Seattle City Council Land Use Committee Public Hearing 42722

In the April 26, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order is 2 PM.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Here.

Vice Chair Morales?

Here.

And Chair Strass?

Not present.

Aye, present.

Thank you.

We have two items on the agenda today.

A public hearing briefing and discussion of Council Bill 120287, which adopts regulations of rooftop features.

And secondly, a briefing from SDCI and OPCD on their annual RSJI report.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Before we get underway, I want to celebrate today is Denim Day.

I'm wearing jeans.

You can't see it on screen, and that's OK.

Just want to highlight the fact that this is a moment where we denounce rape and sexual assault and sexual violence of all kinds.

And thank you to Council Member Herbold for bringing forward the proclamation.

creating Denim Day today here in the city of Seattle.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on today's agenda.

Before we begin, I will ask that everyone please be patient as we learn to operate this new system in real time.

As a reminder, public comment is limited to items on today's agenda, while it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas, the City Council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any time, any point, if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

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I see that we have two public comment registrants with us today.

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The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

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

There is a separate public comment, public hearing For item one, Council Bill 120287, which affects rooftop feature regulations.

If your items are about, or if your comments are about item one, please reserve them for the public hearing.

Mr. G, I realize that both public comment registrants are signed up for that bill, and maybe if I've got Clerk Sanchez with us today, can I just close public comment at this time?

I realize I probably should have figured that out before I read the whole speech.

I didn't know, sorry, we did not realize there was a public hearing, so we did not adjust the form appropriately.

So apologies for that.

I see they're both signed up for 120287.

Council Member Strauss, yes.

If they are going to be speaking for the actual public hearing item, you may close the actual public comment period.

And then when we get to the public hearing item, you may call on those two speakers.

Wonderful.

Seeing as we have no speakers signed up or remotely present, the public comment period is now closed and we will move on to the next agenda item.

Item number one, our first agenda item is Council Bill 120287, which updates regulations for rooftop features.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

And item one, Council Bill 120287, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, updating regulations for rooftop features and amending sections of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Wonderful, thank you.

And before we begin our public hearing, we are joined by Gordon Clowers of SDCI and Keto Freeman of Council Central staff.

Will you both introduce, and I see we have, oh, Director Kieran Dongos for the next one.

Will you both introduce yourselves and then kick off the briefing?

Sure, Keto Freeman, Council Central staff.

Go ahead, Gordon.

Gordon Clowers, a planner working on land use code development for SDCI.

All right, I'll say a few things and then hand it over here to Gordon to walk through a presentation describing the contents of Council Bill 120287. So today, the Land Use Committee is having an initial briefing Discussion of public hearing on Council Bill 120287, CB120287 would modify regulations for rooftop features.

Rooftop features are essentially anything that projects above the roofline of a building.

So the height limit for zones is essentially drawn at the roofline.

And there are features that extend above a roofline, such as parapets, railings, penthouses for elevators and stairs, solar collectors and greenhouses.

As the committee knows, there've been some recent changes to our construction codes, particularly the energy code.

And so there are competing demands for rooftop spaces, and that is in tension somewhat with some of our urban design goals.

Council Bill 120287 seeks to resolve some of that tension.

Go ahead, Gordon, take it away.

Thanks.

Will there be a presentation that will be put on the screen?

It's up to you.

You can share your screen if you have the presentation up.

There it is.

OK.

I'll load that.

Can you see that?

Yes, we can.

All right.

I will move to the first slide.

So what does this relate to?

As Ketel said, it does relate to the adoption and effective this year energy code updates that will address space heating and water heating in new buildings.

And what we'd like to do is coordinate the land use code regulations with the new energy code requirements to avoid any conflicts or hampered ability to meet both codes.

Since we are looking at some complex code here, we'd like to simplify the language as possible and clarify what's accounted for the rooftop requirement in each zone.

And we've made a fair amount of progress on that.

And also, as a side topic here, later in our process, the ideas for amending rooftop use allowances in Pioneer Square came along.

And we took a look at that, vetted it, and proposed something that would address newly allowing lodging uses and dining uses on the rooftops of buildings in Pioneer Square.

And similarly for the Chinatown ID neighborhood, we looked at a comparatively more constrained list of changes relating to increasing the roof coverage percentage limit and then also clarifying a note about greenhouses as a rooftop use that had been allowed, but wasn't stated clearly for that capability.

So just briefly to summarize key points about how the Land Use Code treats rooftop features, height, the height limit of a building, the zoned height limit is measured to the roof's surface level.

And many things above, up to four feet above the roof are easily allowed, like parapets commonly present items that are low or not limited.

In that space between four feet and 15 feet is kind of another category, generally more taller features that the code wants to allow, but also set some limits, which are generally about percentage coverage of the roof, and things like proximity to the edge of the roof.

Elevator penthouses that Ketel mentioned, we have some varying allowances for how tall those can be above the roof, but it ranges from 16 feet to 35 feet above the roof, or even 45 feet in a special case in a certain zone.

And then, as I mentioned, taller features are limited to a certain percent of coverage of the roof.

So moving on to a quick summary of the main elements of change, we have increased the percent coverage with these rooftop features for the taller items, generally in the range of 10 to 15% increases across almost every zone in the city.

And the column on the left there summarizes the proposed rooftop coverage for percent for these zones.

It varies from the lower density zones around 30 percent coverage up to about 75 percent coverage for certain kinds of downtown residential towers and 50 percent coverage for other feature other downtown buildings with these features.

And then in Pioneer Square and Chinatown zones that are distinct in downtown they generally have a lower percent coverage allowed today but we would propose to bump those up about 10% in those zone categories.

And it reflects just a greater sensitivity to the historic character of those neighborhoods.

And so another objective of the change is just to increase the consistency in the rooftop limits.

We have many more zones these days that have buildings that can reach to or above 120 feet in height in zones that include mid-rise, high-rise, commercial, neighborhood, commercial.

And also, there's several newer kinds of Seattle mixed zones that have come around since we've really updated these rooftop regs.

So particularly in downtown, there's an interest in accommodating these to recognize that the narrow, the smaller residential towers tend to have a limited floor plate and therefore there's less space on the roof to serve, to put all the equipment that needs to be there to serve the residential units.

And just noting here that we do have a second option for architects to use in their design of their buildings, particularly in the Seattle mixed zone where we allow up to 75% coverage in those zones.

Generally, if the rooftop features are grouped toward the middle of the roof, and we're proposing, you know, to limit the height of features near the roof edges and extend that kind of option to high rise zones, commercial and neighbor commercial, and Seattle mixed zones.

Currently, that's only applicable to South Lake Union.

So moving on to Pioneer Square, the short summary version of what the changes here are, that we would newly allow these kinds of penthouse uses on rooftops in these Pioneer Square zones, that this could happen on buildings at least 40 feet tall.

