Select Budget Committee Session I 10/1/21

Good morning, everyone.

Today is Friday, October 1st, 2021. And it is our last day of the Budget Deep Dive.

So Skodan, I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Budget Committee.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Gonzalez?

Here.

Herbold?

Here.

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Peterson?

Here.

Morales?

Morales?

Here.

Sawant?

Present.

Strauss?

Present.

And Chair Mosqueda?

I'm present.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, we have a long agenda in front of us again today.

I want to thank you all for being present with us on our final day with two sessions to do the budget deep dive of the proposal that we received from the mayor on Monday of this week.

We're going to start with a new item on our agenda that was requested at the at the request of council members to have members from the office of planning and community development present.

I want to thank them for their quick work to be present for us so we could look at their budget details as well.

We'll have the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle Parks and Recreation that will cover our first session and in the afternoon we will have a presentation on the COVID response and recovery efforts along with the HSD presentation from yesterday that was item number three And that is everything related to Human Services Department that is not related to Homelessness Services.

There's no objection.

Today's agenda is adopted.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

And as a reminder, we will of course have a recess between 1 p.m.

and 2 p.m.

At this time, there are members of the public who have signed up for public comment, so I'm going to go into reading those individuals.

We will read three names at a time.

Please remember to state your name and note that you will have two minutes to speak.

You will hear a 10-second chime.

When it is time to wrap up your comments, that is your indication to provide your last few thoughts before the microphone cuts off so that we can hear your final thoughts.

When you're done speaking, please do disconnect and call back in on the listen-in line.

When it's your time to speak, you'll hear you have been unmuted.

That's your cue to hit star six on your end of the phone.

Again, hit star six so that we can hear your line.

That helps make sure that you're coming through loud and clear, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Colleagues, we do have a hard stop on public comment today at 10 a.m.

as always, and we have 13 people signed up to speak, so we will give folks the two-minute allotment, and we will aim to hear from everybody.

The first three speakers are Alice Lockhart, Brainy Nordstrom, and Laura Lowe.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for starting us off.

Alice.

Good morning, Council.

I'm Alice Lockhart, speaking for 350 Seattle, and also this morning, the Move All Seattle Sustainably Coalition.

I'd like to bring a climate focus to the SDOT budget.

This morning, I emailed each of you the Solidarity Budget section on transportation.

And this outlines the SDOT budget that we need for a city where we can all thrive.

The mayor's budget address promised environmental justice and a Green New Deal but gave zero specifics.

And the mayoral budget for SDOT like others before it reflects that level of priority.

I know our human brains tend to focus on the emergencies closest to hand.

And thusly the SDOT budget stresses both the West Seattle Bridge and other bridge maintenance and admits that this focus would, and I quote, limit future investment in other city projects long-term.

Council, our transportation emissions aren't going down, and bringing them down is every bit as urgent as an emergency as bridges.

In a drought-stricken world, our kids won't be able to eat bridges, but we do have a choice.

We at MAS would be delighted to work with your staff to align the SDOT budget with the solidarity budget priorities.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Brady Nordstrom.

Good morning, Brady.

Good morning.

Hi.

My name is Brady Nordstrom, and I'm with Seattle for Everyone.

We are a broad coalition of nonprofit and private housing developers, affordable housing providers, labor and business groups, social justice advocates, environmentalists, urbanists, and neighbors.

And we unite around the conviction that everyone, regardless of income level or background, should have access to a safe, stable, and affordable home.

Settle for Everyone strongly supports an increase to the OPCD funding for community outreach for the major comprehensive plan update in 2024. We do not believe that the current amount is adequate to do meaningful and equitable outreach and engagement.

Truly broad community outreach is the foundation to future land use that works for everyone in the city and can better ensure that our land use aligns with our values for equity, access to opportunity, and inclusion.

Seattle Project also supports an adequate budget for OPCD to study and propose alternatives to modernize our zoning and related codes in the major comprehensive plan update process.

Without community engagement and study, we risk making decisions that can cause harm or unintended consequences for communities for at least the next eight years.

And so as we face contemporary challenges, We call on the city to make an inclusive and high-information decision by adequately funding OPCD in the 2024 major comprehensive plan process.

Thank you very much for letting me speak.

Thank you very much, and good morning, Laura.

Thanks for being here.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Laura.

I'm calling on behalf of Share the City's Action Fund.

We have a Slack group with over 150 volunteers and mailing lists with over 1,000 folks and 7,000 followers on Twitter.

We've joined with almost 100 groups and growing to support the brilliant solidarity budget.

And if each of you listening to this haven't dug into that yet please read it this weekend.

Today we are calling specifically to highlight a struggle related to the upcoming comp plan and to echo what you just heard from Brady.

We also want to mention design review even though that's not being brought up today we still think they're connected.

We know that that's not a focus of the budget but we really want to focus on that as well right now.

As Brady said, please robustly fund OPCD.

We really need enough staff to do the CEPRA analysis in order to make land use change.

We need equitable community outreach.

We need to focus on things like disability justice, language justice, and racial equity.

And that's going to take the ability to grant out some of that community outreach to trusted partners.

And then I want to switch to the SCCI budget which doesn't have a presentation this week but is absolutely essential as we do the comp plan work in OPCD.

We absolutely have to fix design review before we approach our next comp plan.

Some people have called it the new redlining.

We have the new technical summary from a small group of stakeholders that I will be emailing to you again from Seattle for Everyone AIA and ourselves and other But we need maybe an interdepartmental team from DON, OPCD, and SCCI to do a serious outreach project to find out how to have meaningful community conversations around design review, something that all of us wish we had done, but we did our technical report.

But we know that in order for the design review changes to be equitable, there needs to be a really strong community conversation.

So please fund that.

And last of all, again, please read the solidarity budget.

So much work, months went into making that.

So thank you for your time.

Thanks for your time.

The next three speakers are Katie Wilson, Karen Taylor, and Merlin Rainwater.

Good morning, Katie.

Good morning, Council.

This is Katie Wilson.

I'm here representing the Transit Riders Union.

We are part of the Move All Seattle Sustainably Coalition and also the Solidarity Budget Coalition.

We support the whole solidarity budget vision, and we ask you to continue the work begun last year, divesting from policing and investing in communities.

In this transportation budget, we're asking for $40 million in new investments in bus service, bus lanes, and bus priority, and $60 million in walking, rolling, and biking infrastructure.

But here's the thing.

Even if this additional $100 million investment happens, we're still not moving nearly fast enough toward a sustainable and equitable transportation system that tackles the climate crisis and makes mobility a human right.

For example, there's a profound need for new sidewalks in neighborhoods throughout the city.

And for example, we believe the city needs to move toward free public transit.

For these and many other city priorities, there's a need for new progressive revenue.

The jumpstart tax passed last year is a really significant step in the right direction, but it's only a first step.

We need to go further to reform our tax code, not only to generate new revenue, but also to reduce regressive taxes.

The solidarity budget believes this is a project the city needs to take seriously.

And the first step is to figure out what our options are.

So we're asking that the city council take action in this budget process to create a task force of community experts that can research progressive revenue options, both those the city already has the authority to pursue and others that would be possible with new authorization from the state legislature.

This is a really important project, and we hope that you'll not only use this budget to address the city's immediate problems, but look ahead and set the city up to be able to take on larger, and more adequate stuff moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Katie.

Good morning, Karen.

Hi there.

My name is Karen.

I'm also a member of the Transit Riders Union.

Thank you, fearless leader before me.

I'm calling, I'm under-resourced and transit-dependent, which just means, as you know, that I'm super poor and I have to take the bus.

And I'm calling to support the solidarity budget in the sense that you divest from policing, invest in communities, specifically transit.

You already heard that we're joining with the Mass Coalition, but I just wanted to make sure you know we're asking for an additional $40 million to add 100,000 bus hours, key bus lanes, and bus priority at intersections.

I know buses are unglamorous, but they're super important to folks like me, and we're becoming a larger and larger part of your city as poor folks who are trying to depend it.

Thank you very much.

Bye.

Thank you very much.

The next speaker is Merlin.

Good morning, Merlin.

Good morning.

My name is Merlin Rainwater.

I use the pronouns she and her, and I'm representing the Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, a member of the Mass Coalition and one of the organizations involved in developing the solidarity budget.

I am calling to urge you to please use the solidarity budget as a starting point in evaluating the mayor's 2020 budget.

Please continue to divest from policing and punishment and invest in caring and sustainable communities.

I'm 75 years old.

I'm a multimodal traveler.

I prefer to travel by bike or to walk and I often put my bike on the bus or the light rail.

I had an episode a few years ago when I broke my hip and was dependent on a wheelchair.

And at that time, it was exceedingly clear to me how dramatically the missing links and the poor connections between our various sustainable and climate-friendly transportation systems can be.

A missing curb ramp or broken sidewalk is an insurmountable barrier for a wheelchair user traveling by bus or by light rail.

Buses that run only every half hour are not functioning connections to light rail.

Protected bike lanes that end funneling bikes into fast moving traffic won't work for families trying to get their kids to school.

The mayor's budget does have some small positive increases.

We're happy for example to see funding for the transportation equity work group But we cannot achieve our climate goals or our equitable development goals unless we dramatically shift our transportation priorities away from cars.

As others have mentioned, we're asking for an additional $100 million for equitable, climate-friendly infrastructure for people walking, biking, rolling, and using transit.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next three speakers are Rachel Schaefer, Doug Trum, and Justin Austin.

Rachel, it says you're listed as not present, so please dial in if you'd like to speak.

I'm going to move on to Doug.

Good morning, Doug.

Good morning.

This is Doug Trum with The Urbanist, and we support the vision laid out by the Solidarity Budget Coalition.

Um, and we, uh, I'm today going to speak about transit, which, uh, got $40 million of additional investment in the solidarity budget.

And we believe that's important because we still haven't returned to the service levels that we had before the pandemic and the, uh, renewal of the STPD, um, Uh, the additional funds in, in, in that measure didn't get us back to where we were.

Um, and.

It was great that the council increased what the mayor proposed, but we're still behind on service, and that means working class folks have a harder time getting to work.

And if we top that up, we can return to the transit growth that we were on a trend to before the pandemic, get people back in buses, and that will help our climate goals.

And there was also money for more bus lanes, so buses are faster.

The mayor's budget still doesn't get us out of the sort of rut we're in where we're not meeting our Move Seattle pledges, rapid rides delayed, and generally just not a vision for a multimodal city of the future, still just kind of getting sucked into going along to get along, and the West Seattle Bridge taking up a huge chunk of SFAT's budget, making it look bigger than it otherwise is.

So thank you for your thoughts, and we hope that the mayor's budget can be improved upon.

Thanks for calling in today.

Good morning, Justin.

You are up next.

Good morning, members of the council.

My name is Jason Austin.

I am a renter living in District 2, and I'm calling as a member of the Seattle Transit Riders Union.

TRU is in support of the Solidarity Budget Coalition, and they support the entire Solidarity Budget.

including continued divestment from SPD and additional investments in health and safety programs that center BIPOC communities.

This budget must move Seattle quickly towards a transportation system that is equitable and sustainable.

That means more investments in public transit bike lanes and especially sidewalks.

I've lived and worked most of my time in Seattle in the peripheries the far north and the far south of the city.

And I know this is a city that struggles to create spaces that are safe for people to walk around.

Despite a decrease in traffic due to COVID pedestrian-related vehicle accidents and deaths stayed flat and even increased from previous years.

We can make a significant strides towards actually achieving the goals of Vision Zero by rapidly expanding the development of sidewalks as well as adopting the Solidarity Budget's recommendation of rolling out block-to-box cameras to make crosswalks safer for pedestrians to walk and roll.

Thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for calling in.

And the last three speakers are Carla Cantor, Lauren Hill, and Addie Smith.

Good morning, Carla.

Sorry, excuse me, Clara.

Apologies for someone's pronunciation.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Clara Cantor, and I'm a community organizer.

And I'm a member of the Streets Are Stupid group to get police out of Personally, so when you get around, I walk to transit and after speaking, I remember Matt Cole.

Clara, I just wanted to let you know.

Clara, can you hear me?

You're coming, you're getting a little bit cut off.

I'm wondering if the connection might be bad or if it's on speaker, we can start your time again.

Oh, is that better?

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, a little bit better.

Thanks so much.

Let's try your time again.

Here we go.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

My name is Clara Cantor and I'm a community organizer with Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and also a member of the Whose Streets Are Streets work group to get police out of traffic enforcement.

Personally I'm also someone who gets around by bike and by walking to transit.

And I'm here speaking this morning as a member of the mass coalition in support of the solidarity budget alongside a number of the other commenters this morning.

So I'm here asking for council to please support the solidarity budget as a starting point in evaluating the mayor's proposed budget and continuing to divest from policing and investing communities.

And I also want to talk specifically about the transportation budget.

The solidarity budget includes an additional $100 million investment in infrastructure for people walking, rolling, biking, and in transit.

And that's reflective of what's possible with our current funding levels.

That's not reflective of the current need within the city.

Our city needs a massive investment in order to affect the change we need.

23 people have been killed while walking and biking on our streets so far this year, and we haven't even really hit the point of the year where we have higher numbers of tragedies like that because of the darkness in the winter.

Many more have been seriously injured, had near misses, or changed the way that they choose to get where they need to go because of the fear of being hit by a car or being out on our streets.

Our lack of safe places to walk and bike and cross the street most dramatically impacts disabled people, parents with strollers, elders, people living in low income neighborhoods and communities of color.

I know that when I'm walking around my neighborhood in the Rainier Valley, I'm walking with my kid on streets without sidewalks.

I'm lifting my stroller up and down curbs without curb cuts and over major cracks and lifts in the sidewalk.

And I'm someone who's strong enough to do that.

There's a lot of people in wheelchairs, that's not an option, and I see people wheeling down the side of the street in the gutter because they can't get up on the sidewalk or know that there's cracks there.

Thank you so much, Clara.

Good morning, Lauren.

Thanks for dialing in.

Hello.

Good morning, council members.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you for checking.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm speaking towards the park's budget, and so I fully support the restore of it, and it should also be increased to refund the Soundview play field and also Magnuson Field 12. Soundview was fully funded two years ago, and now the permit's done, construction drawings are done, and now it's scheduled a couple years off.

Magnuson Field 12, is out in the far distant future.

Sports fields provide a healthy opportunity especially during the pandemic.

It's been my daughter plays soccer and it's been one of the things that has gotten us through.

Having a lit sports field will add 2,000 rentable hours which I was at practice the other night up in Shoreline since there's not enough Seattle fields and there was like 40, 50 people.

So you do say 30 times 2,000 that's like 60,000 participant hours.

We really need to invest more in play fields.

The city has increased over 200,000 people in 10 years and there has been little increase in play fields.

Please invest in this.

I won't take any more of your time.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And the last person on our list is Addie Smith.

Good morning, Addie.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

My name is Addie Smith.

I'm calling on the city, Governor Jay Inslee and House and Senate Democrats in Washington state to stop the sweep and invest in housing for all.

I support the solidarity budget.

and actually divest from SPD.

As a matter of fact, all cities in this state must defund police.

Washington State would be number one in hate crimes if police would actually write police reports.

I want to also speak about Washington State residential landlord tenant law, RCW 59.18.130 paragraph eight.

The House Democrats passed this law.

It evicts predominantly black people from their apartments and housing for assaulting another person, resulting in arrest.

There is no addition to this law that includes self-defense.

Black women in Washington state are being attacked, stalked, harassed, and threatened by white people in this state, specifically police.

in on Mercer Island are receiving to write police reports.

When black women fear for their lives after multiple attacks and fight back, they are arrested.

This is happening right now to a black woman who is living on Mercer Island.

She's being evicted because of this law, and it needs to change.

This law needs to change.

It is targeting black people.

If you are arrested for defending yourself, not only do you have to worry about clearing your name of criminal charges, but there's no way out of the eviction under this law.

This law has to change, or there needs to be something implemented to include self-defense or staying in your home if you allege self-defense until your name is cleared in a criminal court, not in an eviction civil court.

Thank you.

Thanks for dialing in today.

Colleagues, that does conclude all of the individuals who've signed up for public comment that are present today.

I appreciate everyone dialing in.

We're going to go ahead and dive into the items on today's agenda.

We do have a full agenda again today, so I appreciate your patience and do appreciate your participation as well.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number one into the record?

Agenda item one, Office of Planning and Community Development for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

I want to welcome members of OPCD, the Office of Planning and Community Development.

I want to thank you for your quick turnaround with the request from council members to have more of a deep dive into the proposed budget in front of us.

I would say that that is a good thing that there's a lot of interest here.

and I understand that this issue crosses over from land use.

It also touches on equitable development.

So I know that there's multiple council members, Council Member Strauss, Council Member Morales, I see you both on screen.

Thank you for your interest in having this today.

And we're going to go ahead and start with Director Kittigdongo, and then we will turn it over to Council Member Strauss, and then, of course, other council members in the queue.

