Seattle City Council Governance, Accountability and Economic Development Committee 5/8/2025

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you for coming.

Today is Thursday, May 8th, and the Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee will come to order.

It is 2.03 PM.

I'm Sarah Nelson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Council member Solomon.

Here.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

For present.

Thank you very much.

And I want to note that we are also joined by council member Moore.

All right.

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

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

And we will now begin our public comment period.

Let's see, relating to the items within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many people are signed up to speak today?

We have 21 in-person public commenters and seven virtual.

All right.

We'll give everybody one minute and start with 10 in-person public commenters and then go to the online, finish those and then come back.

Thank you.

Please read the instructions.

I'll call on the speakers in order they signed up to speak, starting with in-person commenters.

As Council President Nelson mentioned, speakers will have one minute.

When you hear the chime, you'll have 10 seconds left.

If you exceed that time, your microphone may be cut off so that we can move on to the next speaker.

If you're offering a remote comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

The first speaker for in-person-

I want to note that we do have a formal council member, uh, former council member present.

So our tradition is to let that person go first and then proceed with the next people.

And for the record, I note that council member call Hollingsworth has joined us.

Thank you, council president.

Um, so yeah, so the first in-person public comment will be a former council member someone.

Okay, go ahead with the order.

All righty.

First, we'll have Pamela Reese, followed by Ellen Salad, and then Alice Wolt.

And I apologize in advance if I mispronounce your first or last name.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Paula Reese.

I've worked in downtown Seattle for 45 years.

My design firm specializes in how to make really successful neighborhoods.

Orange Barrel Media has plastered their digital spacecraft all over two of our projects in other cities.

Their annoying and unsightly units seem to dominate the streets.

It shouldn't happen here.

not for Red Bull and not for Coca-Cola, their main advertiser.

Please tell Ike to take a hike.

For 35 years, I've represented the thousands of citizens who have carefully been here to maintain Seattle's ad ban since the 1960s.

Allied Arts was before us.

Currently, the public is unaware of this.

If allowed, there will be rightful lawsuits in the wings by much larger players that have been told.

Our sign code says no.

Thank you, Paula.

Our businesses are told no.

And now we're telling that Ohio company, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we have Ellen.

Following Ellen, we have Alice.

And after Alice, we have Carolyn.

Come on down.

We were given to understand we'd have two minutes, so I will try and keep mine to one.

My name is Ellen Solid.

I'm a citizen, and I'm a former vice chair of the Seattle Design Commission.

I'm opposed to the digital kiosks.

These eight foot by three foot flashing screens will have a deleterious effect on the character of our city.

Each kiosk will flash 920 times an hour.

and allow both static and moving images for a total of 21,600 times in 24 hours.

When we're trying to wean children from their screens and we know how detrimental this is to our social fabric, why in the world would we allow this in our city?

The program violates the city's sign code and would never be approved under the code.

The term permit is a shameful way of undermining city policy.

Orange Barrel Media has withheld their financial projections, and the director's report has failed to show data about the impacts in other cities.

Thank you, Ellen.

I'd like to leave the rest of my testimony, along with my comments that I have previously sent to council, so they'll get recorded for today.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, I'm Alice Wald.

And just a reminder, when you hear the chime, just a reminder, you have 10 seconds left.

Just a reminder, and then Alice, go ahead.

The Seattle City Council has required council members to recuse themselves from votes when they have a conflict of interest.

This has been going on for 45 years.

I think some of you have not even finished one term So why?

What is this?

I mean, really, our rules are similar to other large cities around the country, and they don't seem to bother them.

Given the increasing lack of trust and faith in elected officials, due primarily by the chaos and corruption and confusion and the Trump administration, I would think twice if I were you if I voted for this.

Do yourselves a favor and vote no.

Thank you, Alice.

Following that, we have Carolyn.

Following that, we have Alex Zimmerman, and then April Putney.

Come on down.

Come on, Carolyn, Alex, and April.

Carolyn?

Carolyn, which name?

That's you, baby.

Go talk.

I believe that's you, yes.

I'm Carolyn Malone.

Shouldn't public servants, first responders, that is Seattle police, Seattle firemen, ambulance drivers, first priority and Simple duty, a major duty, not be road raging in the streets, but saving lives, not trying to damage my hearing because I'm standing at Fifth and Cherry protesting Seattle rogue racist cops.

I take photographs of all of those siren, harassers, and violators, and they simply find me wherever I go, even riding buses.

Firemen circulate around, causing the buses to stop properly.

These people, servants, public servants should be reintroduced to their primary duty, which is to save lives, not damage my hearing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carolyn.

Following that, we have Alex, April Putney, and then Rachel Snell.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Zeheil, Nazi fascist and mob bandita.

My name Alex Zimmerman.

I have 6,000 days of trespass from you, and five times you prosecuted me.

I want to speak right now about something at the number four kiosk.

I think they spend money for nothing.

Another stupidity, what is you have.

So I have something that I can't recommend you right now.

Yesterday, come new statistic.

For five years, we from number one come to number ten.

You understand?

For five years.

And crime, housing, and homeless.

Number one from the bottom.

It has happened for five years.

How is this possible?

Can somebody explain to me this idiotic city?

Viva Trump!

Viva New American Revolution!

We need to clean this chamber from this degenerative idiotic.

Thank you, Alex.

All right, after Alex, we have April Putney, Rachel Snell, and Jordan Crawley.

Thank you.

Hi, thanks for the opportunity to hear my testimony today.

April Putney here on behalf of the Seattle World Cup Local Organizing Committee in support of Resolution 32170. We are really excited, like all of you, to be welcoming hundreds of thousands of fans to the city next summer.

in addition to all of the people who are normally going to be here to enjoy our beautiful summers.

And we really think, after having a chance to review and see the kiosks, that these are going to be an amazing asset to our city, both during the World Cup and long after the final whistle.

There's two things in particular that we're really excited about with these kiosks.

One, the on-demand translation.

It's so important to be able to provide assistance to the hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be coming here, many from international places, some of whom may have limited English proficiency.

That's going to be true long after the World Cup as well.

And this will help...

to navigate the city with ease.

The other thing we're really excited about is the dynamic calendar, which we've heard from the city council previously.

It's important to make sure that we're sending people outside into the other parts of the downtown core, outside of the downtown core, rather, into the other parts of the city, and this will help be a tool to do that.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Rachel Snell.

Over the past few days, you've heard from many Seattleites, such as myself, who strongly oppose rolling back ethics protections.

Not one testimony was given that supports this legislation, not one.

I asked myself, why would elected officials who were voted into office by the people even consider a piece of legislation that is strongly opposed by the people?

I said this Tuesday and I'm going to say it again.

You are not entitled to demand to demand our trust and support.

You have to earn our respect and trust.

How do you earn this?

They're being transparent and honest with your constituents about who you are as individuals and by voting no on rolling back ethics protections or prepare to prepare for massive protest and massive backlash.

All right, following Rachel, we have Jordan Crawley, Howard Gale, and Tyler Blackwell.

Thank you.

Hello, I'm Jordan Crowley.

Here's the chair of the 34th District Democrats.

Earlier this week, every council member received a letter I wrote about the proposed code of ethics amendments, a letter co-signed by five local party organizations, collectively representing 98% of the city.

Seattle should set the ethical standard, not fail to meet it.

Strengthen our democracy, not erode it, and foster public trust, not destroy it.

Yesterday, before the Ethics and Elections Commission, I got to hear something I didn't expect to hear so soon.

The quiet part said out loud, that this council believes the privileged of this city are at risk of losing their influence over legislation in Seattle.

That they believe this bill will protect the interests of Seattle's developers, landlords, and the wealthy few.

If losing their influence means preserving the rights of Seattleites, then the code of ethics is doing exactly what it should.

requiring that this council be independent, impartial, and responsible to the people.

You represent us, not yourselves.

Reject this bill.

Thank you.

We have Howard.

Please refrain from clapping in between speakers.

Thank you.

Howard Gale, District 7. The central staff memo provided for the ethics legislation today has a section titled Overview of City and State Ethics Codes, yet it fails to mention any states.

Why?

Obvious.

Because California and Oregon, the only other Western states, prohibit all elected officials from voting with a conflict of interest.

Also interestingly omitted from your memo, the Washington state constitution adopted 135 years ago by vote of the people demands recusal for all state legislators.

Yet you're proposing legislation that's gonna have a lower standard than our state constitution.

The question is why would you do that?

Again, this legislation supposedly denies, I'm sorry, this legislation is rationalized on the basis that the current system desires members an equal voice when their council member is recused.

That, If council members have a conflict of interest and residents don't like that, they can vote them out.

Thank you.

That's what should be done.

All right.

All right, after Howard, we have Tyler Supriyev and Mike Stewart.

Good afternoon, my name is Tyler Blackwell and I'm the transportation planner for the Soto Business Improvement Area, also known as the Soto BIA.

I am here to speak in support of Resolution 32170 pertaining to the interactive media kiosks.

The installation of smart and easy-to-use interactive media kiosks is a win-win for Soto businesses and the district's visitors.

Through wayfinding and real-time transit information, the public will be able to better navigate the business district and its various amenities.

Local businesses will gain visibility through the use of these kiosks, connecting the public with Soto's cultural gems and experiences.

that often go unseen.

And with the inclusion of social service apps, these kiosks will provide critical resources and help DeSoto's unhoused population.

Furthermore, these kiosks provide an opportunity for revenue sharing with the BIA, allowing us to reinvest in our community and augment the services we provide.

DeSoto has much to be gained through this installation, and we strongly support this resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Apologies for mispronouncing your first name, but Superiv, S-U-P-E-R-I-I-V, followed by Mike Stewart.

And then after Mike, we have Anna Smalley.

Thanks, council members, for always accepting me and allowing me to be here and be a representative of us that are intersex, like myself.

I oppose the rollback of ethnic rules because I feel that's a direct attack against intersex renters and low-income people and poor people.

Instead, you should focus on funding for roads, infrastructure, the sidewalks, the arts.

Thank you.

Following that, we have Mike Stewart, Anna Smalley, and Gwendolyn Hart.

Come on down.

Good afternoon, Chair Nelson, members of the committee.

My name is Mike Stewart.

I'm Executive Director of the Ballard Alliance.

We are an improvement organization that represents hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents in the Ballard neighborhood.

I'm here today to support Resolution 32170, which will help establish an interactive media kiosk program in the Metropolitan Improvement District, the Ballard Improvement Area, and three other business districts in Seattle.

Interactive kiosks in neighborhood business districts like Ballard would be a game changer.

I've had the opportunity to use the Ike kiosks in other major US cities and they provide an incredible experience not only for visitors but for locals as well.

They provide helpful functions such as transit information and wayfinding.

Interactive kiosks also help activate public spaces and allow neighborhood business districts like ours to promote events to support our local community and our small businesses.

Thank you for the time and I encourage you to support this resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Following that, we have Anna Smalley and then Gwendolyn Hart and then we will transition to the remote public commenters.

Hi, my name is Anna Smalley.

Hi, my name is Anna Smalley, and I am with Commute Seattle today to support the Ike kiosks.

At Commute Seattle, we are focused on helping people figure out the best way to get in and around Seattle for them, and Ike does just that.

The Ike kiosks will serve as the primary point of information for many folks coming to our city, from locals to tourists, to help them figure out how to get around.

Many of us think that our phones are the primary point of information when you get to a new city, but how do you even know what to look up?

Ike gives folks a new way to find information without having to be sure of the information that they are looking for.

An example of this is when people come to Seattle and they're hoping to get around to see the sites, how would they know the name of the Link Light Rail or the Free Waterfront Shuttle?

Ike would be the answer to that.

It provides the information that they're already looking for right in front of them, Ike allows us to share tailored and specific information to create a less overwhelming way to experience the city.

We really believe that Ike allows all folks to access information about how to get around in our great city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, our last in-person public commenter for now will be Gwendolyn Hart.

Hello, I'm Gwendolyn Hart.

I'm a renter in Greenlake and a member of Workers Strike Back, and I'm here today to speak against the proposal to roll back the ethics law protecting our renters' rights.

Seattle's a majority renter city, but we are only scraping by while huge corporations like Greystar and Essex rake in massive profits off of our backs.

And it's completely abysmal that this council would try to make it so that landlords can write the law on how to get to exploit their tenants like us.

Workers Strike Back, which I would so want, we won the cap on late fees of $10, six months' notice for rent increases, the ban on winter and school year evictions, things that Sarah Nelson has stated she wants to roll back and attack.

And it's not surprising that he's attacking the Democratic Party.

On the state level, the Democrats are slashing the budget $7 billion, cutting hospitals, schools, firefighters, and public services.

Just last year, the city council tried to attack our minimum wage victory.

You and your party are shredding through every last bit of good will working people have left.

You've heard that today.

You've heard that on Tuesday.

And don't think that if you vote for this, you won't be thrown out in the next election.

All right, we will transition now to the remote public commenters.

And just a reminder, when you hear the chime, you'll have 10 seconds left.

If you exceed that time, your microphone may be cut off so that we can move on to the next speaker.

So we'll move.

So yes, and if you're also offering remote public comment, please make sure to press star six to unmute yourself.

The first remote caller will be Valerie S. Valerie, please feel free to press star six to unmute yourself.

Valerie, please press star six.

All right, we'll come back to you, Valerie.

Next, we'll have Aiden Carroll.

Aiden, please press star six to unmute yourself.

This legislation, as I predicted, It's getting more backlash than anything you've done before this because of how obvious it is.

I'd like to remind you a couple things that make it even more obvious.

You are not following the 27th Amendment principle where these rules would not change until after the next election.

This makes it even more blatantly self-serving.

Second, you haven't thought about the fact that these rules are in place now So anybody with a conflict would have to refuse themselves from voting on these rules.

Third, yesterday in the Ethics and Elections Committee meeting, they had to point out, to directly contradict one of you, we don't make ethics rules to further political goals, no matter how important the political goals may or may not be.

We make them on ethical principles, and those principles always apply.

I don't understand

Thank you.