That was an opinion shared by the historic preservation advocates for the neighborhood, interested in the neighborhood, allowing 50% coverage of the roof with these features.

And the reason why we need to add that is because the code explicitly allows only office and residential uses on the roof today.

And that's a long time prescription for what was felt to be viable in Pioneer Square.

we can add these new categories today, just to allow it to be a feature that could be complementary to a lodging use, basically.

And we have taken care to define these limits within the context of Pioneer Square zone regulations that are there today and maintain a sort of a sensitivity in how much coverage of these uses can happen in these buildings existing primarily we're talking about.

And then for Chinatown ID, similar to the other categories of zones we talked about, we would generally be allowing the increased roof coverage by 10% which would reach up to 25% or 35% coverage of roofs with the board and DON's recommendations.

So the outlook is the same as today, which is to give the boards for the neighborhoods the ability to weigh in and conditionally allow these higher roof coverages if they wish to.

And similarly, the greenhouse allowances an incentive that gives up to 10% more to allow 45% total roof coverage in Chinatown ID with the board's recommendation.

That's the very short version, and I'm willing to entertain any questions that you may have.

Wonderful.

That was a very helpful presentation.

I see former Vice Chair Mosqueda has her hand up.

Thanks so much.

I'm wondering if we can go back a slide.

On slide seven, it says the proposal would allow penthouses for lodging, uses, and eating and drinking establishments to exceed the height limit, subject to coverage limits in some Pioneer Square mixed zones.

I'm wondering if there's a reason other restaurant districts were not included and what restrictions exist in other parts of the city.

Oh, in other downtown zones?

Exclusive of Chinatown.

Is that what your question is about or?

And yeah.

Go ahead and vice chair.

That's going to be hard to lose.

Was your question about other neighborhoods or just downtown?

OK, so Gordon, I think the question.

This bill is bringing into line downtown regulations with Pioneer Square and.

Possibly Chinatown International District.

Is there a potential reason or not a reason to expand this to other neighborhoods and zones across the city?

That is a good question.

I think in general, the outlook for rooftop coverage in many other zones would be that, assuming they include some residential, use is that there would be quite a bit of coverage used by other features like mechanical features and perhaps the penthouses and other things like that that would really consume a lot of the available roof coverage.

And so there wouldn't necessarily be a natural fit with newly allowing that, especially in a low-rise zone.

in a commercial zone, I think that, again, it doesn't necessarily relate well to probable new buildings in commercial zones either.

If your question is in other zones, does the city authorize eating and drinking establishments on rooftops?

Generally, the answer to that question is yes.

Pioneer Square and the ID are somewhat of an exception because they are historic districts and as a consequence have had a stricter set of limitations imposed.

But generally, throughout most of downtown and other urban centers and mixed use areas, rooftop decks, rooftop eating and drinking establishments are allowed uses.

Yeah, and you could say that the downtown zone has layers of of added information in it.

So because there was an indication about office and residential uses on the roof, if we want to allow other kinds, we should add that specifically to the downtown code so that it is addressed rather than omitted.

So the second part of my question was, what restrictions exist in other parts of the city?

Is the answer to that that there are no restrictions in other parts of the city or there are some?

Answer to that is that there are some.

There are some rooftop limitations on the amount of coverage that might apply, but there are not specific limitations on uses for the most part in other zones where lodging and eating and drinking establishments are allowed.

So there is some variability, but for instance, if you think about Belltown, for example, there are hotels, numerous hotels in Belltown that have rooftop bars.

So in places like that, there's not the same kind of limitation that applies in our historic districts.

And then my last question is, could you talk a little bit more about the stakeholders that were involved in developing these updates?

For Pioneer Square in particular, We presented to the board about the ideas.

We worked with the Department of Neighborhoods.

We had some feedback from the Alliance for Pioneer Square, and Eugenia Wu wrote in as well, commenting and participating in the meeting that we had with the board.

So in terms of evaluating that, it was vetted across a spectrum of neighborhood stakeholders.

And as far as other areas of town, we did seek to engage with the Seattle Chamber, group interested in land use issues and reached out to a couple of other similar groups and we briefed them and got their feedback.

And also we worked with, we briefed to the Construction Advisory Board, the CCAB, much earlier and they understood and were generally accepting of the of the need for the changes.

Wonderful.

Council Member Muscat, any more questions?

You're good to go.

And actually you asked all my questions.

Wonderful.

I have no more questions.

I might have, I do have one more question.

I see Council Member Nelson has some, so I'll let her go first.

So just to be clear, it's not, so this is not just referring to obviously amenities, you know, things over barbecue areas or whatever and it's it also has to do with mechanical equipment right yes so and i remember back in the day we we were all you know the tall skinny uh...

residential tower was all the rage and so it looks as though this is trying to accommodate the the smaller floor plate of tall residential towers so uh...

i'm supportive of that effort i'm wondering uh...

The limits between downtown and the international district, they're pretty close together.

And so why the, for the same height of building, why would the percent of coverage, and somebody just mentioned historic neighborhood, but presumably the actual, that has to go through design review anyway.

So why couldn't it just be the same coverage?

That's a good question.

I think that the rooftop coverage limits that we have for Pioneer Square and Chinatown ID were mostly defined for the context of what can happen on existing buildings, historic buildings.

And there's an interest in helping the visual changes from any renovation on those buildings from not detracting from the historic character of those buildings.

And similarly for Chinatown to relate as best as possible to the character of the Chinatown International District in its built environment.

So one thing that has happened in the meantime is that about 12 years ago, we rezoned parts of Chinatown ID and newly added a capability for the slimmer towers.

particularly in places north of Jackson Street and also south, the southern half of the Chinatown ID core.

So as written today, the lower limits apply to even newer buildings in those zones.

And we hadn't proposed to define a new limit for that class of buildings so far.

And it is arguable as to whether those limits that we have are enough to serve the new buildings per se.

Right.

Well, so I guess I'm saying that Good that we're upping the limits, but I think that rationally, if we allow for greater height, we should allow for the same coverage on the same height of building because it's really about the mechanical.

We're not talking about extras here.

We're talking about the mechanical equipment.

Right.

Well, anyway, I don't know if this constitutes an amendment to this legislation or a separate piece of legislation.

It's just that we should allow these buildings to function as they're intended.

And we want more housing.

And if the height is there, then why not?

Council Member Nelson, maybe let me get to my questions, because I think some of my questions might answer yours, which are the central staff memo lists three potential amendments.

Mr. Freeman, can you briefly describe those to us?

I know that I have interest in sponsoring these, just waiting on some last stakeholder outreach that I want to make sure we do.

There are three potential amendments that are identified in the central staff memo.

And after today's public hearing, and you may hear from constituents between now and the next meeting, we may identify additional amendments, but there are at least three that we know about so far.

SDCI has identified what is largely a technical amendment, a clarification, Since implementation of MHA, we have a new height datum that applies in a lot of our commercial zones.