I'm sure Council Member Morales, I know this was a request of yours as well, so I'm going to have you up early in the queue as well.

We have with us today Director Rico Quirindongo, Interim Director Uba Gardere, Michael Hubner, and Melissa Lowry from OPCD, along with Ben Noble, Director of the City's Budget Office.

We're going to turn it over to you first, and then I'll turn it over to the Chair of Land Use, and then we'll see if Economic Development Chair has also comments as well, and then we'll open for questions.

Okay, please go ahead.

Thank you, Director.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Can you hear me okay?

All right, awesome.

Can you advance to the next slide?

Thank you all for making the time to add us to your extremely full agenda today, and so we'll try to be efficient in our presentation.

I'm actually gonna turn over this first slide to Melissa, who directs all of our budget activities for our office.

So Melissa, do you want to talk people through the numbers in front of us?

Sure, thank you.

Hello, I am Melissa Laurie.

I'm the finance manager for the Office of Planning and Community Development, and this is the slide you've probably been seeing a lot this week with a summary of OPCD's budget for 2021 and 2022. You can see there's some shifting around in the numbers here both between the adopted and revised and proposed budgets and also between the general funds and other funding sources.

This is primarily well there's two main reasons for this.

One is that OPCD has received a number of new funding sources for equitable development initiative over the past several years.

All of that funding has been awarded.

Not all of it has been spent.

So that budget carries forward, and you see it show up.

You see the unspent budget from the previous year show up in the revised budget.

So that's the jump between 2021 adopted and 2021 revised.

You'll also see a difference between general funds and other fund allocations, which was partially due to shifting revenue projections for short-term rental tax in 2020 and 2021. And in 2022, there was the addition of the new payroll tax revenue.

So there's an increase there as well.

And finally, you can see that our 2022 proposed budget includes the addition of 4.5 FTEs.

And we'll discuss those in the coming slides as we go into our highlights and changes to the proposed budget.

Next slide.

So I would turn over to Uba to talk about our equitable development initiative.

Thank you, Rico.

Good morning, council members.

I'm here to talk about the EDI proposed budget, which maintains the $5 million of the short-term rental, maintains the $430,000 of the community development block grant, and also adds $14.3 million of the jumpstart funding Also, this includes three new positions, grants and contract specialists and two new project managers.

As you all know, EDI is currently staff is project managing about 46 projects, including 21 new projects, projects selected during the 2021 RFP cycle.

We also anticipate this assignment to support the management of 11 new strategic investment fund contracts.

for land acquisition.

The grants and contracts manager supports the added staff to administer the grant processes and the contracts for both the EDI and strategic investment fund, including compliance.

The two new planning and community development senior positions for EDI will both take on new EDI and SIF funded projects and absorb projects from other managers who are currently over capacity.

doubled, like I said, the number of total contracts from 2021 as the results of the EDNC frowning.

Frown, sorry.

And then also we are anticipating to see more and larger contracts in 2022 as a result of the additional jumpstart funding So that's why OPCD and EDI is asking for those three new positions.

I also want to add is this is something we have discussed with our advisory board who's open to and making sure that the sustainability of the program works and open to the percentage of admin going towards project management.

And we'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

For items two and three, I would like to have Michael Hubner speak to those.

Good morning, council members.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, Michael.

Excellent.

Thank you, Rico.

Michael Hubner, long-range planning manager in OPCD.

So I'm first going to speak to the comprehensive plan major update.

The update is being funded in three phases beginning actually this year and with a budget for 2021. The second phase which is the topic for today will include the bulk of the environmental impact statement the SEPA analysis and outreach and engagement work and will be funded at a $350,000 level in 2022. This includes a $220,000 increase in the proposed budget plus which is on top of the $130,000 base that's already in our baseline budget for 2021. The important thing to consider with respect to the project is that the total project budget over the full three years including anticipated 2023 funds is $425,000 for the EIS and $150,000 for community engagement.

So OPCD is currently preparing to launch the update this fall.

We're coordinating closely with other departments, most notably the Department of Neighborhoods, and with SDOT, particularly on analysis and data, transportation planning and policy, and community engagement.

We intend to use the funding for the community engagement consistent with an approach which we recently presented to the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee that focuses our resources on reaching out to and partnering with BIPOC and other marginalized communities, and that supports a racial equity toolkit.

With respect to the EIS, we expect this comprehensive plan process to address the first major update of the city's urban village strategy since it was adopted in 1994. With that in mind, and for this EIS, we anticipate studying a wider range of alternatives for where and how the city grows over the next several decades, including alternatives that are informed by recently completed racial equity analysis of our current Seattle 2035 plan.

I'm going to turn to the regional growth center sub-area planning, which is related to the comprehensive plan, as I'll explain.

The 2022 proposed budget includes $150,000 to initiate work on regional growth center sub-area planning.

And this is another important element of what we're doing in long-range planning at OPCD over the next several years.

There are six regionally designated regional growth centers in the city.

These are designated by the Puget Sound Regional Council.

They include downtown, uptown, South Lake Union, the University District and Northgate.

And these are places the region has agreed should play a major role in planning for future growth.

And the designation is specifically tied to access to regional transportation funding programs.

Sub-area plans, which would likely be adopted as components of the comprehensive plan, address our diverse growth needs and policies, including land use, infrastructure, housing, and other areas of policy development and strategic implementation.

And the intent here is to support long-range and equitable recovery and vitality for these important places in our city.

Why are we taking this on now?

The regional policy adopted by PSRC in the last several years establishes a requirement that cities have updated sub-area plans in place for their centers by 2025. We've been working closely with PSRC staff which will review and certify the adopted plans to identify that there is a significant body of work that's needed for the City of Seattle.

But just as important this work will bring our neighborhood plans for the centers most of which are a couple of decades old.

current and relevant to the challenges ahead.

Rico, do you want to add anything on the either the comprehensive plan or sub-area planning?

I would.

Thank you, Michael.

So a couple other things I would note.

One related to the comprehensive plan major update.

You heard Michael make a reference to the $150,000 budget that we have for community engagement over the course of the next three years.

What we are aware of is that We are in a new climate than we were a couple of years ago.

And, you know, with the tragedies of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others, and the racial awakening and reckoning that the nation is dealing with, what we know as we look at the ComPlan major update is that there is a enhanced level of community engagement that we need to reach out into community to hear from the people that we are trying to represent and that we are trying to serve well to get an understanding of how we need to affect and change our comprehensive plan and plan for the future and reconcile some of the very challenging past we have from a policy standpoint, be it redlining or other policy restrictions that have made generational wealth not possible for our BIPOC, for many of our BIPOC community.

That budget that we have now is, well, I will say this.

We will do everything that we can with the resources that we are provided.

And so we are grateful for what we have in front of us currently, what we do know, particularly related to the discussions that the city has been having and the work that we've been doing to try to compensate community for involvement in extended planning efforts and community engagement efforts.

the budget that we have currently did not originally contemplate that level of reimbursement.

So those are some things we've got to figure out.

And that will take some time, and there are multiple departments that are doing that.

We are certainly no exception.

Related to regional growth center and sub-area planning, I'm very excited to have the $150,000 in the proposed budget to be really some starter funds to kick off the sub-area planning that we need to do.

As you heard Michael state, we have six sub-area plans that from the way that I've been looking at it, If we really need to run that planning parallel to the foundational comprehensive plan major update, that regional growth center subarea planning is supplemental and complementary.

But what I'm saying is it's additional work.

So there's a much larger budget beyond the $150,000 that we need to look at over the course of the next three years.

This is enough to get us started, but we'll want to be in conversation with council about what that effort needs to look like moving forward.

Next slide, please.

So these last two items, I will speak to Duwamish Valley Program.

We're very excited by the additional funding that's in the proposed budget.

We're adding $2.5 million to expand our existing Duwamish Valley Program.

The funding includes a new program coordinator position to be out in community and be a part of enhanced community engagement.

and best community assets, including South Park Community Center, South Park Neighborhood Center, Georgetown Gathering Spaces, and community support developments at the Utility Electric site were out last week for a great press event to talk about this work.

The work is intended to foster climate and community resilience, provide opportunities for youth, and advance a range of community priorities documented in the Duwamish Valley Action Plan.

As you know, we're closely coordinating with both OSC and SDOT regarding this work, as well as other outside agencies.

And OSC and SDOT also have budget for the program.

Indigenous planner, you've probably heard me speak about this need before.

You know, we've talked about indigenizing the comp plan.

We really had a strong need to have an indigenous planner within our staff as a permanent position we have an additional Seattle program where we have.

Interns come in for a short period of time every year for a number of months, but having a full-time position to help us develop frameworks and processes for incorporating Indigenous planning concepts into our work and to our community development is really critical.

That position will also expand the City's planning approach and increase our ability to engage with that Indigenous Seattle work.

and our engagement of Indigenous Seattle residents.

The intent is to enable a city to transform or transition from the erasure of Native American culture and experiences to instead a process where Indigenous methodologies are incorporated and implemented in our work.

Next slide.

Looking at our work through a racial equity frame, 17 million in new investments seek to advance our RSGI work to combat systemic racism, eliminate racial disparities, and support racial equity.

As we've already discussed, we have the EDI dollars to the tune of the additional 14.3 million the Duwamish Valley program work, an additional $2.5 million.

And then the comp plan outreach and engagement, an additional $50,000.

The indigenous planner position, $159,000.

Equal development zoning.

This one for $25,000 is work that we're doing currently and will continue in 2022 to address barriers in our land use and zoning regulations that make it difficult for EDI and other affordable housing and development projects to succeed.

RSGI training for staff internally, $26,000 this year, and that's also planning commission and design commission training.

And then real estate data, 13,000, would be to increase monitoring of displacement risk and community indicators, support land acquisition for the SIF and EDI projects, and inform policy development and planning strategies.

I believe that was our last slide.

And with that, I would open up for questions.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Well, thank you.

a lot of interest, there's a lot of interest on council in making sure that we get to some of these promises that we've kept to community.

And so I'm gonna thank you for your time.

And I see three people in the lineup.

So we'll go Council Member Strauss, Council Member Morales, and Council Member Juarez.

I thought elders got to go first, but okay.

I see how it is.

All right, I'll wait my turn.

Thank you for the gracious- Thank you, and Council Member Herbold, I see you as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you for the graciousness, Council Member Juarez.

And Patty, could you put the slides back up?

Because my questions are connected to the slideshow.

Council Member Strauss, if you had any comments you'd like to say, you're more than welcome to as well as Chair Blaine.

Yes, you know, it's been an absolute pleasure to get to work with Director Karen Bongo, Uba, and Michael.

You all do amazing work.

I just want to make sure that we are allocating the appropriate resources that you need to be successful with your work, especially as the major update is coming.

Starting on slide two, I just want to confirm that this $14.3 million for EDI is all additive from JumpStart, and that amount is in line with the spending priorities outlined by council for JumpStart revenues, or has there been a change made?

And Ben, feel free to.

I think maybe better for me to confirm.

So again, this should say payroll tax, not general fund, just to be clear.

And that is applying the formula that was in the legislation.

This is the funding target for 2022 under that jumpstart ordinance for EDI.

But as described, it's not the only funding that goes to EDI.

But in terms of the specific question, yes.

To answer that specific question, the answer was yes?

Yes.

Great.

Glad to hear that the amount is in line with the spending priorities we outlined earlier, and that it is additive.

Thank you, Dr. Noble.

Staying on this slide for a minute, based on OPCD's presentation to the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee last week, I believe you anticipated allocating $150,000 towards comprehensive plan outreach and engagement over three years.

That would leave $200,000 for work on the environmental impact statement.

Do I recall this correctly, or has there been a change since last week's meeting?

There has not been a change since the last time we reviewed the numbers.

Okay.

If I may, a point of clarification there.

Over the full three years for the project, it's $150,000 for community engagement, and $425,000 total for the EIS.

For the three years for the project.

Oh.

OK.

So is that where the budget also indicates an additional funding of $575,000 for the 2023 budget?

And if not, would you like to elaborate on that?

Melissa maybe you could chime in here to help explain the phasing of the comp plan budget over the three budget cycles.

Sure.

Yes.

So the comp plan budget is estimated to be $575 total spread over three years.

So we had $130,000 in 2021 this year.

We'll have $350,000 in 2022 and the final $95,000 will be 2023. And that all adds up to the 575 for the comp plan overall major update.

Okay, that's helpful clarification I may follow up offline with more questions.

Staying on the slide, I know that in previous major update cycles, OPCB received a higher amount of funding.

Is $150,000 over three years sufficient for the robust outreach and engagement process, similar to the comprehensive plan outreach?

Or what would fully funding that project look like?

And if you are not at liberty to answer, I'm happy to take the answer from Dr. Noble.

So I will take a pass and Ben, if you have additional comments that you'd like to make, please.

So my perspective, I believe that as we look at engagement of both community liaisons and community organizations that we will engage, that our We will do everything that we can with the limited budget that we have.

But the simple reality is with the number of people that we're trying to reach out to, the number of neighborhoods that we're trying to get into the discussion, that if we had a greater level of resource, we would put it to good use.

We have a draft outline that Michael has put together regarding how we would allocate that $150,000 over the three years.

We certainly have the ability to identify where there are what I would, I don't know how else to characterize it, where there are some gaps.

We've actually been doing a robust coordination with SDOT related to the Seattle Transportation Plan.

and the 1.5 that they have for a similar time period for community engagement to figure out kind of where we align our efforts, where we plug in, where we can share some resource.

But that's also allowed us to identify where there are some gaps that we could fill.

Well, it sounds like at least $150,000 would be a start for this year.

And I'll be continuing to watch this process to make sure that we have the appropriate amount of funding for the outreach that's required for such a large, as the major updates only happen out of cycle, once every four years at minimum.

And if I might, I think that that was exactly the perspective of the mayor and the executive in bringing the core proposal, bringing this proposal forward in the forum that recognize we are financially constrained at the moment.

We are in a recovery mode.

As Director Kierendago mentioned, he has begun some discussions with other department directors around the city's overall outreach efforts on a variety of major fronts.

So comprehensive plan, by its definition, being the most comprehensive, but we do have, as I was doing, and there's potential opportunity to both not per se driven by a cost issue, but also just in terms of effective engagement to think about how to streamline those efforts.

There may be a side benefit on cost.

I'm the budget director.

I'm all for that.

But we also recognize that as the process continues, there might be the need for additional resource.

This is a budget for 2022 put together in the constrained environment that we are in.

Excellent.

Well, let's stay connected on this.

And I know that in the past, the council has adopted provisos aimed at ensuring alternatives to our current growth strategy are considered in these updates.

Do you have sufficient funding at this time for a comprehensive plan EIS that will allow the city to consider appropriate or just appropriate changes to zoning, in particular, single families soon to be neighborhood residential areas?

I want to have you address Council Member Strassel's question there, because I think there's an important piece that we need to raise.

Before we do that, I would also say regarding the community engagement dollars, I had mentioned this before, but as Ben had just mentioned, We are looking at an equitable communities framework and how across multiple departments we can maximize resource and how we engage community.

I think part of that discussion that I'm interested in continuing in 2022 is to what extent can we potentially establish some standard framework that we share related to how we compensate community in our community engagement processes.

I'm concerned about how that comes back and hits our budget line item.

And so that's just another piece that I have a critical eye on.

Michael, do you want to address Council Member Strauss' EIS question there?

Certainly.

Sun coming through my window there.

Apologies.

Yeah, I think I can be helpful in explaining that the $425,000, that should be thought of as a base budget, if you will, for an EIS.

For a point of comparison, the EIS for the last comprehensive plan update was The full cost was a bit more than that.

Around $500,000.

Of course that was a number of years ago.

2014-2015 time frame.

What our approach to this is we're going to go into this and and procure consultant support this year.

We're going to work within the budget that we have through that process and as we consider multiple needs and the desire to get the most bang for our buck from this environmental analysis process.

And what I mean by that is we are looking at a wide range of alternatives.

That includes looking at potential roles going forward or new roles for urban centers and villages for station areas which we're planning on light rail for potentially new areas of the city and complete and equitable 15-minute neighborhoods.

And looking at broadly at new roles for single-family or neighborhood residential areas across the city that's a lot to analyze.

We also know that this there'll be a lot of attention around climate impacts and and equity and displacement impacts.

Those are additional analytical pieces in the work.

And we also know that there may be significant code development to implement the plan when we get to the finish line.

So all of those pieces may indeed and we anticipate there will be some cost implications of those.

So think the 425 as a base and there may indeed be cost drivers to fully address all of those other factors and policy issues going forward.

And we certainly can get back to you to let you know what that looks like.

Okay, that's helpful.

And the last question on this slide, I see your budget includes new funding for growth centers planning.

I'm not sure that we've had robust discussion on this project.

Can you elaborate what this project is and maybe take a sub-bullet for me to understand if there's sufficient funding to do what you want to do?