How much money would have had to.

Next we'll have Odin Amador.

Please press star six to unmute yourself.

My name is Odin Amador and I'm a renter in District 3. I'm addressing Council Bill 1209-78.

I'll quote directly from the bill's summary and fiscal note on the Seattle website.

This legislation would ensure fuller representation by providing additional opportunity for council members to participate in legislative matters in which they have a financial interest or other conflict of interest.

That just sounds bad, and that's in the official document.

I'm strongly opposed to the proposed change of Seattle's ethics code that would allow council members to vote on legislation that poses a financial conflict of interest.

Seattle should not loosen ethics rules that have been in place for decades.

It's a miracle we even have these safeguards.

As a nine year Seattle resident, I only learned about this rule when I read news coverage about this threat to the ethics code.

This is not a good look for the current city council and this change will open up ways for local elected officials to use their positions.

I am extremely concerned to hear of this proposal and I urge you to oppose it.

Thank you.

Next we'll have Alberto Alvarez.

Please press star six to unmute yourself.

Rolling back rules of ethics to allow for more corruption would be a systemic failure by this council.

Self-dealing, self-interest, and self-righteousness will inflict critical damage to the protections of public good we all depend on.

Chaos and harm by wealthy politicians is not hypothetical.

It is a fact.

No one on this council is immune to corruption.

This legislation goes far beyond allowing a small group of landlords to line their pockets.

God only knows what future city councils would do if given free reign to enrich themselves.

Legalized corruption is not something the public has ever voted for.

Council member Kathy Moore, please take down your bill.

All right.

I see that Valerie, you're back on.

Please press star six to unmute yourself, Valerie.

All right, we'll try again, Valerie.

Continuing on, Marshall Bender, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Hi, I finally managed to unmute.

I'm so sorry.

This is Valerie from District 2. I'm commenting on the proposal to change how City Council handles voting where there's a financial conflict of interest.

You're getting a lot of public comments against changing the ethics requirement for recusal that has been in place for decades.

It is especially concerning that this is proposed just before an upcoming vote on rolling back tenant protection.

I've learned over the years that when people in power seek to minimize or gloss over structures for accountability and fairness, those people are not to be trusted.

Trustworthy people, when they have some degree of power or privilege, want accountability and transparency because they have a sense of responsibility and relationship to other people.

That sense of responsibility and accountability outweighs some inconvenience one might experience from, for example, not being able to be a landlord, a council member, and vote on issues of renter's rights.

Ethics rules exist to provide some protection against abuse of power and privilege.

At this time in history, we need to protect democracy.

All right.

We'll continue with Marshall Bender.

Marshall, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Marshall.

Sorry.

Any council member who votes on the Seattle Ethics Code to change it is making a terrible mistake.

My name is Marshall Bender, and I live in District 5. I'm a renter.

Many of you are new on the council and are already mistrusted by your constituents, so I really suggest you consider remaining constitutional and vote no on any change to the Ethics Code.

We do not need to be an outlier among the U.S.

West Coast.

Like it was said earlier, Oregon and California both have these laws statewide.

We should have them too in our city.

And you all must remain accountable to your constituents.

That means remaining transparent and recruiting yourselves from votes where you have a conflict of interest.

We have so many other issues to tackle in this city, from police violence to the library systems funding to homelessness.

So don't waste your time passing terrible unconstitutional ethics code changes because You're not going to win your re-election if this is what you're fighting for.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks for that.

Natalie Morgan, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Hi, my name is Natalie Morgan.

I am the organizer for FairVote Washington, a nonpartisan nonprofit working on democracy reform measures like ranked choice voting.

And like many of the folks here, I am also, of course, here as a Seattle resident to express my opposition to the new proposal concerning the Seattle Ethics Code.

I'm concerned about the proposed changes to the Ethics Code that would allow council members to vote on matters where they have a financial conflict of interest.

I urge you to oppose this proposal and maintain our current level of transparency and public trust in our city government.

Seattle should be continuing its leadership in modeling a just and transparent democracy, not rolling back protections that are already in place, especially during times like this.

This proposal harms both transparency and democracy, and as a result, will erode public trust.

And I think we all know what a perilous position public trust in government is in right now.

Please maintain the safeguards that are already working and vote no on this unnecessary proposal.

Thank you.

Carly, please pass star six timing yourself.

Carly Svek.

Hi, my name is Carly and I'm a renter in Seattle.

And more importantly, I'm a member of Workers Strike Back.

an organization founded off of the mass movements of working people through Shama Sawant's city council office.

Last year, I attended my first public comment to fight back against the shameful attacks from the city council on minimum wage in Seattle.

I was absolutely appalled at the apathy that was on all of the council members' faces while working people came up and shared how they were barely scraping by with minimum wage.

And now, really another attack on working people Stop taking money from corporate landlords.

Stop trying to repeal these ethics laws so that you can vote in favor of these millionaire landlords.

It's so obvious.

Working people are never at the interest of your proposals, and it's frankly disgusting.

If you are a working person or a renter in Seattle, visit WorkerStrikeFact.org to get organized and help other working people fight back against these corrupt politicians.

Thank you.

Next, we have David Haynes.

Please press Sartre.

Stop clapping in between speakers.

I've said that many times.

Please respect the rules of decorum for the, go ahead.

Point of order.

Point, point, point of order.

This is disrupt, this is, We're gonna call a recess, five minutes.

Yes, thank you.

Hey, do you think we could get different Democrats to run next to them?

I'm going to show you what I'm going to do.

Bye.

Yeah.

Please call the roll.

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Council member Solomon.

Here.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Chair Nelson.

Present.

Five present.

Thank you very much.

We will proceed with the meeting and I will repeat.

Please do not clap in between our in between speakers.

That is disruptive.

It prolongs the time that we are spending in public comment.

We have already gone over the 20 minutes, but I'm going to let everybody speak.

It is disruptive behavior to fail to comply with the rules of the chambers and also to follow the direction of the presiding officers.

So please.

show respect for each other or point of order.

That's that point of order.

Council president.

This is considered disruptive behavior because we cannot continue with our meeting and respect for the people that are here that we have a meeting with.

This is unacceptable.

Yes.

And it's in violation of council rule 11 D one.

So please let's proceed.

All right.

Going back to.

Carl Nelson, please press star six to unmute yourself.

Carl.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Go ahead.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, members of the council.

My name is Carl Nelson.

I'm a 16 year Seattle resident renter, small business owner and member of the Cedar Crossing Tenants Association.

I am calling you today to express my disapproval of the change in ethics requirements.

I had the pleasure to attend the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission meeting in person yesterday, a meeting which, according to the commissioner, saw one of the highest turnouts from the public of any meeting in recent memory.

The public comments at the SEC meeting were unanimously in opposition to the proposed rollbacks in ethics.

I would also like to address something Councilmember Moore said at the meeting.

In her own words, quote, we have to be aware of what's happening at a federal level.

But in some ways, the greatest way to continue to have trust in local government is for local government to be effective, for local government to be able to actually solve problems, end quote.

My response to this is to simply ask, what problem is being solved by a rollback in ethics legislation?

And how does it engender trust, which is majority renter, where the renters on the council are already outnumbered by landlords, and a council where leading members have openly expressed hostility to elections with high turnout.

If this rule is not open to corruption, then pass it.

Next, we have David Haynes.

Please press star six to unmute yourself.

We need to kick out the landlords writing laws to oppress the working class and the tenant and any politician who inspires to change the morality of the laws and then create a stall of progress within a mess that supersedes the bad laws that still conspire a desire to put restrictions on the comprehensive plan and cheat a multitude of younger generations so that we have really low quality bad choices in housing so that it doesn't compete with the city council's speculative investments in their dilapidated inflated housing that is used to oppress working class so they can pad the cost of housing and deregulate it.

We need to add transparency to the little conflicts of interest to see where the council is coming from and still keep the enforcement of the major without all of these deletions and changes so that you don't have to be more transparent when you start doing negotiations and representing in bad faith.

You're representing in bad faith and you're justifying results.

We don't need you to do a disservice to our working class anymore.

Get out of office if you're going to keep those trustings.

All right, then the last remote speaker will be Kate Rubin.

Kate, please press star six to unmute yourself.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm the co-executive director of vSeattle, the interim co-chair of the Seattle Renters Commission and a voter living in District 2. I'm calling to urge you to reject this proposed rollback of Seattle's ethics code.

For 45 years, Our city has required elected officials to recuse themselves from votes involving financial conflicts of interest.

Voters elected this council with the understanding that those rules would apply.

Changing them midterm is a violation of public trust.

This is not about whether or not you believe you can remain impartial.

Ethics rules are not built on personal integrity.

They're built to protect the public when integrity falls short.

And no one knows who will hold these seats in the future.

Elected officials should be held to a higher ethical standard, not a weaker one.

Oregon and California maintain strong recusal rules for this exact reason.

The Seattle Renters Commission and I as a District 2 renter and voter stand firmly opposed.

Vote no.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll resume back to the in-person public commenter.

Commenters, first we will have Calvin Priest followed by Shama Sawant, then Dominic Wolfgang Wallace.

Come on down.

It's obviously nakedly unethical to rewrite the legal code to allow landlords on the council to attack renters' rights.

But it's no surprise because their party, the Democratic Party, is a party of the landlords, of the rich.

This is a prelude to a vicious attack on renters' rights.

Democrats like to pretend they're the ones who follow the rules, the advocates of decorum and civility.

This is obviously a lie.

And there's nothing civil about passing one of the worst attacks on renters in Seattle's history.

These renters' rights they're targeting were hard won by movements led by Shema's socialist council office.

Democrats fought them at every step.

What council members are attempting would be legal.

It will dramatically expand homelessness.

It will kill hundreds and soon thousands if allowed to pass.

This is a murderous attack.

We, worker strike back, will not stand aside and allow it to happen.

We will organize hundreds, thousands, to fight against these attacks and bring down the Democrats here who support them.

When runners' rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up, fight back!

When runners' rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up, fight back!

Hey, Shama Sawant's next.

Stand up, fight back!

Shama Sawant followed by that, Dominic Wolfgang Wallace followed by that, Kareem Kinch.

Come on down.

I'm not surprised in the slightest, but it is pretty stunning to see you guys up here talking about Decora and Joy Hollingsworth and talking about your unacceptable behavior, that's unacceptable.

Do you know what the eviction rates are for children and black renters?

Shame on you.

Shame on the Democratic Party to be so openly carrying water for big business and corporate landlords, which is what this ethics law reversal is all about.

It is about making sure that you have enough yes votes to repeal the renters' rights laws that we have won, And it really shows that the Democratic Party is only very slightly different than Trump, that they are not openly right-wing in their rhetoric, but in reality, they are as tied to big business as the Republicans are.

And that is why we have launched what we bring back.

That is how we defeated Joy Hollingsworth and the city council's attempt to dismantle our $15 victory.

That is how we are going to defeat you in this effort as well.

Thank you.

Dominant Wolf King Wallace, come on down.

After Dominic, we have Kareem Kinch.

After Kareem, we have Dustin Hauck.

When renters' rights are under attack, what do we do?

Dominic Wolfgang Wallace, Kareem Kinch, Dustin Hauck.

Hi, I'm Dominic Wolfgang Wallace.

I'm a Worker Strike Back member and a District 3 voter.

I'm also a minimum wage worker, and I remember the attempted attacks on my wage by council members Hollingsworth, me, and all my coworkers live in your district, and we will not be forgetting the absolutely shameful attacks you have on working people consistently in this city.

You are a disgrace to your seat, the seat that won all of these rental protections in the first place, and it's appalling that you even got there in the first place.

What could possibly be the point of recalling this ethics code except selling out renters to the landlords who are already making Seattle an incredibly difficult city to live in?

I need those $3 an hour.

I don't know what you think living in your district is life, Hollingsworth, but it is atrocious to try and survive in this city right now.

In the absence of rent control, corporate landlords gouge renters as a normal business practice.

But on top of that, there are three class action lawsuits alleging that Seattle's quote unquote cartel of dominant for-profit landlords have tightly controlled rental rates since at least 2016 by engaging in shady price fixing to manipulate housing costs and artificially raise rents.

After Dominic, we have Karen Kinch, Dustin Howe.

and long win.

Come on down, Karen.

Good afternoon.

My name is Karen Kinch.

I'm a lifelong citizen of this once proud city and a member of Workers Strike Back.

I stand before you today to speak for the workers of the city who can't be here because they're at their jobs, working long hours to keep a roof over their heads, on the heads of their children, sometimes their aging parents, and other family members who would otherwise be unhoused in this unforgiving terror we have the audacity to call an economy.

Every day, more and more of those workers are facing the reality that they can no longer afford to live in Seattle and are forced to make long commutes to Olympia and beyond where they can afford rents and where their children go to school and where they are away from their children and can no longer be parents for all those hours of all those long days.

I cannot believe that we are standing here today discussing the possible robot ethics code.

And I believe you are exposing yourself bare to where your allegiances really fall.

And it ain't with the working class and the poor of the city, the very people who need your help the most.

Dustin, come on down.

Thank you.

All right.

Long, Lynn, M. Smith, and Summer Miller.

If you continue this behavior, I will ask that you be escorted from the room.

Please stop.

This is disruptive behavior.

This is disruptive behavior.

Point, point.

We are unable to continue the orderly meeting and so you are interrupting our business.

Point of order, this is disruptive behavior.

Point of order, council president, continues to be disruptive behavior for us to continue our business as a council to do this meeting.

I just want that for the record.

Point of order, this is continued disruptive behavior for us to conduct our business.

this was allowed at the federal building and also you oh my gosh

I want to get on with the meeting.

So I will say thank you very much for coming to assistance.

I don't want to drag this out.

We've got three items, many items on our agenda.

I would like to proceed.

I am asking you, please follow the directions and let us get through public comment.

We will continue with public comment.

Thank you very much.

And we'll see what happens.

Thank you.

All right.

We got Dustin, Long Wynn, M. Smith and Summer Miller.

Come on down.

Dustin, you're here.