It's a 55 foot height limit.

The language in Council Bill 120287 doesn't sort of clearly contemplate that height limit.

So there is an amendment to clarify that.

And that was identified by Gordon and planned reviewers at STCI.

There are also two amendments that I think Council Member Nelson may be speaking to.

that have been identified by Weber Thompson, which is helping design a project on the international district.

And those those amendments would allow higher heights for elevator penthouses.

So for elevator overruns to accommodate faster elevators and also do a council member Nelson is describing, which is allow greater rooftop coverage, sort of more consistent with what we allow other sort of downtown zones and Seattle mix sounds like in South Virginia.

Um, so that, um, there could be a higher percent of the tower structure that is covered by mechanical equipment or the rooftop features because that tower is beating our urban design standards for, um, four plate size.

So those are three amendments that have been identified and that staff is reviewing again.

There may be others that come forward between now and the event.

Thank you, Mr Freeman.

Councilor Nelson.

Does that answer your question?

Absolutely, and I'm sorry for jumping the gun here.

No problem.

Ketel makes these great, I mean, he keeps me smart with the essential staff memos.

And if you have interest in co-sponsoring any of them, please do let me know and we can work together.

Colleagues, are there any questions?

It seems like my colleagues have done a good job of asking the questions that I had.

Council Member Mosqueda, please take it away.

Thank you so much.

One of the things that I'd be interested in is if we have the possibility to help expedite any sort of permitting or approval that might need to happen.

Could you let me know what the process is, if there's restaurants or entities that are interested in opening these up?

Just with the fact that this isn't a new footprint, it'd be great to know if there's a possibility to expedite any permits, assuming there are some.

I think- Yeah, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Flowers, Council Member Mosqueda, I might chat with you offline about the work I'm doing around permitting, although I don't have, that's not regarding this, but Gordon or Ketel, if you have information about permitting within this envelope, let me know.

Yeah, I mean, of course, there's always a desire to get permits issued faster and construction completed more quickly.

And there's, of course, when there are a variety of priorities, there's always a question about sort of what to elevate.

STCI currently prioritizes, among other things, Gordon will know more about this than I, but there are at least two types of projects that receive, two types of projects that receive expedited permitting and STCI affordable housing projects and green building projects.

So those two already more or less kind of first in the queue when it comes to allocation of additional resources for expedited permitting.

Um, there are, of course, there are other programs that might be a benefit to a tenant who wants to occupy a rooftop space or ground level space.

Um, and those largely come through the Office of Economic Development.

There are folks there who can help facilitate permitting for those uses.

But that's kind of more of a tenant improvement function, not an initial construction function that is served there.

I'm not sure if your question was relating to expediting the ability of known projects to use the kinds of changes we're talking about today or something different.

It's about this bill.

It's about the piece in front of us.

If folks want to open up more rooftops, wondering how fast they can do that, especially as we're encouraging people to.

their homes if they're vaccinated and stay safely distanced, I would prefer to go to a rooftop outdoor dining place than go to one.

So how quick can we make that happen with this legislation?

Yeah, well, I think if we go through the meeting process here at the committee and proceed with its approval, presumably and get it to the mayor, it could be effective 30 days after the mayor's signature.

So that would be a fairly efficient outcome for everyone.

Council Chair, can I add a comment?

I just wanted to remind council members that SDCI does have a downtown business permit coordinator.

His name is Peter Furbringer.

This was added to our budget last year.

And this individual, given the current state of downtown and our downtown recovery efforts, he's a one-stop person.

If someone is interested in applying for a permit, for downtown space.

Peter's also helping small businesses citywide and also our arts and cultural businesses.

So the idea is if someone is interested in starting a business, they would start with him before applying for permits, and then he would be a point of contact as an applicant goes through the process.

Well, thank you for reminding us of that important ad from last year's budget.

Council Member Strauss, I know you've been a huge champion of that, so thank you.

It takes a strong budget rider, as Council Member Muscat is the chair of the Finance Committee, making sure that we get those things included.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Council Member Peterson, Morales?

Not seeing any right now.

This will be back before us at the next committee meeting as all of you have become accustomed to.

I like to have bills before the committee twice before we vote them out.

This gives us the time to learn about what we're going to vote on before voting on it.

And we may be bringing back those amendments that Mr. Freeman mentioned.

And with no more questions, I will open the public comment.

We've got a couple folks from Pioneer Square who would like to share their thoughts with us on the official record.

And so before we begin the remote public hearing, I would again ask that everyone please be patient as we continue to learn to operate this new system in real time and navigate through the inevitable growing pains.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process and adding new features that allow for additional means of public participation in our council meetings.

I will moderate the public hearing in the following manner, each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on one speaker at a time and in the order in which they registered on the council's website if you have not yet registered to speak and would like to sign up for the end of this public hearing.

by going to the council's website at seattle.gov forward slash council.

The link is also on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, the staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and automatic prompt if you've been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that is their turn to speak.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item in which you're addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to council bill 120287. If you have comments about something that is not on today's agenda, you can always provide written comments by emailing my office.

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

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

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

Once you have completed your public comment, we're pleased to ask that you disconnect from the line.

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

The public hearing on Council Bill 120287 is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list.

We have two speakers today.

Brian Steinberg and Lisa Howard.

Brian, welcome to the committee.

You have to press star six.

There, I see you're off mute.

Take it away at your convenience.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Brian Steinberg, and I am speaking in support of CB120287.

I'm an architect and principal in a local design firm, Weber Thompson.

And at Weber Thompson, we work on urban scale housing of all kinds, market rate, affordable, student, senior housing, et cetera, throughout Seattle.

I'm asking that the council include the amendments to address zoning fairness in the Chinatown International District.

While the bill supports increased energy efficiency by providing for modest changes in rooftop covers and elevator overrun heights, the current draft does not treat the CID zone property the same as other zones.

The proposed amendment would help fix that, which is important for future market rate and affordable housing.

This bill addresses the needs of high-rise housing, mechanical coverage, normalizing The common covers allowance for four-plate restricted residential towers across multiple zones to be 75%.

It would reduce the number of design departure slots to accommodate these basic needs and address the energy code revision to exclude natural gas systems, whose alternatives have a slightly larger rooftop footprint.

This amendment also addresses the needs for elevator overruns in the IDR slash C 125, 150 to 270 zone.

so that you can build to the full zoning allowance.

This brings zoning fairness to the Chinatown International District and does not impact the land values disproportionately to downtown and Southwest Union zones.

It also maximizes MHA assessment on development there that can be used to build more affordable housing.

We support the council's proposed rooftop features ordinance and hope you will as well.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Brian.

Great to hear from you.

Up next, we have Lisa Howard.

Welcome, Lisa.

I see you're here.

Press star six.

There you are.

You're off mute.

Welcome to the committee.

Good afternoon.