So I will start off, and Michael, you can weigh in.

So if you look at our kind of urban village map, we have six sub areas that the Puget Sound Regional Council in 2018 adopted a requirement where City of Seattle now needs to create a plan around each of those sub areas that then gets tied back to transportation dollars that the city receives.

The timeline for completion of those six, and Michael, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, it's not explicitly aligned with comprehensive major plan update.

However when we look at the requirements for the sub area planning and the requirements for the comp plan major update there are some overlaps and efficiencies there.

Overlaps and efficiencies which will also be achieved by running that work parallel to the Seattle transportation plan work.

And so our our hope.

Well first there's a need.

And there's a need that wasn't contemplated that hasn't been contemplated in previous City of Seattle budgeting.

So it's a new cost.

I think that that Councilmember Strauss, to the extent that your committee has an interest in seeing it, I think that there is a larger three-year plan that we could talk about that, in my mind, looked at investing in two subarea plans a year, what's the level of cost related to that.

The $150,000 is really just a smaller dollar amount that actually allows us to bring a consultant on board to begin fleshing out that plan for the six sub-area plans.

So there there is a there is a substantial amount of work to do there that's supplemental to the base comp plan major update work.

Michael is there anything that you want to add to that?

Yeah I and perhaps this just puts a fine point on it but I think of this as really there's there's a there's a city driven need and externally a regional responsibility piece to this as to why we're taking this on now.

As Rico was explaining there, there is a regional expectation.

I know that Councilmember Strauss, you sit on the Growth Management Policy Board and other at the PSRC and other Councilmembers have been engaged in the PSRC process.

regional centers framework which was the original policy change in 2018 that set this expectation in a time frame for doing very specific and place-based planning around those regional growth centers.

The six of which I listed in my earlier comments was established then.

It was further codified when Vision 2050 was adopted.

And what we want to do as a city is is and it's an office is do the work that is commensurate with what other cities with centers in the region are doing that puts us in a good position to maintain eligibility for federal transportation dollars around which there are competitive processes each year.

In 2025 the regional council is going to be reviewing all of the centers and the plans and certifying those plans as updated plans and If the city were not to have those plans at that point in time it could put some of that funding accessibility in at risk.

But internally we also know looking at the comprehensive plan the neighborhood plans we have neighborhood planning policies in the comp plan for downtown for U-District Northgate the others that are regional growth centers and our manufacturing industrial centers as well.

We have policies in the plan right now but they're really old and they are they are truly not very meaningful at this point in time and looking forward.

So this is really a need that the city has as well to have fresh eyes, fresh work with the community around those center-specific policies and strategies to accommodate the growth we know is coming, a lot of which is going to be concentrated in those centers.

So that's the work we have before us.

It's going to require staffing, which we're trying to step up within our limited staffing, as well as budget for consultant support.

Thank you.

That's quite helpful.

And please let me know how I can be of assistance as we move forward.

And I know that these are longer range plans than this budget, which is just for the next year.

Patty, if you could advance to slide three.

Just noting, not a question, more of a comment, that my staff and I have met a couple times with a group of Duwamish Valley and Georgetown residents advocating for more resources for the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, and specifically for the green wall type projects in the area.

Just making a note that, calling out my appreciation that this is included in the mayor's budget.

So thank you, Director Noble, and thank you, Director Cambongo.

Slide four, if you could, Patty.

I'll only ask two more questions, and then I'll let my colleagues ask questions as well.

Just understanding, for the $50,000 for comp plan outreach, is this additive to the earlier total, or is this the $50,000 that is the total set aside specifically for engagement with BIPOC communities?

There's the proviso lift for $100,000, and then there's this $50,000 for next year, and that's the $150,000 total.

Okay.

So it is a subsection of that $150,000.

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then I think slide five is just general questions, but just bringing up the Director Carrondongo, you and I have long discussed completing the long-awaited Crown Hill Community Action Plan in time for council to adopt the plan by resolution this December.

Just wanted to check in.

What is the current status of the Crown Hill Community Action Plan, and is it on track to be completed by December?

It is.

It is on track.

Great.

And do you have the resources you need to develop and design guidelines next year that will stem from this plan?

That is in our work program for 2022, so yes.

Okay, thank you.

I have some other questions, but I'll hold them because I have a feeling my colleagues might ask the same questions.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Morales, please go ahead and thanks for your request to have this item on the agenda today.

I know there's a lot of overlap with equitable development initiative.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Good morning, everybody.

I want to first acknowledge that I don't actually sit on this committee, so forgive me if I'm asking questions that you've already presented on.

I do have a couple of big picture questions, and then I have a couple of line item questions.

So let's see.

I want to first, since we're talking so much about comp plan, I'll start there.

I do want to give a shout out to the Planning Commission who've been providing recommendations that city planners and our leaders really engage in principles that reduce barriers created by different forms of oppression.

And we know that this department in particular has a lot of you know, harm to repair because of our city's past practices.

So I appreciate that you were all engaging with the Planning Commission and particularly EDI doing a lot of important work there.

As we move into the comp plan process, I think it's going to be really important.

And the discussion that we've had, extended discussion about community engagement is something that I'm very interested in.

The Pomp plan, we're starting the EIS process.

I know that folks in the CID are very frustrated because they will be engaging in two processes given that the sound transit process is also happening.

And one of the questions that kept coming up in that conversation is around community engagement and translation services.

So, I don't know if you have this level of detail right now, but I'm very interested to know what the budget is for translating documents for providing translation services through the engagement process as you move forward there.

And I think maybe what I'll do is just ask if it's possible for us to have a more fleshed out understanding, a table or chart to see how this $575,000 is being planned over the entire phase of the comp plan process, rather than kind of year by year, because it's hard to understand what's going on.

So it sounds to me that you're saying the $150,000 really isn't sufficient.

So I'd like to know what you think is sufficient to make sure that we're doing this the right way.

Because as you know, this work affects the built environment and the people who live and work in it.

And it's how the people who are gonna experience this long-term They're my priority, and we need to make sure that they can engage in this process in a meaningful way.

So if you have an estimate of what you think it would take to do this right, and I think this is the same question Councilmember Strauss asked, but I'd like to hear that answer.

So I guess I would say a couple things.

First, your question about translation services.

I don't have a number I can identify at the moment.

I can say as a follow-up to this meeting, and you just have to tell me how quickly we need to turn it around, we can provide you a breakdown, a comprehensive breakdown that shows the 575 how it's spread out currently over the three-year period and how it's broken down and what each allocation represents.

that should be a pretty straightforward exercise for us, and we can do that in the form of a table.

I think that when we do that, that would also be an opportunity for us to identify, I had mentioned before that in working with SDOT and looking at the, I'll call it loosely, a shared community engagement strategy, we can identify gaps within that that would provide some insight to the question that you're asking me about additional funding.

Okay.

Yeah, I'll say additional funding opportunities.

Okay.

I mean, I understand this is, you know, if we're talking about authentic community engagement, that takes money.

People need childcare, they need food if they're coming to evening meetings, they need translation services if they live in certain, you know, if they come from certain communities, they should be compensated for their time and expertise that they're contributing to our decision-making process.

So I totally get that it is an expensive proposition.

And when we're talking about, Things that are going to impact the way neighborhoods look for generations to come.

It's an investment that we need to be willing to make.

So I don't think you need to be afraid of telling us how much it's going to cost.

I think we need to be prepared for that figure and then figure out how we're going to do it.

So OK, moving on, I want to talk about and I feel like we have been talking about this all week.

So I'm going to ask one more time and see if I can get some clarity about the EDI and strategic investment fund.

So first I want to say that just to clear up the record, what we have proposed right now for EDI is 14 million, 14.3 million.

That is not what was actually in the spend plan for Jump Start.

So I want to clear that up.

The spend plan indicated 9%.

Given the expected revenue, that would be more like 21 million for EDI, not 14. But I think for me, what I'm really trying to understand here is I understand where EDI came from.

That's a process.

I was part of that process when I was participating in SouthCore, when communities developed that idea, vetted it over time, proposed it to council.

And it's been a long process.

The EDI board just got seated after years of advocacy.

It's clear to me where that came from and why it's so important for us to invest in that.

I think Uwe has said before, this isn't a fund.

It is an anti-racist strategy that is very intentional about bringing community in and ceding power and decision-making to community.

So that is authentic community engagement.

And it's as authentic a process as I've seen from the city.

So I'm really excited that we're doing it.

I think we should be really proud as a city that that's what we're doing.

And it's frankly why I fought so hard to make sure that the investment from Jumpstart was included.

What I don't understand is the expansion of the strategic investment fund.

That is something that was created as a one-off because of the sale of the Mercer Mega Block.

And it seems to me that if what our real goal here is to expand the opportunity to invest in community-driven projects, then we already have that.

We have EDI.

to see an increase in staff and resources for EDI to expand their anti-racist work.

than to try to duplicate what that is in a way that doesn't actually engage the process the way EDI did.

So all of that's to say, I would rather see us build up EDI than just try to replicate something.

I think we need to be really careful about creating new pots of money and new programs without that that authentic engagement to support it, because I do think that that's sort of in direct conflict with anti-racist principles.

I know that I really have a question there, but I just, it's important for us to sort of pause throughout this process and really think about how we can achieve the goals that we are aiming for, but do it in a way that is strategic and honors the work that community has done.

And that is really, you know, Also, sort of fiscally responsible and if what we're saying is that, you know, different departments need more staffing to do their work.

Well, that's a different question.

So I'll stop there and just see if you want to respond or if I should just.

Councilmember, before I see, I know director and both directors that I can go and Noble may have some comments.

I do have three other people in the queue.

I think that it was an important comment that you've made to put on the records that we can have that as a central piece for us to come back to as we think about our priorities.

And I see Ali as well.

up there, but I want to make sure that that that value statement that you have sits.

It's an important comment that we have.

I just don't want to necessarily debate that comment right now so that we can get into questions.

I do have one other question about my district if I could and then I'll be done.

Okay, so I'm going to ask you to throw out your question quickly and then we're going to move on to Council Member Juarez.

Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Fair enough.

So we have 2.5 million in the Duwamish Valley program.

That's exciting to see.

It includes a South Park Community Center, a South Park Neighborhood Center, and a Georgetown Gathering space.

So I'm interested in what differentiates those kinds of spaces, because we would certainly love to have a Georgetown Community Center or Neighborhood Center as well.

And then my other question around that is how are you working to build a relationship with Duwamish Tribal Services as you invest in this work around there?

Thank you.

Please go ahead, Director.

Okay, thank you.

So if I can take a step back for 30 seconds and just make a note.

The EDI team drove the strategic investment fund process that we engaged and stood up the community advisory group this year.

Our conversation around 2022 is that the $5 million of base funding and the $14.3 million of payroll tax jumpstart funding, that we're treating that as one bucket and one effort with one team.

So hopefully that addresses that concern.

Ben, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Let me say a little more because I think I'm hoping to clarify because I may have been a source of confusion.

We agree, on the executive side, we're not proposing to continue the strategic investment fund as its own standalone thing.

It was a one-time allocation of resource.

What we're saying is that there is $30 million total, half of which, partly less, 14.3, is going to EDI.

That is the right thing.

Why have two separate processes?

They cover largely the same space.

I'm not saying it's identical, but certainly think that the staff can work to craft an approach that captures the principles of both, the extent that they are different.

So that is the idea, is essentially that the council's perspective on increasing the EDI ongoing allocation is consistent with the ideas that were underlying the one-time strategic investment fund.

So it's really, in some ways it's a labeling thing.

Do you have an answer to that second question?

Sure.

Um, so customer Ross, I appreciate your question around in drama trial investments.

I, I would actually love to have a more expansive discussion and to bring David Goldberg and Alberto into that just to talk about the program overall in our, in our plans for next year.

Lauren Flemingster, my deputy director, and I actually were part of a University of Washington studio with Duwamish Tribal Services earlier this year to talk about their needs and efforts, planning efforts.

The short version is there's a lot there to talk about, which I'm actually super excited about.

We just actually had a little planning session yesterday.

So I think that we could put together some materials to talk about, to line up the conversations that we've all been having and kind of take a look at the opportunities that we have with the dollars that are in play and then kind of come at this through one strategic lens, if that makes any sense.

So I'm totally 100% on board there.

All right.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

We are going to go to Council Member Juarez Herbold, then Gonzalez.

Council Member Juarez, thank you for your patience.

Thank you.

I was just going to make a few comments, but Council Member Morales did make a point that I was going to underscore.

First of all, Director, thank you for, I just want to share that OPCD was the first city department to use the indigenized and decolonization language ever in the history of this city, which has never happened.

And you know that Sam Asafa, left a great legacy and having you move that forward is really, really important.

The city of Seattle traditionally just would have some, I shouldn't say some, an indigenous and native person in the executive, never on the legislative side.

So having the indigenous planner is going to work phenomenally well and dovetail with the indigenous advisory council that this council passed and now we're in the middle of passing the ordinance for that staffer to be in Department of Neighborhoods So the question that Council Member Morales asked, all of those three individuals are going to work together.

And it's finally we're being holistic about baking in indigenous knowledge, the decolonization piece, government to government relations, strengthening our relationships with local tribes, national tribes, and urban Indian organizations.

We take that out of just the one person that gets dropped into the executive.

or in on the on the legislative.

So that is a wonderful, wonderful legacy to continue and for us for the city council to be proud of.

And I just want to say that also, Sam, as you know, was the first city director.

to have a four-part series about indigenous and the history of Seattle with historians, scholars, lawyers, policy people, some phenomenal intellectuals nationally and from BC and imparted all that knowledge to bake into OPCD.

No other city has done that.

And so I want to thank you for the legacy that you're continuing.

And again, when I was making a joke about elders go first, yeah, that's where we got to start indigenizing.

So I just won't put that out there.

And as we said, and I've shared with this before, and I'll leave it at this, you know, what our Uncle Billy Frank taught us, and we're also learning is that, you know, you do lead to leave.

And when you do leave, you leave a legacy.

And that should be our goal and our role.

So I'm really glad you're working with Duwamish and all the other tribes and Native American organizations, because I think we've come a long way.

And I just wanted to leave it at that.

So thank you.

And I might apply for that job.

I don't know.

I'm just thinking about it.

Thank you, Councilmember.

OK, Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you very much.

sure is anticipated by our friends at OPCD.

I do have some questions about the Duwamish Valley Program funding.

I'm really excited about the investments that are being proposed to make a reality in a more expedited fashion, the Duwamish Valley Action Plan goals.

Just some questions that I've been asking around the funds associated with the unity electric site.

1. Is the intention for those funds to be operation or capital dollars?

And one of the reasons why I'm asking is just recently that council authorized the purchase of the parcel for $3.9 million, but with only $1 million in hand with the understanding that Potentially, we could get full funding from the Conservation Futures funding in King County, but they've made that clear that that money would only be available after community conversations, which have not, I think, happened to the extent that they need to happen.

And so it appears that the $1 million may be coming from from either parks or EDI.

Just wondering, is the intention of part of this $2.3 million to cover the remaining gap in funding?

That's one question.

The other question is, what is the time for the community conversations?

And then I just want to note that soon after we voted in the Parks Committee on the authorization of the purchase of the parcel, folks in South Park did reach out to me because they're really concerned that if we're transferring this parcel to parks that they're going to be in the same bind that they were with the plaza property.

Mainly that property that's in the ownership of the parks department can only be used for parks purposes and their vision for this property similar to what their vision was with the plaza property, their vision with this property is broader than just a park's use.

And so they've described it as a multi-purpose building, a one-stop cultural anchor where local families can access opportunities and resources, open space for gatherings and pop-ups, multi-generational space for learning, retail, affordable childcare, and low-income housing units.

I know there's another housing project, but this particular sentence that I just read is a goal for the acquisition of the unity property.

Maybe I should be bringing this to asking parks this question, which I have done and I can do again.

But I know that being planners, the shop at EDI and OPCD kind of have the big picture planning goals for these projects in mind.

And I'm guessing that they have some insight for me that I can share with the community.

Thank you.

Councilmember Verbal, thank you for your questions, and I'm gonna give you a pretty broad answer right now, but I also would say that, like, if there was an opportunity to schedule some time for you and I to be able to sit down with Dave Goldberg and talk about the breakdown of the dollars, because I can't directly answer your question about the breakdown of the 2.5 today.

There's a spreadsheet, which is a bunch of different project opportunities and activities with community.

I can tell you that I was down at the Duwamish River Community Hub a week ago yesterday meeting with community Porter Seattle.

And there were a few of us from the city there talking about a whole range of issues, including that whole list that you just went through about opportunities.

And I, the other thing I can say is that yes, bringing the question about the unit electric acquisition to parks is good in terms of kind of closing the loop.

This is an active conversation that Jesus and I are in regarding the stewardship of that site on behalf of community and understand that fundamentally that the intent there is that it not just be a site for traditional park use or traditional park uses.

also know that there is a draft of a MOU that we are working on together that would point to what future opportunities are beyond the acquisition.