Long Wynn.

My name is Long.

I'm a member of Workers Strike Back and Revolutionary Workers.

Working people and the oppressed are reeling under the cost of living crisis and horrific attacks by Trump and the Republicans.

And we face the parasitic corporate landlords every month.

Others have made it clear that rewriting of these ethics rules is a step in attacking workers' rights and renters' rights.

It is despicable and yet predictable that the Democrats want to tear down the victories that have made historic improvements in our standards of living.

We need to fight back.

Workers Strike Back will help to wage these defensive fights against Trump and the Republicans.

We will also take on defensive fights against the Democrats.

But most importantly, we understand the best defense is a good offense.

That is why we have taken on Medicaid for All as one of our core demands in our Fight the Rich campaign, to show these city Democrats and their billionaire masters what a pissed-off working class is capable of, that they have overstepped their bounds, and we will fight back.

Em Smith, followed by Summer Miller.

Em?

Thank you.

My name is Em Smith.

I'm a renter in District 3. I'm a member of Revolutionary Workers and Workers Strike Back.

It's despicable that the Seattle Democrats are attempting to undo the basic protections that working class renters have in the city that we won against the landlords, against the millionaires, and the billionaires, and big business.

It was won by Shama Sawant's council office, her socialist council office, and thousands of working people that fought for this.

We won despite opposition from the Democratic Party in this city, including some of the Democrats on this council right now.

We won a cap on late rent fees at $10 a month, six months' notice for rent increases, economic evictions assistance, a ban on winter evictions, a ban on school year evictions.

closing the loopholes in Seattle to just cause protections, the right to a lawyer for renters facing eviction, limiting move-in fees, allowing payment, requiring landlords to provide voter registration.

This is what the Democrats are trying to dismantle, and you're trying to evict renters from this hall so that you can more easily evict renters from their homes by repealing these renters' rights.

It's outrageous.

We need a new party.

We need new house members.

Every single Democrat who votes for this legislation should be thrown out of office.

Your time has expired.

Please have your seat.

Summer.

My name is Summer Miller, and I'm a member of Workers Strike Back and Revolutionary Workers.

I rent a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill.

Like so many working people in the city, I had to take on a roommate and section off a second bedroom.

This is life for renters in Seattle while corporate landlords like Graystar and Essex rake in profits and collude to hike rents.

What's despicable is that instead of fighting these landlord cartels, Seattle's Democratic politicians are doing their bidding.

Now they're trying to gut the ethics laws that stop council members with landlord interest from voting on renter legislation, a clear attack on the basic protections working class renters fought to win.

Let's be clear, these are the same Democrats who tried to repeal our $15 per hour minimum wage last year that we fought back and defeated.

That victory raised the wage to $20.76 for all workers.

Now we need to fight back again.

All those victories, the City Council Democrats fought us every step of the way.

They're only interested in protecting the profits of corporate fucking- Thank you.

Council President, that concludes public comment.

Thank you very much.

We have now reached the end of our list of public commenters.

Public comment period is now over.

Will the clerk please read items one through three into the record?

Agenda items number one through three, appointment 03146, appointment 03147, and appointment 03148. Appointments of Lawrence Alexander III, Davis R. Powell, and KD Hall as members Seattle Film Commission for a term to April 23, 2028. Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

All right, why don't our folks come up to the table?

Sorry for the length of disruption.

Please come up and have a seat.

So just a little bit of background before we get started.

When I, we formed, Council formed the Seattle Film Commission in, I think it was September 22, 2022. And in April of 2023, the inaugural Film Commission was appointed.

and they've been serving on staggered one and two-year terms.

This year, three of our Film Commission members are transitioning out, and I would like to express my utmost gratitude to Beth Barrett, Laura Jean Cronin, and Melissa Purcell for their service, and also Melissa, in particular, her partnership in forming the Film Commission.

In any case, I express my gratitude for their service and I'm really excited to move forward and bring some new talent to the commission.

So please go ahead and begin your presentation.

Introduce yourselves first and then begin.

Thank you, Chair Nelson and Council President Nelson.

I am not a commissioner.

My name is Chris Wentz, and I'm the film program manager for the Office of Economic Development.

I'm the liaison to the Seattle Film Commission.

Thank you for that introduction.

I would love to introduce folks.

I'll give a little bit of additional background on the commission, if that's all right.

Please do.

Okay, and I will be sharing a quick little deck here.

All right.

How do I go?

I got it.

Just scroll.

Okay, got it.

As council president and chair Nelson mentioned, the Seattle Film Commission was established in 2023 through legislation by then council member Nelson, I believe.

The commission is set up with 11 positions, each of them have represented different discipline in the film industry.

The commission's duty and work is to advise the city and the Office of Economic Development on ways to equitably grow film jobs and the film industry and the film community.

Five of the positions are appointed by City Council, five are by the mayor, and one is by the commission itself.

As Council President Nelson mentioned, the commissioners serve one, two, and three-year terms.

I want to echo Council President Nelson's thank you to the three terming commissioners, Melissa Purcell, who represented the unions, Laura Jean Cronin, who represented education and education programs, and Beth Barrett, with CIF, who represented film festivals and content distribution.

It's been wonderful to work with them over the past two years.

When the positions were beginning to be terming out, the Office of Economic Development opened a public application process similar to what was performed when the commission was first developed in 2023. It was open for 10 days, lots of recommendations and lots of applications came in.

We had 19 total.

And from that pool and the recommendations from the commission itself, the mayor's office and city council chose the appointments here today.

So I would love to introduce, I believe Davis is online, is that correct?

Yes.

Uh, Davis, Davis Powell, who is, uh, uh, uh, appointed to position number two film industry labor unions.

Take it away, Davis.

Yes.

Um, uh, my name's Davis Powell and, uh, good afternoon, uh, council members, uh, council president, uh, thank you for allowing me to, uh, appear, uh, virtually I've, uh, been down in Oregon and still am right now on various union business.

I'm the local executive director for the SAG-AFTRA Portland and Seattle locals, the Seattle local covering Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.

My office is based in Seattle, and I've been happy to say that I've been a Seattle resident for several years now, having originally moved from the Southeast Atlanta area.

I have been the executive director for the locals for about since about August of 2022 and it started with the SAG-AFTRA in February of 2021 as the broadcast business representative representing the television and radio stations that are we that are union represented in the Pacific Northwest.

I've I'm an attorney by trade and the vast majority of my career has been serving and representing the unions.

I've been practicing since 2012 and I would estimate that nine to 10 years of my professional career have been dedicated to representing unions.

And a good chunk of that has now been with SAG-AFTRA and the film industry.

I have made many connections with several unions, especially the entertainment unions in both the Seattle and elsewhere.

I've been able to foster very good relationships with IOTC 488, the local Teamsters unions, American Federation of Musicians, among many others.

and as well as labor at large with mlk labor the central labor council which covers represents the various unions in the in king county as well as the washington state labor council the state affiliate of the afl-cio so with my experience i'm very happy to say that i have can bring a good representation for the labor unions, not just SAG-AFTRA and the actor performers, but all of the labor as well as serving as a ear and a mouthpiece for labor at large.

Thank you, Davis.

I would next like to introduce, if I can get to the page, Katie Hall.

Welcome, Katie.

Thank you so much, Chris.

I'm Katie Hall.

I am a classically trained strategic communicator from Detroit.

Love Seattle, been here 18 years.

I'm also a classically trained journalist, graduated from college exactly 20 years ago to the date.

After college, my path was different than most.

I actually was facing some pretty serious time in prison because I wanted to be a journalist and I didn't have the funding to pay for it.

After getting out of trouble and out of that situation, my boyfriend married me, we became husband and wife, and we moved to Seattle.

Actually, Spokane, to be exact.

And in that time, I hid from film and journalism.

I hid in education for 11 years, and I kept getting beat down with journalism, like, wanting to do it.

So exactly 12 years ago, I started my nonprofit, which is Katie Hall Foundation.

The purpose of my nonprofit is to ensure that any woman or girl, or really anyone, but especially women and girls, that they can come through our program and don't have to work full-time jobs while they're in college like I had to.

My goal was really to prevent women from not being able to do the field work that they enjoy doing, and so at this point, I've graduated about 68 women out of colleges throughout Washington State, over 1,000 girls through my Girls on the Rise program.

These accolades are cool, but what I'm most proud of is out of my six Emmy nominations, four of them are Woods students.

Four of those nominations are with young women and girls in our state, and I'm very proud of that.

As far as accolades go, I do sit on Natus Northwest Board, which is known as the Emmy Awards for individuals who don't know.

I've been there for five years.

I am now over scholarships, so I give out funding.

I'm a philanthropist as well to young women and men.

going to school for journalism.

I also am a Board of Governors, re-elected two weeks ago, just became a Seattle sports commissioner a month ago, and I'm also the partnership chair for the Seattle Association of Black Journalists.

I think I'm gonna be doing film until the day I die, and so this appointment means the world to me.

It truly does, because the day that I was convicted was exactly 20 years ago today.

So to sit here in front of all of you and to know that hopefully I will be a part of this commission, not only am I proud, but I guarantee you this, I work hard, and I don't care about being the first.

I want to make sure I'm not, like, the last person to come through.

So one thing you can count on from me is that film schools, I work in them.

I don't just do it for TV.

I'm really into schools when people are not.

I work with young people, I coach them, I develop them, and I give them scholarships.

And my goal is to really partner with Chris and the rest of the commission to ensure that we're telling all different types of stories.

Thank you all so much for having me.

Thank you, Katie.

And I failed to mention, Katie is the appointee for position five film schools, film programs, and film educators.

All right, I'd like to introduce Lex.

Lawrence Alexander III, appointed to position eight film festivals or film content distribution companies.

Lex.

Thank you, thank you.

Can everybody hear me?

Hello, hello.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you to everybody for their time, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone on the council.

My name is Lawrence Alexander III, professionally known as Lex Scope.

I am a filmmaker, I am a film lover, and I am a community organizer, cultural curator.

All the accolades and all the words and all those things are really, really great, but what I'm about is being able to continue the work that I do, which is bringing up underrepresented voices in storytelling, specifically black, brown, tan, everybody that the film industry before us systemically doesn't necessarily shine the most light on, let's put it that way.

So basically in our underground film festival that we created, we've been able to bring 10 different artists from here every single month, show their stories in front of 300 real live people instead of 300 shares or likes or things on the screen.

And the impact that that has brought has been undeniable.

And being a part of something like the commission, I like that word impact.

I think I know being involved with an organization like this and an institution like this will be able to continue our mission with impact, with purpose, I would like to let people see people like me and understand that we can create a future of creators that are not starving, that are not hungry, but they're thriving.

And I think that's the number one thing that I would like to be the takeaway from this as an underrepresented creator from the South in North Carolina by way of Seattle.

Love it here, been here 10, 15 years.

But when I grew up, I didn't necessarily have a lot of this access already with the Southern public school system.

Let's just say the Seattle public school system blows my mind every single time I see a lot of my nephews and whatnot going to school up here.

Yeah.

Thank you all for letting me speak.

I'm really, really, really happy to be here.

This is my first City Hall meeting.

Is it always like this?

This is something I was like, oh, very, very, very, very energetic day.

So I appreciate y'all's time.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Lex.

Thank you, Katie.

And obviously, I have the honor of working potentially with all three here, including the rest of the really dynamic film commissioners.

I will scroll up here and say a little thank you and open it up for any questions from the committee.

Thank you very much.

I would just like to say, first of all, I extend my thanks to you, Chris.

You are You're Seattle film guy.

I mean, you basically, you're everywhere, you're all over the place.

You know film, you know the, you don't just know the discipline on all the sub-disciplines involved in film, but you are out there and you have, you've added so much life and you're a major force behind everything that we're doing with the Film Commission.

So thank you so much.

And, My question, I do have a question then I'll open it up.

One of the reasons why I wanted to create a Seattle Film Commission was not only because this has been the top priority of the film industry for years and years and years and it just seemed odd that we didn't have a film commission after so long.

to advance the priorities of equity and growing the industry here, but it is also to put Seattle back on the map as this is the country's best filmmaking city, right?

And we're tired of having films that are supposedly about Seattle, but filmed elsewhere.

And we want to attract new production and also grow our existing film commission, our film community and industry.

So one of the things, basically we want industry experts to tell us what to do.

What can we change in how we regulate film in this town or anything else?

How can we make it easier to make film in Seattle?

So that is what I'm asking you folks here.

If you have any ideas, hopefully you don't have to say them right here, but if anything, if you have something that you really want to work on on the commission,

do tell and that goes for you too as well davis do you want thank you lexi you want to go first yeah because i went before you sure okay yeah we're going well together um i think one of the things you mentioned about how do we attract larger productions here i think is us being involved in film outside of washington state as well um just recently um i personally just hired in the lead writer from the power episodes 50 cents and he's the lead writer and he's also went to harvard as a writer so i think bringing people like that into our city from la they're they're suffering um some of the writers are suffering that's in the bigger industry and so being able to bring them in and also bring in larger productions it you have to network and you have to leave out the state to do that too sometimes that's one of the things i would like to do personally we're working with chris and his leadership and then really capitalizing on the schools.

I think it starts in sixth grade.

We have to get the arts back into the schools.

Thank you.

Okay, so for me, I think that I know that pouring into our youth, not necessarily school-based, because that is important, but even for those folks like myself that didn't necessarily have the educational background, I think it's about pouring into just the youth and the up-and-coming creators and allowing them to have the resources that they feel like they have to go to New York or LA or Chicago or even Atlanta.

We have all those things here.

I feel like there's not a lot of I would like to be the bridge between the liaison, between the people that do not know what's going on and all of the amazing resources we do have here to keep our people here.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm just going to thank you all.

And Davis, I know that you're online as well.

And first of all, Chris, thank you for all the work that you're doing.

Davis, thank you.