All right, thank you.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Lisa Howard, and I'm the Executive Director of the Alliance for Pioneer Square.

I'm speaking today in support of Council Bill 120287, amending various provisions of the Land Use Code, addressing rooftop features, especially the opportunity lent by this legislation for new options for penthouse uses and recreational spaces on rooftops in Pioneer Square.

We look forward to near and long-term projects for realizing this opportunity, bringing creative spaces to life and enhancing the opportunities for both visitors and residents in the square.

I would also like to thank your city team for the thoughtful process around identifying these changes for the fragile districts.

Pioneer Square's ongoing economic recovery requires our neighborhood to provide unique quality experiences to bring people down to experience all we have to offer.

This expanded legislation will support that fully.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lisa.

Always great to hear from you.

Mr. G, can you confirm there are no more public comment registrants present for this public hearing?

Confirm there are no more public hearing registrants.

Thank you.

That was our last speaker remotely present to speak at this public hearing.

The public hearing on Council Bill 120287 is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who came to, commented today.

Colleagues, thank you all as well.

Gordon Ketel, appreciate your briefing us.

And Director Torgelson, thank you for jumping in right there.

That was very helpful.

This legislation will be back before the Land Use Committee on May 11th for a vote.

With that, we'll move on to item two.

Our next item is a briefing from OPCD and SDCI on their RSJI report.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the item into the record?

Attenda item two, Office of Planning and Community Development and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, Race and Social Justice Initiative report.

Thank you.

We are joined by Director Nathan Torgelson of STCI and Director Rico Curandongo of OPCD.

When are we getting your confirmation pack, by the way?

We need to get that.

It's been too long.

It's been too long.

That is a good question.

It's a good question.

Well, with that, we love having you both here before committee, as well as staff from both your departments.

Well, everyone presenting, introduce yourself and then take it away.

I am Nathan Torkelson, Director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

And Rico Kidding-Nago, Acting Director, Office of Planning and Community Development.

I'm Corey Buttrey, a land use planner with SDCI and a co-lead of the change team.

I'm Nick Welch, senior planner at OPCD and also a co-lead of our change team.

We'd like to start this presentation today, as we do many of our meetings, by acknowledging the role that traditional Western-centric planning practices have played in harming, displacing, and attempting to erase Native communities.

We commit to identifying racist practices, to practice allyship, and strive to center restorative land stewardship rather than unsustainable and extractive use of the land.

We humbly recognize that we are on indigenous land, the traditional and current territories of the Coast Salish peoples who have reserved treaty rights to this land, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and Stilloquamish.

We thank these caretakers of this land to have lived and continue to live here since time immemorial.

For some context, there are several groups within SDCI and OPCD actively working to dismantle racism and colonialism in our workplaces and in the city we serve.

In addition to the joint department change team, SDCI has an anti-racist task force, with an explicit mission to provide alternatives to systemic racism, an action and accountability group for white identifying employees, and a BIPOC caucus.

OPCD also has BIPOC and white caucuses, as well as the Leading with Equity team, whose purpose is to build capacity for equitable outcomes.

Having these distinct groups for distinct purposes allows us to view the enormous and complex institutional issues we face from a number of unique perspectives and respond with a variety of strategies and tools.

While there's some overlap in these groups missions, the work being done is not redundant.

and we're regularly collaborating with each other, which gives us an opportunity to practice being in relational culture.

That's something that we hope will supplant the white supremacy culture that persists in the city to this day.

So just a little bit of background for people Watching on the Seattle channel, the Department of Planning and Development and the Office of Planning and Community Development used to be one department, DPD, and in a previous administration they were split into these two departments and we decided to keep our joint change team since we work so closely together.

So we know that structural racism is preventing government from doing its best work.

This has especially come to light in the last two years.

So we are trying to incorporate this work into everything we do.

That's why we're doing the work and how we're doing the work is the bulk of this presentation.

some of our accomplishments.

Oh, sorry, Rico.

Oh, I was just going to say, I, I, well,

Go ahead, and then we're going to pull up the slides in a minute.

OK.

In 2021, the change team participated in a two-day retreat facilitated by the Office of Civil Rights to ground everyone in the goals and functions of the change team as a group of anti-racist organizers.

The training helped us to understand key concepts like decolonization and helped us to clarify our roles as interrupters of internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and structural racism.

We started a regular reading and discussion group for change team members that has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for all who participate.

The conversations we've had in that space have inspired many of our important work goals for the future, and the openness, curiosity, and bravery demonstrated by participants have helped to break down barriers to bringing our full authentic selves into the workspace.

We believe that the vulnerability demonstrated in this space, in this group, is necessary for healing the wounds that perpetuate race-based trauma.

We also collaborated with the Chinese Information and Service Center on an anti-bias, anti-hate program training, which provided instruction on identifying hate and bias due to race, national origin, and other identities, and gave participants tools for effective bystander intervention.

OPCD has also developed and shared a presentation that we call Land Use 101, and that focuses on the history of planning and development through the lens of colonization, segregation, and exclusion.

OPCD staff have given this presentation multiple times in the past, including last year, both to our full staff in the department and also to the People's Academy for Community Engagement, or PACE, and to students at the University of Washington.

Thank you, Nick and Corey.

I see Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

Thank you very much.

And Mr. Schrader, this may be a question for you.

I'm not remembering us receiving the land use 101 presentation.

And if we haven't already, it might be exciting to have that in our committee at some point.

And if we have already received it, my apologies for not having that at this moment.

That's a great call out.

And maybe this is for OPCD.

Is this different than the series of presentations that you did about indigenous land maybe two or three years ago?

Is this current?

And do we need to bring you back?

I'm not sure what that series was off the top of my head, but I think this is different and Rico can confirm, but I think we'd be glad to work on bringing that back to you.

Yeah, so Council Member Strauss, we are in the process right now of doing a few updates to that Land Use 101 presentation.

We'd love to bring it back to the group.

Wonderful.

Great check, Council Member Mosqueda.

Yeah, that's so exciting, especially in advance of the comp plan.

Discussions happening this year and community and then policy discussions next year.

Yeah, that'd be wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I know you probably have packed agendas, but appreciate it.

Yeah, Corey, please continue.

I'll just highlight a couple of the change team accomplishments in 2021 and I know Rico will add on to that.

At STCI, we advised on two racial equity toolkits.

for virtual design review meetings and also for Bluebeam.

And we'll talk a little bit about that further on in the presentation.

We also formed a subcommittee to review budget issue papers.

These are the papers that we put together and forward to the mayor's office before a final budget is submitted to the city council.

And through that review, the committee looked at potential opportunities using a race and social justice lens.

We also participated in an RSJ Mayoral Candidate Forum, and our former co-lead, Christopher Endifan, was one of the moderators for that session and got to ask the mayoral candidates questions, so that was exciting.

