Good afternoon.
Thank you for being here on November 5th Monday for a regularly scheduled City Council meeting the November 5th 2018 City Council meeting will come to order.
It's 2 o 2 0 5 p.m.
I'm Bruce Harrell president of council the clerk.
Please call the roll so on Bagshaw Furbold here Johnson Juarez Mosqueda O'Brien President Harrell here seven present.
Thank you very much If there's no objection, the introduction and referral calendar will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, the introduction and referral calendar is adopted.
And if there's no objection, today's agenda will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.
The minutes of the October 29, 2018 City Council meeting have been reviewed, and if there's no objection, the minutes will be signed.
Hearing no objection, the minutes are being signed.
presentations.
I'm not aware of any presentations this afternoon.
Let the record reflect that Council Member Bagshaw has joined us and was here and she had to go out for an adventure.
Public comment at this time.
We'll take public comment on items that appear on today's agenda or our introduction referral calendar or our 2018 work program and we're gonna have public comment for 20 minutes and I'll call you out in the order with which you've signed.
Do we have any signatures this afternoon?
Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.
Okay, we have, first we have Alex Zimmerman, followed by Tyrone Kenney.
Mr. Zimmerman, you're up, sir.
Oh, I was going to come over and give it to you, but I was going to let him speak for a moment.
I just signed a letter.
I want to speak about agenda about taxes.
Situation with taxes right now absolutely critical.
For last many years you suck blood and money for 100 million dollars and nothing situation change.
And I come in this council chamber for last 10 year almost every day more than 2,000 time and nothing change.
You don't fix it one.
problem.
No one problem.
You don't fix it.
Housing, homeless, transportation, two critical problems.
You never fix it.
This is exactly what is I want to explain to you.
This is exactly what is people angry right now very much.
And I speak to 2,000 people for last few months And everybody angry, everybody want change you because you acting like a cretino, like a criminal, you like a political, we make what is half political anonymous because you cannot change fundamental problem.
And everybody in Seattle, 700,000 people very painful right now, all of it.
I cannot find one man, and many people come to me in street in talking about this, and no one happy.
It's a problem what is we have right now.
Question right now very simple, why we pay you $130,000, we have four assistants to you, you all, each of us cost approximately a million dollars, you're doing nothing for many year, and you sit for many years.
And it's absolutely don't have sense, you know what I mean, because by definition, you represent only small.
group of people.
For example, we don't have one Jew in this council chamber.
It's population of Jew exactly identical to, for Brown Council, what is we have right now, seven percentage.
This exactly what is we need talking right now, and I see this ever in media right now, because media a little bit stand up against you.
So right now, speak to everybody.
Clean this dirty chamber from this Nazi pig, Gestapo, Brown.
Thank you.
Our next speaker is Tyrone Kenney, followed by Yvette Dynash Kenney.
I came to speak on the homeless area, you know, me and my wife were going over a few things and also I want to speak on also to be able to hold meetings for the public in the Roberto room.
And I think we would need to open it up where we can all find out what the solution to how to solve some of these problems, because we continuously waste money, $90 million we are wasting.
on services, not including getting houses for the people.
I know some of the service and also as we help them, we need to not help them so much, but we need to let them be active to be able to help they self.
That's what program that we need to really work on to be more self-sufficient of they self and not just depend on the state all the time to doing things.
And so that's where we came to be hardy in the city.
How can we be helping them if we continue to help them?
And we should put some standards out where we wouldn't be able to spend all this money.
If we can be able to put the people in a housing, we would continue, if we need to just say, well, you know, let them stay where they at until you build a housing where you can put them in.
Because you continuously waste money by going out, cleaning up their mess, you know, body waste.
trash, needles, all of that, that goes into the services.
And then you got to equip the people to do the service.
They got to have some kind of shield to protect them from getting any kind of disease.
So that's where we're wasting the money at.
