Seattle City Council Briefing 5922

I am Andrew Lewis, Council Pro Tem, and the time is 2.02 p.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council President Pro Tem Lewis.

Present.

Seven, present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Swant's office did reach out to indicate that Council Member Swant would not be able to attend briefing today.

So just for the record, Council Member Swant is excused from today's briefing session.

Moving on to the President's Report.

I am going to go ahead and wave right past the president's report.

I don't have anything to communicate aside from the fact that Council President Juarez will be returning to preside over council briefing at our next meeting.

And I look forward to being able to hand the virtual gavel back over to her at that time.

Signing of letters and proclamations.

Council Member Mosqueda has a proclamation proclaiming this week of May 8th, well May 8th to May 14th of 2022 to be Affordable Housing Week for signature.

Council Member Mosqueda, please leave the discussion on the proclamation for any additional feedback before I request signatures be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you very much Council President Pro Tem Lewis.

I'm excited colleagues to again be bringing forward affordable housing week proclamation.

Every year we bring forward a proclamation declaring a week in May as affordable housing week.

The proclamation in front of us today declares May 8 through May 14 as affordable housing week in Seattle for the year 2022. You should have all received an email from my staff.

Thanks to Aaron House for circulating the draft around last week.

And thanks as well to the mayor.

Mayor Harold has indicated that he will be concurring with this proclamation today.

Affordable Housing Week is an opportunity to celebrate, to celebrate our wins and to organize and get motivated for the work that is ahead.

I'm especially excited about this year's Affordable Housing Week proclamation because we have a lot of work to do in the horizon, but we've also been able to celebrate a tremendous amount of wins in the last few years.

And the proclamation gives us a chance to both celebrate what we've accomplished and to work together on what needs to happen next.

Some of those accomplishments were passed by the council through jumpstart with more than with almost $2 million of investments in last year's budget that went directly to affordable housing, half of that coming from jumpstart progressive revenue in Seattle.

And the numbers expected to grow in the upcoming years.

We've tripled our investments in home ownership opportunities with a focus on communities who've largely been locked out of home ownership opportunities, due to current and past discriminatory housing policies both lending and zoning policies.

We've established a community focused acquisition and development fund to help remove barriers for especially smaller community rooted organizations that are led by and rooted in communities most at risk of displacement, meaning communities of color, and we've created housing serving those communities most at risk of displacement.

through policies like affirmative marketing and community preference.

We created an ongoing funding stream for the equitable development initiative to fund projects that root communities in place and co-locate housing services and small business and cultural space all together around housing to create more than just a home, but to create a sense of place.

And we're recognizing through this proclamation, the intersection of housing and climate crises and the ways in which as we build affordable housing and invest in Green New Deal strategies, we can continue to address the pressing need to create affordable housing within our city and address climate resilience through housing stock to improve weatherization and electrification within our housing options within our city.

This is a great opportunity for us to reflect on what's been done and going forward what needs to happen.

And Mr. President, just very briefly, I think the importance of COVID, the message to stay home, to stay healthy when so many people are lacking a place to call home, has really exacerbated this call and emphasized the need for us to build more affordable housing.

Housing insecurity in our community has continued to increase in the wake of COVID.

And we channeled much of our COVID relief dollars to enabling the Office of Housing and our affordable housing partners to seize opportunity in the real estate market to acquire new buildings and buildings that would have otherwise gone derelict or been for sale on the private market.

Working together with council, the state legislature, and federal funding, we were able to bring properties off of the private market and convert them into affordable housing.

Using rapid acquisition funding in partnership with the county, we are getting more units stood up than ever before.

Seattle is getting national attention because we are leveraging the state and federal resources, and we are expediting the creation of affordable housing, and we're doing this in partnership with our affordable housing providers.

There are over 5,400 new affordable units currently under development, with 4,000 of those opening in this upcoming year.

That's an incredible investment, and that is equal to about seven multifamily units that we took off the private market.

And I'll conclude with this.

Policies that we passed over the last few years are really now coming to fruition.

As policymakers and folks who are advocates and community know, it's not often you get to see your work coming to fruition.

And here this year in April, we celebrated the opening of two affordable housing efforts, both creating permanently affordable home ownership made possible by surplus land legislation that I sponsored in 2018 requiring the city to not sell its public property on the private market and instead require that that surplus property, whether it's owned by utilities or any other department, to be prioritized for the Office of Housing and for our community affordable housing providers to develop affordable housing.

Again, priority given to communities at most risk of displacement.

And one of these projects is the Village Garden in partnership with the Central District and Homestead Community Lands Trust and Africatown.

It is utilizing community preference that we passed in 2019 and affirmative marketing policies that we enhanced as well to provide homebuyers with historic ties to the Central District to have the first opportunity to have home ownership in the community.

A shout out to our colleagues for all of the work that you're doing to increase special permitting considerations for permanent supportive housing projects greatly needed to make sure that we're cutting down on reducing the time.

it takes to build affordable housing and Seattle is the only city in the nation with specific permitting for permanent supportive housing so thanks again for all your work on that.