And we've also been looking at return to tower, as in return to the municipal tower, Looking at that through a racial equity lens, understanding that a lot of our lower paid employees live further out, and it's more difficult for them to get downtown.

Do we want to bring up the slides to go into a little bit more depth there?

I have a bunch of change team ads also, but I know we also have a slide for it too.

About which specific?

about the racial equity toolkits, maybe?

Are you seeing the slides?

I am not.

That is my issue.

It's OK.

It's OK.

It's OK.

All right.

I am now.

I am now.

I'm now seeing them.

I was looking at people's faces.

So accomplishments of other accomplishments of the change team.

So we we last year in 2021 created a very robust process for at OPCD where we leaned into budgeting through an RSJ lens.

And in that we made certain that that everyone had a voice.

Everyone had an opportunity to to take a look at what we're What were things that were missing that we needed to add that were augmenting the work that we do as an organization that is leading with equity?

And to also be able to critique and revise proposals that we were putting forth to the budget office and ultimately that became a part of the council discussion regarding our 2022 budget.

We are recreating that process again this year.

We've increased our connections between OPCD and STCI, including our work on equitable development zoning.

And now in 2022, our design review work and standing up our, frankly, an accountability framework for that work through the RET.

We also participated in the RSGI summit panel discussions.

And then we've had internal to OPCD, we've had growing participation in our BIPOC caucus, our white caucus, and our leading with equity team.

So in addition to the joint change team, STCI also has an anti-racist task force that works closely with the change team.

And this task force works on equity issues specific to STCI and all the work we do in developing and implementing our codes.

So some examples here.

included what I referred to before as far as research and analysis surrounding equity issues of employees returning to the Seattle Municipal Tower.

We've done a lot of work on inspectors' cars and during COVID allowing inspectors to take their cars to their home site and go directly from home out into the field, but looking at that with an equity lens.

depending on where inspectors work and where they live.

Looking at space planning issues, we have actually outgrown our space in the Seattle Municipal Tower.

We've hired a fair number of employees over the last two years, so we have to look at sharing options.

And we've also taken a fresh look at our whole website.

We've added an anti-racism statement on our website and made other changes as well.

So just as a point of clarification, so we have a leading with equity team internal to OPCD, which is different from the change teamwork.

The difference being the internal office work to move toward a relational culture, and then lead with equity framework, which informs all of our work as an office.

both internally and externally.

We conducted an RSJ staff survey, which underscored the important longstanding issues and disparities, particularly for BIPOC staff, and how we are affected by office culture, whose work is celebrated, uplifted, and how we need to move more toward a relational culture.

We've undertaken several important red efforts, including heavily now leaning into our work for the comprehensive plan update, which we will talk about a little bit more here in a bit.

We last, in 2021, we wrote a community engagement ethos.

The need, and that's posted on our website, the need and the intent there was to be very intentional about in leading with equity, how we are reaching out into community, working alongside community, and stepping back to allow community to lead, and how that's critical both in informing the work as we do it, and also how it informs our policy work.

We also, last year, did a very heavy lift.

Lauren Flemister, who is our new deputy director, did a great amount of work with staff, listening to folks one-on-one, also in small groups with each of our team, our divisions and our individual teams for programs, to ensure that we really hold ourselves accountable as leaders and make sure that people are doing the work that is meaningful for them and the work that they want to be doing and in the way that they want to be doing it.

You are all familiar with our Equitable Development Initiative.

I think this is common knowledge.

Our EDI advisory board is now permanent.

You will see us bring forth to the committee and to the council later this year a number of new representatives, new faces to add to the council as it grows.

We have been, it's a little bit of an aside, but we are up to over 80 active contracts right now.

So as a program, we are continuing to grow, and that's both the EDI classic contracts working in partnership with community, as well as the COVID response funding, as well as the strategic investment funds, the one-time award of $30 million to 13 awardees, the first of which we actually are entering into a contract this week.

We have our continued ongoing equitable development monitoring program data work to reflect the request of council and the necessary metrics to monitor success of the EDI program and the fund.

This is also a request of the advisory board.

We are very busy and very proud of this work.

And that's a picture of our newest indigenous Seattle edition, Dakota, who is awesome.

She's been a great addition to our staff.

That work, as you know, so we have a standing and growing group there.

As we look to a statement that we have made to this council around indigenizing the comp plan.

It's been very important for us and I have, it is something that frankly keeps me up at night.

Like what do we mean by that statement and how do we actually lean into it in a meaningful and intentional way?

How do we serve our urban indigenous and how do we really begin to right so many of the wrongs that are in front of us.

That work and being able to be in partnership with the Indigenous Seattle group is of great meaning.

Includes holding the city accountable for past harms to Indigenous people and community, addressing a lack of positive Indigenous presence in the current plan, recognizing the place in the history of our land to combat indigenous erasure.

And we're looking to examples outside of Seattle, including British Columbia and New Zealand and other places to help inform that work.

I also am hoping that as we lean into those, that we can figure out ways to apply Indigenous values and process and how we update the plan itself.

And I'd love to talk about that more, but I don't think we have time here today.

But it's definitely something that we need to spend more time on as a group.

As you know, we have both the Planning Commission and the Design Commission housed at OPCD, even though they obviously act independently.

There was the publication by the Planning Commission of the book that you see there on the right, Racially Equitable and Resilient Recovery.

The commission recommended overarching themes to guide our comprehensive plan update, and we are working with the planning commission to be held accountable to those guides now.

The commission, and I'm talking about the planning commission, committed to color, race-based norms, to guide the commission's work in their everyday, which included a half-day retreat recently.

The Design Commission recently approved the creation of 15,000 square feet of cultural space, which will be owned and operated by the Cultural Space Agency.

and has adopted new requirements for projects requiring commission approval, requiring presentation of local neighborhood demographics to measure equitable outcomes for project designs.

Last year at SDCI, our department hosted two Seattle Youth Employment Program participants who were able to observe and work in inspection services, land use planning, code compliance, and HR.

This year, in 2022, we plan on doubling that number with four participants.

For any who may be unfamiliar, SYEP is available to youth from qualifying income households and communities that experience racial, social, economic disparities with the goal of increasing the youth's abilities to pursue careers that pay well and are meaningful to them.

Unfortunately, we had to suspend our job shadow program in 2021 due to the pandemic, but we made significant efforts to prioritize equity work in the face of substantial changes to our workforce and environment.

Nathan touched on some of these earlier, the equity analyses we conducted on department vehicles, the impacts of several different return to office models, the impacts of vaccine mandates for employees, and looking at space, the ways we design and utilize our office, and the degree to which our online presence is accessible and centers racial justice.

These equity analysis have shaped how we see our department and have informed our goals for 2022.

So I want to talk a little bit about pay equity.

And Corey, you can go to the next slide.

I think it may be hidden.

OK, that's fine.

So the majority of our employees are represented.

But that being said, we have about 80 employees who are APEC SAM.