We're not putting them in homes because, number one, we're continuously wasting money on the service.
You need to maybe let them stay where they need to be at.
And these four years been by, we could have been on building some houses for them.
Thank you, Mr. Kinney.
Yvette Dynish-Kenney will be followed by Richard Schwartz.
Good afternoon, all.
Is this on?
Yes, it is.
I have been going to the People's Academy for Community Engagement class that the Department of Labor puts on.
And even though you know I'm a veteran activist, I'm learning new things.
It's an excellent class.
Our last class is this Saturday, 10 o'clock, LinkedIn News.
If any of you could come, that'd be great.
And what we're gonna be focusing on in this class is how to speak before the council.
So we'd love to have you there.
But one thing I learned, which was interesting, is that the budget process actually starts in March, where the city budget office has the projections, and then June, the department submits their budget, and then the council adopts a budget, as you well know, in November and December.
So pretty much everything is, the monies that are available is set, but then you can move it around before it's adopted.
And why I find that of interest is because the Seattle Times on their Project Homeless, as my husband referred to, is that the 90 million in funding for homelessness is just programs and services.
And this stuff, money's been moved around for share and for will to extra money.
But I found that interesting so that even if we show up at the budget public process meetings, there's really not much we can do in order to push for certain things.
But also, three years into a state of emergency, what's been learned about the homeless problem is that There are three potential solutions, alternative housing, shortening waits for treatment, and diversion.
And also, three lessons learned is no one is in charge, there is no price tag to fix the crises, and to address homelessness, you must address vehicular homelessness as well.
And I must say that it is appalling to see where people living in their vehicles, where they are, places you would not expect in upscale neighborhoods.
And the reason it bothers me so much is because, quite frankly, it seems to leave a lot of trash.
And as much as I support the issue, that's really not cool.
So thank you.
Maybe we'll see you next Saturday.
Thank you.
Our last speaker is Richard Schwartz.
Good afternoon.
I'd like to bring to your attention once again the Westlake Avenue North community's concerns about the city's management of the Westlake Cycle Track.
The focus of those concerns are the intertwined issues of excessive cyclist speed and cyclist failure to yield to pedestrians.
The city selected a very problematic location for the track.
All pedestrians accessing the businesses and the sidewalk have to cross the track from the parking area.
This adds up to several thousand pedestrian crossings a day.
To alleviate the community's concerns, pedestrian safety concerns, the city told us the following.
They anticipated a target speed of about 12 miles per hour, speed controlling measures would be built into the design, and the city's vehicles yield to pedestrians law would apply to the track.
In the end, none of this has occurred.
Speeds are far in excess of 12 miles an hour.
The track is essentially a long straightaway with no speed reducing features and cyclists rarely yield to pedestrians.
With the addition of electrically powered bikes, skateboards, and unicycles, the situation is just getting worse and worse by the day.
Last week, between 5 and 6 p.m., we used a radar gun to monitor cyclist speeds.
30% were at 20 miles per hour or higher, 65% were 17 to 19 miles per hour, and only 5% were 15 miles per hour or less.
These speeds were observed under the following circumstances.
It was fading daylight.
It was a time of day when the highest level of cyclist-pedestrian interactions take place.
It's a time when a large number of two to six year olds are crossing the track to get to their swim lessons at Safe and Sound.
It was at a point where cyclists were passing through one of the dedicated crosswalk zones, walk zones, where the words slow are painted on the pavement in three foot high letters.
Shortly after riding past, and it was shortly after riding past these signs, Oops, excuse me.
Thank you, Mr. Schwartz.
Thank you for your testimony.
Could I just finish, please?
I think we've got time today, don't we?
Another 30 seconds.
Just try 10-15.
I'll try to keep it...
I understand.
Go ahead.
Make it real quick.
And we also didn't observe a single cyclist yielding to bad accidents.
The city built this track in response to the Cascade Bikes Clubs and cyclists saying that they didn't feel comfortable riding on the street or in the parking corridor.
