future Wise Luncheon, Wednesday speaking at the United Farm Workers Rally at the Starbucks shareholder meeting.

Again, this is related to the resolution we passed last fall that stands in solidarity with the farm workers, the dairy workers, who've experienced retaliation, intimidation, and wage theft while trying to produce the milk that Starbucks mostly uses through Dairy Gold.

So it's a great opportunity to highlight our commitment to labor standards there.

And then Friday, I'm going to be continuing our last day for District 3 tours.

We're going to go to the Capitol Hill Eco-District and Gay City.

And thank you all so very much.

Thank you.

On the March 21st Housing Development and Anti-Deplacement Strategy Brown Bag, some of us, I won't, I'll be in Olympia for our Council Lobby Day, I think some of you.

So I'm going to try to get a feel for how many of us are going to be in Olympia versus here to make sure that the Olympia trip is We get some good participation, so we'll see how that plays out.

Thanks for that, Council Member Muscata.

Deeply appreciate it.

Welcome your staff if you can't come.

Okay.

Council Member Johnson.

Good morning.

After four years and 200 plus meetings, 40 some odd of which were led by the council, we are at a final action on mandatory housing affordability today.

So I'm excited to be shepherding across the finish line four bills, actually three bills in a council resolution this afternoon.

The first is a council bill that would amend the comprehensive plan to implement the program.

The second would amend our Seattle Municipal Code to implement the program.

The third would implement MAJ on a particular site in the Northgate neighborhood.

And the fourth is a resolution calling on the city to continue our work to complement MHA implementation in other places outside the land use code.

For each of those bills, there's a technical amendment adopting some findings associated with them and removing the university district.

We are going to have the university district have its own separate bill that's on today's introduction referral calendar to be referred to the citywide MHA committee and that particular piece of legislation will be considered later on in the spring.

Those are the only items related to the citywide committee on MHA that are in front of full council today.

We had the great pleasure of co-sponsoring alongside Council Member Mosqueda a second resolution that we'll be discussing today.

31871, which endorses the final report of the King County Regional Affordable Housing Task Force.

The task force came up with a series of I think about 60 or so recommendations, several policy recommendations, several funding recommendations about how each of our cities within King County should be expanding our affordable housing.

and excited to help shepherd that through.

Council Member O'Brien mentioned the pedestrian focus rebuild of 43rd.

That'll be in his committee on Tuesday afternoon.

Thank you, Council Member O'Brien.

But I also know that you have an amendment for us to talk about related to the citywide MHA proposal, and I now will turn it over to you to explain that amendment.

Thank you, Council Member Johnson.

Fun kind of gravelly voice.

I'm good on water.

Thank you, Councilmember Bakeshaw.

Passing around an amendment that I will be bringing this afternoon.

This is specific to a site that is going through a contract rezone as a quasi-judicial process.

It's 7009 Greenwood Avenue.

We made a decision on this last year.

That decision was appealed to the Superior Court.

Just last week, I believe, it was remanded to us to make a couple little changes.

There's a couple options here.

That contract rezone was done in advance of MHA where they were looking for additional height.

And what we, I believe, unanimously agreed on through the quasi-judicial process was a property use and development agreement that allowed some heights and some other setback and protection requirements for adjacent single family properties that the project owned.

My amendment would continue to keep that process alive, so it would exclude that property from the MHA agreement and instead have the conditions that we imposed upon it as part of that quasi-judicial process remain in place, including likely some revisions to the property use and development agreement, which I imagine will come back to us in the next few weeks.

Alternatively, we could include it in the MHA process, but then all that work we've done would be for naught.

And my preference at this point would to keep that process going forward that we thought was complete but is not quite at the moment, but hopefully will be complete in the next month or so.

So that's what this amendment does.

And I think it's fairly typical of what we've done with the MHA legislation is where there are contract rezones in place.

But the property hasn't been built is to just carve those out because they were under their own agreement.

And again, there is an affordability requirement on this as part of the PUDA that we put in there that will probably not identical to MHA attempted to mirror.

the what we were going to do in MHA.

So again, this would exclude this property.

The intent, I believe, was to do that.

And I think this is a bit of a cleanup because I think it was excluded in one place and not the other place.