And APEC SAM stands for accountability pay for executives, strategic advisors and managers.

And again, these are non represented employees.

And we last year recognized the complex issues surrounding compensation for these employees.

And we did an in depth analysis of the salary of every one of these employees.

And we found disparity of pay, uh, for people in these classifications, and it was primarily for women and BIPOC population.

So what we did is we took all the executive categories, all the strategic advisor categories, and all the manager positions, and we're paying people exactly the same salary.

The mission is equal pay for equal work.

It doesn't matter if you've been in that position for five years or for 10 years or 15 years.

And so that really leveled the paying field as far as pay equity.

That wasn't an easy change, but we felt that was a really important change as far as pay equity in our department.

This is not a year free of challenges.

Many of the challenges we faced last year and continue to face today result from the intractable and complex nature of racism itself.

What we see on a daily basis is that the power structures established through a system of white supremacy that predates the founding of our city persist to this day.

and those who have historically benefited from the explicitly racist systems continue to do so through our colorblind codes and processes.

Specifically at SDCI, we see the applicants who are able to navigate the permitting process the most efficiently and effectively are those with access to resources.

including the financial resources needed to hire professionals for code interpretation and permit pushing.

This advantage ultimately perpetuates itself by providing an additional benefit of experience and connections to decision makers who ultimately make determinations about who develops their city and how.

Not surprisingly, we see that Much of current development in our city is perpetrated by white men who have broadly benefited from access to generational wealth and access to power.

As the collective awareness of systemic racism and its impacts on development in the city grows, we are being called to acknowledge and address the racial disparities endemic to planning in Seattle.

But the pressures that we as departments face to be productive in the midst of this housing crisis, make it difficult for us to step back and gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of racism in the city.

and then to integrate that understanding into our daily work.

The sense of urgency that pervades everything we do really prohibits us from being engaged with the public in ways that are most helpful and meaningful.

And we're concerned that without a comprehensive understanding and acknowledgement of the underlying power structures shaping our city, our hurried attempts at racial equity work will inevitably perpetuate existing social and economic inequality.

Advantaging, again, the existing power holders while possibly causing undue harm to both employees and communities of color.

Another ongoing challenge for us is shifting from RSJ work being led and sustained by various individuals in our departments.

to having all of our work fully rooted in racial equity, where our planning and our community development efforts are really living the tenets of RSGI across the full department.

As Corey said, part of the challenge here is the sense of urgency we often feel with our projects, which can make it difficult to build trust and establish more of a relational culture.

And that's both internally within our departments and among staff, but also externally with community.

We are finding that the best tools we have for undoing these patterns of white supremacy and other systems of oppression are the tools, programs, and spaces that facilitate collective well-being, creativity, and transparency.

We're slowly building a culture that values people and relationships with each other and with the communities that we serve.

By valuing embodiment and connection over an emotionless intellectualism, by valuing creativity and healing over extraction, spaciousness and flexibility over urgency, and then by promoting transparency and sharing leadership, we're creating communities where folks can be vulnerable and where discomfort can be lived and examined.

It's there where we can achieve a degree of consciousness and values alignment that's necessary for rectifying the harms of racism.

and then moving forward into a more equitable future.

One specific idea that builds on that, that we're looking ahead to, is to try to have fewer projects on our work plan that we can actually focus more of our time and energy on, and through which we can build the stronger and ongoing relationships with community that Cory is describing.

The spirit of RSGI.

At an Allstaff meeting last year at STCI, some harmful language was used during a group exercise with an interactive presentation app.

Because the submissions were anonymous, there was no way to hold the responsible party accountable for the harm caused.

or to be able to direct interventions to mitigate potential harm in the future.

The change team and the leadership, executive leadership, took positive action in response, expressing solidarity with the Asian American community.

providing education about microaggressions and offering spaces for processing.

But it's clear that our workplace culture has not yet evolved to a place where we can offer complete security from race-based harm.

This is reflected in the opinions of many of our BIPOC colleagues who have indicated an almost universal preference for remote work, which allows them to avoid the microaggressions that they experience in the office.

The change team and the anti-racist task force have drafted a set of community agreements designed to be a framework for creating workspaces where all staff feel comfortable to share their needs, assert their boundaries, and develop their potential free of harassment, discrimination, and harmful bias.

These community agreements also establish a mandate for including BIPOC staff at the table when decisions are being made that impact our departments, our department, both of our departments and our communities.

So far, these agreements have buy-in from the change team, the anti-racist task force, and other anti-racist organizations in our departments.

Corey mentioned accountability, and I'll build on that to speak to the last bullet on the slide here, which is that OPCD is currently developing an accountability framework.

This is a work in progress that we're exploring through our caucuses, and the purpose of it is to help us create a stronger culture of accountability within our department when racial harm occurs, as Corey described that it still does.

And so when that harm occurs through our work and in our workplace, the framework would only give us guidance that we have to make real through our actions and our behavior, but we're hopeful it will help us identify and stop harm and take responsibility for our actions, make the necessary repairs and transform harmful behavior and practices.

We know that accountability is not easy or comfortable.

We're hoping this will help us start to see it as something we can seek out and embrace instead of fearing it.

So SDCI had completed three racial equity toolkits in 2021. Corey is going to talk about Bluebeam implementation in a future slide.

We did a racial equity toolkit for design review virtual meetings during the pandemic.

All those meetings have been done virtually.

It identified the need to do additional outreach to certain populations to engender trust in government.

And the results of that analysis will certainly be helpful as we look at the future of design review through the council's statement of legislative intent.

We also did a racial equity toolkit for our current tree protections.

And as Council is very aware, we are now looking at updating the tree regulations going forward.

And that analysis will also be helpful as we develop new regulations.

We need to look for opportunities to reduce the burdens of enhanced tree protection on our BIPOC populations.

But we also realize that our tree canopy is significantly lower in those areas of the city where we have BIPOC populations.

So as you see on the slide, last year, we leaned into two RETs, one which was in our work along with other departments on our light rail stationary planning for sound transit, and then the work that we ultimately in May had 80% consensus around 11 strategies for the industrial maritime strategy work.

What we wanted to talk in detail about today is our comp plan major update, BRET, and equitable development zoning.

Next slide.

So with the comp plan, it's funny because it's such a large body of work, I feel like Our office has been working on it already for some time, and we're just getting started.

The questions that you see here have been generated in our initial discussions in the RET.

What are racial equity benefits and impacts of the current urban village growth strategy, and what improvements would make the comp plan and growth strategy more equitable?

We know that we have given the very unfortunate history of redlining of this city that we have a great deal of work to do.

The bullet points that you see here, meaningful engagement of BIPOC communities, addressing housing needs for households and families of color, generating more well-paying jobs for BIPOC families, including providing opportunities for workers without a four-year degree, increasing affordable commercial space, mitigating displacement.