Thank you so much, Director.

I think we have a meeting in the works and really appreciate your advocacy and your focus on this project.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Council President Gonzalez, thank you for your patience as well.

Please go ahead.

Yay, my turn.

So good morning.

I just have a few quick questions.

I had a series of questions around community outreach and engagement, but I think we've exhausted our exploration of that area.

So I will just indicate to the department my interest in making sure that whatever the outreach and engagement is in terms of how it's resourced and at what level it's resourced, I just want to encourage the department to keep an eye towards looking at how the comprehensive plan can um advance the the need to build truly complete neighborhoods and um that that that are you know um you know going to be going to be those efforts are going to be really important to making sure that we are able to eradicate some of the barriers particularly to to entry and and producing more equity throughout our city so um just wanted to punctuate that conversation with my interest in making sure that our outreach and engagement is really focused at the at sort of the outcome of how do we how do we facilitate the the the vision around really building complete neighborhoods throughout throughout the city.

On the tone of complete neighborhoods, I believe that neighborhoods will remain incomplete so long as we don't center the ability to create and enhance our childcare infrastructure throughout the city.

And I was wondering if Rico you or Michael or whomever can talk to us a little bit about whether or not the comprehensive plan update work that we've been discussing this morning includes any any components related to how we can more easily site and how we can make more plentiful the options of having both home-based child care centers and center-based child care options throughout our complete neighborhoods.

Thank you, Council President.

So it's a really good question, and I mean, I think you probably know that our staff and particularly our EI team are focused on this issue and finding ways to fund daycare center opportunities and work with our CBOs that are doing that work in the community.

Michael Hubner, if you are still on the line, do you want to address our council president's question briefly before I go on?

as I do.

Yes certainly.

Briefly what I can say is we are very excited to be exploring this concept of complete inclusive 15-minute neighborhoods as a as a new and really potentially really engaging for community frame around how we do long-range planning and do comprehensive plan specifically.

It does challenge us to look at additional components of what makes a complete neighborhood including child childcare and education across the span of educational needs and components of our neighborhoods and the city.

But at the same time just putting this in the contact the comp plan is is a high-level policy document.

It's not going to do everything that we would need to do as a city to create those opportunities in all neighborhoods and communities.

But what we can and would be doing in that vein is looking at our land use policies and our the growth strategy and how it frames the roles of different parts of the of the city our neighborhood plans and at the very least address and remove barriers to expanding child care options in neighborhoods.

and endeavor to work with community and through engagement to identify what the comp plan can do to key up co-changes or other programs to make those opportunities real when the plan is implemented.

And I would, Council President Gonzalez, the only thing that I would add to that, so I think you know this, I'm a recovering architect, right?

So I, in I've always been invested in kind of urban planning and then how does that drive down to single site solutions.

And you have to look at the whole you have to look at the ecosystem and health of the whole.

And that relates to socially terms of health.

Kaiser Family Foundation research on how do you create healthy communities.

And this issue of child care and supporting working families is a critical piece of that discussion.

I think that as Michael has said, as we look at the framework that's established by the comp plan, major update, and then how we take pieces of that, that hit our land use policy changes, and then pieces of that in terms of how we put funding into the community through our EDI program, and then some of our other policies as a city, I think there is a healthy ecosystem that we can support, which is multifaceted.

And that is part of, when I look at the Equal Communities Framework that Ben and I are bringing to the capital subcabinet, That's a place where we're trying to convene that conversation for where it hits the work that we do at OPCD, but then also how it how it is supported by other departments.

So I just I guess all I want to say is I see you.

It's a critical issue and it's totally like top of mind for us.

Great, I just want to.

Restate my support for making sure that it's continues to be part of the conversation and also that we utilize the tools available in the area of the comprehensive plan to continue to advance our shared goals around creating greater amounts of childcare infrastructure throughout our city.

And again, I'm talking about both sort of those home-based childcare opportunities and center-based childcare opportunities for for all of our families across the city.

And in sort of the spirit of creating connectivity between our departments, I wanted to just remind you all, I'm sure you already know this, but DEEL, our Department of Education and Early Learning, does have some reports of work that they've done to identify what specific zoning changes would need to occur in order to um you know facilitate uh a better better built environment policy to allow um child care infrastructure to to really permeate throughout our neighborhood so would just would just offer that up my office is happy to to send that to you all if you haven't seen it yet um and would would um encourage you all to take a look at that and and and take it into consideration and have conversations with deal about how to create um uh you know sort of shared shared commitments around that.

The last thing I wanted to touch on, and then I will hand it back over to the chair, is really around, and Council Member Strauss touched on this a little bit in his line of questioning, and I just want to lift up those comments and want to echo some of those comments by just simply asking what OPCD thinks they need in terms of tools in order to be able to simplify and modernize our zoning, land use, urban design, and design review guidelines, and any other related codes, either through the comprehensive plan or through some other mechanism.

I just think that, you know, I think Director Kirindongo, you kind of mentioned already that some of our codes and laws and systems are very outdated in many ways.

And and I suppose what I'm looking for is some some sense of you from you all about what kind of tools or resources would be necessary through our current budgeting process, perhaps that would allow you all to take a very holistic view of those outdated codes and systems.

to get us moving towards a more modern set of applicable codes in this area.

And again, I'm thinking about the whole thing, zoning, land use, urban design, design review, guidelines, anything else that I may have not listed.

Well, that's a small question.

I only like I only like to ask small questions, which is why I put it on the table.

I appreciate the question and I while I'm probably not prepared to do full justice.

To the answer I do.

I do believe that we can achieve social change and social justice through engagement of built environment issues.

And so I think that the community, well, I think that the ComPlan major update and a robust community engagement with it at the same time that we're working across departments will be the next step to getting there.

I think that as we bring on an indigenous planner, as we bring on a consultant for the EIS and for community engagement and for the sub-area plan work to frame what comes next, I will be much I'll be in a much better position to provide you some more concrete answers.

I do, I do hear on the regular and Nathan Torrelson, SDCI, like the conversation around permit processes, design review, all of that.

Those are ones that have come to me as well.

I think there is a lot of work that we are going to need to do to take a look at the processes we have in place and how do we make them, how do we open up some doors, provide more resources to small business, BIPOC communities and families to navigate our processes and to do more and do better and support generational wealth.

There's a lot to weave there, so I do appreciate the question.

I think that what we've talked about in terms of the resources that we have in the proposed budget, we're very excited about.

And I think that the additional staffing opportunities will help us build some additional momentum in that whole list of areas that you just went through.

I think that I'm going to need to get into it a little bit more to be able to come back to council to talk about where I see more opportunities, if that makes sense.

That makes a lot of sense.

I appreciate the opportunity to continue to engage in that sort of 30,000 foot level question about how our outdated codes and laws have really resulted in creating a lot of unintended consequences.

And some might argue intended consequences of not actually achieving the goal of having complete neighborhoods.

And I'm very interested in identifying ways that we can engage in that reform work.

to advance our goals around equity and making our city more sustainable as well.

Just a real-life example is I know that there is $25,000 included in this budget to address code barriers to EDI, for example, and just wonder whether that could serve as a learning opportunity for us to see if we can bring whatever lessons we learn in that sort of narrower context to the broader question, but also recognize that that is happening at the same time that we're considering modifications to the comprehensive plan, and I'm looking for help and guidance on figuring out how to create synergy there so that we don't miss the opportunity for another decade.

I really appreciate that.

And I was just a, I was a co-chair for a national conference, research conference with the American Institute of Architects and the ACSA, which is colleges built environment related with Jelani Cobb talking about historic roots of racism, how that affects cities and understanding that city of Seattle is not unique in this, In this unfortunate legacy, it will take us a very long time.

I think that the comp plan can begin to provide us some opportunities and a new roadmap.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, we are getting towards the end of this time.

We're a little bit over.

Council Member Morales, did you have a follow-up?

An urgent comment?

I just want to signal my interest as well in having OPCD and SDCI work together to start a really meaningful process review of the design review process, because it really does not meet our RSGI goals.

Right.

Probably never.

So I do think it's time for us to review that.

And I know there's lots of folks hearing from community about that as well.

So I'm interested in part of that conversation.

I'm sorry, Director Charles and I have a great relationship.

I love the work that we are doing together and I understand, I hear you.

I understand that that's something that we need to jump into in 2022 as well.

Great, thank you.

Council Member Strauss, I think you said you had a few extra questions.

Anything burning that you would like to get out there right now?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I will hold my questions in the interest of time.

Okay, and we do have a close of business by today for questions to go to Allie and Patty.

Thanks again to Allie and Patty for collecting those questions.

Council members, I will send my questions along with Council Member Strauss' as well.

All of you have touched on.

We have a comprehensive plan.

We have a comprehensive plan for all of the issues.

a legacy to uproot.

But we have evidence by your incredible staff through the racial equity toolkit that we funded and the past few years ago that your team worked directly with community partners including Puget Sound SAGE to have a roadmap for how those policy changes should be implemented.

And I really want to thank you, your team, Puget Sound SAGE, PolicyLink, for all of the work that you did on that racial equity toolkit, because I think that that provides that not only the strategies for how we can create a more inclusive comp plan, process, a great model, but it provides the justification for the urgency to do it now.

So I think this will be a big priority for us in this 2022 budget to finalize a budget that includes the funding, the breakdown that will be helpful.

So the breakdown that you're sending in response to some of the questions to include what it looks like to have the full amount for community engagement, including contracts with community-based organizations to help us engage like you did with the racial equity toolkit, to make sure that we have the ability to fully fund the comp plan EIS, which if we do it right and this time around means that as we look at single-family zoning as requested in the docket for the comprehensive plan, we don't have to do again later and be duplicative and wasteful of resources.

So I'd like to see in that analysis as well what the total amount of funding is needed to include the study of single-family zoning changes in the Comprehensive Plan EIS as well.

And I'll be asking some follow-up questions about the $25,000 for the equitable zoning barriers that we are attempting to reduce and just making sure I understand that program and whether or not that is funded to scale as well.

But with that, Kareem, anything else you'd like to say, Director?

Well, I guess I would say a couple of things.

One, regarding the deadline, it sounds like there's additional questions that we will get today that we need to answer by the end of the day today.

Oh, no, no, no.

That would be amazing if you could do that.

But no, we are going to send those to our team, and Allie's on the line here.

It's an internal council member deadline that so that we're collecting all the questions and you're not inundated with questions from a variety of different offices.

We're going to collect those and you'll have a streamlined process on the inside for each department on how to reply.

No deadline for you all.

You all did heroic work to get us this information and we're going to work with you over the next two months.

Okay, so thank you for that clarification and Council Member Esqueda.

So I just I want to say that And I'm sorry, I'm going to sound like just a getty school child for a second.

Super exciting to be able to present to all of you today and all of your questions.

Totally amazing.

And totally like, like this is our, like, well, I was just speaking for myself.

Like, this is what gets me out of bed every morning.

And I see and feel how the work that we do supports community, lifts up community, and when we don't do it well, how it harms community.

And so I appreciate all the things that you've asked about today.

Part of the work that I have seen us doing this year is, you know, despite COVID, despite this terrible pandemic that we've had to live through, getting out into the community, meeting and talking with people about what their needs are, seeing how that relates back to the policies that we are putting in place and the dollars that we're funding for community-led projects.

I am very grateful to all of you for your support of the work and was super excited that you added us to your busy calendar to be able to talk with you today.

So just a lot of things.

So thank you very much and I know that my staff was very excited to do this as well.

So thank you for your time today.

We're thrilled to have you.

Thank you for being here and thanks to the council members Morales and Strauss who inquired as well about your participation.

As you can tell everybody's very excited about your future work which we want to make sure you are set up for success and community is set up to be included as well.

With that, thanks so much.

Thanks to your team.

I see you on there.

I see you, Michael.

Thanks, everybody, for all of your work.

Let's move on to item number two.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number two into the record?

Agenda item two, Seattle Department of Transportation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

Okay, speaking of making sure our community is inclusive, that not only includes making sure our roads are connected, but that community has the ability to walk and bike and be safe and be free from harm by automobiles and making sure the buses literally and the trains literally run on time.

That's why we have Director Zamzambabwe with us from the Department of Transportation, also Chris Castleman, And of course, we have Director Ben Noble.

Thanks for being with us.

I'm going to turn it to Council Member Peterson after the conclusion of this presentation for some opening questions and comments.

And with that, we'll send it over to Directors Mbawe.

Sounds good.

Good morning, Council Members.

And I don't know if Director Noble wants to say anything before I jump in, but Unless he comes on camera here, I will just take it away since I know we're running a little bit over time as well.

Thank you for the opportunity to present our budget this morning.

Mayor Durkin's proposed transportation budget continues and expands important work that's underway.

That's work providing safe, equitable, affordable, and accessible travel options for today and for future generations.

The priorities for our budget were developed with input from our race and social justice change team and informed through our ongoing engagement with community stakeholders, including the Transportation Equity Work Group.

It considers the broad portfolio of work which the 1,100 plus women and men of SDOT deliver each and every day.

Work ranging from managing important infrastructure like our streets, traffic signals, trees, sidewalks, areaways, and bridges, to welcoming our new parking enforcement colleagues to the department.

to addressing the climate crisis and keeping travelers safe.

For SDOT, as for all of us, 2020 was a year of uncertainty and emergency response.

Crisis was behind every door.

2021 has been a year of relative stability and the ability to catch up a little bit on what we couldn't do in 2020. 2022, as reflected in our proposed budget, will be one of exciting progress and a platform for addressing the critical investment needs in our transportation system going forward.

To that point, to that chronology, we're on budget and on schedule to repair the West Seattle Bridge so it is safe to use by mid-2022.

We continue investing in Duwamish Valley neighborhoods bearing the brunt of West Seattle Bridge detours.

We're building community-requested projects to reduce traffic impacts, and the mayor's budget includes $1.75 million to improve 8th Avenue South and Gateway Park North and link the Georgetown community to its only waterfront access point.

To reduce the need to drive during this time of the bridge being closed, we're funding water taxi service to and from West Seattle this winter and partnering with King County Metro on the Flip Your Trip program.

The proposed budget also advances our levy to move Seattle commitments to voters, and we are reaching some really important milestones in the levy.

This weekend, we'll wrap up work to extend the 4th Avenue protected bike lane downtown and complete the Center City Bike Network, a priority defined in the 2014 Bike Master Plan.

Vital bus projects are breaking ground, like the Madison Rapid Ride G line.

We broke ground on that yesterday.

And wrapping up, like the Delridge Rapid Ride H line, scheduled to start operating in 2022. These projects, coupled with additional investments in the transit plus multimodal corridors, offer people frequent reliable accessible bus service bus service connecting Seattle lights to employment hubs housing cultural destinations and regional transit service, like light rail and ferries.

But it takes more than just building projects to make these low-carbon transportation options successful.

In 2022, $32 million is being invested in ongoing and planned transit service, thanks to the Seattle transit measure overwhelmingly passed by voters in late 2020. To keep people and goods moving, we're finishing major street and sidewalk projects around the city, and we're building and repairing bridges.

The last wooden bridge on a major street, the Fairview Avenue North Bridge, has been replaced and opened for business this summer.

The John Lewis Memorial Bridge now reconnects neighborhoods divided by I-5 for decades, keeps people walking, rolling, and biking between North Seattle College and the new Link Light Rail service at Northgate.

We look forward to celebrating with some of you tomorrow.

Light rail service is projected to add up to 49,000 daily riders to the already 80,000 taking the system in normal times by next year as we recover from the pandemic.

Along with these major projects, we seismically retrofit bridges, like the West Howe Street Bridge in Magnolia, and conduct basic bridge maintenance, regular inspections, monitoring, preservation, and repairs.

And we know that we still have a lot to do.

The budget allocates $6 million to replace and upgrade mechanical and electrical components of the University, Ballard, and Spokane Street bridges, and supports repairs to the 4th-over-Argo Bridge.

Thanks goes to council for providing a much needed revenue source, the $20 vehicle license fee.

We completed your requirement earlier this year to do engagement, and we've already begun deploying those resources to critical needs and have included the community-led spend plan in this proposed budget.

We're still seeing too many serious injuries and traffic deaths, and we are not on track to reach Seattle's 2030 Vision Zero commitments to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries.

The budget invests an additional $4.5 million in projects and programs to improve safety for all travelers over and above what goes into our ongoing work.

It includes redesigning streets with a history of serious and fatal crashes, giving pedestrians time to start crossing the street before people driving start to move.

and invest in safety basics like adding ADA compliant curb ramps, maintaining our sidewalks and bike lanes and repainting crosswalks.

The proposed budget also sets the stage for investments that serve as a platform for the future.

There are resources for ongoing major investments in an interconnected, safe, reliable, and low-carbon transportation system.