I'll be sharing out some of the other wins over the course of this week we are going to have a tile or a social media post every day to celebrate some of the incredible work that has been done.

And some work is still yet to come with the housing levy that will be up for renewal next year.

And this is a great opportunity for us to think about how we prepare for that housing levy.

We're going to need projects that invest in affordable housing revenue streams to make sure that we stay laser focused on critical long-term investments for making good on our commitments codified in Jump Start, codified in the housing levy, but that need more additional funding.

That will come with the renewal of the housing levy in 2023. This is an opportunity for us to expand and increase affordable housing investments, both for renters and for first time homeowners, and we need to make sure that we continue to tackle the toughest issue that Seattle is facing, like many other cities.

to come through and follow up on the rezoning of our city to make sure that we're building in every possible place that we can to increase access to high opportunity neighborhoods and build more affordable housing throughout Seattle.

So thanks as well to our colleagues who are working so diligently on making sure that there's community voice included in the comprehensive plan.

I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this I am also going to go from our briefing here today to join the affordable housing week kickoff at the wing Luke museum alongside King County Councilmember get my ally, along with the housing development consortium, and also the author of the homeless of the book called homelessness is a housing problem problem author Greg Colburn.

There's a full calendar of events as well to celebrate affordable housing week.

I hope that colleagues take the chance to promote this on your websites as well.

Go to housing consortium.org backslash affordable housing week.

Thanks so much, Mr. President for allowing me to present this proclamation declaring this week affordable housing week in the city of Seattle and more to come next.

Excuse me tomorrow as we get a chance to present this to our community partners.

Thank you so much Councilmember Muscata for bringing this forward for our consideration.

Is there anybody else on the Council that would like to make remarks regarding or ask questions of the mover of the proclamation before we affix signatures?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which Councilmembers would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation?

Councilmember Patterson?

Yes.

Councilmember Peterson?

Yes.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Councilmember Nelson?

Aye.

Council President Pro Tem Lewis?

Yes.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Right after calling the roll and excusing Councilmember Sawant, I did forget to do the approval of the minutes, so I'm going to go back and do that at this point.

If there is no objection, the minutes of the May 2nd, 2022 briefing meeting will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Moving forward from proclamations, we'll now go to the review of the City Council and Council Regional Committee actions for this week.

And this will of course proceed in the rotated roll call.

This week's roll call rotation begins with Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, please begin and then hand it next to Councilmember Strauss, given that Councilmember Swann is absent.

Thank you president for Tim Lewis, good afternoon colleagues on tomorrow afternoons, full city council agenda, there are no items from our committee on transportation and Seattle Public Utilities.

Our next committee on transportation and Seattle Public Utilities is scheduled for Tuesday, May 17 at 930am.

At our May 17 committee we're likely to consider eight items, which would include the renewal of three term permits to for existing pedestrian tunnels downtown and one for an existing skybridge and Cherry Hill.

We will vote on a term permit for the installation of conduit pipes for construction project and just for.

Wallingford.

We'll also have two bills from Seattle Public Utilities.

One is essentially a technical correction because it accepts two property deeds that would perfect SPU's property rights for those two parcels originally acquired in 1986. And the other bill is to accept an easement from the State Department of Natural Resources to install a replacement sewer line We will also hear the RSGI report for Seattle Public Utilities.

And finally, we'll have a briefing on the annual financial audit of Seattle Public Utilities, which, as we know, is a $1 billion enterprise for at least four lines of business, solid waste, drinking water, wastewater, and drainage.

Regarding Sound Transit, Sound Transit is giving themselves another month to make some decisions on the West Seattle Ballard Link extension routes and stations, so instead of on May 17, we'll start discussing a joint resolution with the executive regarding Seattle's preferences at our June 7 committee meeting.

We will then have a second committee meeting on July 5 or July 19 to vote on that resolution.

Also at our June 7 committee meeting, we will vote on Mayor Harrell's nomination of Andrew Lee to become the permanent general manager and CEO of Seattle Public Utilities.

As chair of the committee that includes SPU, I'm following the confirmation process outlined in Resolution 31868. We have circulated the mayor's appointment packet to you, and it was also on last week's introduction and referral calendar.

If you have any questions you'd like Interim Director Lee to answer in advance, please respond to my office by this Friday, May 13, with your questions.

Then we can circulate his answers well in advance of the June 7 confirmation vote at our committee.

On tomorrow's introduction referral calendar, we are likely to have three bills from the executive that would help Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities customers still struggling with their utility bills.

This includes extending the waiver of interest fees on utility bills and extending the additional flexibility previously granted for the emergency assistance program.

Because these bills impact both City Light and SPU, I'm co-sponsoring them with Council Member Nelson.