We now have a situation where pedestrians don't feel comfortable, even though pedestrians don't have a powerful organization like the bike club to lobby for them.
Their discomfort deserves the same level of attention as was given to cyclist discomfort.
SDOT says there's no data to support our safety concerns.
I'll leave with you today the names of 350 members of the community who have to deal with this situation on a daily basis who disagree with that.
Data was not the criteria used for addressing cyclist safety concerns.
The vast majority of cycling infrastructure is located in places where there's no data demonstrating accidents or injuries.
And all we're asking is that we would like the city to manage this facility in the manner that they promised.
And it was very clear what they said they were building and how it would, how it would interact with our community and it just isn't happening is, and I, you know, I've spoken with you before, my community would like me to get some commitment.
I thought we had one last time I spoke to you last November.
when President Harrell asked Council Member Bagshaw to follow up on this, and we did send her an extensive email, and we got a very short response asking us who we were referring to, which I thought was clear was the community, and that was the last we ever heard from her.
And I also have sent, last month I sent your office an email, and I haven't heard back from that either.
Thank you.
Can we get some kind of commitment to this?
What do we do?
We've been asking for a year and a half now to get some kind of...
Thank you.
Council President Harrell, may I just ask that you contact my office one more time?
I've been out there many, many times, both as a pedestrian, as somebody that has been talking to businesses, and also somebody who rides her bike.
So if you're not getting what you need, please talk to my office.
We'll get SDOT again.
We'll see what we can do, but I also appreciate the fact that you took the time to come today, and we will follow up with you.
Thank you.
How do I do that?
Because I'm not going to, this is inappropriate at this point, so we'll talk offline.
Thank you.
My office is right down the hall, so you can leave a note and we'll get back to you with a scheduled time.
I'm going to move the payment and bill, so please read the title.
Council bill one one nine four hundred a podium age is based here on the claims and ordering the payment thereof Council bill one one nine four zero zero Is there a second?
We moved and seconded that the bill passed any further comments Please call the roll on the passage of the bill.
Swann.
Aye.
Bakershaw.
Aye.
Herbold.
Aye.
Johnson.
Aye.
Juarez.
Aye.
Mosqueda.
Aye.
O'Brien.
Aye.
President Harrell.
Aye.
Eight in favor none opposed.
The bill passes and the chair will sign it.
Please read the first agenda item.
The report of the City Council agenda and one Council Bill 119-399 pertaining to admission tax revenue amending section 5.40.120 of the Seattle Municipal Code making technical corrections to ordinance 125-672.
Thank you.
So this is a matter of the technical correction that I described this morning during briefing.
Basically, this council bill makes a technical correction to Ordinance 125672, which we did pass, dealing with our city's partnership with the Seattle Arena Company LLC for the redevelopment and operation of Key Arena.
You may recall that a an amendment was brought forward by councilmember herbal that was accepted by the select committee Had to deal with the admissions tax and giving some flexibility there literally it just simply deleted some language in a section that we all had agreed to and when it was formally signed and conveyed we Had a technical mistake and a clerical error and we did not make that correction.
So this is the technical correction to make sure that The ordinance reflects what we had agreed on when we voted on this deal because my herbal did you need to add anything to that?
Okay, any other questions by anyone on this Okay, everybody good.
Okay, so I will move to adopt council bill one one nine three nine nine It's been moved and seconded to pass council bill one one nine three three nine Please call the roll on the passage of the bill so on I
Bagshaw.
Aye.
Herbold.
Aye.
Johnson.
Aye.
Juarez.
Aye.
Mosqueda.
Aye.
O'Brien.
Aye.
President Harrell.
Aye.
Eight in favor, none opposed.
Bill passed and the Chair will sign it.
Is there any further business coming before the Council?
If not, we stand adjourned and everyone have a great rest of the afternoon.