I have an incredible amount of respect for you and the breadth and depth of all the information that you provide an experience um to this so thank you and then lawrence um thank you as well i know that you're going to bring a lot of creativity um to this as well i'm not saying that because of the way you're presenting yourself today but you could just tell about the the love and passion that you have and then obviously i've been knowing katie for years and all of the work that you have done in the community i know you didn't talk about your um or you did, but your nonprofit work that you did, that you do with young women is incredible in our community.

And so just wanna thank you all.

We know that these positions are not paid.

And so being able to bring your expertise and your diversity and your experience to these is incredible.

So just wanna thank you all for your service to our city.

So thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, and then I also see you, Councilmember Salomon.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President.

I want to lend my voice of gratitude as well to the commissioners.

These are volunteer positions and they are very important positions, and I particularly I have a fondness for the arts, as Chris knows, and we need more arts now more than ever, and particularly for our young people.

And so I want to thank you for the work that you do with young people.

It's really important.

And then obviously representation is really critical in this industry, because as with many industries, there's been underrepresentation for far too long.

So I really want to thank you for the work that you do in particular to make sure that we have representation and bring more young people and young people of color to film.

It is really critical to the work, not just young people, all people, but again, in particular young people.

This is really the arts and film are part of that is so important to children and young people.

uh part of their development um it is a really critical piece like i said so i really want to thank you for the work that you're doing uh davis you too online um and particularly like i said because i know these are volunteer positions we always are so grateful when amazing people want to hold these commissioner positions and really want to do this work we are so lucky that we can harness this talent in the city And so thank you for being here.

I'm glad you're in Seattle.

And thank you, Council President, for the opportunity to lend my voice of gratitude.

Thank you.

Council Member Solomon.

Thank you, Madam President.

I also want to thank you for your work, your interest, your volunteerism in this space.

I reflect back on when I had my security business many, many years ago.

and we would actually do security for movie productions that were actually in this town.

You know, I remember sitting on equipment in Pioneer Square, Sandpoint, Newport, all over the place.

So, but it also comes to something that Council President Nelson said, which was there's so many times when something is supposed to be in Seattle and we know it's Vancouver, right?

I was just watching an episode of Tracker the other night and say, oh, they're in Seattle.

I was like, no, it ain't Seattle.

Come on now.

So if you have ideas as to what we can do to attract major productions to this town so that Seattle is actually represented, not our neighbors to the north, that'd be great.

I'd love that.

So again, thank you very much.

And I look forward to supporting your appointments.

What I've heard is that there are two ways, primarily, incentives, film incentives, and we have that at the state level, 15 million, I believe, and cutting red tape.

So lacking a lot of resources, I'm game to see if there are ways to make it easier to make film.

That's in the cutting of red tape category.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Nelson.

Thank you, everyone, for being here and your testimony and your stories.

One point that I was thinking about, particularly in the context that the film industry, the film world generally in America is facing some heavy headwinds, which has recently come up because of being caught up in the tariff discussion.

but it also highlights the challenges that we have.

And so it just underlines the need for the Film Commission to leverage what we have here in Seattle in terms of natural beauty, the people all across the board that we have, the advantages that we have.

You know, in my hope that, you know, you don't have to watch a Hallmark movie made out of Vancouver all the time, particularly when they base them in Seattle.

To Council Member Solomon's point about, you know, seeing, quote unquote, Seattle when it's not.

I just wanted to, you know, to say that and also think it's important to, since you're all coming from the outside, I think that's really important.

Like I was remarking on your remarks about bringing those different perspectives from the Southeast, but other parts of New York, LA, Chicago and the like.

And I think it's important to bring that here and bring it into the mix.

And I think that's probably going to be a very strong net positive for moving forward.

And so I really just wanted to highlight that point because that struck a chord with me because I think We can get used to different pieces here in Seattle, but by bringing those fresh eyes like you have and everyone else, I think it's going to be really helpful to us.

And so having that perspective is really important, so thank you.

All right, I'm not seeing anybody else's hands up.

I'll just say that film creates jobs, of course, let's not forget that's what, and generates economic activity also.

And there will be a film that we can see that was, based here and the production was made here and Washington State is featured widely, so stay tuned for that.

Okay, I will move these appointments.

Hearing no further questions, I move the committee recommend confirmation of appointments 03146, 03147 and 03148. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to confirm appointments 03146, 47 and 48. Will the clerk please call the roll.

Council member Rivera.

Aye.

Council member Solomon.

Aye.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Council member Kettle.

Aye.

Chair Nelson.

Aye.

Five in favor.

Thank you very much and congratulations.

Yes.

And this will be back at full council, not next Monday, Tuesday, but the following Tuesday.

And you're welcome to come to that as well.

Thank you very much for your service.

Thank you.

All right.

Will the clerk please read agenda item four into the record.

Agenda item number four, resolution 32170, a resolution granting conceptual approval to the Downtown Seattle Association to install, maintain, and operate interactive media kiosks in public places located in the Metropolitan Improvement District and participating business improvement areas for briefing and discussion.

All right.

Well, these folks are getting settled.

I'll just say that this legislation is a long time in coming.

I had my first meeting about this in April 2022 and have been working with stakeholders for the better part of three years on this.

And it's been a priority for my office because there are tremendous public benefits.

that you'll hear about later on in the meeting.

And I just have to say that I'm very happy that we're finally at the table.

This is a resolution that we'll be discussing today and hopefully voting out of committee the next time.

And then there will be an ordinance that accompanies this, that actually contains the terms of the concept that we will be discussing today.

So this is a two part legislative effort.

And the run of the show will simply be that next I will have folks introduce themselves and then we'll have John Scholes frame the partnership and then we'll have a presentation from SDOT and we'll have questions from council members after that.

And we're also joined by central staff analyst Calvin Chow to answer questions and provide information that has not already been provided by previous speakers.

With that, would you please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation or introduce yourselves and then Johnny are welcome to say some other opening remarks.

I'll start from this end.

Calvin Chow with Council Central Staff.

John Scholes with the Downtown Seattle Association.

Amy Gray with the Seattle Department of Transportation.

Mark Brands with Site Workshop or Consultant to Ike Smart City.

Clay Collette with Ike Smart City.

Jessica Burton with Ike Smart City.

Thank you.

And hi, I'm Elise Nelson.

I'm with SDOT and online virtually.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for joining us, even though you're supposedly off right now.

Anyway, please go ahead.

Well, thank you, Council President Nelson.

Again, John Sculls, the President and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association.

We're grateful to be before you today with a proposal to locate inside a digital wayfinding kiosk program in downtown and in neighborhood business districts around the city.

I want to just offer four brief points before turning it over to SDOT and and others here at the table.

One, you're right, Council President, we've been at this for a bit, and we're grateful for the extensive review of city staff, for meetings of the Design Commission, the Pedestrian Advisory Board, the Disability Advisory Board, and the input of a number of community groups.

Thank you to SDOT for their thorough work and working with us over many months, and to the mayor for including this initiative in the downtown activation plan.

Number two, great urban places, great cities, great downtowns are places that are easy to navigate to find your way and discover experiences.

And this is a proven technology that's in place in more than 20 cities across the U.S. to help people do just that.

Folks who live downtown and in the city, folks who work downtown, folks that may be visiting from around the city, across the state, or from around the world.

Great cities embrace technology like this to help people find their way to transit, to arts and cultural events, to community events, to farmers markets, to First Thursday.

And we have a lot of new events, new investments in our downtown, a lot of new businesses and new arts and cultural organizations like Cannonball Arts, which will open later this summer for folks to discover.

And this is a technology and a vehicle to help people do just that.

Number three, over many years, the city has set a high bar for the use of its right-of-way when it comes to private structures like this.

We think that's an appropriate standard and that this proposal, this initiative, meets that standard.

There's extensive public benefit that will be provided through the provision of these kiosks within the downtown and across the neighborhood business districts.

And then finally, just for some additional context, the proposal for downtown will include 30 kiosks within the Metropolitan Improvement boundary.

That boundary includes about 300 square blocks to give you a perspective of scale.

We look forward to your questions and review.

And again, appreciate the opportunity to be before you today.

Thank you.

All right.

Well, thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and do the first few slides and then turn it over to my colleague, Amy Gray, who is in person at the table with you today.

Thank you for having me online and accommodating my request to be virtual.

We are excited for this presentation and the discussion today as we begin discussion about the programmatic term permit for digital kiosks and the resolution that is a first step with you and and then what comes next so for today's presentation we will be talking about what the downtown Seattle Association is proposing generally where the kiosk would be placed what SDOT recommends and like I said I'll kick off today and then Amy will Amy will get into the the weeds as well as the team here in front of you next slide please As a background, the kiosks are a near-term action that is included in the Mayor's Downtown Activation Plan, or DAP for short, which you may hear today.

And this is an action that is intended to help make downtown a top destination for people who live and visit here.

The DAP anticipated that kiosks would be delivered via this partnership model with the DSA through the term permit.

Next slide.

I'm kind of just reinforcing what John was saying just a moment ago.

This is a programmatic term permit for a total of 80 interactive media kiosks.

The DSA is our applicant working closely with their vendor, which is Ike Smart City.

The kiosk will be maintained at no cost to the city, and the DSA will receive revenue that can be reinvested back into downtown and other participating BIAs.

So the city charter authorizes city council to approve nonconforming uses, and the term permit structure is what we're proposing for use of this programmatic project.

Next slide.

This is a timeline, and you'll see the yellow arrow, which kind of means we're in the middle.

And there's been a lot of work done to date, and there's still more work to do.

So like I said, the Downtown Activation Plan identified kiosks as an action in 2023, and we've really been working since then.

with the DSA and Ike Smart City.

They applied officially for a term permit in summer of 2023, and we've been conducting an extensive amount of internal review, briefings, and community engagement since that time.

So the arrow kind of marks the start of our council consideration stage.

And with this, we will kind of transition as council's process concludes to the next phase, which Amy will provide more details, but will include installation permitting, where we look at specific sites where the kiosk will be proposed within the Metropolitan Improvement District with the goal that kiosks can be installed beginning hopefully later this year and into quarter one 2026 ahead of FIFA World Cup.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Amy Gray.

Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to present this to you today.

So term permits require city council approval in two steps.

The first step is why we're here today for the resolution to present that.

The step two is the ordinance.

Oh, I should go back.

Before consideration of the resolution, the SEPA process has to be completed, and this was done I think in January or early February of this year, and there was a determination of non-significance published.

So that has been complete, so that's why we're here with you now for the resolution.

The second stage is the Term Permit Ordinance, which sets all the terms and conditions of the permit, including bonds and protections for the city.

It includes insurance identification and restoration requirements, reporting, and all the things we want to be concerned about to protect the city for having this private structure in the right of way.

And it also grants the term for the permit, and this one will be in two terms, and it's a little wonky, it's 16 and a half years for the first term, and then there will be a second term for 13 and a half years for a total of 30 years.

Um, then after that, uh, is the permitting and that's the, the site specific locations will be identified and, um, the, the applicant cannot obtain their permits until after city council would pass the ordinance.

And so that we're starting early identification and screening things and working with Seattle city light on meet me vaults and everything that deciding the coordination, where's area ways, the construction permitting.

And so that early work is happening now.

And then if council passes the ordinance, that would be the point which they could go forth with the permit and install.

Next slide, please.

So our review is guided by Seattle Municipal Code, chapter 1565. And we evaluate, I need to move my notes over here.

we evaluate to which the kiosks serve the public interest and their relationship to the cityscape.

Our analysis includes reviewing the public benefit proposal to determine if it adequately offsets the impact of the kiosk on the public right of way.

Our review has concluded that the kiosk proposal sufficiently met the criteria in SMC 1565. And there's also another review part of this, which is the Seattle Design Commission.

This is a code mandated step review.

And they look at the urban design impacts and the public benefit proposal.

And as you can see on the slide, they met multiple times presented to the design commission.

We took some of the recommendations from the Design Commission, including they said you should go to the Seattle Disability Commission, and that was happening.

We included some of the other recommendations, including location criteria for individual placement and site-specific public realm improvements, amongst other things.

I'm going to turn it over to Mark Brands for his portion.

Thanks.

Again, Mark Brands of Site Workshop.

We are a consultant to Ike Smart City and really helping to facilitate the conversation with Design Commission and also with community engagement in the process of siting the kiosk themselves.

So I'm going to leave it on this side for a second because the kiosk has been here before.

It's been at the state of the downtown a couple of times.

It's been downstairs, a commission, as you can see on the screen.

We also had it at a community day at Westlake Park.

So Ike has been very good about getting it here so you can experience the kiosk itself, which is the best way to understand it.

We have a project website and online survey that has been, for the duration of the project, has been used to engage public interest and comments.

We have presented to associations.

We have presented neighborhood associations to not just the BIAs, but also Pike Pine Corridor, Uptown Alliance.

South Lake Union, Belltown, Soto, so quite a few.

And then communicated directly with John's team, has communicated on several occasions with the BIAs.

You heard Mike Stewart and other speakers representing the BIAs today.

Also, diversity of community groups and then BIPOC community.

So there's been extensive outreach by our project team.

Program areas, as John mentioned, is focused in the first phases on the mid.

So 30 kiosks there.

And then outside of that, we have four initial BIAs.

We had to start somewhere.

So we have Ballard, U District, Soto, West Seattle Junction.

Very importantly, the kiosk will not be located in historic districts, landmark or special review districts, shoreline district, the waterfront, our new waterfront.

We have staying outside of that zone.

Seattle center overlay districts and park boulevards are excluded.

Two phases, initial phase is 30 in the mid.

That's the first phase.

That's where, for FIFA 26, we've got a short timeframe.

That's our goal.

Second phase, as Amy mentioned, is to then expand into, again, the mid gets 30 additional kiosks and then 20 additional would be spread amongst the BIAs.

So that's 80 total.

The kiosk description, as you've seen downstairs, is over eight feet tall.

It's about three feet wide and about a foot deep.

The screen size itself is a little over 12 square feet.

The kiosk is a very robust structure.

It's been installed in a number of cities, well over 20 cities around the United States.

And so it's weatherproof, it is erosion resistant, dust and water resistant.

We get a lot of comments about what if you hit it with a baseball bat, It's shatterproof.