Because they are extensions of existing relief programs that are time-sensitive, we're sending these bills straight to full council.

speaking of utility bills, we know utility bills are essentially regressive, with lower income households paying a greater portion of their income for utilities than higher income households do.

I'm really proud of Seattle Public Utilities and the City Council for working hard to manage costs and keep rate increases to the bare minimum.

So I wanted to alert my colleagues to a troubling rate increase pending from King County government that will negatively impact the utility bills of all of our constituents.

After promising months ago to raise their King County wastewater treatment rates by 4%, the King County executive is asking King County council members to go back on that promise and instead raise rates by 5.75%.

The governance structure for wastewater treatment is frustrating because the city of Seattle, which has the West Point Treatment Facility, continues to have Seattle residents subsidize development in Eastern King County that's paying for the Brightwater Wastewater Treatment Facility.

Moreover, our city government has no official authority to adjust wastewater fees passed through directly to our customers by King County.

The fate of this original rate increase is now in the hands of King County Council members.

So I'm hoping King County Council members will ask questions, push back and push down the proposed 5.75% rate increase because the cost drivers have not been adequately justified in my opinion, especially when the more reasonable rate of 4% was codified just months ago.

Council members, this concludes my report.

Any questions before we turn it over to Council Member Strauss?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Council.

Councilmember Peterson, Council President Pro Tem and colleagues.

This last week here in District 6 and continuing this week, the Woodland Park update is that outreach efforts are currently in their third and final phase.

Hope Team System Navigators, Reach, and other service providers are actively making connections to services and shelter, which include 24-7 enhanced shelter options with on-site services.

and other options such as tiny homes.

Person-centered plans have been and continue to be created to get people inside, as well as the transportation and logistics plans that are needed to get them from where they are today at the park to where they need to go inside and shelter and housing options that we have available.

More on this as this continues.

Last week in District 6, I also attended a meeting with Tom Fay and Rick Sheridan at the Ballard Library about activation planning for both the patio area and the garage.

My staff attended the Bowdoin Avenue historic commission meeting to discuss improvements to the Bowdoin Avenue street cafe and continue and I continued meeting with them to about when we can have the improvements implemented to the street, so we can get that as fast as possible hopefully before summer truly starts.

My staff also attended the Finney Neighborhood Council and the North Precinct Advisory Council, and I hosted my weekly office hours with these six residents.

Last Thursday from 2 to 6.30 p.m.

I met with three residents from Finney, two from Whittier Heights, two from East Ballard, one from Ballard, one from Green Lake, and one from Greenwood.

We talked about homelessness, public safety, light rail tunnel station planning, tiny home villages, and one resident even created a digital version of the street map of Old Ballard.

Let me pull this one off here.

This is the old version, the paper version.

They digitized this.

With their permission, we'll be sharing that out.

It was cool to see somebody taking the old Ballard street map and digitizing it.

I also invited the managers of two Safeways in D6, the Crown Hill Safeway and the Market Street Safeway to meet, and we discussed how we can include them in our weekly public safety case conferencing meetings.

I also hold held that meeting last week my public safety conferencing with King County prosecutors, Seattle Attorney's Office SP and SPD to address public safety in District six, we're all that we've also been working with the mayor's office, and we continue to fine tune this operational meeting.

As well I continue to hold my weekly operations meeting both last week and this week, coordinating with community leaders governmental entities and non governmental entities to make meaningful interventions to address homelessness in specific places in District six.

This coming weekend D six I'll be hosting my office hours from.

On Thursday again from 2pm to 6.30pm.

I'll also be meeting with the Woodland Park Zoo to discuss implementation of the operating agreement that we approved last year.

And I'm also hearing that the staff at Card Kingdom in Ballard are on their pathway to unionization and I I'm very excited to hear more updates when they're available and just hope that this this comes to fruition.

Very proud of the workers in Ballard.

Last week at City Hall I met with the Seattle Department of Construction Inspections Director Nathan Torkelson to discuss land use issues including permitting and design review.

And I met with the Board of Parks and Recreations Commissioners, the new District 6 representative, Amy Brockhouse, had a really great conversation with her there.

This coming week at City Hall, I'll continue meeting with OPC Director Rico Quirundongo to continue the discussion about the Maritime Industrial Strategies, as well I'll be meeting with the International Longshore Workers and Inland Boatmen's Union, and separately the representatives from the Stadium District, all to discuss the Maritime Industrial Strategy.

This coming Wednesday at the economic development, technology and city light committee I'll be bringing an amendment to one of the surveillance impact reports, my amendment would request that funding be included in the supplemental budget for an independent evaluation of the I base system to evaluate the risk that the system, what the risk is in misidentifying connections and associations between individuals.

Friday I'll be attending the Seattle Maritime Breakfast at the port with the Port of Seattle I'd call this a D six event, even though it's outside of D six, and then on Saturday my staff will be attending the King County Regional Homelessness Authority's continuing care session.