I think that what I am hoping that what we are framing is a process by which The work that we do in real time, we are going out to community to say in very plain and simple language without the wonky technical language, what is it that we're trying to do?

Extracting a piece of potential policy, bringing it into community to say, what do you think?

Hearing from people, what they want and what we need, what we're getting right, what we're doing wrong, and what we need to change.

That is going to take time.

And in some places, we know that we are not going to get it right.

But if we are leaning into it earnestly and through a calm response process, and I'm thinking, for example, of our partnership with the EDI Advisory Board, like we are committing, we're bringing in a facilitator to help us with that conversation, going from the technical work of staff to the plain language talk in our advisory meetings, but making certain that in real time that we have community leaning into a conversation with us to say, yeah, that looks good.

to bring to a larger forum, or no, we need to either check ourselves, talk to more people, or look at it through a different lens in order to get it right.

And I'll turn it over to Nick to talk about equitable.

Thanks.

We're also Taking part right now in our rat on a new effort.

We're excited about that we are we're calling equitable development zoning.

This has already come up a couple times in this presentation, but we know that zoning in land use regulation have their origins in racism and exclusion and while explicitly racist practices like redlining as Rico just mentioned and racial covenants.

aren't in effect anymore.

Other systems over time and other policies have arisen with both intended and unintended harmful outcomes for communities of color.

EDI, as we just saw a few slides ago, is one way the city is trying to meet community needs in the context of those past harms.

But what we've seen in recent years is that the city's development rules and processes often hinder delay, complicate, and add cost to equitable development projects, including those funded by EDI.

So the purpose of equitable development zoning is to try to align land use policy more closely with EDI and with our mission to advance racial equity.

Right now, through engagement funding that council identified in our 2022 budget, we're working with stakeholders to identify and eventually remove regulatory barriers to equitable development, With the ultimate goal of helping EDI projects be more successful and over time doing more to encourage and support equitable development outcomes through the land use tools that we have.

As Nathan noted, we also conducted a RET on the implementation of the Bluebeam program, which is a plan review software.

At SCCI, not all of our customers are proficient in reading plans or understanding our complex codes, so any mechanism to improve communication, like the Bluebeam program, helps everyone, including historically underserved communities.

For this, we surveyed over 800 respondents seeking to understand challenges with the old system.

And while the number of responses from participants of color was low overall.

BIPOC individuals are statistically underrepresented in the built environment design trade communities.

The responses that we did receive suggest that the move to Bluebeam is in alignment with the needs of those respondents.

As a result of this work, applicants who don't have a background in the built environment codes and regulations now receive a much more straightforward explanation of what needs to be rectified because the correction points directly to the issue on the drawings.

We anticipate that this will be especially helpful for applicants who are not as proficient with English.

And the marked up plans don't require any special program to review, so there's no software cost burden on our customers by implementing this change.

We have completed a considerable amount of outreach concerning this change and provided applicant instructions for navigating the new technology.

And we plan on doing additional outreach to get this word out about the improvement.

It will be important moving forward that we maintain our relationship with the respondents of the 2021 survey group and request their participation in a follow-up survey this year, where we'll be looking specifically for trends concerning BIPOC participants.

Our goals for 2022. While we have goals related to education and training, capacity building, strengthening connections between departments, one of our primary objectives is to create a culture of support for those who suffer from the system of racism.

So to do this we're prioritizing building capacity to interrupt racism as it surfaces, or even better beforehand.

And we'll do this by establishing a shared context of historic racism in the city and its legacy and our work.

identifying and removing our own forms of bias through training and discussion, and building an understanding among employees and leadership that as servants of the public good, equity is our responsibility.

And we cannot say that we are functioning as a public service until all forms of racism have been eliminated from our departments.

In a similar vein, we're looking at how we can make racial equity work.

A requirement for all department staff, something that is no longer optional or something that you can choose to opt out fully from But something that we're all taking part in and reinforcing that key principle through our E3 process.

Rico, you're on mute.

Terrible.

Sorry about that.

With our Leading with Equity team, we're leading into a bunch of work, which you can see in the slide here.

We are standing up a new accountability framework within our office to hold ourselves accountable for harms, both for harms both past and present to a staff of color and to call those things out, both if something of my own doing or something that I see in a space.

We're also inviting more people to, inviting more people in to do this RSJ work and to try to push earnestly toward having more of a relational culture and understanding what that means.

I will say that some of that, there is work that's being done at a manager level related to that more relational culture, and we are planning to do work as all staff in that regard too, just because I think that that shared experience matters a great deal.

And it has been through the inspiration of discussion from the change team and leading with equity team that I really think has gotten us there.

We're working with the Office of Ombuds on that culture shift.

We've also done, because we are growing as an office, we have eight positions that we are filling this year.

Nine, actually.

We've improved an onboarding process for new staff, interns, and commissioners with that RSJN focus.

And there's other things on the slide.

I don't know if we mentioned this before, but because these slides are so text heavy, it's obviously will be made available to all of you for reference later.

Okay, last slide.

Thank you for your patience.

It's an important discussion.

So as we have mentioned, we have the joint change team, and STCI also has the anti racist task force and some of the goals for this task force for 2022. include hiring transparency and equity, the same treatment and opportunities for all STCI staff and prospects.

And this one is hard and challenging.

In many of our job interview panels, we do not give the panelists copies of the applicant's resumes up front.

We have found that when the panelists see resumes, they may be biased depending on where someone went to college or where someone worked before.

The other thing that we have been talking to Seattle HR about, and it's another difficult, challenging topic, is minimum education requirements for a job.

Um, we may have a fantastic candidate who has 20 years of awesome experience, but the personnel qualifications are that they have to have a four year college degree.

Well, maybe that person couldn't afford a college degree 20 years ago.

So is that something else that we've been taking a close look at?

Transparency and equity for promotion and discipline.

I talked a little bit about the APEC SAM and equal pay for equal work.

Leave and remote work equity.

We know that a lot of our lower wage earners are also BIPOC and may live further away.

In some cases, bus transportation hasn't returned to pre-COVID levels.

It's very difficult for them to get downtown to work.

Management accountability and accountability culture at STCI.

This is trust and allyship from the leaders at STCI.

Making RSJ a part of every project and work plan from words to action.

Digital equity, making sure that everyone has access to work through digital means.

And bottom line, and Rico articulated this, replacing a white supremacy culture with a relational culture where everyone is welcome.

And that concludes our presentation.

We really appreciate your patience.

This is really important and hard work.

And Rico and I are just thrilled that we continue to get to work together as departments on these important and challenging issues.

Directors and Corey and Nick, great, great work here.

I'll be honest, I had a list of questions I was ready to pepper you with.

And you've went off the, I mean, you didn't have it written as text on the slides and you answered those questions.

And some things I'd like to highlight about is.

Accountability to community, the ability where you're not just asking a question once, you're coming back to see if you've actually addressed the issue.