And the big thing here is Ike maintains these things with DSA.

They have a vendor that will maintain them.

They'll be on the spot if something is damaged or tagged.

It's in their own interest to make sure these things are operational to make sure that they're functioning properly.

The two modes of operation, the first one is a passive mode.

So this is the default mode where it's running through the loop and I'm gonna show you the slide, how it runs through the slides and we'll have a short video to share that with you.

The second one is engagement where you go up and hit the screen.

Advertising is minimized and then you have a screen that you can engage with and there's a number of things that you can engage with when you get into the engage mode.

So the kiosk itself, there's 80 second loop Eight slides, 10 seconds each.

That's the first row.

There's a minimum of a quarter, 25% of the content is public content.

As Clay or Jessica will tell you, oftentimes advertising isn't sold and that can go up to 30 to 40% public content.

There's a daily minimum when there's a high rotation of a minimum of an eighth of the content will be public.

Okay, I'm gonna see if I can do this.

Go to the, here we go.

And is it going to play?

Okay, 80 second loop.

Okay, thanks.

That's one loop.

Okay, the kiosks are...

located where they're supposed to be in the furniture zone, in the landscape furniture zone.

So they are a structure where you'd find a street tree, a bike rack, a bench, a street sinus utility poles, et cetera.

They fit neatly within that space.

They have to be set a minimum of 18 inches off the curb face per code and have a minimum of 12 inch clearance on the pedestrian side.

So that extends the sidewalk zone from the six to eight feet that we often see to seven or nine feet.

They're located away from intersections and crosswalks.

We've specifically got location criteria that came out of the SEPA attachment.

We were responsible for the citing criteria.

So there's also some transportation standards in there thoroughly reviewed with SDOT.

All complies with the municipal code and the streets illustrated and coordinated with street furnitures and everything else.

So public benefits, I'll just end on this and end the...

public benefits and other features as we're calling them.

So this is one of the things coming out of commission.

Really wanted us to focus in on elements that would enhance the pedestrian realm.

So your experience as you walk down the sidewalk in a right of way experience.

So a couple of examples on the screen here are things like flower baskets, bike racks, all in the vicinity of the kiosk.

And then also repairing broken or redundant furnishings within the right of way.

Other features include, and these are very important, are the financial one.

First phase, revenues are directed directly to DSA.

It's anticipated approximately $1.1 million will be generated.

Potential for new income for the city over and above that if it's achieved.

Phase two, same thing happens again with the DSA.

Ambitional money again would go to the city and then the DSA would then divvy up the money for the kiosks that are located within each of the BIAs.

They would get their pro rata share of the revenue generated there.

Public safety, during one of our commission meetings, we had Seattle Fire Department, Seattle Police Department and the care team, Amy Smith showed up and briefed the importance of the kiosk to commission members.

So the kiosk has the ability to share alerts and other messaging from the city.

It's equipped with an emergency call button on the side of the unit, can show wayfinding during special events or unplanned demonstrations.

gives information during severe weather or the natural disasters, displays public safety and emergency warnings immediately when issued by the city, and then it's connected to FEMA's alert feed, or otherwise known as IPAWS, to show public safety warnings in real time.

In the engage mode, so this is again when you go up and touch the screen, it can promote public art.

So it can be hyper-local.

This is geo-located so it can really respond to the neighborhood that's within.

Provide information about local arts, culture, community events, promote local businesses, gives interactive wayfinding coordinated with Seamless Seattle.

We spent, we had side meetings with Seamless Seattle, this is the Urban Design Department within SDOT and spent a lot of time making sure this was coordinated.

So things like color, language, iconography are all coordinated with their system.

And if you look at their wayfinding program, you'll find that this is identified, digital wayfinding is identified within their family of signage.

And they also acknowledge that this is better served by private industry because of technology advancing so quickly.

And then lastly, it promotes civic and social resources, including safe shelter and supportive housing.

In the passive mode, the, so again, this is when it's running through the loop.

The kiosk gives community and city messaging.

So it promotes local profit, local nonprofits and neighborhood councils, BIAs and city departments and includes a public art program.

Ike has their own department within the company that runs this.

We have planned to coordinate directly with the DSA and their, their, uh, staff that runs art programs throughout the midst itself so really promoting local artists this is kind of a low bar for these folks to get in and promote their artwork and it also include a curator and these are paid positions and then we provide free wi-fi as well around the kiosk itself amy i'll turn it back over to you

Okay, so we are recommending to you counsel that you conceptually approve the term permit for the interactive kiosks.

And as noted earlier, there will be a second step of approval with bringing to you an ordinance.

Next slide, please.

So this is a timeline of the legislative actions.

Today we're with you and then the second committee meeting on May 22nd will involve discussion and you could potentially vote on the resolution at the time.

On May 22nd as well, we'll give our first briefing on the term permit ordinance.

On June 3rd, if the resolution is recommended out of committee, it will go to full council for the vote.

And then on June 5th, it would be the second discussion and possible vote on the ordinance and a full council vote on the ordinance estimated at June 10th.

And that would be time that they could actually obtain the construction permitting and start working in the right of way.

and thank you very much for your time here.

Elise and I are available to answer any SDOT questions, and I will turn it over to Clay and Jessica.

Good afternoon, council president and committee members.

I just want to say how excited we are to be here.

We've been working on this for a few years with John and the DSA team, and we believe that we're bringing forward a really compelling program and proposal for Seattle.

A little bit of background on us that didn't come from the presentation.

We are in the ground in 23 cities across the country, hot and cold, big and small, Baltimore, Houston, Miami, Tampa, to name a few.

On the West Coast, we are live in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Diego, and a couple more on the way later this year.

All of that have, you know, in each city, we learn something new and make our program and our product a little better, and so I think what we're bringing forward in Seattle will really respect the community and reflect its values.

And we're here to answer any questions you may have.

And thank you again for the time.

Thank you.

I will...

Cal, is there anything that you would like to add before I open it up to questions?

Yeah.

Would you go back to the schedule, the committee schedule?

So I just wanted to highlight for the committee that my central staff paper just highlights that the resolution is currently before you, doesn't really give a lot of council direction.

It's really a bit pro forma in terms of what we would see in the permit.

with this aggressive schedule, there's a draft available, then that might be the more appropriate place to kind of look at what actually goes into the, like rather than taking it into a resolution, we can focus on the actual ordinance if that's gonna be coming for us soon.

I would note that the design commission did not recommend the proposal, but they provided feedback on considerations for public benefit and for mitigations for your consideration if the proposal didn't move forward.

And so those would be the types of things that you would expect to see in the draft ordinance.

Thank you.

I will now open the floor up to questions from my colleagues.

Council member Kettle, vice chair.

Thank you, Chair Nelson.

Welcome.

I've met, actually I've met the majority of the table, to include our representatives from the company, Ike.

Very nice to meet you and get to demonstrations.

I've gotten essentially a demonstration and a half, so thank you for that.

Can you bring up the slide with the public safety pieces to it?

It's slide.

I have it on slide.

Actually, the slides are not numbered, but for those who don't know, by the way, we have the briefing in front of me.

I have it through the agenda.

Just in case you're curious about what we look at on our screen, I also have it separately here, and I can scroll through the slides as I wish to, which is a great feature.

Just give me a hint right now.

So I just wanted to speak to this.

I understand, you know, one of the things in terms of the Public Safety Committee, which I chair, you know, there's a lot of different pieces to that, and one of them is OAM.

Can you speak, you say can share alerts.

Can you go into more details related to that?

And by the way, as I asked this question earlier in terms of the 23 cities, if there's any antidotes or anything along those lines, starting off with that kind of emergency management kind of function,

Yeah, it's a great question, council member.

And there's a few things that we do.

And we've actually met with the CARES team and the Seattle folks in different emergency disciplines to make sure that what we're doing will work for Seattle.

So the most obvious thing we do is we work with FEMA's alert system, IPaWS, which Alert Seattle also feeds into.

So if there's ever an AMBER alert, or inclement weather, active shooter, or something terrible like that, it'll automatically take over the screen.

Another feature we have is our 911 call button.

So on the spine of every unit, we have a button with a two-way speaker, and it'll call emergency dispatch.

That can be customized.

In some cities, that calls clean and safe.

In some, it calls 311. Most cities have 911. And we do see it used.

A question came up today in a few of our demos of, is it abused?

And do we see it folks kind of hanging around and constantly pinging the button?

We've actually never seen that reported in any of our 23 cities.

What we have seen is productive use.

I think you asked about examples.

One anecdote we have is actually from the city of Berkeley about a year and a half ago where someone brandished a knife and someone used our call button.

Someone who didn't have a cell phone used our call button and was able to get an emergency response and actually diffuse the situation.

So we do see it.

It does strike me like a modern version of the old telephone booth that has the blue light as well, which must be a standard, getting the blue on the button.

Also, I think you spoke to those pieces.

The alerts.

Actually, you asked my second question.

I was gonna ask specifically about the 911 as well.

And I think this is important, and can you go more details in terms of like, how it takes over the screen, cause you have the screen in terms of like, okay, we have this way you showed your video, like explain the process, like when it would be overtaken by like the Amber Alert example you mentioned and how does that work and for how long and who controls it and what's the communication, what's the coordination that is done with whatever city official that you're working with, which kind of goes to the lead, I guess.

And then Mr. Scholes, if you can also speak to the DSA, if you have like an operational piece of that, Just so people understand Ike, DSA, City of Seattle, that combination as these things play out.

Yes, maybe I'll answer the technical first and then hand it to John.

So two ways, again.

And you can see the visualization here in the bottom right quadrant.

So IPAWS is already integrated into the kiosk without any sort of human intervention.

which is really good because that means if there is an active alert that's put out by FEMA or put out by the city, it'll automatically grab it, and the portion that you see the gentleman touching that we call kind of the active mode will automatically turn red and white and show that text really prominently.

It'll displace an advertisement, any city content or art to do that, and it'll last for as long as that event's happening.

If someone were to come and access it, it would actually put a little icon in the corner, like a flashing red, so you know, hey, this is happening.

You click on it, you get more information.

In addition to that automatic takeover, we also will give the city emergency response services a direct line into the kiosk.

So if they want to upload images, if they want to put text and do an emergency protocol, they'll sort of have their finger on the button and the ability to do that.

And then we'll coordinate with DSA as well.

And for other content, Councilmember promotion of events and community gatherings and the applications themselves that folks are interacting with in the active mode, we will have a close partnership with Ike to develop and help curate that content, both for downtown and then the outlying BIAs.

That's been a really successful model that Ike has employed in working with downtown organizations across the country.

In most of their markets, they have partnerships directly with the downtown organization.

And in fact, it was the Downtown Denver Partnership in 2016 that worked with Orange Barrel Media to develop this tool itself.

deployed in denver first so we will have an ongoing close relationship with ike we have an agreement with ike we have an agreement with the city to make sure that this is a successful and relevant piece of technology and program over time

Mr. Schultz, can you also speak to, I was just thinking in terms of the mid, the mid ambassadors, in terms of the DSA and how you use the revenue from this program and how does that play into public safety?

So we propose in the term permit ordinance and our agreement with the city that revenue that comes to us must be expended consistent with the objectives and programs and services of the Metropolitan Improvement District, which this council reauthorized.

Thank you.

back in May of 2023. So on an annual basis, we would propose to the city how that 1.1 million would be spent within the parameters of the mid programs and services.

So additional cleaning and safety, community hospitality ambassadors, more beautification, outdoor concerts, et cetera.

And the city would review that.

annually so the revenue to us goes into those services and I would note too we haven't mentioned this but our ambassadors see a lot of utility in working with members of the public whether they be folks in need or their folks that are visiting our downtown to and using this piece of technology to help them find their way it could be finding their way to a great event or it could be finding their way to a shelter bed or the winter shelter at Seattle Center that's opening in January So we see a lot of utility in helping all members of the public and having our ambassadors have another function that's, you know, bigger than their phone or more relevant and accurate than a static map.

Before asking my last question, Chair, I just want to say a shout out to the MID Ambassadors.

For our guests, if you don't know the MID Ambassadors, it's fantastic people.

I speak to them on a regular basis when I pass them on the street, you know, getting some intel on what's happening in that part of the neighborhood or just thanking them for their service to our city.

So would that lead into my last question?

Generally, we get a million emails.

Some of the emails on this topic that I've been receiving has talked about The critique is distracted drivers.

Obviously, traffic and pedestrian safety is key.

Can you speak to that point?

Because as I see it, like a perfect location would be like Westlake Park, you know?

So it's like nobody's gonna be distracted by it.

Can you speak to anybody?

Can you speak to the parameters, the different pieces of the program that help ameliorate that situation to help avoid distracted driving?

Sure, that was a part of the SEPA analysis.

There was a traffic analysis memo that was published as part of it.

Their consultant worked heavily with our transportation operations division and that they analyzed locations, potential locations, and they did the math that engineers do to see what is a safe stopping distance.

Did I say that right?

And so that all those parameters that they identified in the SEPA checklist of reducing driver distraction and conflicts will be included in the term permit ordinance.

Mark, did you have anything?

Well, I'm going to take it down to the layman's terms, Councilmember Kettle.

So site stopping distance, working with Marnie Heffron Transportation.

So Marnie worked directly with the city's, one of the transportation planners, and this is math.

They came down to worst case scenario of me crossing a crosswalk at a red light, looking at my phone, and a driver having to see me and react.

That's the safety that's built into the math.

So these distances from intersection think about all these oopsies or people not paying attention, whether it's the driver, the pedestrian, the cyclist, whatever.

So they are very conservative, probably the most conservative, I might say, for Ike in any city in the United States.

So this has been very well studied, and we feel very good about what we've published in the SEPA documentation.

Thank you.

Your antidote there, I almost wanted to make a public service announcement, because this is one thing.

Maybe it's because I grew up on the East Coast, but I always make eye contact with a driver.

100%.

A lot of my fellow Seattleites don't necessarily do that.

So public service announcement, make eye contact.

Thank you, chair.

Council members, if I could just add something.