King County Regional Homelessness Authority will discuss the strategies and success metrics that will be formalized in the five-year plan in order to guide our regional homelessness approach.

Here in the Land Use Committee, the next meeting of the Land Use Committee is this Wednesday, May 11th.

We're planning to have four items on the agenda.

a vote on Council Bill 120287, which updates the regulations of rooftop features on new buildings.

Actually, as I'm reading this, I am realizing that we've had a request to delay this vote.

So colleagues, the rooftop legislation may be delayed by one meeting.

So I'll be checking in with my vice chair to hear more about that.

A briefing on OPCD's community engagement efforts around the comprehensive comprehensive plan major update, seven appointments to the Urban Forestry Commission, and five appointments to the Design Commission.

With that, Council President Pro Tem, that is my report.

Colleagues, any questions?

Seeing none, it is my privilege and honor to pass it on to Council Member Herbold.

And right on cue, my cat meows.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

There are no items on tomorrow's full council agenda from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee for our consideration.

The Public Safety and Human Services Committee does meet tomorrow morning at 9.30 a.m.

There are three items on the Public Safety and Human Services Committee agenda.

First, we'll hear the quarterly response from the executive to the council's legislative intent about identifying potential non-sworn officer response for 911 call types identified by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, categorized as appropriate for a civilian response, Just want to clarify for my colleagues in the viewing public, the first quarter response is not all we had hoped for for the first quarter, but I do think it's important to hear from the executive on its plans moving forward and to hear from them their continued support for this work.

Secondly, we'll have on the agenda Resolution 32050, sponsored by Council Member Nelson.

I do have a proposed amendment to this resolution.

And the amendment just clarifies that the resolution is to signal our intent to consider release of funds in an amount necessary to implement incentive and retention programs, acknowledging that some of the salary savings using some of the salary savings is a strategy to help mitigate the protection gap, but then also recognizing that we will have to consider in making that decision some of the 2023 budget challenges.

Thirdly, on the committee agenda, we will be hearing Council Bill 12 that I'm sponsoring to provide some funding to address recruitment issues and to work on trying to address them sooner rather than later.

And not just recruitment issues for police officers, but also recruitment issues for hard to fill critical jobs throughout the city.

On the Human Services Department front, I just want to let folks know that the Human Services Department is seeking proposals to conduct the comparable worth wage analysis of the local human services sector.

Council members will remember that this was an issue that came up during the budget process last fall.

and the funds necessary for this study was supported by council members.

I think I was a prime sponsor for that one.

It was a very high priority for many of us.

And again, the basis for that is just a recognition that human services workers, particularly frontline staff, are disproportionately BIPOC and women.

and they're precariously underpaid for the difficult work they do, and that the wages that they receive do not reflect the education-required difficulty or value of their work.

This results in high turnover, positions left unfilled, and work that is desperately needed left undone.

The study itself will consider the core functions and requirements of human services jobs, including their level of authority and responsibility.

required training in autonomy environment difficulty working conditions, ours, and determine a value for those elements across sectors, not just in past when we've done this work we've really only looked to cut.

to compare to other human services, social services workers, but we recognize that many of the skills and capacities in jobs that are being more highly compensated mirror some of these same core competencies.

Applications to do the study are due later this month, and work is expected to begin in July.

And we are, I know, looking forward to getting recommendations in time for our fall budget process.

As reported last week on the public safety front, I met with Chief Diaz this week.

I'll be meeting with District 1's own Southwest Precinct Captain Rivera, and I'll also be meeting with the Inspector General, Inspector General Judge, and just wanna announce to the public that the Community Police Commission is holding a community outreach meeting tomorrow evening at 6 p.m.

And then finally, I wanna note a very sad West Seattle occurrence from the weekend.

There was a pedestrian death when a man was hit by a car on Southwest, on California Avenue Southwest, near Southwest Finley Street.

And this happened on Friday evening.

And I just wanna say that my heart goes out to family and friends and anybody who was close to, to this occurrence.

This is sad news on the Petri and safety front floor.

As far as regional committees coming up this week, I do have a watershed resource inventory area, otherwise known as WIRA 9 meeting coming up.

and other items.

One item I forgot to mention in my updates last week was my planned attendance on Saturday to the National African-American Reparations Commission meeting hosted by former Councilmember Larry Gossett.

I was joined by other Councilmembers on Saturday as well as staff representing other Councilmembers' offices and the community-based work that they're doing on developing a program and proposal is really exciting and inspiring.

I'm glad to be able to be there.

Items coming up this week, I know several of us are meeting with Jeff Olivet, the Executive Director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

And this is a great opportunity for us to share our unique challenges in helping folks find homes, especially those living unsheltered and those who are living in RVs.

Tomorrow evening, I'll be, tomorrow morning rather, I'll be joining the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce in their annual West Side Awards event.

I'm really excited to be able to participate in that event and to recognize some great small business leaders in our community.

On Saturday, I will be attending Scott Morrow's Celebration of Life.