There are ongoing resources to support our transportation equity work group as we complete a transportation equity framework that points the way towards a holistic approach to transportation that serves our whole community and begins to repair the impacts of systemic racism and transportation inequities that have held our city back.

We're also excited about the opportunity to closely align the work of the parking enforcement team with a view towards re-imagining community safety.

The budget also includes funding to integrate and update our four modal master plans, pedestrian, bicycle, transit, and freight, creating a long-range plan for Seattle's transportation system.

This effort aligns with the comprehensive plan update that I just heard the discussion of, and through inclusive public engagement, we expect to create a collaborative vision serving as a framework for a transportation funding package to replace the left to move Seattle expiring in 2024. This framework also allows us the flexibility to respond to a possible federal infrastructure package and other federal funding being discussed in D.C.

right now.

In conclusion, I'll return to where I started.

Mayor Durkin's proposed budget considers and balances the breadth of work for which we are responsible, one that helps us make progress towards our Vision Zero goals, supports equitable recovery, delivers on our levy commitments, invests in low-carbon transportation options, and makes the SDOT and the city more resilient for years to come.

With that, I will turn it over to Chris Castleman, who is our Division Director for Finance and Administration, to walk through some of the more details, and I look forward to the questions and discussion.

Good morning, everyone.

As Sam said, I am Chris Castleman, and I'll be walking you through a high-level view of our proposed budget, including key changes to our operating budget and CIP and other noteworthy items.

Please note that appropriation amounts and percentages throughout the presentation are all referring to the SDOT budget only and are not references to appropriations elsewhere in the city budget.

This slide, which you've seen for all of the other departments, compares SDOT's 2022 proposed budget with the appropriation levels in the 2021 adopted and 2021 revised budgets.

You will recall that in 2021, SDOT, along with many other city departments, faced significant revenue shortages associated with the ongoing economic impacts from the pandemic.

We were struggling with historic shortfalls in virtually all funding sources.

that began in 2020 and resulted in significant reductions to our 2020 and 2021 budgets.

With the ongoing challenges of the pandemic, SDOT's revenue base continues to see some instability.

As a result, our 2022 proposed budget assumes the continuation of most reductions made in the last two years.

to be able to balance expenditures with revenues.

In addition, we've had to adjust spending to reflect the current forecasted conditions for gas tax revenue in 2022, which appear to be dipping.

We have also had to reduce our 2022 general fund-based budget by a little over $3 million to support overall city needs.

While we have revenue increases in some areas, these are largely tied to specific or restricted purposes.

As a result, a continuation of the majority of budget reductions taken in our 21 adopted budget is necessary in 2022 for our department.

Aside from these reductions, with the addition of the parking enforcement program and some new investments tied to specific funding sources, our 2022 proposed budget is largely a cost to continue budget, meaning very little change to current projects and ongoing programs and services.

For the general fund, As I mentioned, our 2022 general fund allocation is reduced by $3.2 million from our base to help the city balance declining revenues due to COVID-19 impacts.

But overall, our general fund allocation is increased with the addition of over $18 million to support the parking enforcement program, which will be noted on the next slide.

Other appropriations.

So turning to non-general fund or other resources, You can see that our appropriation level has increased over the 2021 adopted budget, but is significantly less than the 2021 revised budget.

The 2021 revised budget increase was mainly due to capital carry forward.

of $415 million of unspent 2020 funds, which was approved in this year's second quarter supplemental.

Just a note here that we are retooling our CIP to avoid such significant carry forwards in future years, and this will be explained further a little later on.

The majority of increased appropriation in other funds comes from leveraging newly available resources in high priority programs.

You'll see mention of many of these investments in the coming slides.

While most SDOT revenue sources are forecast to remain in line with prior projections, and as I mentioned, Gas tax revenues are actually expected to dip further.

The forecast has improved for several transportation funding sources, including the Seattle Transportation Benefit District or STPD sales tax that was approved by voters last fall.

Real estate excise taxes, or REIT, that support capital improvements, school safety traffic and pedestrian improvement funds, which, in other words, are the school's own cameras, and revenues from both the original and the new $20 vehicle license fee.

Additionally, we have revenues coming in from the pilot program for automated traffic enforcement cameras, the block the box, and the proposed budget includes new investments from the cumulative reserve fund.

Now, turning to positions or as you can see, as thoughts proposed budget does include a sizable increase in staffing levels.

The great majority of these positions 120 are related to the parking enforcement program and are being transferred in from the Seattle police department.

SDOT is also proposing the creation of 10 new positions across six work areas within the department to perform critical services that can't be provided with existing staff.

Finally, this budget identifies 25 existing temporary or term limited positions which represent regular ongoing work essential to our delivery of programs, services, and projects that we are proposing to establish regular positions to do this work because the terms of those temporary positions are about to expire.

We have exhausted all options to address these critical staffing needs with vacant pockets and are therefore requesting this additional position authority.

But please note that the cost for these 25 positions are already built into our base budget and will require no additional budget authority.

Next slide, please.

All right, these next seven slides touch upon some of the more significant changes to SDOT's budget in 2022. Parking enforcement.

This change reflects the transfer of the parking enforcement program from SPD to SDOT that Sam already mentioned.

When council moved the program to SDOT in September, that action only updated the 2021 budget.

This change updates SDOT's base budget and reflects an entire year of operation for the program.

Included in the transfer are all direct and indirect costs associated with the program as it existed in SPD.

In addition, many parking enforcement officers provide critical traffic control support for special events, and so $800,000 of overtime budget for special events is also transferred to SDOT.

Item two, Citywide Integrated Transportation Plan, aka the Seattle Transportation Plan, that was already mentioned a few times during OPD's presentation and that Sam spoke to earlier.

This effort is already underway thanks to your support for the 2021 Vehicle License Fee Spend Plan.

As Sam indicated, this planning effort will establish a renewed long range plan for our transportation system organized around community aspirations and our SDOT vision, values and performance goals, namely equity, sustainability, safety and stewardship.

In addition to mobility and access functions, we will also recognize the important role our streets play in providing public spaces and ensuring public safety.

We intend to consult with people who may be harder to reach, exploring new formats and structures to build partnerships, reduce barriers to participation, center race, and gain input to address and repair barriers to our transportation system where investments have been traditionally lacking.

The plan will address both capital and programmatic system investment needs, including maintenance needs, and will identify potential transportation funding strategies.

These planning efforts will be aligned with the comprehensive plan update that all of you were just discussing, and engagement efforts And will the COMP plan engagement efforts, pardon me, and will inform a future transportation funding package to replace the levy to move Seattle, which expires in 2024. Next slide please.

Item number three, bridges.

In addition to the bridge maintenance business process update, which is described in this slide, this change supports new investments in our city's bridges.

As Sam already mentioned, the University, Ballard, and Spokane Bascule Bridges will collectively receive $4.3 million of resources to replace and upgrade various mechanical and electrical components to ensure continued operations.

These bridges provide vital connections throughout the city for transit, vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle traffic, and also preserve maritime connections between Seattle's various bodies of water.

The remaining REIT appropriations will support repairs for the 4th Avenue South Bridge, commonly referred to as 4th over Argo, as Sam mentioned.

This bridge serves as a primary connection between the Georgetown and downtown neighborhoods.

The structure's age, higher volume of vehicular traffic, and increased vehicle weight loads have caused deterioration of the cantilevered ends of the main span piers.

Repairs must be made to the bridge to ensure the safety of the public and maintain neighborhood connections.

Item number 4, the new vehicle license fee spend plan.

As Sam indicated, SDOT's 2022 proposed budget continues the mayor's spend plan for the new $20 VLF revenues, investing in priority programs, that meets SDOT's goals as well as the goals and values held by transportation stakeholders, labor representatives, and community members with regard to the use of the new $20 VLF.

The spend plan centers on the themes of equity, safety, maintenance, and meeting climate change goals.

The selected programs can make progress toward improving these areas through maintaining existing transportation assets.

The funded operating programs are citywide transportation planning, crossing beacon maintenance, bicycle signal maintenance, crosswalk remarking, bicycle lane maintenance, and bridge and structures maintenance program development.

The funded capital programs are sidewalk safety repair, Vision Zero, and ADA program improvements for curb ramps and accessible pedestrian signals.

These investments are consistent with the $20 VLF prioritization process we conducted earlier this year to solicit external stakeholder and community feedback and input as directed by council spending proviso accompanying the adoption of the 2021 budget.

This investment represents a full year of funding that continues the 2021 adopted spend plan that you've adopted earlier, and it aligns with the latest revenue forecast for the new $20 VLF.

Slide four, please.

Item five, SDOT's RESET program.

RESET is Recovering with Sustainable and Equitable Transportation.

RESET is focused on addressing the disproportionate impact of the events of the past 18 months.

and how recovery efforts should be prioritized in those communities hardest hit and that have historically seen less investment in transportation infrastructure.

The projects in Rainier Beach and South Beacon Hill aim to create equitable and vibrant recovery through a series of pedestrian, transit access, and livability improvements.

Project work will include street lighting improvements, pedestrian paving projects, crosswalks, curb ramps, and pavement marking and painting.

Item six, the Seattle Transportation Benefit District.

Please note that the description of this item on this slide has an error.

The actual appropriation amount is $19.2 million, and the appropriation change is 71%.

And I apologize for this error.

We didn't catch it in time before we sent this slide deck over to you.

SDOT's proposed budget, therefore, does include an appropriation increase of $19.2 million to support ongoing and planned transit service investments funded by STPD Proposition 1 passed by voters in November of 2020. Our proposed CIP includes $9 million for the STPD Capital Improvement Program to support the design and delivery of bus-only lanes and other transit priority projects in 2022 through 2027. This project, excuse me, this budget adjustment is consistent with the spending allocations identified in Ordinance 126115 related to SDBD.

It also includes a budget neutral conversion of one emergency position to a permanent position.

That's one of the 25 that I mentioned previously.

Next slide, please.

Item 7, Sound Transit Programs.

In addition to supporting community engagement for Sound Transit's West Seattle Ballard Link Extension Project, known as WSBL, this item invests in staff resources to provide critical information, analysis, and engineering expertise in collaboration with other city departments to determine the best alignment for the new line.

This item also creates a city position to serve as the city's ST3 designated representative to Sound Transit, a role funded by Sound Transit and previously performed by a consultant.

And you'll have to bear with me because I just skipped too far ahead.

And here we go.

Item 8, Center City Connector.

Sound Transit's continued forward momentum on the Wisbell project is expected to impact Seattle Streetcar operations, both in its current configuration, the First Hill and South Lake Union lines, as well as the network when expanded by the Center City Connector project.

also known as C3, and depending on timing, potentially, to C3 construction.

To better identify the extent of these anticipated impacts and inform negotiations with Sound Transit on WISPA, an update to the C3 streetcar project is needed.

Current plans and technical analyses are at least three years old, and in many cases, several years old.

Many conditions have changed requiring updates on key project aspects, including cost, timeline, ridership, operating model, and vehicle purchase options.

SDOT is proposing a C3 project development update to prepare planning level technical analysis and conduct public outreach.

This analysis will help inform a decision-making process by defining a path to advance the project, answer critical outstanding questions, and support a common understanding of the project scope, schedule, budget, risk, and funding plan.

The request uses TNC taxes intended for streetcar capital and operations.

Resolution 31914 directs these revenues to be used in support of projects related to transportation and transit, and specifically including the Center City Streetcar Connector, or C3.

The C3 project is one of five high-priority, high-capacity transit projects identified in both the 2020-12 and 2016 Transit Master Plans.

Next slide, please.

Item 9, Duwamish Valley 8th Avenue South pedestrian improvements.

SDOT is excited to be a partner in the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, and the 2022 proposed budget includes funding to support this program.

The largest portion of the funding would go to the 8th Avenue South Shoreline Street and Park, also known as Gateway Park North in Georgetown.

Design elements may include trees, native plants, rain gardens, benches or tables next to an educational kiosk near the entrance, and riverbank stabilization.

Funding would also be allocated to develop partnerships to improve the pedestrian connections between the Georgetown residential neighborhood along 8th Avenue South from East Marginal Way to Gateway Park North.

Design elements there may include sidewalk repair, drainage improvements like conveyance swales, trees, and plantings.

Next slide, please.

Social justice.

This item programs a small amount.

Oh, excuse me.

I think there is a disconnect between.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have advanced the slide.

That's my fault.

Item 10, social justice.

This item programs a small amount of general fund resources from within SDOT's base budget to support two key programs that specifically address our department's commitment towards social and environmental justice.

The City of Seattle's commitment to being carbon neutral by 2050, with significant interim milestones being achieved by 2030, requires a concerted effort across departments.

SDOT is a critical partner in this effort, as transportation emissions currently make up over 60% of the city's total greenhouse gas emissions.

We are reprioritizing $300,000 of general fund to fund the development of an SDOT climate implementation plan that advances departmental projects and programs to meet climate goals.

The SDOT climate implementation plan will be informed by the build out of SDOT's current prototype climate and congestion calculator.

And this proposal includes resources to purchase transportation activity data critical to calculating emissions baselines and tracking progress toward climate goals through short, mid, and long-term policy and infrastructure investment priorities.

Secondly, we are directing a portion of the TNC revenues within our general fund to continue funding for the Transportation Equity Work Group beyond 2021 and on an ongoing basis to support this important work in delivering transportation projects and programs with a focus on positive impacts to BIPOC communities.

All right, now we're ready for the next slide.

Thank you.

RV and encampment response, item 11. SDOT is an active member of the city team that is focused on keeping parklands and right-of-way clear of debris and obstructions to improve public health, safety, and use of these public resources.

SDOT will continue to participate in the city's Clean Teams response along with the Parks Department and Seattle Public Utilities to provide a coordinated, rapid response to address hotspots throughout the city.

In addition to the funding allocations mentioned here, ESSAT is also a recipient of CLIFR funding to support the Clean Cities Initiative that started earlier this year and is continuing into 2022. Item 12, CIP realignment.

As I indicated earlier, ESSOD is implementing a new capital budget process that realigns the department's six-year CIP budget to the latest project spending plans, which are updated and communicated to council and the public more frequently than the annual budget.

This change represents a more accurate picture of SDOT's intended spending and has no impact on the timing or deliverables of any of our CIP projects.

We intend to make this part of an annual synchronization of our capital budget and spend plan to ensure greater transparency and more up-to-date information on SDOT's capital budget program and projects.

A large portion of our S.CIP is the levy to move Seattle portfolio.

So now I'm going to move to a specific focus on the levy.

Next slide please.

As you can see, SDOT's 2022 proposed budget for the remaining years of the Move Seattle levy portfolio is increasing by $47.4 million compared to how the levy portfolio was budgeted in the 2021 CIP.

This is largely due to a shift of $35 million from 2021 to the remaining years of the levy as a result of better SDOT spend plan development and financial management of projects.

This change underscores the need for SDOT to realign our CIP as I just described.

Additionally, the proposal includes $14.2 million of new local investments into the portfolio from the new $20 VLF.

These investments are consistent with the $20 VLF prioritization process we conducted earlier this year to solicit external stakeholder and community feedback and input.

as directed by the council spending proviso accompanying the adoption of the 2021 budget.

This doubles down on SDOT's commitment to safety, investing an additional $11.3 million in programs such as Vision Zero, sidewalk safety repair, curb ramps, and traffic signal improvements.

It also directs nearly $2 million to maintaining our current bridge assets by investing into our bridge repair backlog program.

That completes my portion of the presentation, and I'm going to turn it back to Sam Zimbabwe.

Thank you very much.

Okay, you can advance to the next slide.

This is the last slide, and then look forward to the discussion.

You've heard Chris and I talk about racial equity throughout.

I just wanted to highlight a couple of places where, you know, three broad areas that Our budget reflects our commitment to racial equity.

The first is in our investments in our transportation assets and programs.

We talked a lot about the transportation equity work group.

Also the programs that we deliver through the Seattle transit measure through that voter approved proposition one.

programs and efforts throughout the department that are committed to delivering services in an equitable way and using our investments to advance racial equity.

The second is in our contracting and purchasing.

Last year, we were able to achieve a 38 percent WMBIE participation in our consultant contracts and a 17 percent of our purchasing through WMBIE providers.

The 38 percent exceeded our goals.

The 17 percent fell just short of our purchasing goals.

When we look below that, those top line numbers, we know that we have a lot of work still to do in deepening the equity participation to especially minority-owned firms in both contracting and purchasing.

The third is in advancing our RSJ work internally and building a diverse and inclusive workplace.

We've made a lot of strides in the last year, but still have a lot of work to do.

We've stood up an equal employment opportunity program as required by the Federal Transit Administration for a transit agency of our size.

deepened our work with our change team and our employee resource groups, our race-based affinity groups within SDOT around training, around participation in the budget development process, and in working to make SDOT an inclusive and diverse workplace.

But there's still a lot to do, and those initiatives remain baked into our budget as a whole.

So we've talked for quite a long time.