Just to add on, this is a programmatic term permit.

So this is something we do not see very often.

We've only had one other one in the city in the past.

It does it at a much higher level, and then it leaves the implementation of specific siting locations, that type of thing, as permit conditions, as for the permits that would be required for actual installation.

So this is a higher level of council review than typically we would have a specific structure that we would review for a specific location.

This is not that.

And I would say, too, that when this comes back to you in the form of ordinance, there may be other documentation that you might want to know more about, including the memorandum of understanding between DSA and the city, which would govern some of the other operational requirements of the program.

And I'll just finish up that the location criteria that is established from the SEPA and will be included in the ordinance when they apply for installation permits to street use, that criteria will be evaluated to make sure it meets all those conditions.

And then also the other conditions for construction and traffic management and things like that.

So that their installation permitting review will also double check the location criteria as established.

Thank you.

Council Member Solomon.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Some of the questions that I had for you have actually been addressed by Council Member Kettle's questions regarding what do you do with the funding?

How is it going to be used as well as the distracted driving part?

So I'm satisfied with the answers that you provided for that.

When I see the commentary that is coming to us, I'm getting the feeling that there's a lack of understanding of what these things are and what they will do, as well as what they are not and what they will not do.

So just for the record, are there going to be cameras on this thing that are going to be recording people's everyday movements?

No.

OK.

No.

So this is not surveillance technology that's going to be out there that our real-time crime center can tap into?

No, sir.

OK.

Cool.

Thank you.

And who is responsible for the maintenance upkeep of these units?

That would be Ike, the vendor.

So this comes at no cost to the city, no cost to us.

And Ike has a very good track record across the markets they're in of ensuring that these are operable, they're clean, they're kept up.

We've done our homework, visited other cities, visited our colleagues that have agreements with Ike in other parts of the country and are satisfied with their performance to date.

The performance requirements for their upkeep are spelled out in the agreement we have with Ike and the agreement we have with the city.

Okay, great, thank you.

thought I had another question but I know that we can get to it later on but you know again I just wanted to establish for those who may be listening watching what these things will do what they will not do who's responsible for maintaining them it's not the city the city is not incurring any costs in putting these things in and there is financial benefit that will benefit the you know, downtown, the DSA, the BIAs, as well as the city.

Is that a fair statement to say?

Correct.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Well, you almost delivered my closing comments.

Okay.

I just wanted to say thank you very much.

This is exciting to me to be having this first discussion today because I, as noted before, I've been involved in this project for a long time for three main reasons.

Number one, the public benefits, everything from the free Wi-Fi to the multilingual in real time information for public transit and also for emergency information, the list goes on.

also because they allow for the elevation of local, our local small businesses.

And that is always very important to me.

And that's in part why it is in my committee and not, for example, in the transportation committee, because there is a nexus there, of course, but the fact that the partnership is between the vendor and DSA, which manages one of our business improvement areas called the MID, Um, that is why it's also in my committee.

And that is the final reason why I am so supportive is because the, uh, you know, the rate payers in our business improvement areas tax themselves to be able to provide services that benefit, not just themselves or the, uh, the small business, uh, neighborhood business district, but the, the surrounding community.

And this will, I've always felt that, uh, imagine downtown without the mid, right?

And it's a tremendous service and I believe that it's right to allow for the generation of revenue that can further help the mid provide the services that we all depend on that make downtown so great.

So that is why I am excited for this going forward, but there are questions that need to be answered and this is our first discussion and we'll continue at our next meeting.

And if there aren't any other questions, I just want to say thank you very much.

And for everybody who's watching, there is a kiosk downstairs.

Go give it a test drive and check it out.

How long will it be in the lobby?

It'll be leaving later today.

So for the next few hours, we'll have it around.

Yeah.

Anyway, thank you very much for the presentation.

Thank you very much.

Okay, if folks can stay until 430, I think that we do have time to get through our last committee item.

Okay, go ahead.

Would you please read item five into the record?

I believe.

Agenda item number five, council bill 120978, an ordinance relating to the code of ethics defining elected official requiring elected officials to disclose any financial interest or conflict of interest prior to participating in legislative matters and amending sections 4.16.030 and 4.16.070 of the Seattle municipal code for briefing and discussion.

I'll just say that this is in my committee because the governance committee is the committee that oversees the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

And so I will simply turn over discussion to council member Moore, the sponsor of the legislation to lead the discussion.

So with that.

You're welcome to, well, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves and then I'll, I'll let Councilman.

I'm Wayne Barnett.

I'm the executive director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

Good afternoon.

Zach McAllis, I'm the chair of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

And Lauren Henry, I'm the council's legislative legal counsel.

Go ahead.

Okay, well, thank you very much, Chair.

First, I just want to say thank you to the Council President for allowing me to join the committee today to present this legislation.

Thank you to Mr. Barnett, Mr. Pekalas, and our own legal counsel, Lauren Henry, for being here to walk us through.

I just wanted to provide some background information on the drafting of the legislation.

So we all know that we had a lot of issues come up last year and so in that context our legal counsel last November forwarded an email to all council members from our Seattle Ethics and Elections Director Wayne Barnett, who's here with us, outlining in general his thinking on a possible update to the Seattle Code of Ethics.

And I guess, given my background as a lawyer and a judge, and somebody who chaired the bylaws rewrite for the Washington State Bar Association, I did decide to, it piqued my interest and decided to further explore this.

So I have to say that, and I did ask for counsel, our counsel did provide me some feedback about what do other jurisdictions do, what are some of the concerns with this current, our SMC, And I have to say that, quite frankly, when the approach or the idea was that we would move from a recusal model to simply a more broad disclosure model, that I also shared some of the concerns that we have heard here in the past few days and that we heard yesterday at the Ethics and Elections Commission.

So in doing that, we did look at what some other jurisdictions do, and I was able to put together a sort of modified recusal model based on what some of the other jurisdictions do.

And I took that to the Ethics and Elections Commission for feedback, I think that was in March.

And what we found or what I found in that process was that there were a lot of questions that sort of resulted in how do you parse a conflict And when I went back to the drawing board to try to figure out how to incorporate those suggestions, I really got back to the original point that our Ethics and Elections Director, Mr. Barnett, had made.

which ultimately comes down to sort of one person making a judgment call.

And that can have potential consequences in the legislative context for the democratic process and for the full airing of all voices that are represented in us.

And so, That said, I went back to the drawing board and came up again with the help of Council with what we have here today.

And I just want to also point out, and maybe if you'll allow me the indulgence of reading from the Federal House Ethics Manual, which came out in 2022, which notes that financial disclosure provisions were enacted to monitor and to deter possible conflicts of interest due to outside financial holdings.

Proposals for divestiture of potentially conflicting assets and mandatory disqualification of members from voting were rejected as impractical or unreasonable.

Such disqualification could result in the disenfranchisement of a member's entire constituency on particular issues.

A member may often have a community of interest with the member's constituency and may arguably have been elected because of and to serve those common interests and thus would be ineffective in representing the real interests of the constituents if the member were disqualified from voting on issues touching those matters of mutual concern.

And then they go on to state that the problem of conflicts of interest involves complex and difficult issues, especially with respect to the legislative branch.

A conflict of interest is generally defined as a situation in which an official's private financial interest conflict or appear to conflict with the public interest.

Some conflicts of interest are inherent in a representative system of government and are not in themselves necessarily improper or unethical.

Members of Congress frequently maintain economic interests that merge or correspond with the interests of their constituents.

This community of interest is in the nature of representative government and is therefore inevitable and unavoidable.

At the other extreme, a conflict of interest becomes corruption when an official uses his position of influence to enhance his personal financial interests.

Between these extremes are those ambiguous circumstances which may create a real or potential conflict of interest.

The problem is in identifying those instances in which an official allows his personal economic interests to impair his independence of judgment in the conduct of his public duties.

Hence, public disclosure of assets, financial interests, and investments has been required as the preferred method of regulating possible conflicts of interest of members of the House.

So I think that that beautifully summarizes the struggle that we have here before us and has also led to this particular legislation.

And so just with those opening remarks, I would like to, with permission of the chair, to call upon our legal counsel to walk us through her very thorough memo outlining the bill.

Thank you and good afternoon, council members.

As I open, I just wanted to note my usual role is to provide attorney-client privilege legal advice to my clients in the legislative department.

And while that's still my function, today I'm also wearing a hat of a central staff policy analyst in order to review the bill with you and its effects.

My goal here is to respond to the questions that you think relevant to make an informed decision on the policy choices before you.

And so I'll open with what this council bill does and then turn it back over to the chair for any other comments.

So this council bill relates to two different sections of the city of Seattle's code of ethics.

That is 4.16030 and 4.16070.

There's one noted change in 030 that I'll hit first and then about four effects out of 4.16070.

So turning first to the definitions in the code of ethics, this council bill would clarify the definitions by adding a new term and that term is for elected official.

It clarifies that elected official is defined by the charter and would include those serving an elective or appointive office.

So that would be the mayoral city attorney and all nine council member seats.

Turning to 4.16070A, that's where all of the changes are confined, though the section does continue thereafter.

The first change of note is to create an exception to the types of relationships that categorically create financial interests or conflicts of interest.

For people acting on city business, those individuals are called covered individuals throughout the code of ethics.

So that exception is to remove a landlord-tenant relationship from those other categorically created financial or conflicts of interest.

And so that's to note that the mere residential status as a landlord and tenant would not under this council bill would not raise an automatic financial interest or conflict of interest.

So that's the first change.

The second is to adjust the wording that's found in subsection A3, what you might call an appearance of conflict of interest or a subsection that deals with situations where it might appear to a reasonable person who knows what's going on with a situation that a covered individual's judgment is impaired.

And the code goes on to say in circumstances like a personal or a business relationship or some sort of contractual relationship, a transaction that might be occurring that might give rise to an inference that a judgment is impaired.

The change here is to the verbiage.

And instead of it being a classification where one's judgment is impaired, It's just stated that you may have a conflict of interest.

So nothing changes about the circumstances of you're assessing your business relationships, your personal relationships, and whether the transaction or activity is giving rise to an issue.

It's more in that verbiage.

Are we talking about your judgment being impaired or you having a conflict of interest?

But there's no other effects happening there.

The third one that I'll note here within 070A is that there's a deletion of the provision also in A3 requiring elected officials to disclose their conflict of interest in writing to the executive director of the SCEC, Wayne Barnett, and to the city clerk in order to receive an affirmative defense to an alleged violation.

What this means practically is Subsection A3 has certain safe harbor provisions where if you follow the procedures that are laid out to disclose your perceived conflict of interest in the manner prescribed and to hear some feedback from Wayne, about whether or not you would do indeed have a conflict of interest, then you can claim an affirmative defense.

That is, if someone alleges a violation of this ethics code, you have a defense to that violation if you've accurately followed the procedures that are in subsection A3.

So this modifies for elected officials what those steps would be.

The effect depends on who you are and what type of matter you're actually taking up.

For you as council members, in your legislative capacity, when you are taking up legislative matters, practically there's no effect and difference for you because you're now, under this council bill, going to be governed by the same disclosure requirements that you would send your disclosure to the same places, Wayne and the city clerk.

Now, that's different for the mayor and the city attorney when they are largely functioning around non-legislative matters, more implementing matters, executive matters.

For them, this change would have a meaningful effect because their disclosure would be sent only to Wayne and not to the city clerk.

Practically, that means right now the city clerk publishes the disclosure on the website.

And so meaningfully, that difference in disclosure would mean that it's being only sent to the SEC via executive director Wayne Barnett and not otherwise to the city clerk for filing.

The last and most substantive change proposed by this council bill is to how elected officials participate in legislative matters.

What this code change would do in effect is to take what's right now a limited exception whereby council members are permitted to participate in legislative matters notwithstanding a financial interest or a conflict of interest when the matters concern things like taxes or setting of fees or utility rate considerations.

That was a limited exception created in 2018. What this council bill would do would be to broaden that exception and allow for council members participating in a legislative matter to participate, notwithstanding a financial interest or conflict of interest, provided that they follow the disclosure requirements that are already within the code, but were previously only limited to those circumstances in which you had an issue involving taxes or fees or utility rates.

So in effect, this would broaden the authorization to allow council members to disclose and participate in a legislative matter in which they have a financial interest or conflict of interest.

Thank you for that.

Can you, so I just want to be clear, for council members, if they have to disclose a conflict of interest financial They have to file with the director of ethics and then they have to announce at a committee meeting where the legislation is being considered if they sit on that committee meeting or at a full council.

Is that correct?

That's right.

is existing code provisions.

And so the existing process would still apply, would just apply to perhaps more matters rather than just the limited exception that's present in the code right now.

So you'd post to the city website.

You'd file a disclosure with Wayne Barnett and the SCEC.

You'd file a disclosure with the city clerk, and that filing would be published there as well.

And then for council members, at an open public meeting in which the matter is being discussed, you would provide a disclosure.

Now there's one change here.

Right now the current code says that you would repeat that disclosure, so you'd have a recurring disclosure each time the matter is before you and you're participating in that legislative matter.

The change here would be that you disclose one time and that would satisfy the code provision that's in front of you.

And I think you and I had discussed that maybe that might be an area of change so that you would be required to disclose at the committee meeting as well as then at full council.

Do we have that discussion?

Yes, I'm happy to take on any proposed amendments that any council member would like.

And yes, we've discussed that and can put that in the works.

Thank you.

And then I also just wanted to walk through and have you.

So we've had some questions raised about So what parts of the SMC that are there now, and I did provide everybody a copy of the current SMC if you wanted to look at that, go down that rabbit hole, but what part of the SMC still remains, like quasi-judicial?

Could you walk us through that?

Yes.

So specifically to the Code of Ethics, that's a complete chapter of the Seattle Municipal Code.

It's chapter 4.16.

These changes concern discreetly one definition change in 030 and then amendments to 070A.

The chapter continues thereafter, subsections B and onward.

that memorialize in situations that do raise a conflict of interest for covered individuals.

So that's council members, elected officials, those that serve as city employees conducting official business.