And on Saturday, we have the West Seattle Foodbanks Instrument of Change Gala and Auction that I'm looking forward to attend.

And then lastly, just want to give a shout out for Gen Pride's inaugural celebration, Pillars of Pride, honoring our LGBTQIA and elders event on Sunday and looking forward to attending that as well.

of my colleagues.

Have any comments on my remarks?

All right.

Seeing none, I'll pass it over to Council President Pro Tem Lewis.

I believe Council Member Herbold, since I'm pro temming, I'm going last in the order.

So I believe that the next Council Member would be Council Member Morales.

And then Mosqueda, Nelson, and then myself.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

No worries.

That is the usual order.

So sorry for the confusion.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

We have two items on the agenda at full council for tomorrow from the neighborhoods education civil rights and culture committee.

They are the appointment and reappointment of Steve for bath to the Community Involvement Commission.

I do want to give my colleagues a heads up.

This is a mayoral mayoral appointment nomination.

And the mayor's office has chosen not to move forward with this appointment.

So I will be requesting that we hold this appointment indefinitely on their behalf.

So just a note there.

The next meeting of my committee is scheduled for this Friday at 9.30.

And on the agenda will be the discussion of the appointment of Hamdi Mohammed for the Director for Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

Looking forward to that discussion.

We will be sending around Hamdi's answers to the questions that we all posed to her.

We will plan to do that by Wednesday at the latest.

So please let me know if, well, I look forward to that discussion on Friday.

Also on the agenda will be two appointments to the Pike Place Market Historical Commission and one reappointment to the Pike Place Market Preservation Development Authority Governing Council.

Last week, I had office hours at the Columbia City Farmers Market.

I met with constituents to discuss how we increase access to housing, how the city is responding to the Sound Transit DEIS.

I had several folks asking some questions about that.

Lots of folks expressing support for closing Lake Washington Boulevard.

to CARS and that discussion, the community engagement for that process is starting, I think, within the next week or two.

We should be seeing a blog post from SDOT soon.

Um, we also had folks come by to talk about air quality and noise impacts of the potential expansion of the King County Airport in Georgetown.

And these folks were specifically from the Beacon Hill neighborhood but I know that folks in Georgetown are also concerned about this so those conversations are ongoing as well with King County.

We had folks expressing support for Estelita's library, which is a small cultural space venue they provide.

They host cultural events, dancing, music, poetry slams, study nights for our young people.

and have thousands of books available for folks on issues around racial justice.

They are looking for support from SPU to find a water main solution that allows them to install a bathroom.

It is a very small space.

And so I'm hoping that they're able to work with the department.

We did submit a letter on their behalf to try to find a solution there.

Last week my staff and I were also briefed on a Seattle Public Schools plan to adopt a car drop-off and pickup area on 16th Avenue South adjacent to Mercer Middle School.

This is right now the only moderately safe route for people connecting from South Beacon Hill to North Beacon Hill.

And by extension, really, it's it's one of the very few ways for folks in district to south to move north by bike and this corridor is used for by parents, getting their kids to and from childcare, young people who can't drive and others.

So it's a it's an important Fairly safe corridor for people.

The school districts plan is to create a new drive up area that would potentially include three different intersections with cars and pedestrians and so folks are concerned about the potential impact here.

As a consequence, I'm asking SDOT to prioritize building out the second segment of the Beacon bike route to kind of coincide with the school district plans.

I think if we're able to make this happen, that could really be kind of a win-win for the district and for people going north-south on Beacon Hill.

So we will continue those conversations, and I'm looking forward to working with SDOT to try to make sure that happens.

related to schools.

I know families across the city are expressing concern about a proposed addition of a 3rd start time for elementary school and a shift for middle school and high school students.

The proposal really stems from a transportation It's gonna impact families who will need more childcare support either before school or after school.

And so I have talked to DEEL and asked them to start investigating ways that the city would be able to provide more childcare support for families.

I think the school district had intended to vote on this soon.

I think they are delaying that to give families more time to share their concerns.

Candidly, I don't know what the solution is here, but I do know that if families are going to be putting their kids on a school bus at 630 in the morning.

Those kids will be getting out of school earlier and need need more support after school.

So, more to come on that soon.

Last Wednesday, we hosted our monthly Mount Baker community meeting.

Our office is currently working on activating a safe passage program for the Franklin High School students who've been experiencing some issues at the Route 7 bus stop.

And we know that part of our community safety initiative that we funded last year has a hub around here, so we are trying to work with them to make sure that young people in the area are safe leaving school in the afternoons.

On Saturday, as Council Member Herbold mentioned, several of us joined former King County Council Member Larry Gossett in a discussion with the National African American Reparations Commission.

We also heard from former alderman Robin Ruth Simmons from Evanston, Illinois, about their road to creating a municipal reparatory justice initiative.

They're very interested in working with the city of Seattle to see how we might be able to engage in similar work to start addressing reparations for our black community members here in Seattle.