Accountability within your own organization, when things don't happen correctly or bad things occur, you have accountability with your teams.

And then also the hiring aspects, I think, really highlighting the fact that somebody can have four years of experience and they might know the job better than somebody who has a four year degree in the field.

And that understanding is really spot on.

So many more things to highlight.

I see I've got some colleagues in line.

Vice Chair Morales, please take it away.

Thank you.

You guys, thank you so much for this presentation.

This is really well done.

And I think, you know, to me, really demonstrates that you have clearly understood that there is a lot of work to do here to understand what racial equity means and the work that the city really has to do to achieve racial equity and to end to hold departments accountable.

I haven't seen a lot of RSGI presentations from other departments yet.

I know everybody's working on getting them presented.

I hope other departments are diving as deep as you seem to be.

So I want to thank you for that.

I wanted to just comment on a couple of things and then I'll hand it over.

So, particularly as it relates to the comp plan, you know, it sounds like some of the values and some of the direction that you're trying to move.

is to make the language more plain spoken.

So I'm really excited to hear about that authentic engagement with community.

And I think what I heard you say as well is clarity about for community members about how their input will be used in drafting and in making decisions or how it won't be.

I think that's equally important as we're asking people to commit their time and donate their expertise to these conversations coming up.

I think we do need to be really clear with folks about whether this is, to what degree this input will be used to influence our decisions.

So, just a couple more things.

I want to remind colleagues, and I appreciate you mentioning, you know, not just the impact that department work has on community, but also the impacts for the interpersonal work environment.

Because all of that affects somebody's ability to do their job on behalf of community and to be a public servant.

And so I just want to remind colleagues again that just last summer we had seven black women allege discrimination in salary, in promotion with the city.

And so I'm really glad to hear about the pay equity issues that you've addressed and some of the workplace, other workplace issues.

We're also hearing about a possible need for the city classification system to be changed to address some of the things that you're talking about.

Old requirements for education versus lived experience, for example.

And then the last thing I want to say is that in order for all of us to do our work to serve our constituents and to serve our city, we all have to be aware of what racial equity means.

And I'm glad that we're doing this kind of work to understand that what we're doing really needs to be rooted in dignity.

In the next week or two, I think several of us have been invited by King County Council Member Larry Gossett to a conversation about reparations.

And so I'm really, as we're thinking about, you know, our built environment, the work that we have to do in our built environment, it really should be about advancing these movements toward transformative justice.

and atoning for these racist land use policies that we have had.

And I'm really starting to go into these next conversations with a lot of questions about what it means for us as a city to think critically and to think seriously about reparations for people who continue to be impacted by the legacy of racism and in particular how it's reflected in our land use codes.

All that just to say, I really appreciate all the work that you have done to get to this point and look forward to working with all of you to make sure that we're acting on the work that you've done here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

And just to clarify, those seven complaints last year were not within either of these two departments.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

That is correct.

Thank you.

Director, I'll go on.

I didn't hear a question there, Council Member Morales.

No need for a question.

Appreciate your comments there.

Council Member Nelson, please.

This is a very robust and rich report, so thank you very much.

And I really appreciate that you lay out the actual policy implications for the work that you've done.

On slide 18, there were a couple in the draft.

Yeah.

So as economic development chair, I'm really interested in more well-paid jobs for workers of color.

And then also, I'm interested in more affordable commercial space.

And so these have really, there are overlaps between your department and OED, and I think that we should make sure this is a statement of principle, that a lot of these efforts that happened in a siloed fashion from department to department should also reinforce each other.

But my point is, these are drafts, and I understand that you will take them out to community for validation, but you might have said when you thought you might get that back and when they might not be draft anymore, but could you tell me, could you say it again?

I didn't.

Thank you for the question.

So I'm going to be totally honest.

I think that where staff is right now, we feel like we're, and you will see us come back to you to give more detail on this front.

With a comprehensive plan major update, we're in the first of five discrete phases of the work over the course of the next three years.

And I think that in this first phase, we haven't wanted to be definitive about when, so for the racial equity outcomes, when do they move from draft to final?

And I think that part of the feedback that we've gotten from community is that we have in more than one occasion moved too quickly.

So I don't have a hard and fast date for when the, I mean, I do believe that as we have a communal conversation that the bullet points that you see in that slide are valid and meaningful.

I think that part of the reason that you still see traffic on them is because I think that we're asking ourselves the question, are there more?

and with how much specificity do we want to be at this level versus, you know, some of the policy implications.

And I also really appreciate the nod regarding the partnership with OED, and we do work.

We are working currently very closely in partnership with OED, both on the Confluent Major Update work and Industrial and Maritime right now as well.

What I'm trying to put an emphasis on as we do this comp plan is how do we, how do we write a plan that helps city departments think about implementation?

And that's, and you know, it's, I mean, because these are all outcome based, like we can say whatever we want in the plan, but if, if there's not by an understanding of how it, um, informs work plans of the departments, it won't have the value that we really need it to.

And I think it's important that community in being involved in the process, that people see themselves in it, and therefore will hold it up because it is holding them up when we actually implement.

OK.

I will respect the process.

Thank you for the answer.

I just got a little bit excited about advancing some of those things.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Got it.

Well said, Council Member Wilson.

Colleagues, any further questions on this item?

Or directors or Nick, Corey, any final thoughts to leave us with today?

I'm seeing none.

It was a robust presentation.

I know we'll hear more with Land Use 101. And as part of this, we'll be back every year.

So we'll be back next year as part of that continuing accountability.

And just really, again, I had a lot of questions after reviewing the slides, and you answered them in your remarks.

So just want to thank you for your diligent work there.

Council Member Strass, can I make one addition?

Yeah.

I want to say that I think this is our work in the everyday.

And it's important the groups that we've brought together to have the regular and reoccurring conversations.

And then there's what we do in our meetings on the phone, when we're sitting at a conference table, when we're out conducting a community meeting.

And this is critical work.

It, in a very literal way, is my everyday.

And so I really appreciate the heart that staff at SDCI and OPCD bring to this and appreciate the space that the city is trying to create here.

Thank you, Director Quirindango.

Well said.

I look forward to continuing this work at our next meeting, as it seems that we put tidbits into every time we meet.

So it's great.

Wonderful.

Well, thank you again all for your presentation today, colleagues, for your questions and attention.

And thank you all for your work.

With nothing further here, this will conclude the meeting.

I'll flag that for scheduling purposes, we may be canceling the May 25th committee meeting just for everyone to have scheduling purposes.

We almost canceled today's meeting because we only had two items and some of the items that were gonna be here got pushed to the next meeting.

I'm glad that we didn't so that we gave this presentation extra time.

So that's the kind of the scheduling announcements.

With that, this does conclude the Wednesday, April 27th, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

Next regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee is on May 11th, starting at 2 p.m.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.