We'll be quiet here and turn it back to you, Chair Mosqueda, for questions and discussions.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate the in-depth presentation.

And we are going to turn it over to Council Member Peterson for some opening comments and questions.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And Directors Zimbabwe, thank you for your hard work, the hard work of your team, your partnership over the last two years as we've dealt with the impacts of the pandemic, West Seattle bridge closure, and an unacceptably high number of traffic fatalities, as well as the successful renewal of our Seattle Transportation Benefit District to support transit that all the council members here worked on.

I deeply appreciate the SDOT workers in the field who have been busy on multiple transportation projects.

It was nice to talk with the Bridges and Structures team on the West Seattle Bridge earlier this week, and it's great to hear that that is on time, still on time for restoration of that bridge.

I appreciate the focus in the budget on Vision Zero safety investments and the need to integrate the various plans for each mode of transportation.

I know we're all excited about the opening of the three light rail stations and SDOT working with King County Metro to connect transit riders to these long-awaited generational investments.

I do want to comment on some issues I see with the budget right now, and I know other Councilmembers are going to have questions and comments.

I'm seeing, once again, a budget proposal that severely underfunds big infrastructure needs.

So as we emerge from COVID and try to kickstart our economy, I believe our city and region would be in much better shape if we avoided another year of underfunding the safety and reliability of multimodal bridges.

bridges that connect our communities and our region.

Painfully, you know, reminded by the closure of the West Seattle Bridge and the subsequent city auditor report on bridges, bridges impact the mobility of everyone, including transit riders getting the jobs, truck drivers delivering food.

I believe the budget misses an opportunity to provide local matching dollars that will need to leverage federal dollars from either congressional infrastructure bill that is adopted or both are adopted.

Based on my read of this budget proposal, I'm seeing only about one and a half million more in 2022 for bridge maintenance, the items focused on by the audit of city bridges.

I know there was the $6 million figure.

mentioned, but I'm thinking that part of that's multi-year.

It double counts some items, but I know our central staff will be digging into that to see how much is truly additive toward that.

Really appreciate you providing or crafting your list of potential future bridge infrastructure projects, getting that to us on time.

But unfortunately, the executive doesn't seem to have fully funded those.

You're giving the list of the projects with the potential costs, but not actually providing the funds to do that.

So that would then shift over to the idea that some of us floated previously because interest rates are at historic lows.

construction workers ready for more jobs.

The best way to maximize Seattle receiving funds from federal infrastructure packages is to be ready with local matching dollars.

So that gets us back to the idea of issuing bonds to fully fund these up front.

When we debated this last time, we were trying to divvy up just $7 million, and I think that constrained our options.

But now we're looking at your entire $700 million budget.

And so I'm hoping we can go big and make up for lost ground.

One idea is also to consider a modest increase to the commercial parking tax.

We really, this is going to be a yes and situation.

So I know a lot of us like the way that you've allocated that vehicle license fee dollars.

Those things can still be funded and we can do more for bridges if we issue bonds.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on that so we can avoid kicking the can down the road or missing this moment.

Regarding the center city connector, I do want to reiterate concerns I have about that project.

I don't support that project.

I feel that it's redundant considering the light rail lines and bus lines running along the same path.

I think there's some better ways we can invest that $2.4 million.

And then, of course, the money that the project would cost later, that could be invested in other climate adaptation projects or Vision Zero safety projects.

That resolution that was mentioned, I think it was 31914, as I recall, that was transportation and transit projects including but not limited to.

So there's a lot of flexibility in how we use that funding.

So those are my opening remarks about a transportation package.

Happy to hear any response to that or I know council members will have other questions for you.

Thank you.

Can I maybe I'll just in this time I'll just respond to the local leverage question and federal grants because I know that's a that's a ongoing sort of question and area.

It remains to be seen what will happen with the federal infrastructure bill.

The bills, we'll see where it goes.

It is quite likely that there will be some resources allocated in the normal process to states, some to through the regions to PSRC and some federally discretionary.

The timing of when those resources become available to us and how we can apply them to projects is still very uncertain at this point.

I've been really hopeful in the last nine months in ways that I was not for, let's say, four years before that, about how we are able to access those funds.

We have gotten over $130 million in federal grants this year on transit projects, on the West Seattle Bridge, On some of our streetscape and street reconstruction projects.

So, I think that we've always matched those resources, looked across our portfolio, looked at where our projects were from a readiness perspective and been able to take down those those resources from the federal government when they're when they're available.

I have no doubt that we'll be able to do that.

It's a little bit premature from my perspective to sort of set aside local dollars before we know more about what is happening.

But rest assured that when those federal resources become available, we've done it this year, $130 million plus in federal grants just this year, and we'll be able to do that.

I have strong confidence in our ability as a city to access those federal resources and leverage our own investments.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Peterson, as Chair of Transportation, did you have any additional comments or questions this morning?

Not at this time, maybe at the end.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Council Member.

I have Council Member Morales and then Council Member Lewis, and then I'm going to put myself in the queue too.

So we have about 20 more minutes for this conversation.

Colleagues, please keep your remarks to a minimum and focus on the questions so that we can try to get to the final presentation this morning as well.

Thank you so much.

Good morning.

Thank you for being here, Director Zimbabwe and SDOT team.

I have a few questions and I'll just tell you now they're all about pedestrians.

So I am interested to know, you know, looking at the costs of effective sidewalks, effective walkways fact sheet, it looks like the estimated cost to build one block of a sidewalk is about $400,000.

And so obviously that limits our ability to build out the way we'd like.

But I'm interested in learning just a little bit about what goes into that cost, why it's so expensive.

Because as you know, there are parts of the city South End, District 5, where there are no sidewalks.

And so I'm really interested in looking at how we can begin to address that, but having just a basic understanding of the cost of a sidewalk would be helpful.

Sure, so I can I can talk a little bit about that and, and we can follow up with a little bit more, you know, a lot of the costs that goes into our, our communities that don't have sidewalks often don't have drainage or other resources that sort of infrastructure that's necessary to to also.

make a sidewalk work.

And so a lot of what goes into our traditional sidewalks is when we do those changes to build a sidewalk, we also impact drainage of the right-of-way and have to install curb and gutter and some of the drainage infrastructure that goes into it.

That's often the sort of biggest single cost that goes into into the increment of cost.

We continue to do that on our priority pedestrian network and look for those opportunities.

Some of our sidewalk projects also take a little bit more effort, our traditional sidewalk projects, because we're working with adjacent property owners and dealing with driveways and other sort of access issues.

And that takes a little bit more design and effort in terms of easement or temporary construction access acquisition.

So thank you for that.

I'm interested in learning more about the home zone.

I know we've got a pilot implementation.

There were several neighborhoods in District 2 that were interested.

You know, I know there are conversations about one-urfs and paint and I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but you know where I'm going.

Trying to look for alternatives.

If building sidewalks is prohibitive, What are some other options that we have for increasing safety?

And I'm asking because we've got a lot of young kids walking and biking to school.

We have elders, we have folks with mobility issues who are trying to get around their neighborhoods safely.

And in areas like North and South Seattle, where the sidewalks just don't exist, I feel a sense of urgency for figuring out some solution and really starting to move toward But something so I look forward to talking with you more about that.

Especially the homes.

Can you just talk a little bit about the home zones and how we how we support implementation of that.

Yeah, so that's a great question.

And my Dutch is terrible too.

So when are any, I know what you're, I know what you mean.

I don't know how to say it.

The, you know, the home zone program has been something that we've tried recently in collaboration with communities.

So rather than doing traffic calming on a block by block.

level where we often put a speed hump here and then the next street starts to see a diversion of traffic and they want to speed hump and you're chasing after speed humps.

Looking at a community-wide approach, engaging about how people use the streets, where destinations are, and then working to do a comprehensive traffic calming solution at a neighborhood scale.

We've done a couple of rapid implementations efforts as part of the reconnect West Seattle program through the West Seattle bridge closure and we've had some longer term engagements with communities that are bearing fruit now.

It's really exciting to be able to do that on a, on a community basis, and then think about how to replicate that and scale it up so that we can reach more communities across the city.

And really, in the end, it ends up helping us make communities accessible without duplicating resources and be able to do that in an efficient way that does exactly what you said, help connect people to where they need to go of all ages and abilities.

Okay, well, I look forward to that rollout and to seeing what we can scale up to get that done.

The last two things I wanna learn about is, you know, proposed funding for Safe Routes to School is about 2.75 million.

That seems low.

And I know that, you know, I would be interested to hear what capital projects, you know, where that's housed in the budget.

The Vision Zero goals are also, Always.

front of mind for me. 2021 is on track to be the deadliest year for people killed by cars in the city.

So I'd be interested to hear what your Vision Zero team believes are the biggest needs to do their work and what the proposed Vision Zero budget would include.

If we're talking about capital, what would it take to really start to achieve those goals so that we can eliminate pedestrian fatalities?

So this is always a little bit of a challenge when we talk about our budget because our efforts towards Vision Zero get baked into the whole of the capital budget and our operating budget too.

Some of the increment around Vision Zero are like some of those, when we'd go and target our highest crash locations or we've scaled up some of our citywide implementation of pedestrian first signals, of those signals where pedestrians get a headstart before cars start to drive.

and especially that helps cut down turning crashes.

We also citywide reduce speed limits across the city over the course of 2020 and into the beginning part of this year.

And we'll be evaluating that and seeing how, you know, where and how that has been effective and what other steps are needed.

With the Vision Zero program, we often do small pilot efforts that then when they look like they're bearing fruit, we can scale up and do at more of a citywide level.

But a lot of those efforts are sort of baked into our capital projects overall.

You know, I'd also say on Safe Routes to School, somewhat similar.

When our projects are connecting to schools, we're doing some of those things separately.

And then the Safe Routes to School are those really targeted, only focused on sort of the access to school when it's a standalone as a program like that.

So I hope that gets, and we can provide a little bit more detail on specific projects that are funded in 2022 and in the CIP.

Yeah, I guess the last thing I'll say is that I feel frustrated and I know lots of community members feel frustrated that what seems to be a very obvious safety solution, a painted crosswalk, a flashing signal, something, very often requires a whole community engagement process and applying for a neighborhood matching fund and You know, there's just a lot of barriers for some community members to get what they feel like is basic safety that the city should be providing.

And I have to say, I agree.

I don't think we should be asking our community members to engage and organize to apply for a grant to get a sidewalk or to get a crosswalk that we should be providing.

That is a safety issue.

So I know that is a resource question, but I'm really interested in working with you to figure out how we start to move in a direction that just assumes that the city is gonna provide the kind of pedestrian safety improvements that our neighbors deserve.

So I'll leave it at that.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, and appreciate your good line of questions.

Your point is well taken.

Okay, we have Council Member Lewis.

Councilmember Herbold, I see you as well, and I am also in the queue.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

My questions are in a similar vein to Councilmember Morales.

People ask me all the time what I'm surprised about from serving on the city council that I wasn't expecting when I was elected.

And there's certainly been a lot of things, but it's been an unconventional year and a half.

But one of the things that comes up a lot in my district, as Council Member Morales just stated, is huge demand for traffic calming.

huge demand for protected bike lanes.

I knew that it was out there, but I've been surprised.

And similar to Council Member Morales, huge pent-up frustration of people who've been organizing for years to try to get some kind of basic public safety improvement.

and feel like they just can't get through all the bureaucracy.

I will say, though, Director Zimbabwe, the team at SDOT has been very helpful in talking about these projects and queuing them up, and it's clearly been a COVID-era resource issue.

I want to give a shout-out to Bill Laborde, who's been very responsive and very helpful in flagging things and validating the merit of a lot of these requests.

But, you know, the concern over resources remain.

So I'm going to put my cards on the table a little bit here in the spirit, since this has been a big interest for my office and a lot of my colleagues here.

You know, I've been talking to central staff over the last few months.

We have been doing a lot of work in the last couple of years exploring the possibility of a 1% increase in the commercial parking tax, which would raise about $3.2 million a year.

traffic calming projects, protected bike lanes, things that are going to make real sustained investment with an additional 3.2 million year over year in perpetuity to keep driving towards our goal of Vision Zero by 2030. So my question today in looking at Calvin did a really great job and I'm happy to have Calvin chow on our central staff distribute this memo to all council offices.

I've been including chair Peterson since this is his policy area throughout my exploration of this process.

I'm happy to have it distributed now that we're in budget.

But my question here, Director Zimbabwe, would be if we had that 3.2 million resource, what would be the best way for the council to allocate it as a dedicated source of funding to really confront our Vision Zero goals and really empower you and your department to start putting money into these projects in a really sustained way to drive that kind of a vision.

Thanks, Council Member.

Let me say just a couple of things, and this might be a place that we follow up on a little bit.

First off, I recognize we've had capacity constraints.

We didn't do a lot of things in 2020, and we've had to catch up in 2021. That was partly as a result of our working really hard to keep our employees safe throughout the pandemic, which I think we've been very successful at as a department and as a city overall.

The second is, you know, we just, I think what you're talking about, sort of ongoing resources that serve some of these programmatic goals aligns very well with the $20 vehicle license fee that the council adopted last year.

And when we developed the spend plan, and that's what's in the proposed budget, we took those resources through that community engagement and allocated it in an ongoing way that helps us program against it for years to come and sort of build that pipeline of projects that can really start to make a big difference.

So I would look to that process rather than recreating something else and sort of look the veins of where we've already done some of that community engagement around some of our needs, around equity, asset maintenance, safety, and our climate investments, and really look to that VLF spend plan process as additional resources become available.

thought of that as a thing that can be consistent and something that can be scaled over time to really hit those programs that are going to make a big difference.

For us, having those ongoing revenue streams to meet some of those things that we've struggled to do in the past really helps us to then think about how we staff it, how we build a pipeline, how we engage with communities in a reliable sort of project delivery sort of way.

rather than only looking at sort of episodic one-off capital projects, which can take a bit longer, especially if we're trying to leverage other resources as well.

I will say that some of our ongoing programs leverage resources.

We got some state resources over the course of this year for some additional pedestrian median islands.

If we hadn't been thinking about how to do those sort of safe crossings, we wouldn't have been able to access some of the state resources as well.

That's a long answer to what was a fairly simple question.

Can I get just a quick clarification there?

And I appreciate the answer.

But I just want to be clear.

You're saying if there were more resources the council could prepare, you would guide us toward distributing them in accordance to that VLF outreach process?

You're not implying that you have plenty of resource already through that, right?

Like you guys would have capacity to take on more investment in those areas if we were to provide them?

You know, I think $3.2 million is, I think we would have to look at how to deliver on that.

You know, for us sometimes, even these ongoing resources, the VLF last year that passed, we had about six months to prepare for six months of delivery.

And some of the places where you're seeing some position ads in In our proposed budget, you know, these resources do require additional people we've often addressed some of that.

It through temporary work and that temporary assignments that then, as we said this year, you know those become permanent ongoing if there's the resources to support them and then we.

convert those into permanent positions.

So a lot of those additional staff resources will be necessary to deliver those smaller projects.

And there's also that sometimes creates some opportunities for small contracting services that also then help address our WMBIE goals.

So do I know exactly how we would deliver $3.2 million additional now?

No, but I think that's a resource that we could figure out.

what would be needed to successfully deliver that as well.

I guess I'm mostly saying that if there are incremental resources, allocating those into the programs as we've started to outline in the budget will help us leverage and deliver those programs as quickly as possible.

Great well, we will certainly be in touch I've got some other questions, but I'm going to submit those in writing, I think, and considering the time.

But I will just close out here and say, you know, I appreciate chair Peterson's comments about potentially pursuing the commercial parking taxes resource.

We haven't raised the commercial parking tax in a decade.

A small increase that's marginal probably would not have significant impacts on businesses.

Definitely going to reach out to Councilmember Morales, given our shared interest in this area, and maybe Councilmember Peterson, Councilmember Morales, the three of us can get together on some kind of green sheet proposal here to lean into these investments that we flagged as being really critical and important.

So thank you so much, Director Zimbabwe.

I don't have any additional questions.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis, for holding the rest of your questions and for the viewing public where we're going to be dropping the terms green sheets and white sheets.

And we're just doing straight up amendments this year.

It's going to be really exciting and straightforward.

So I look forward to it.

We see cheers from central staff.

Look forward to seeing more on that possible shared amendment.

And as always, we'll have issue identification that gives folks a chance to talk more about the why.

So we're asking folks to keep their comments short.

We have 10 more minutes for this section.

Myself and Council Member Herbold are in the queue here.

I'm going to ask a very a short question on slide two, if we can.

We're looking at parking enforcement officers.

Two questions.

For me, are all of the costs related to personnel or are these costs including one-time costs for transit?

Okay, Council Member Herbold, I think you're off mute on accident.

Oh, there we go.

Perfect.

And Patty, if you don't mind teeing up slide number two.

Thank you so much.

Please go ahead, Director.

You know, I missed the last part of that.

Could you repeat?

Oh, sure.

Great.