And I'm excited to know that I believe there was, well, there were three council members and staff from other offices as well.

So thanks to colleagues for participating in that discussion.

And I do want to thank or congratulate the Seattle Storm for their decisive victory over the Minnesota Lynx on Friday.

It was a great way to open the season.

I got to see the new arena.

I hadn't been in there yet.

It's beautiful and I'm really excited to welcome home the Seattle Storm to Seattle.

Just a couple more things this week.

This morning I participated in a walking tour of little Saigon and met with several business owners in the neighborhood, we heard about their challenges with lease agreements, lots of challenges with lease agreements with language access issues and public safety.

I will be working with our central staff to start exploring language access, possible language access policy remedies to some of the things that we need to do in the city.

This Friday will be our biweekly meeting with community stakeholders coming together to discuss the potential of building out a neighborhood outreach model in the CID Little Saigon area with REACH.

and looking for funding to get this group up and running.

As we all know, right now there's only one outreach worker for the whole neighborhood, so we will continue to try to remedy that as well.

My staff will be meeting with a community group on Beacon Hill this week who've been working with a private developer interested in incorporating an affordable housing component into their market rate building.

And they'll be learning about the proposal to see how we can lend a hand to get more affordable housing built on site and integrated as part of this new development.

And then finally, this Friday afternoon I'll be speaking at an abortion rights march organized by students and young people.

This is a huge issue.

I'm sure we all have our own feelings about it.

For now, I do just want to say that we know this fight isn't really about abortion.

It's about controlling women's bodies.

Missouri is already considering travel bans for women seeking abortions out of state.

This fight is also not about preserving life.

It's about rolling back lifesaving protections for women, for immigrants, for LGBTQ individuals, for low-income people.

So I want to urge our congressional delegation to codify protections for women.

I know Councilmember someone is working on a resolution.

Our office is working with our policy staff and city attorneys regarding several possible actions for those seeking abortion services.

And I know my colleagues are also working, and together, we're exploring a range of issues, including funding, safety, and legal protections for people who are seeking abortion care.

So I am thankful to all of you for engaging in this work, and I hope we, as a city, as a municipality, can do everything we can to make sure that people are safe.

That is all I have.

Anybody have any questions?

Okay.

In that case, I will hand it to Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

I will be short since I spent quite a bit of time talking about the Affordable Housing Week resolution and proclamation.

earlier in our meeting today, so I'll let you know that the Housing and Finance Committee meeting is going to be meeting next week on May 18th at 9.30 a.m.

We will have housing-related items and finance-related items.

We'll have the Office of Housing Annual Levy Report and Investment Report in addition to a briefing and possible vote on the Office of Housing Staffing updates.

We'll have the 2021 Budget Exceptions Ordinance and the 2022 Carry Forward Ordinance.

It'll also be an opportunity for us to hear directly from central staff who've been doing some research at our request to look at where other jurisdictions have similar carry forward legislation to help balance budgets and the short answer is there are none.

So let's make sure that we don't have an exceptions ordinance that is truly exceptional and we continue to have great budgeting practices.

We'll have more conversation about that in our upcoming meeting.

Just want to give you a preview that there will be some good reporting out on the exceptions ordinance and some analysis compared to other jurisdictions as well.

There are no finance and housing items on tomorrow's full council meeting.

And in terms of updates from this week, I do want to again encourage folks to join us at Wing Luke Museum at three o'clock.

There will be a event to kick off Affordable Housing Week.

And again, I'm going to have the chance to speak with Council Member Zahilay.

The author of Homelessness is a Housing Issue and others from HTC as well.

And thanks again for promoting out the week long events that will be taking place this week and they will be on our social media soon if they are not already.

On Thursday, I'll be attending a meeting in person with the Duwamish House, Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center.

And Saturday, I look forward to joining the folks from Planned Parenthood and other community members around our region to continue to call for keeping abortions safe and legal.

Abortions will continue as they always have been.

The question is whether or not they will be safe and legal and whether or not there will be disproportionate impacts on communities of color and lower wage folks as a result of this possible Supreme Court ruling.

Finally, I want to take a second to congratulate the Sounders.

The Sounders clobbered the Pumas 3-0 on Wednesday last week, and this made them the winner of CONCACAF at the Champion League.

They won over Mexico, and I want to thank them for all of the work they've done to continue to create community in Seattle.

This is a historic win on multiple levels, qualifying the Sounders for the Club World Cup and making them the first winners of CONCACAF Champions Cup in the Champions League era.

So congratulations, Sounders, and I look forward to continuing to celebrate this across Seattle and our region.

Seeing no questions, I'm going to hand it off to Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone.

There is nothing on the full council agenda tomorrow from the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee.

We are meeting this week, however, on May 11th at 930, and there are two items on our agenda.

Per the 2017 surveillance ordinance, city departments are required to obtain advanced council approval for the acquisition of surveillance technology and to request retroactive approval if those technologies have already been in use.