So the section does proceed, subsections B, C, D, E, F, G, et cetera, and then other sections of the chapter.

So discreetly, we are talking about only those two subsections within the chapter.

So the current provisions against improper use of official position, acceptance of things of value, interest in city contracts, participating in quasi-judicial votes, decisions, all of those prohibitions still would be in place under this proposed bill.

That's correct.

And then can you talk a little bit about the state provisions, ethical provisions?

Yeah, so many of those successive provisions attempt to memorialize state law prohibitions on various unethical behavior that's established by state statute.

There's several chapters of the RCW that pertain to the ethics of municipal officers.

And notwithstanding any change that is approved or denied by this body, you are all still bound by the state ethical requirements.

Those are regulated separately by the Public Disclosure Commission and then locally here by the SEEC.

And so those state law provisions concern, as you said, the subsections that you described.

But I'd point you to, let me just get some references.

I think page three of her memo logs.

That's the one.

So RCW 42.23 concerns the code of ethics for municipal officers.

Subsection 070 contains prohibited acts for municipal officers.

Those would include securing special privileges or exemptions, receiving gifts or gratuities from a source except the employing municipality, and for a matter that's connected with or related to the officer's services as such an officer would otherwise be provided for by law.

Then to have business or professional activity that would require disclosing confidential information that you acquired as part of your official job.

And then fourth, disclosing confidential information to use it for personal gain.

All of those things exist, and even if this council bill were to move forward and be passed, they don't supersede or invalidate any portion of that state law.

All of those requirements remain.

I'd also like to point out state law separately addresses and regulates council member conduct.

usually in a land use capacity when you're in a quasi-judicial setting.

And that's under the state's appearance of fairness doctrine.

All of those regulations would still govern this body.

Thank you, and those would all be proactive, right?

You would have to recuse yourself before participating.

Yes, so the point in time at which an ethical decision arises is very fact specific, but as each of you know in the performance of your official obligations, As you sit and consider various policy decisions, you do that with a lens to what are my financial interests?

What are the other potential conflicts of interest that would pertain to this matter?

Assessing state law to see if the matter that you're attempting to participate in would do any of these prohibited acts.

And then locally, looking also to the Seattle Municipal Code and making the same determination.

It's at that moment in time at which you have a conflict of interest or a financial interest that's arisen.

And it's at that moment that you act.

And I'll leave it to Wayne to explain the enforcement mechanisms and all of that.

But just because enforcement happens after the fact, a violation may be alleged, an investigation ensue, and some sort of penalty be provided, either at the state level or local level, That does occur afterwards, but the moment of intervention where right now under the code you would need to disclose and recuse yourself in various instances, that occurs at the moment that you understand and attempt to participate in a matter for which you're prohibited from doing so.

So there's still an obligation under the state code to make a recusal decision or any other decision that falls under these categories.

Yes, that's right.

The state law asks municipal officers to assess and understand when they may be approaching these prohibited acts and to take action at that time.

Thank you.

Because we're short of time, I think, if I may, Director Barnett, I would just love to kind of hear your thoughts on this, the legislation, kind of where you land and having to interpret the current code and kind of the, yeah, your thoughts on how that's going and kind of the discussions that we had about this issue.

Yes, well, thank you very much, Councilmember.

I think this probably takes us back to last November.

That was when this issue first came up, when I first sent an email to Lauren about my concerns with the way our code is written.

I just want to be very honest.

I am not always as happy as I would be enforcing the recusal requirement we have in our code.

There are times where I feel like everyone should just know.

Like, if you put out in public what your interests are, then you can either recuse yourself or go forward.

And you're going to be held accountable for that decision you make by your voters.

So I just think that's what I'm used to from before I came to Seattle.

That was the rules I was used to dealing with.

So yeah.

But here, I do think we have a very, so ethics laws are on the spectrum, from disqualification, which we have here, to disclosure, which you see under the federal law, which you just mentioned.

So that's all those.

They're all ethical models.

They're all acceptable to someone.

So I just think that's what we're trying to figure out.

Like, where do we want to fall on this spectrum?

So yeah.

And my concern is, like, right now, It just fests too much authority in me, frankly, as the first line of defense for the commission in making those calls.

So yes.

And some of the things that you have to determine, right, are because financial interest is not defined.

Right, it isn't.

I should say, like, in conflict of interest.

To me, that means something different than financial interest.

You can have a financial interest in something without necessarily having a conflict.

So that, to me, that is the next step in the analysis.

But I don't know if we ever get there under our code.

I told Councilmember Wu back when she was on the council that she couldn't participate in discussions of the gig worker minimum wage because her restaurant had a contract with a food provider or a delivery service under those platforms.

So that's what I told her, like, you have a financial interest.

And I was very comfortable in saying that, like, I didn't have to guess or anything.

To me, she had a financial interest in that matter under our law.

But I wasn't saying she had a conflict.

To me, I just was saying, like, you have a financial interest and you can't participate.

And I think also there's another sort of, and this came about my understanding and when this code was rewritten, You'll have to remind me when it was rewritten.

But the opt out for being the interest is no greater than a substantial segment.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, I think we put that in the law in maybe 2009 or something.

Because we got to like, technically you had to recuse yourself.

You have a financial interest when you pass a levy proposal.

But you all have to vote on that because everyone has an interest in that and we're all gonna be paying it, so yes.

To me, that's the classic example of when that applies.

And again, it just seems like someone is having to define what is a substantial segment and how do we utilize that?

I think you had talked about that in terms of district representation.

Right, we did amend that at some point to make it clear It used to just be substantial segment of the city's population, but then we went to districts that had to be amended because if you share an interest with everyone in your district, to me, that's kind of the same thing.

You shouldn't be barred from voting on that matter because you share it with a substantial segment of your district.

Right.

But that does, again, leave discretion of how is that defined, right?

Right.

And we've done that by administrative decisions so far through adjudicatory processes.

I think there is an option, which the chair mentioned, for us to do that through rule.

So I think that might be something we want to look at.

Thank you.

And the Director of Ethics and Elections Commission, Mr. Pekalas, can you just talk to us about your thinking as chair on sort of the models and the higher philosophical approach to this issue?

I shall do my best, council member.

Thank you again.

My name is Zach Bekalis.

I'm the current chair of the Ethics and Elections Commission.

I'm also an attorney by training and profession.

I work at Pacifica Law Group as a litigation partner, focus on representing government entities and officials, as well as political campaigns, though of course not City of Seattle political campaigns, because that would create conflict of interest.

It is in my capacity as chair of the commission that I'm testifying here today.

I'm pleased to share some reflections on Council Bill 120978 based on my experience as a commissioner in which I've served as for since 2021. The Ethics Code's financial conflict of interest provisions have a straightforward purpose to ensure that all city employees, including elected officials, discharge their duties to serve the public interest, not their own personal pecuniary interests.

That is, I would think, a fairly uncontroversial goal.

Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of how any government could function without some mechanism.

to do so.

But the means by which governments within the United States have sought to achieve that goal vary to some degree, particularly as to the application of financial conflict of interest rules with respect to legislative matters.

Governments do approach the problem differently.

At a high level, as Executive Director Barnett alluded to, these mechanisms can be categorized into three groups, I think.

First, on one end of the spectrum would come mandatory disqualification provisions whenever an employee has an interest in the outcome of a decision based on some bright-line standard.

Second, some governments provide an adjudicative mechanism, whether through an independent commission like ours or otherwise, to determine whether the recusal of a legislator is warranted.

Third, some governments require only disclosure of an actual or potential conflict of interest and leave it up to the elected official herself to determine whether recusal is appropriate.

The current ethics code largely adopts a bright-line mandatory recusal requirement, as Ms. Henry outlined in some detail.

So the code generally requires disqualification when the employee, a family member, a roommate, for example, has a financial interest.

There is no de minimis exception, which makes it somewhat unique and quite strict.

So even if the employee's potential financial interest is very, very small, that does not by itself exempt the legislator or employee from the disqualification requirement.

It's still required.

There are exceptions, again, as Ms. Henry outlined.

First, there's an exception if the prohibited financial interest is shared with a substantial segment of the public as defined by the Commission.

As Council Member Moore and Executive Director Barnett mentioned, the Commission has not yet promulgated such a role, though we could do so, and perhaps we should do so, and I would welcome a dialogue with this Council if that is indeed what we will pursue.

Second, there's an exception for legislative matters that concern generally applicable assessments, taxes, fees, utility rates, and the like.

Disclosure in that instance is still required.

So the proposed legislation, I think as everyone acknowledges, would represent a significant shift in the code's approach to legislative matters, and that it would require only disclosure of financial conflicts rather than mandatory disqualification.

The benefits and drawbacks of such a change are, in my view, fairly self-evident and could be recited in a point-counterpoint debate ad nauseum.

From a purely government ethics standpoint, my view is that there is no one singular right rule to address legislative conflicts of interest.

It defines on a variety of circumstances, including various circumstances particular to the jurisdiction.

There are trade-offs in the current rule.

There are trade-offs in the proposed rule.

There are trade-offs in any conceivable rule that the council could adopt.

But as long as the system is clear and administrable, and I think both the current system and the proposed amendment are, it's fundamentally a policy choice as to where along the spectrum, mandatory disqualification, adjudication, disclosure, the city should fall.

I do want to raise a final point that really was prompted by yesterday's commission meeting.

While any number of systems may ultimately be justifiable from a government ethics standpoint, the reasons for adopting them are certainly not all created equal.

That is, it is one thing if the council amends the financial conflict of interest rules because it determines in good faith that the bill would improve the orderly functioning of democratic government.

But if the council amends the code with an eye towards particular policy objectives, anticipating that one or more disqualifications would be compelled under the current provisions, that would be a cause for concern.

And I think it's precisely that concern that motivates much of the public comment and opposition to the amendment today, as well as the public comments the commission heard in its meeting yesterday afternoon.

Indeed, numerous commenters yesterday specifically mentioned some form of the theory, true or not, that the ethics amendment has been put forward or has been considered or being pushed to ensure no council members would be disqualified from voting specifically on landlord-tenant legislation.

On the flip side, I would imagine that those who support the amendment might similarly suspect that its opponent's motives arise from the polar opposite outcome-oriented objective.

This being politics, it is not uncommon for the advocates on opposing sides of important issues to assume the worst of their opponent's motives.

And to be clear, I do not cast aspersions on any reasons for consideration of this bill or on any council member's ultimate vote on it.

But as chair of the Ethics and Elections Commission, I urge the council to consider the bill on its own merits from a governance standpoint, independent of how it may affect any specific pending legislation or anticipated legislation.

One practical suggestion I'll close with, raised by a commenter yesterday, is to delay the effective date of any change to ensure that the council members elected to serve under the existing ethics rules abide by them during their terms in office.

In other words, I think until 2028. That might avoid any unfortunate appearance that the rules are being changed for particular policy objectives rather than to serve good governance goals.

And with those reflections, I thank the council for its attention.

I'd be pleased for any questions.

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to questions.

I have a question.

I'm not seeing any hands up.

Director Barnett, you made a comment about where you worked before, and so the situation that you're in here makes you uncomfortable compared to where you've worked before, and that's because the nature of our code is, what, more fuzzy or something?

Can you please explain?

It's much more strict.

And it's also like I worked on the East Coast before, so I kind of like come from big city politics.

And both in New York and Boston, their rules are more towards disclosure, if they even apply at all to the legislation, which they don't.

So yes, they're much different places, different rules.

And so that is, so is that what was guiding your recommendation for this legislation?

Moving towards disclosure?

Yeah, because I understand that Council Member Moore was working on some possibilities and then, but they differed from yours.

And so, but you just thought that, I don't want to speak for you.

No, this is back in November.

So I should say like, this is before any of this.

I raised the issue that, and frankly, just coming from where we just had a different political culture.

So that's all.

Good.

Yeah, and I can just clarify.

I went through this exercise of doing a modified recusal and kind of came to the same conclusion that, again, there are many ways to define financial interests, many ways to define substantial segment of the population, many ways to define Is it a material interest?

Is it a remote interest?

Is it a minimus interest?

What is the substantial segment?

How small is the group?

How large is the group?

trying to answer those questions are very difficult, and hence I came back to the original position that our director has, which is really what we want is something that's operational, it's relatively easy to employ, and it does require full transparency and disclosure.

And I think that that's part of what's getting lost here, is that we're not saying, Yeah, you remove the recusal requirement.

You don't remove the disclosure requirement.

In fact, I think this bill enhances the circumstances in which disclosure is required.

And there are many ways in which people in this office can improve their positions that don't currently fall under the current ordinance, which I think would, in terms of conflict of interest, disclosing that.

But anyway, I just want to be clear.

I'm not in opposition to Wayne here.

Thank you.

I understand okay Councilmember Rivera Thank You Council President and thank you all for being here and when you and I've worked together for a long time and you know I'm constantly seeking your counsel on this issue and and I agree that we should not you know this is to apply to everything not for one particular reason and I will say in the time and the year under a little under a year and a half that I've been here this has come up for me and less so financial and more just, you know, because my spouse has sat on a board and it just seemed, and I always wanna air as Wayne knows on the side of caution with this.

So I am constantly making sure that I'm, I am clear on what the recommendation would be.

So it seems to me, so all that said, it seems to me that this key piece here to Council Member Moore's point is a disclosure piece.

That seems, I mean, like to me, that is the critical piece is, you know, if people are in these positions and not disclosing, this is a huge problem.

And the disclosure piece then lets everyone know like there is, we're not hiding anything, we're disclosing.

And then in this district specific situation that we find ourselves, it seems, it is prudent to be looking at this, given that then it limits our ability to represent our constituents and when we're district specific, for those of us district specific.

And so, you know, I am compelled by that aspect of it because we were put here to represent our constituents and if they want something, then we're not able to advocate for that, what they would want and vote on what they would want.

So, I don't know if you have, it's more of a comment than a question, but I don't know if you have.

Anything you wanted to add to that, Wayne, but I know you and I have had many conversations over the years, not just this year, but in particular to this year about that piece, the disclosure and ability to be able to to vote on something constituents want.