So when we're looking at the cost of parking enforcement officers wondering if all of these costs are related to personnel or is this cost also including the the one time cost for transferring personnel over?

Transferring over responsibilities or any, is it all personnel?

Can I jump in on this?

Yeah, go for it, Chris.

Okay.

Hi, so I can take my reading glasses off now that I'm not reading from my notes.

So the costs are related.

Yes.

And all of the costs related to the.

120 FTE in terms of labor, benefits, pooled costs, that is included in that lump sum.

There's still some work to do to figure out the support needs for training, for example, safety training included, and how the program fits in and nestles in and receive support services from SDOT, such as the costs associated with enterprise-wide support services.

But yes, all of the salary and pooled benefits and such are included.

Does that answer your question?

Did I answer the right question?

Yeah, I think it was.

Yes, everything is included.

OK.

Also on this slide, related to the integrated transportation plan, I am glad to see the planning for the next move Seattle-Leving renewal is beginning.

This is really exciting.

And next year, as conversations around a 15-minute city continues, what transit needs will be for the future of Seattle, I want to make sure that we have adequate resources for early outreach.

How do resources compare from the previous Move Seattle Levy to this one around equitable community engagement?

Do you feel like we're increasing community engagement or the initial conversations on Move Seattle Levy?

Absolutely.

And I think part of why you see such a large number here is part of that effort.

And I would say it's not only targeted around the renewal of a funding measure, but really about the engagement early in the planning process and making sure that we bring forward a funding measure that deepens our commitment to equity and climate and safety and asset stewardship.

Along with, you know, bringing it along with community reaching communities.

Meaningfully is really challenging, and I listened to the conversation with director current don't go about the comp plan.

You know, we are, we are working to align these efforts that we're not.

out there in multiple places.

We're also working to make sure we do in-language engagement and and all that the things that we need to do to be successful in terms of community engagement.

This is also sort of the roll-up of modal planning as it's traditionally been done in in the city to put resources into into integrating those modal plans.

And so there's some technical assessment and resources that are also needed to inform that and be informed by that community process as well.

So we're, as Chris said, we're in the process of bringing a consultant team on board.

So this is our best estimate right now of sort of the resources that we see in the near term.

But as we begin to scope the work in more detail and really look towards launching this work in 2022. That'll be an ongoing sort of how we work with community.

We've also worked with Department of Neighborhoods community liaisons in trying to help us do some of that early scoping and really figure out what it will mean to do an integrated transportation plan that serves as the baseline for a real robust funding discussion sort of at the comprehensive level.

Okay, great.

I mean, yeah, I think you can tell along with the comprehensive plan conversations, we want to make sure The departments have full funding for that equitable community engagement.

If we don't do it, it's just going to cost us more time and more money on the back end.

And it also doesn't allow us to fulfill those racial and social justice equity principles.

So thank you for letting us know you feel like that's fully funded.

If something comes up in the consultant process, we'd love to have an early flag before budget ends.

And I'm going to turn it over to Council Member Herbold with this note on slide seven.

We talk about remediation for RVs.

I think we're going to talk more in the next presentation with parks here in a minute.

There's an overall question, I think, about where the best department is to respond to RV remediation.

And I know this is a big priority for Councilmember Herbold as well.

Just double checking, is the amount for RV remediation on slide seven there, is that for a calendar year or is that also ending in August, like the Clean Cities Initiative?

Take this one.

So the amount related to RV remediation is an ongoing amount that is support to Seattle Public Utilities and their work.

So ESSA is providing financial support to SPUs activities on an ongoing basis beginning in 2021. And so you see it as a negative number because it is a transfer from our existing resource space over to SPU.

Okay, I'm going to turn over to Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I get that.

I think overall we're going to be concerned about any clean cities and cleanup ending in August.

But we'll talk more to Parks about that.

So thank you for the clarification on the slide.

So, my first and I think easiest question, I'll get in trouble if I have a transportation meeting and I won't ask this question.

So, I just want to confirm that the West Seattle Bridge remains on schedule for mid 2022 completion of the repair and opening up the bridge traffic.

Yes.

Thank you.

On the topic of bridges, I want to thank SDOT for complying with the request that the council made in ordinance 1263.27 and sending over a list of projects that could be funded by a hundred million dollar bond financing in 2022, including 75 million of bridge maintenance and bridge repair projects, so thanks for doing that.

My questions, one on slide five, the Sound Transit program that it adds $691,000 for two FTEs, one being funded by Sound Transit.

Wondering how many existing positions are there and will these positions facilitate faster action on the city side of projects?

There are, I believe, two existing positions that are wholly funded in the Sound Transit programs, but we do fund and we do have resources sort of city department wide and city wide that are working to accelerate and advance the Sound Transit program.

Some of those are reimbursable by Sound Transit.

Some of the work directly related to permitting and sort of work with Sound Transit would eventually be or are now reimbursable.

Some of that is around the city's work preparing for engaging in the environmental process, but also preparing for station area planning and other activities.

So it's only a few people who are 100% dedicated, but there's a phalanx of people who are out there.

We had, I think, close to 200 reviewers on an administrative draft of the environmental impact statement and expect to have the same number of technical experts across the city working on review of the draft environmental impact statement.

Great.

And then a couple of years ago, I worked with the Mass Coalition to do a study with the Evans School on sidewalk repair.

And I appreciate Council Member Morales' question was about neighborhoods that don't have sidewalks at all.

Sidewalk repair is another one of those issues that's really important to pedestrian safety.

And there were a series of recommendations.

We got this report, I think, was in June of 2020. Totally fully understand that this fits in that category of things that while handling COVID and the failure of the West Seattle Bridge, we haven't gotten to.

But I'm wondering whether or not this budget includes funding for any of the recommendations, particularly Again, looking at what hopefully is low-hanging fruit, maybe starting with the five-year shim bevel plan to carry out the temporary shim and bevel fixes on a plan rotating five-year grid across the city's entire sidewalk network.

Yeah, so it does.

The short answer to that is yes.

Some of those vehicle license fee resources that we mentioned are going towards sidewalk safety repair.

And we've also continued to work with our existing resources in sidewalk safety repair to get to that proactive sort of five-year I think there's also an audit that the office of the city auditor has ongoing that I think was requested last year around this.

And as that comes due, we're happy to engage on some of those other policy related items as well.

That's great.

I might send a couple.

the questions about some of these other recommendations.

And then last but certainly not least.

We're really over time.

I want to make sure that's a very short question, OK?

OK.

The Center City Connector CIP entry list $92 million in unsecured funding.

It says unsecured funding strategy.

SDOT will work with the mayor's office and city council to determine the future of the project.

Separately, the CIP entry notes around $50 million in federal funding.

I'm just confirming one that this will require federal reauthorization of the federal funding and two we're looking at about 140 million or so of a funding gap assuming that there haven't been cost increases.

He's already owes me a beer for going a little bit longer than than my a lot of time but.

So let me just take a couple seconds to answer this because I think it's really important, as we think about the C three and project and sort of where we are with it.

And if you remember a couple years ago we had that we had a lot of this discussion again 2019. There was a funding plan.

then the pandemic hit.

So we were not able to do some of the work that we had talked about at Interfund Loan and some other things.

We still need to do some of that work to figure out the capital needs, the vehicle needs, some of the sort of operating plan for the C3 project.

It will require federal resources.

The federal government has moved from going on a sort of line item authorization approach to major traffic projects into major transit projects into a readiness.

So if we demonstrate that we're ready, we are able to access those small starts grant dollars.

We now have experience making it through that process and successfully securing, we have $80 million of federal resources going into the Madison Bus Rapid Transit project.

We made it through that readiness project process, which was challenging.

It was a challenge for our department to demonstrate our readiness to FTA.

We now know what goes into that, and we are a lot more confident.

I'm very confident in our ability to access those federal resources if we can demonstrate a ready project that's ready to go.

So a lot of what is going into this is making sure that we have the fundamentals down, that we can demonstrate to the federal government that we are a good grantee for this project.

Performance-wise, the C3 project would perform very well from a Small Starts grant proposal.

Connects to existing streetcar lines that have seen increasing ridership prior to the pandemic.

It's part of this integrated downtown transit network.

It's actually filling in some gaps that aren't currently filled or aren't planned to be filled by our transit network.

And I'm happy to talk in more detail about that.

But this resource is really for the, as Chris said earlier, about our engagement with Sound Transit, but also making sure that we have and can demonstrate a ready project that can access some of those federal resources.

Thank you all very much.

I want to echo the appreciation from everyone with Chair Peterson leading off our appreciation for transportation.

staff members during this time.

We know many of your staff members were out in community helping to not only fill potholes, but to fix these bridges.

And we know it doesn't take a bridge engineer to know you're moving as fast as you possibly can on some of these fixes.

Looking forward to having West Seattle connected and having our entire community have the support they need.

As Council Member Peterson said, we want to make sure that there's full funding there as we come out of this crisis to put people to work and also to connect our city.

So more to come and to connect our city with not just cars.

looking forward to working with you.

Thanks so much for all you do, and please pass on our appreciation to your staff as well.

I owe you both beers.

Thank you for letting me take your time this morning, and apologies for the abrupt end to transportation and for the short amount of time that we have for parks.

We do have 35 minutes, and Dr. Aguirre, I know you've been in front of us already yesterday, so thanks for coming back.

Madam Clerk, will you please read item number three into the record?

agenda item 3, Seattle Parks and Recreation for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much.

We have Director Jesus Aguirre, excuse me, the superintendent for parks with us along with Michelle Finnegan and we have Director Ben Noble with us.

I want to thank you for being here.

We're going to turn it directly over to you and then I'll turn it over to Chair Juarez of Parks.

Thank you.

You're turning it over to me or?

We're turning it over to Director Aguirre and Council Member Juarez, you will be up first if you have any questions or comments.

Thank you.

I think I'm good, but go ahead.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for that elder acknowledgement, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

So, um, well, thank you so much chairman of the council members for the opportunity to present mayor, the mayor's proposed budget for Seattle parks and recreation for 2022. I want to certainly appreciate as we jump into this, the great work, even though they're not listed on this presentation, and you mentioned, I'm with me or Amy, Amy Williams and Michelle again, who.

Lead teams that have developed this budget and worked really closely with Director Noble's team and really want to express great appreciation for all of their work on this.

Amy and Michelle will be on call to help answer any questions if I'm not able to answer some of these questions, but I'll go through the presentation here.

Um, and as we jump into this, um, we'll go the 1st slide here, uh, is, is obviously the budget summary.

And so our.

22 proposed budget, um, really focuses on a few things.

So economic recovery, including the restoration of pandemic related reductions that were made in our 2021 adopted budget.

Uh, that impacted our park fund, our general fund, and of course, also our real estate excise tax funds.

This proposed budget reliance resources to support our commitment to equity addresses rising costs due to inflation in this ongoing, challenging bidding climate that we have for the projects that we're seeking to implement.

But it also increases our investments to provide safe and welcoming parks and public spaces for all community members.

So walking through this slide, our 2021 adopted budget includes about $98 million in general fund appropriation and $130 million in other resources, which are comprised of several funds, the park district funding, REACH, as I mentioned.

This also includes King County levy funding, and then some other smaller capital funds.

And in our 2020 adopted budget, we have 939 full-time equivalent staff members included.

In terms of our revised 2021. It reflects about $3.1 million change in which the funding was added this year from the clean cities initiatives currently underway.

And then also shows $183 million increase in other appropriations.

from the 21 adopted budget.

And this includes $162 million in capital carryover, which as council members know, this includes projects that are already under construction, some projects that are being held for partners like the Freeway Park Work, Green Lake Small Craft Center, Volunteer Park, et cetera.

There's a lot of funding there for projects that are, it's already committed.

This also includes $3 million for COVID-19 stimulus package as part of the America Rescue Plan and an $18 million quarter two supplemental changes that were presented to council.

And as you'll see, we made some technical corrections to our 2021 budget to align the budget with our HIRS system.

So there's a little bit of a, it doesn't show up in terms of the difference, but there's a little bit of a gap in the FTEs.

It just reflects a technical adjustment to just capture the data from our human resources information system.

And in terms of our 22 proposed budget, so if we compare 22 general fund to 21 adopted fund, we'll go through these in detail in the accompanying slides, but it shows an $11 million increase in general fund resources to our 22 proposed budget as compared to the 21 adopted budget.

And again, I'll go through these in some of the coming slides, but the bulk of it is a restoration of general funds.

And then comparing 22 to other proposed 21, excuse me, comparing our 22 other proposed to our 21 other adopted.

Again, we'll go through these details in the slides, but this includes a $43 million increase in other funding compared to 2021. And of that, there's a $40 million capital investment, which includes restored REIT and again, some other items that I'll go through.

And then our FTE is proposed to increase just over 20, 20.75 FTEs from our adopted and we'll explain sort of the proposals there.

And then finally, comparing on the slide the 22 proposed to the 21 revised, there's a difference in the general fund appropriation of about $8.3 million, which nets out $3.1 million from the Clean City funding that I mentioned earlier.

And the reduction in other appropriations is a combination of netting out the $183 million one-time capital plus $43 million in proposed changes that I've just covered.

So we'll go into detail on some of these.

Next slide, please.

So as I mentioned in 2021 and council knows our general fund budget was reduced by $11.4 million due to pandemic related revenue losses.

This reduction was partially offset by realigning $7.7 million at the time from park district funding from our capital budget, moving that over to our operating budget.

And then the remaining balance of $3.7 million to get to that overall reduction.

It was really done with internal ongoing reductions, cost savings, hiring freezes, et cetera, that were done within the department.

So our 22 budget increases the general fund by that $7.7 million, which then includes the corresponding changes to our park district to support the operating budget.

Um, also on the capital side, um, the, the, uh, baseline also restore $7.7 million of park district resources into our capital budget, uh, to cover those, those reductions that we, um, that were impacted last year.

So it includes bringing back the allocation for park land acquisition funds for major projects, challenge fund, and then major maintenance backlog.

Now the proposed budget then takes, uh, 5.4 million of those historic funding, um, and allocate them differently.

Next slide, please.

So our proposed budget realigns, as I just said, 5.4 million dollars of the MPD capital funding to support equity goals and some inflationary costs as described on this slide.

In terms of workforce equity, this investment allows HPR, excuse me, SPR.

To increase our human resources support by four and a quarter FTEs gets us to 16 total FTEs supporting our staff, which really is closer to a ratio of FTE to HR staff that's aligned with similar sized departments.

And this is supported by $700,000 of ongoing realignment to the acquisition funding that came back as part of the restoration I mentioned on the first slide.

So this adds specifically a workforce equity advisor, a training coordinator that really has been, well, that needs to be focused on anti-racism training deliverables.

It has an HR business partner for the ground maintenance division, which is one of our largest divisions that needs some extra support.

It increases capacity for performance reporting, dealing with all the leaves of absences and other managerial needs that, again, it takes to support a large staff.

And it reclassifies four existing positions to better align with their job responsibilities.

In terms of line three, the second component of our proposed equity investments includes additional support for our pathway to equity work, which is, this is our commitment to the race and social justice initiatives.

And it really calls on us to challenge and change the institutional barriers that perpetuate harm.

Our department also recognizes there's much work to do in working to position ourselves as a learning organization that is in constant change of action.

So this work requires additional and sustained commitment to dedicated resources.

And this investment will allow us at SPR to expand our equity team by adding three new equity focus positions to our focus department wide.

And one is going to be focused again on the parts and environment line of business, along with establishing a base budget for our RSGI change team to support their ongoing work.

And the proposed funding for this change is $600,000, also includes $300,000 from the NPD acquisitions budget that was showed on the slide earlier.

And it's matched by $300,000 of reallocation of our baseline operating costs.

In terms of item four, this budget also reallocates $300,000 from the major projects challenge fund to begin transitioning to a new program, equitable park development fund, which was really recommended by a task force that included park district oversight committee members to just make this grant program more effective in meeting its goals.

This investment is gonna focus on partnering with communities, community groups to make improvements to parks and parks and rec facilities.

In neighborhoods that have a history of racial disparities in access to green space and in safety from environmental harm.

So this change adds two positions to begin the capacity building portion of this work in 2022. And as I mentioned at the beginning, this budget also includes an item to address some of the inflation.

The first funding cycle of the park district ended in 2020, as council knows.

This last couple of years, including 2022, are bridge years.

And then, So that when we begin the next funding cycle of the park district in 2023. So, in those years, we use one time resources, including appropriations of interest earnings fund balance and delaying the repayment of the intrafund loan.

To cover cost increases for those 2 years, including things like and utilities and so.

These strategies are not going to be sustainable, but we implemented them to keep our property tax collection at the 2.5 inflationary cap in alignment with the first six-year cycle.

So the 2022 proposed budget includes ongoing redirection of NPD resources to right-size those budgets to cover the inflationary increases that go beyond the 2.5, including base costs that have compounded over time, things like utility rate increases and anticipated wage increases, which of course will be dependent on the results of labor negotiations.