And that's what we were talking about on Wednesday.

Council bills one two zero three zero seven and one two zero three zero nine would approve the Seattle Police Department's continued use of audio recording devices and link analysis software and accept the surveillance impact reports and an executive overview for each technology.

And this will be our second discussion and possible vote on these bills.

Tomorrow, as was already mentioned, I am really looking forward to to hopefully voting out my S.P.D. salary incentives program resolution from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, as well as Council Bill one two zero three two zero, which is council member Herbold's S.P.D. salary proviso modification, which would pay for those incentives.

So in case you missed it, I have put aside my competing proviso list lift legislation in order to work together on a single piece of legislation with Councilmember her world and with with input and and support from Mayor Harold.

To put together a package with with spending cap on items that we really need right now to to begin better supporting recruitment efforts at SPD and eventually provide for staffing incentives for relocation.

expenses.

So this is the first step toward a more comprehensive plan which is in development and my hope is that we're in a process of continual improvement when it comes to making sure that we're doing everything we can to improve public safety in Seattle.

So tomorrow is going to be a big day for that.

Let's see.

Also this week, I'll be attending and speaking at the Maritime Festival Breakfast hosted by the Seattle Propeller Club, the North Seattle Industrial Association, and the Port of Seattle to celebrate National Maritime Day, which is on May 22nd, and also learn more about Seattle's maritime industrial sector and what city council, if possible, could do anything to strengthen this sector.

I will be speaking at Project Dash to celebrate the partnership between United Way, King County, and DoorDash, which is a partnership that was spurred by the pandemic and stay-at-home orders to ensure that immunocompromised people, elderly people, families who have transportation barriers or food insecurity keep getting the supplies and food that they need.

And I will be on hand to help pack select boxes for delivery and hand out this ceremonial 300,000 food box to a Dasher.

Looking backwards, last week my staff attended the Central Puget Sound Economic Development District Board meeting on my behalf.

And that's one of my external committee assignments.

I attended the Wedgwood Community Council meeting and heard about their neighborhood plan to leverage future zoning changes to better support small businesses in the neighborhood among a lot of other topics.

And I attended the Seattle Builders Council meeting and learned about ways the city could help them meet our needs for building more housing.

And spoiler alert, the issue of permitting came up a lot, but there are a lot of other ways that the city could better align our regulatory systems with our overall policy goal of addressing housing affordability.

And so I look forward to future conversations with this body and seeing ways that potentially my committee can help.

On Thursday, I joined Mayor Harrell and Interim Director of OED, Marca McIntyre, to present the proclamation that we all passed last week, recognizing May 1st to May 7th as National Small Business week and we presented that to the, the small business administration's regional administrator, Mike phone with that proclamation, you know, We did this at Boon Boon Coffee and to me what was the main part of the show was that we got to honor the owner, Ephraim, who has won Washington's Small Business of the Year Award among many other awards because of what his business does not only to provide delicious coffee, but also provide a community gathering space and so that was great to be able to meet him and celebrate and honor those awards as well.

Let's see, last week I attended the Top of the Town which was a celebration of and fundraiser for Community Roots Housing and I've met Chris Persons and talked with him several times and I knew a bit about the work of Community Roots Housing but But just hearing how much they were able to accomplish during these past two years, especially during the pandemic, to, to complete and bring forward so many new projects was just really inspiring so that was a great event.

Lest anybody think that being a council member doesn't come with some perks.

I didn't go to a storm game, but Steph and I got a tour of the Seattle monorail.

We met the president of Seattle Monorail Services, Megan Ching, and a couple of her engineers and toured the maintenance facility at Seattle Center and learned how they keep a 60-year-old piece of infrastructure going.

And also, it was interesting to learn how they are supporting transit ridership to games at climate pledge arena, and you know they have surges of about 3000 people when when games, and so that's a big challenge that they are meeting.

So far, and they let me not just blow the horn.

But I got to drive the monorail that was like actually sit in the driver's seat and make it go forward.

And that was that was quite fun for me.

And we also visited the Woodland Park Zoo.

And, you know, the zoo is a regional asset.

And everybody who's ever had kids might realize what well, how important it is to have that facility on hand to to visit, but it's also a very their mission is improving biodiversity.

And so we were able to learn about their their program for penguins and they let us feed and pet penguins.

And then we also got to feed their red panda.

So that was quite heartwarming as well.

And That was pretty much it.

If there are any questions, I'm happy to answer them right now.

Does anyone have any questions?

All right.

Yes, Council Member Peterson.

Oh, I wanted to say, before you talk, I wanted to thank you very much for teeing up the legislation that we're co-sponsoring next week so that I don't have to talk about it.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

And I just wanted to thank you and Council Member Herbold I'm just reading this press release from the mayor's office came out during Council briefing and really appreciate the leadership of the mayor and you, Councilor Nelson and our Public Safety Chair Councilor Herbold for what appears to be collaboration on the different pieces of legislation, which will make the Public Safety Committee meeting very productive tomorrow.