Yes.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kittle.

Uh, thank you, uh, chair Nelson.

Um, I just want to say thank you for everyone to being here.

Uh, director Burnett, um, chair Calis, uh, the Calis, it rhymes with Chehalis.

Calis.

I had two ways to go there, and I chose the wrong way.

Absolutely useless outside our state.

That's a very good point, too.

And Ms. Henry, thank you so much for coming and the presentation.

I do like the chair's comments for this.

I will say I do have concerns and questions, and that's why I do have a meeting set up with Council and Mr. Burnett.

It might be good to be with you as well, probably not possible in terms of schedules, but to look at those concerns and questions, so I appreciate that.

I only wanted to make one point here at this time, and I think it's my favorite word, and it's grace.

I do believe that we need some grace in this city.

It's a very important topic, and that's why I have my concerns and questions, but I think the tone of what one could say is the tax or the comments that have been bantied about basically lack that grace in terms of what's behind different pieces.

And I think that would be very helpful to this whole conversation if we do bring in a certain amount of grace and a certain understanding.

You know, we talk about the financial, you know, are basically our financial status and the like and a lot of the comments are being made and this bears no resemblance to facts.

Because the King County Assessor dramatically increases the value of your home or maybe inflationary reasons, the stock market has gone up.

that can all disappear tomorrow.

So this idea of, you know, what that really means is just like an example.

I think we should have grace and understanding in terms of how we're very sensitive topic, how we're conducting our discourse on it.

And so that's just all I wanted to say, basically, is the idea of having grace, having a conversation, and this has been good, and I will follow up on it to address the concerns and questions that I have.

Thank you, Chair.

Because we are running low on time, I am privileging committee members, and then I will get back to Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Solomon, please proceed if you have a comment.

very quickly so that Councilmember Strauss can have his say.

Just like with the discussion about kiosks, there's the perception of what these things are, and then there's a reality.

When it comes to this legislation regarding disclosure versus recusal, and how this is going to impact a particular piece of legislation that may or may not come before full counsel.

There's the perception of how it's going to benefit a group or disenfranchise another group, and then there's a reality of what this thing actually says.

And hearing the discussion that's going on, that's one of the first things that pops into my mind.

Second thing that pops into my mind is a constituent basically telling me that I should recuse myself from anything this council discusses regarding police because I used to work for the police department.

to which I say, well, I'm kind of a subject matter expert on that.

So wouldn't you want me to look at these things with that lens?

And the third thing, you know, again, full disclosure, there's a lot of talk about renters and landlords and the whole bit.

I'm a landlord.

I've been a landlord multiple times.

So again, if I'm looking at landlord tenant issues, I'm going to have the perspective of somebody who's been a landlord.

I can't erase that.

Okay.

Yet I think it's appropriate, more than appropriate for me as a landlord to disclose that so that folks know that when I'm making these decisions, when I'm looking at these issues, they know where I'm coming from on that.

So I'm all for more disclosure.

I'm all for more transparency.

And I'm also for, if it crosses that threshold, yeah, recuse.

And we need to be held accountable for our decisions and positions.

And the more information that people have about where we're coming from, okay, when we're making those decisions, the better.

Now, you know, again, how do you define conflict of interest or financial interest?

I don't know.

You know, maybe we'll get there.

But, you know, at what point does, again, you know, where's the line?

Where's the threshold?

I think that may need to be defined.

But I'm saying all this to say that I want more transparency.

I want more accountability.

And if that means disclosure, let's do that.

Yet where there is that kernel of, huh, is it or is it not?

I would err on the side of recuse.

Just saying.

So that's all I had.

I just wanted to pass it on.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

And I know that we're starting to run tight.

Have this panel back before us again, so that we can have a robust discussion because this is incredibly important information.

Mr. Perkalis.

Thank you for your mention that we should be considering this bill on its own merits.

For me, that is exactly what I'm doing.

I'm considering this in the legislative history that it has been, this proposal has been before the council in 2016, 2018 was in conversation last year and is here before us again today.

Mr. Barnett, we've got a couple questions for you just to start off.

How many years have you been in this role, either here or in Boston?

What is your...

23 years total, 20 years here in Seattle.

And Boston was your last post before this?

Yes, it was.

Taking a little bit of levity here, did you ever provide Frank Skeffington a ethics violation?

No, I did not.

Okay, well, he had him.

Anyone read The Last Rob by Edwin O'Connor?

It's a good read.

How often do you...

Please be quick with your questions.

We are running out of time.

I wanted to have a hard stop at 4.30.

We're now getting up to five, so please proceed.

Let me jump right into the meat of it.

I'd like to ask several factual questions right now and try to figure out why this legislation is coming before us today.

To do that, I'd like to ask you, Mr. Barnett, about some emails that became public last year in the media.

Director Barnett, in September of 2024, Council President Sarah Nelson emailed you disagreeing with the Ethics and Elections Commission decision in your guidance that Councilmember Wu recuse herself from voting on Council President's bill that would have repealed Seattle's minimum wage ordinance for app-based drivers.

Is this a correct understanding?

Yes.

I'm not sure it was, it wasn't a, the commission never made a decision on that.

I just want to make sure this was only me, so it's kind of the way these things normally go, yes.

You were put in the middle.

Yes.

In that email chain, council president accused you of not giving the full and appropriate consideration to the request it merited, to which you responded, the ethics code is not a complicated law.

It's written in plain language to establish bright lines that people in public service must respect.

Is that correct?

Yes, I think very much.

And then two months later, there was a request made by the council's legislative legal counsel to detail your thinking on the interaction between the ethics code and legislative process.

And it's then where you said there's room for potentially amending the ethics code.

Is that correct?

Yes.

And it seems to me that since January of last year, when Councilmember Nelson became Council President, there has been more scrutiny and pressure on you and the Ethics Commission about their rulings.

Point of order.

It sounds as though this is veering into an impugning of intent or integrity of a colleague.

So...

No, you are welcome to you and I can talk about this if you would like what what generated this.

But yeah, no problem.

No, I do.

I would like to continue asking my questions.

I am the chair of this meeting, so you are going you're welcome to go ahead, but please be aware that.

Let me reframe.

It seems that in the last 18 months, there has been more scrutiny and pressure put on you and the commission about the rulings than under previous councils.

Would you say that that's fair to say?

I'm not sure.

I feel like more, there are just more issues coming up.

There's more about people are kind of focused on this issue in a way that is not normal.

I mean, I never had this back when Jan Drago was a small business owner and there was never any, no issues that came up that would have affected her.

So it is, these issues are a bit more apparent in the last couple of years, so yes.

And in these last few years, you've been put into deciding on what could be interpreted as political decisions.

I guess those are my words.

Do you feel like you're being put in the middle sometimes?

No, I'm being asked to do my job and I'm doing my job.

And your job is to provide feedback.

And I'd say it's up to us as elected officials whether to take your feedback or not.

From my perspective, in my opinion, it seems that you are being put in a tough place because if council members receive an opinion that doesn't fit their narrative, they're pushing back on you.

The other option is for us as elected officials is to take your feedback, either use it or disregard it.

In my opinion, you should not be put in the situation to stand your ground on ethical decisions.

Council member Strauss, it seems as though you are trying to get into somebody else's mind about what his thinking was when receiving emails from council members.

Please be direct about your questions and keep them to a factual basis.

It is getting late.

This is all on public record.

And to the public and to my colleagues, I don't believe we should be changing the ethics code because electeds do not like the opinion that you as an executive director provide us.

The question here is what happens if someone asks your opinion and does not take it or does not ask your opinion and votes on an issue that they have a financial interest in?

The example in the media recently is a former council member who had Airbnbs, proposed legislation regarding short-term rentals.

What happens, say, that your opinion was not requested and a council member took a vote on an issue that they had a financial interest in?

What happens from there?

That's difficult to say.

I think at the end of the day, the commission's only power is to levy penalties.

So what would happen was somebody would bring a complaint or I would bring a charge and then the commission would decide on whether there was a violation or not.

Thank you.

I've got a few more questions.

I will ask that Council Member Rivera, did you have your hand up?

We're going to share in the questions.

We are trying to finish this meeting so you can hold your questions and then allow for somebody else.

Did you, Council Member Rivera, I saw your hand up.

Did you have a question or not?

No, I actually had a comment, but I'm happy to wait.

You're welcome to make it.

I am my comment was I earlier when we were talking, I want to make it really clear that I do not take this these decisions lightly and that I have always appreciated Wayne's counsel, which we all have and we take.

And when we have and when I have had questions, Wayne is always open to a dialogue back and forth to get to what is needed.

And that's true, not just for since I've sat here, Um, but Wayne and I have had, um, the privilege of working together on other, other city business.

Um, and, uh, you know, we've always had a back and forth dialogue and sometimes that is necessary, um, to get to what should be done.

And so I, I wanted to both state that, and then also say that, you know, in no way, I mean, I am fully supportive of ethics.

Um, uh, I have a law degree, which I take very seriously, though I'm not practicing.

there I'm disclosing, I'm not practicing.

Um, and, uh, this is really something again, that I don't take lightly.

And I wanted to say that for the record, based on all the conversation that we have heard.

So thank you for allowing me to make my statement.

Um, and I'm done.

Thank you.

Council president.

Thank you.

You may proceed.

Council member Strauss, please refrain from being disrespectful to our presenters.

I apologize if I've been disrespectful to you, directors and Lauren.

Mr. Picalis, I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may.

Please.

Yesterday, the Ethics and Elections Commission talked about this legislation.

Of three commissioners that were there, Kristen Hawes said she had major concerns about the current draft.

One did not weigh in on the merits, and you mentioned the idea that perhaps this legislation, like you did today, should not take effect until the next round of elections.

This is interesting to me.

For me, I also believe that the voters need an opportunity to weigh in either on this conversation or on the legislation.

Can you expand on your thinking there?

Councilmember Strauss I want to be clear that I've studiously avoided taking a position on this legislation.

I do believe that it is a policy matter and it's this council's job to weigh the various benefits and drawbacks that the current system or an amended system may provide.

I did in yesterday's commission meeting as well as today relate and echo the comments of one of the public commenters, I believe her name was Natalie, that suggested delaying the effective date of the legislation.

I don't believe that I adopted that as my own suggestion.

Again, I think it's this council's solemn duty to evaluate the merits of that possibility as well as the rest of the proposed legislation.

And to follow through with that, the options that we would have are delaying the effective date or sending this to the ballot.

Is it not being our, maybe this is for that is, are those the two opportunities or options there?

I do think that question would be better directed to your counsel.

Fair enough.

I am going to ask that, uh, do you have any closing?

I would, I would ask that you, request that you can get some of these questions asked offline, but now we are at 5.03 and I do want to give the sponsor of the legislation closing comments because I've already kept folks at half an hour after I asked them to stay a half an hour in addition.

If you can one last thing, just as my request record for you and for our colleagues is to have the panel back because while I can ask these questions in private, it is important for me to have it on the public record so that our voters can see.

And as the chair of this committee, I do not know if I will be able to do that.

And we've got a pretty full schedule in my committee with other legislation going forward.

So I would like to now pass the last word to council member Moore to speak to, to wrap up if you would like.

All right.

Thank you, chair.

Well, I do want to say thank you to everyone who's been here today.

This is a, It's a very heated, controversial topic.

It seems like everything that we talk about in Seattle these days is heated and controversial.

We are just trying to get work done.

We are just trying to do the business of the city.

So I do appreciate your honest answers, your nuanced answers, your legal answers.

This is about opening a discussion.

This today was about having a discussion.

It was really, I think, an attempt to try to highlight how complex and difficult this issue is and that there are many different approaches that are all valid in and of themselves and ultimately it is a policy decision.

And I just really appreciate the thinking that has gone into this and the questions of the colleagues.

I'm certainly happy to walk through, you know, As I said in my opening remarks, when I got the initial version from Council, I thought, hmm, I'm gonna work this myself, and I put Lauren through many months of agony in doing so.

She was wonderfully patient with me, and really did try to work through some of the things that we've talked about today.

There's no easy answer.

And we really are just trying to find a way to make sure that all voices are heard and that we are able to represent all voices.

So in terms of, I don't know if we're coming back, but I did want to say that if there are potential amendments, I would ask Lauren to email out a deadline to all council members for amendment concepts.

I think I mentioned one today about requiring double disclosure at full council and committee.

So, and other than that, I just want to say thank you very much, Chair, for giving me the opportunity to present and to utilize, to take up your committee's precious time today.

Thank you.

Do you already know when you would like amendments to buy?

I don't, but I'll email out shortly.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

With that, I'm not seeing any other comments.

Oh, there it is.

I see it.

Go ahead.

But this isn't about...

Okay, go ahead.

It's just about the meeting.

I just wanted to state for the record that I fully respect and uphold the right to freedom of speech.

I know that this council does as well, and my colleagues, and I think this principle is really fundamental to our democracy and the work that we do.

However, I will call out...

I will call out when public commenters question my blackness and it's a form of racism and white supremacy.

And my other colleagues do not have to experience this type of racism and white supremacy that my other, and I'm getting a little emotional right now and I apologize because the amount of racism that we have to take as black council members is quite despicable in this progressive city.

I have a voicemail in my office with people calling me the N-word constantly.

We have people questioning my blackness here as public commenters.

And it's disappointing.

It's very disappointing.

They don't even know where 10 black churches are.

Couldn't even name 10 black people.

Doesn't even know the average household income of a black family is $50,000 in this city.

And I just had to say that because it's very disrespectful and it's racist.

And you can be progressive and racist in this city.

And I've seen it for the last 15 months.

And it's disgusting that we have to sit here and see that.

So I had to call it out, colleagues, because I'm very disappointed.

Very disappointed.

We will respect people's right to freedom of speech.

I can take it constantly, but I will not tolerate the racism blatantly questioning my blackness.

For the record, thank you.

Thank you.

Hearing no further business.

This meeting is adjourned.

It is 5 0 9 PM.

Thank you very much everyone.