But this amendment would make it clear that this is excluded and is going through its own separate process, which is almost complete.

Very good.

A friendly amendment from my perspective and very appropriate considering the quasi-judicial nature that the property has been under for the last several years.

So I'll save most of my speechifying for this afternoon, Council President, and just want to ask that my colleagues consider, you know, we're going to have four different opportunities to give speeches this afternoon.

I'm going to try to limit my speeches to two of those four opportunities.

I'd encourage my colleagues to think about this.

will follow your lead.

Thank you, Councilman Johnson.

Councilwoman Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I think that's excellent advice considering it's supposed to be about 69 degrees today.

So keep that in mind, colleagues.

I have nothing on this afternoon's agenda that is up for vote.

There is one item on the introduction referral calendar that pertains to my committee, and that is the introduction of the council bill for City Council to consider.

the implementation and evaluation plan related to the family's education, preschool and promise levy, which once again was passed by voters overwhelmingly this past November.

And we will have another conversation about the proposed implementation and evaluation plan in my committee next week.

That's Wednesday, March 27th at our regularly scheduled time of 9.30 a.m.

I again encourage you all who have interest in that to please join us.

The 27th of March will be the first opportunity we have to hear from central staff around issues that are being identified both by my office and other offices.

So invite you to join us to hear from our central staff what those issues are and how we intend to resolve them.

We will also have in We have an executive session scheduled for April 1st related to the FEPP levy to make sure that folks understand some legal issues that might be relevant to your consideration as you are thinking about potential amendments to the implementation and evaluation plan.

So happy to answer any questions about that particular aspect should you have them.

And that is all.

Okay, before we go into executive session, I've asked our City Attorney, Pete Holmes, to come and share a few thoughts with us on the issue that Council Member Bagshaw brought to our attention and Council Member, Council Member, is there something I don't know?

I feel like I'm one of you.

City Attorney Holmes, you have the floor.

Thank you, Council President Harreld, and thank you all.

It was really a sad day, Friday.

Carlton's wife, Cindy, called me in the afternoon to say that Carlton had passed away in the afternoon of Thursday the 14th.

As you might imagine, there hasn't been a dry eye over on the 20th floor at my office.

It was very difficult to take.

I apologize for not being able to call each one of you.

I was trying to talk with all of the members of the government affairs section one-on-one.

We will certainly let you know.

Cindy has promised to let us know about services, and we'll certainly let you all know.

As you know, Carlton suffered a great deal toward the end here.

We were hopeful, though, that an accommodation was going to allow us to continue to tap his talent and love of the city.

And so it was really, really very hard for us.

I don't think there is a a lawyer who loves the city more, who is better at his job, and who is a more gentle soul than Carlton.

And we're going to all miss him greatly.

I thought I would close with a little bit of good news that we received on Friday.

It was kind of overshadowed, but it's an example of what Carlton helped deliver.

We had a double win on the Rentbury case, which of course is, you know, litigation that's maintained by the Government Affairs Section.

Judge Jones granted our motions to dismiss the complaint, not only on standing grounds, but on the merits of the case, ruling that the platform was inexpressive conduct.

It's not protected by the First Amendment.

And interestingly, that same day, the Ninth Circuit also ruled in the same way on the merits of a case that came out of Santa Monica.

So that's a very good case.

Your moratorium ends at the end of next month, April, and I'm sure we'll be talking with you about what are next steps.

But I think Carlton would have been really proud to know that that's just another example of the kind of love for the city and trying to support all the work that you do for Seattle every day.

So, thank you for your thoughts and if you pass it along to the other colleagues.

Again, I'm sorry it was, it would have been a very difficult message to deliver on Friday and it's not much easier today.

I understand.

Thank you for sharing.

Thank you all.

Okay.

After presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

The Council's Executive Sessions are an opportunity for the Council to discuss confidential legal matters with our City Attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the City Attorney's Office is always present to ensure the Council reserves questions of policy for public open sessions.

I expect this Executive Session to end in 30 minutes, so that would be 11.35 p.m., and if the Executive Session is to be extended beyond that time, I will announce the extension and its expected duration.

With that, we'll secure the room and move into executive session.