And I think sends a really strong signal of us trying to work together as a city council to recruit and retain the frontline workers that we've lost the most of.

And so I appreciate, just wanna say my appreciation to you both.

Thank you very much.

And next time, would you please write my talking points?

Thank you for that recognition.

All right, seeing no one else with a raised hand, I will now pass it this to, I believe, Council Member Lewis, pro tem.

Thank you council member Nelson.

All right so let me just close us out here so we can get back to the rest of our afternoon.

There is no item on this afternoon's agenda from the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.

We did have a chance to have a committee meeting last Wednesday where CEO of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority Mark Jones joined us for a productive conversation, updating the council committee on the progress of the regional authority in a number of different areas, including Partnership for Zero, the appointment of the system navigators previously, or the system advocates previously, the peer navigation, referred to as the peer navigation system, as well as the announcement that the South Seattle tiny house village and more on that later in my briefing is going to be opening with support from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as well as updates on various other shelter request for proposals and the current status of some of those initiatives including We had an update on camp second chance and that investment moving forward fairly quickly along with the RFP that is currently outstanding, but I believe closing soon for a RV safe lot, vehicle safe lot concept that the council funded in our last budget.

So it was a productive conversation with CEO Jones, appreciate them being generous with their time to update the committee.

and look forward to continuing to receive those updates on a regular basis to see how the city investments are being implemented by the regional authority.

We also concluded as a committee that it would be good at this point to get an update from the city's new unified care team, which has been assembled by Mayor Harrell under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, in order to get just a sense of how we as a council can interact with the resources offered by that team to indicate areas of interest in our respective districts and move to better support that team with having resources and community connections to successfully and effectively navigate people experiencing homelessness off the street and into shelter or housing.

So that is hopefully someone or some group we will be able to get in front of our committee in the near future to hear a little bit about how that process is going and what we can do as a council to support that work.

Moving forward to last week, along with some other colleagues, as has been mentioned in previous briefing updates, I did have the opportunity to attend a session convened by former county council member Larry Gossett with the National African American Reparations Commission.

It was a really good conversation.

I appreciate Councilmember Gossett's invitation to attend and look forward to continuing the discussion with the commission and Councilmember Gossett on some potential policy innovations in the future based on what some other cities have been doing in that area of recreation-based programs, particularly around housing and security.

It was a good conversation and I look forward to continuing them.

I was able to attend on Thursday the opening of the South End Tiny House Village, or at least the soft opening in anticipation of beginning the process of admitting new villagers to that site.

It was really good to hear from speakers, including representatives from Council Member Morales' office, former Speaker of the State House, Frank Chopp, and others who were on hand to commemorate the opening of that village with the generous support of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, as well as several other philanthropic supporters.

So looking forward to that new sheltering asset, being able to take on as many as 60 people currently camping and experiencing homelessness and being able to offer them that non-congregate shelter is a huge step forward.

and look forward to continuing to support that village as we look for permanent ongoing funding options in the future.

In recognition of Small Business Week, my staff and I toured Noir Lux, a BIPOC-owned candle making shop in the Belltown neighborhood on Friday afternoon.

It was a great opportunity to go and make a candle to our Lux and get to know the employees of that business and hoping to do more small business outings in the district now that we can increasingly go and do things in person again as we're coming out of the pandemic.

So I look forward to being able to do more of those tours and really appreciated being able to commemorate Small Business Week by visiting Noir Lux in Belltown.

So thank you to Noir Lux for hosting me on Friday afternoon.

I also had the privilege of taking a tour of a new social justice incubator space in the Melbourne Tower located on 3rd Avenue called 360 Social Ventures.

This new public interest incubator space is going to provide a a hub for like-minded organizations committed to social, economic, and environmental justice to commiserate, share space and resources, and engage in programming in this new congregate working space in the Melbourne Tower.

I look forward to seeing how this enterprise takes off and provides a new example of unconventional tendencies that can activate downtown spaces that of course throughout the period of the pandemic have been very limited due to the limitations on congregate gathering and congregate work.

So I look forward to the success of 360 Social Ventures and I appreciate them inviting me to take a tour of their space.

Looking forward to this week, I have a meeting of the Regional Policy Committee this coming Wednesday.

I will also be joining friends of the Pike Place Market at the Celebrate the Market event this Thursday at 6.30 p.m.

highly recommended for folks to join in the celebration of the Pike Place Market on Thursday evening.

I will also be taking a tour of the Orion Center in the South Lake Union neighborhood this coming Friday and looking forward to reporting back on those activities when we convene for briefing under the leadership of Council President Juarez next Monday.

And with that, colleagues, I do not have any other updates so that will conclude my report and that will conclude the items of business on today's agenda.

Our next regularly scheduled Council briefing meeting is scheduled for May 16 of 2022 at 2pm and we are adjourned.

Recording stopped.