So you only see a net change of a million dollars here for utility cost increases that are covered by major maintenance funding.

The remaining 3.1 cover operating costs included in the base expenses that are already appropriated are not going to be backed by the redirection of the NPD capital resources.

Next slide, please.

The proposed budget also includes other equity investments in several areas, including in our recreation area.

So since the fall of 2020, we've had a team of SPR employees that were redeployed to develop and deliver community center programming, serving approximately 6,000 participants from August through December of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.

And this was, of course, realization that our community still needed recreation programming, but we needed to bring that programming outside of the walls of the shuttered community centers and into community.

So this proposed budget transfer $660,000 from multiple funds within our own budget to formalize this mobile recreation pilot, which we've named rec in the streets.

And again, this delivers programming in partnership with community using neighborhood based data, and we use equity maps to determine where they're going to be deployed.

So funding is going to be reallocated from a couple of areas.

One is from the outdoor opportunities program, which represents about just under $260,000.

And then the operations of the Laurel Hearst Community Center, which is just under $200,000 that will establish these two permanent teams.

In addition, the department's going to use one time savings from excuse me, plan community center closures for 2022, given that we're not able to operate as we were pre pandemic and that'll that'll fund a 3rd temporary team.

The, the, the number you see here of $10,000 actually just reflects an additional small grant that we received.

That's going to support this work.

In terms of the next line item, the out-of-school time staffing, this item makes permanent a TLT position that has been in place since early 2020. Excuse me, this staff announced position is a liaison between the Department of Parks and Recreation and our partners at DEEL.

And it was created to support the growing body of work that's associated with the DEEL SPP program in SPR facilities.

So the position is gonna be funded with Rental revenue generated from third-party preschool programs that operate within SPR facilities, and it will continue to support the partnership between us, DEEL, AHRQ, and third-party preschool providers, in addition to overall efforts in early learning initiatives within SPR.

Item eight shows a proposed budget item that provides $200,000 in one-time general fund to Rise Above.

Rise Above provides education and outreach to native youth and families in Seattle through community-based partnerships.

Council added $100,000 in 2020 to this initiative, and this increases that and extends the investments into 2022. And then finally on the slide, line nine shows an increase in ongoing appropriation for language service stipends.

So per the coalition of city unions collective bargaining agreement, city employees who are multilingual and provide language services such as interpretation or translation as part of their business related situations, they're now eligible to receive a monthly stipend.

for these language skills.

So the amount in 2022 is just an estimate based on an analysis of employees who we believe are going to be eligible for this.

Next slide, please.

Excuse me.

Our 2022 proposed budget increases funding and staff capacity for our role in maintaining safe and clean spaces in both parks and the rights of way.

I know we discussed a couple of these yesterday.

Item 10 refers to clean city funding.

This is an extension of the funding for the clean city initiative through August 20 of 2022. And this allows us to continue the work of cleaning up litter and garbage across the city in partnership with Seattle Public Utilities, Office of Economic Development, and of course SDOT.

Specifically in 2022, the proposed budget continues funding for four crews to provide enhanced trash removal, including dumping, garbage collection, and litter pickup, power washing of hardscapes, graffiti removal, storm drain cleaning, lighting repairs and replacement, and cleaning of abandoned cabins.

The work is above and beyond our routine O&M that typically goes into these areas during the year.

And then it's shown in the fund columns as work as part of the CLFR funded items in the Seattle Rescue Plan.

Excuse me.

Item 11, again, we discussed this one a little bit yesterday.

This adds $900,000 in additional resources to support the increased demand on SPR in terms of the impacts of serving unsheltered populations in our parks, including litter removal, site restoration.

We take the lead in the storage of personal belongings when folks are connected to housing.

Also add some additional capacity for data collection, reporting, and just administrative support to make sure that we can do this work effectively.

The change in our 2022 proposed budget is going to assist us in meeting legal requirements and council mayoral expectations around this work, including their MDARs and the identification storage of personal belongings.

Um, and then item 12, we also discussed this yesterday, uh, as our parks have been used differently as our parts have had, uh, encampments in particular, the ones that are there for long periods of time, uh, there's been lots of damage, uh, that has been occurring.

And so, uh, this line item, uh, adds $2 million in one-time funding to restore the property that had been severely damaged.

And, and this, This kind of restoration, as you can imagine, varies by site, depending on the size of the encampment, depending on the way that it was used.

So this is just an estimate to restore approximately 50 sites.

And item 13 also adds funding to support our efforts to encourage park code compliance and increases our capacity to address issues related to cleanliness and safety in parks and beaches.

Specifically, we're proposing adding $300,000 to a contract with security.

And this is to support our late night program, as well as the support of beach closures at Alki and Golden Gardens during peak seasons, which we've seen have been very necessary.

This also adds $40,000 to increase the dispatcher position from half-time to full-time, just to respond to increased call volume.

And then also allocate some funding as we seek to pilot new approaches and investigate best practices across the country as we seek to, again, to provide safe and outdoor spaces for all community members.

And then finally on the slide, item 14 is related to Fort Lawton maintenance.

And this increases the funding for the maintenance of Fort Lawton property, which as council knows, the city's leasing from the U.S.

Army.

This just allows us to increase security and maintenance at the site.

And this represents half of the costs that are being shared with the office of housing.

Next slide, please.

On the capital side, in addition to the restoration of the capital MPD funding on the previous slides, our 22 proposed budget also adds $23 million of REIT into our capital projects, including $16.7 million for major maintenance priorities, which some of which was restored from the COVID reductions.

And some of the items here include things like funding for ADA projects, funding to support the Garfield super block project, adjusting budget for the boat mortgage project that we're in the middle of.

And also creating a new discrete project for things like the pedestrian bridge at Park Peak Park that needs replacement, which is $2.2 million in 2022, but we estimate that's about a $5 million project.

And it also includes the delaying of some future conversion projects to accommodate emerging needs through 23 and 24. It also includes $1.25 million of REIT added to the major projects challenge fund to support the Green Lake Small Craft Center and their fundraising efforts, as well as the South Park Community Center and campus projects, which builds on the $1.5 million from NPD in 2022. This budget includes $1.5 million for Outdoors for All and their project to renovate Magnuson Building 18, as well as some funding for municipal energy projects, and $3 million was added for the replacement of Pier 58. And then I'll go ahead and go to the last one here, park fund balance on item 16. As council is aware, during the pandemic, the park district provided a reliable funding source to allow us to pivot operations to mission essential functions and allowed us to retain our highly trained employees to provide parks and recreation services as deemed safe and as we began to come back to some extent from the closures from the pandemic.

So in addition, throughout the pandemic, we implemented a pretty, I think, significant and very conservative fiscal management approach to our expenditures.

And as a result of the great effort of our staff and sort of tightening of the belts, we're able to identify about nine and a half million dollars of fund balance in our park fund that now is going to be utilized to support certain capital projects that were impacted during the pandemic.

This includes restoring three and a half million dollars towards developing the new parks these land bank sites that we've been working towards.

And it's also important to note that in 2020 we allocated $4.7 million of park district funding for land bank site development.

And so we're replenishing, we're replenishing $1 million of the equity.

Acquisition funding here.

We're also establishing a $5 million reserve for the future renovation of the lake city community center.

It's important to note that this is this commitment is in addition to the funding already in place, which is 11.5 million.

Plus a $5 million commitment that was made.

This, this, these amounts gets much closer to fully funding the project.

And then, of course, we'll, we'll use all of the funding source and we'll align all the funding sources to the project.

Next slide.

And then finally, I want to just reiterate SPR's commitment to equity in aligning our fiscal resources to the value of equity and the commitment to being an anti-racist organization.

Overall, our 2022 proposed budget centers equity on both operating and capital proposals, with the majority of proposals funded with reprioritized-based funding.

We take this approach in support of the needed recovery from the global pandemic and associated economic crises, along with a need to lead with deliberate strategies to respond To the racial reckoning highlighted highlighting this historical and ongoing systemic racism that exists in our institutions.

These investments are in addition to the equity work we've already we already do as part of our daily operations, including contracting and purchases within the firms advancing equity in our hiring and practices and through our required RSGI trainings.

community granting programs like REC for All and Get Moving that focus on BIPOC communities.

And the changes being proposed mostly within our base budget build on our overall effort to continue to build an anti-racist workforce and workplace and to lead with equity in how we deliver services to the community.

So with that, I know we're short on time, so I'll stop and I'm happy to answer any questions and call on Amy and Michelle to help me answer any questions as well.

Thank you very much, Director Aguirre.

Council Member Juarez.

Chair Parks, any additional comments or questions?

I'll be very brief, Madam Chair.

This has been a really interesting budget cycle because, as you know, Seattle Park and Rec, their duties and responsibilities in the corresponding budget report spans between many departments now that we didn't do in the past, most notably with SDOT, SPU, HSD, and as we learned yesterday, with the King County Regional Housing Authority.

So we have Jesus's presentation today on clean cities, and I want to focus a little bit on that.

And yesterday when we went through the citywide homelessness response, notably page slide three and 22, and then this afternoon with the COVID response and recovery page 21. We have parks doing things that they didn't traditionally do, but are responding to and have been laser focused on the pandemic.

But we are asking more of our employees, our park employees, And we are requesting, obviously, we work with Jesus on this, on the training and the data, but also laser focused on park employee safety.

That being said, I wanted to point out that I'm glad that we're restoring, though I'd like to see more, 7.7 million back into parks.

Because if you remember, both parks and library gave up money out of their budget back to the general fund to respond to COVID.

And I'm glad to hear and we've been continually saying thank you, Superintendent Agare, that we've been able to retain our employees, which has been great.

But we do want to expand the training and the data so we can not have people doing jobs that they did not sign up to do.

And this last year has been very intense about the employee safety.

We've met with labor and folks from different places about what that means, and we see that that's provided for in this budget.

My only concern on the Clean City Initiative, two things.

we're going to be working with s that we've you've been working with s.spu and hsd since since the winter almost since what december january and we've been coordinating that and now we're going to fold in the king county regional housing authority so we've been doing that and it looks like we're more institutionalizing it and funding it and keeping it up so with all that in mind and i know we've got we got three presentations going that are all focused on parks and clean cities initiative um cleaning up the repark restoring the park keeping it safe and also having the sanitation systems, the handwashing, the purple bag, also picking up the needles in the trash.

My concern is this.

Hey Susan, we've talked about this, so I'm not doing a gotcha thing.

I'm concerned that we're only funded through August of 2022. I don't think we're going to be out of the woods on the pandemic or the homelessness crisis.

And we have been seeing, even before we had COVID, what the hygiene issues are, and this is, I'll bring it up again, obviously, we talked about it with SPU as well.

I think the good thing that's come out of this is the organization and the delegating and how this city department, Parks, has been working really well with SDOT and SPU and now HSD and King County.

So I'm thinking in the next six months, we'll have a better sense of how that all gels when some of these folks from HSD merge into the King County Housing Authority.

And also I like what Councillor Morales asked yesterday, which we will continue to push with parks and HSD that we keep the geographic entity piece in there that we are focusing on the nonprofit groups that are already providing services to those particular neighborhoods to get people indoors.

But as you know, and what I've learned from your employees, Parks is doing more than just cleaning up and restoring with their staff, particularly with the community centers.

So I appreciate what the presentations and also the presentation we'll have this afternoon.

Like I said, I was looking at it on page 21. the Clean City Initiative for 6.2.

So I guess what I'm going to be coming back at and what I'm going to ask my colleagues to take a second look at is I think that the executive should probably go beyond August of 2022. And I know why, because the ARPA funding goes away.

But I think as we all have learned, and I won't name any particular institution, well, I'll name a few, that the homelessness crisis isn't going to go away, and everybody should have a homelessness plan, whether they're WSDOT, SDOT, Sound Transit, Seattle Public Schools, City of Seattle.

We all have to do this.

We all have to have that plan.

It should be part of an essential governmental function and service that is funded and not just a one-time, one-and-done deal or maybe a two-year cycle deal.

I think this is going to be part of what government delivers.

So I will leave it at that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Very well said, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you for your leadership on this committee.

And I want to just reiterate what Council Member Juarez said before I turn it over to you, Director Aguirre, for any comments.

I think you've heard a large number of the council members over the last two and a half days talk about how health and hygiene, along with housing, are our top priorities.

Again, I want to underscore what Council Member Juarez just said, that that is traditionally not what Parks has taken on.

And how we address this budget going forward over the next two months is going to be imperative for me that we center our conversations around health, hygiene, and housing.

And that we ask ourselves the right questions about whether or not that's being housed internally in the right place to make sure that we're setting you all up for success.

so the community can be successful in receiving those services.

So I know there's gonna be more conversations on that, but I wanted to make sure that folks know for our council, this is going to be a huge priority to see that through calendar year 2022, from what I'm hearing so far.

Director Gideon, please go ahead.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate those comments and also customer water very much appreciate your comments and I think it's also important, as you both have said, to recognize that that the staff of Seattle Parks and Recreation really stepped up throughout the pandemic and not just to do what we could within our regular work but really doing much, much more than than we normally do, but our staff is the kind of individuals who step up and do what's necessary.

Now, that said, their work has changed dramatically, and we need to continue to focus on ensuring that they have the capacity, the training, the skills, the resources, as well as the support, and making sure that we're thinking through what's appropriate for Seattle Parks and Recreation staff members to be doing and not doing.

And I appreciate that we can continue to have those conversations.

Specifically around, so anyway, I'll end with just expressing just my gratitude to the team at Seattle Parks and Recreation for always being willing to step up and do whatever was needed, particularly to serve our neediest community members.

Specifically Council Member Juarez, with regards to the Clean Cities Initiative, we included it through August.

The idea is that obviously this was supposed to supplement and enhance what was happening, what we normally do on a regular basis in terms of our own maintenance and cleaning the parks, but of course, as this pandemic has been unpredictable, we understand that those things change and we're happy to work with you and the rest of the council to think about what that might mean and have already begun discussions with central staff about providing enough information as you all make those deliberations, so thank you.

Excellent, thank you very much for those comments.

I am not seeing, oh, excuse me, Council Member Juarez, did you have anything else?

I thought I saw a hand.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any additional hands right now.

I want to just ask one very brief question.

On slide five, it talks about the South Park Community Center, and it's okay.

I don't think we need to put it up on the screen or anything, but I did just want to ask, for investments that are looking at expanding the Duwamish Valley program, we know that there's community goals around community-owned nonprofit space and housing.

Is there an opportunity for community members to engage even further in the investments in the Duwamish Valley for potential community ownership over the land that the city currently owns?

We've heard a lot of frustration over the years and Council Member Herbold, I see your hand up too, over folks wanting to have ownership and then kind of having a last minute city purchase or sometimes it gets sold to somebody else.

So any thoughts there about community ownership as we look at that South Park community center area?

Sure, thank you.

One thing I'll say, and I appreciate that and certainly appreciate the community's interest, and I know that we, along with several other departments, have been working closely with various folks there to try to address some of that.

One project that I'm really excited about that just closed, which is purchasing a property that is adjacent to the Duwamish Waterway Park, The idea for this property, we've got a few years to figure out what to do with it because it's still being, you know, we accepted the lease that's currently on site.

But the idea there is work with our partners at OPCD, work with the various folks here in the Duwamish Valley Action Plan to figure out what we can do there and what kind of use can be there.

And of course, we want to be very thoughtful and careful about the legalities, about the funding and how we can do that.

That is certainly something that we're really interested in trying to sort through to see if there's a way to achieve what you just described.

Thanks so much.

And we have one more minute.

I'm going to turn over to Council Member Harville for a very brief question to round this out.

Thank you.

I just want to On the table, another question about South Park, we know that because of renovations inside the building as well as improvements in the upcoming year that the.

The community center is planned to be closed through the fourth quarter of next year.

And I just want to highlight, historically, there's a lot of activity that goes on in this building.

And the community has so many barriers from the rest of the city and, of course, is also experiencing the additional burden of significant increase in food traffic.

As I understand it, the improvements to the building are roof emplacement, HVAC system upgrades, renovation of the restrooms, lobby, and kitchen spaces.

I'm just really concerned that this work is going to require that the facility be closed for more than a year.

And just what else is available to the young people in particular?

That neighborhood has the highest per capita youth of any neighborhood in the city.

And I wanna understand what we have planned as an alternative for recreational opportunities beyond the investments, of course, that we're making in youth development of youth leadership in the Duwamish Valley Action Plan, thanks.

Yes, thank you, council member.

I mean, I agree.

This is this is a challenge we've been working through and we started these conversations pre pandemic trying to identify alternate sites.

We haven't yet found an alternate site.

We're going to work with our friends and partners at the libraries to see what we can do.

I mean, I think on one level, this is a tremendously exciting project because the entire campus is going to get refurbished.

It's going to get transformed, which is great.

But as you said, we've got to work through the challenge here on the The interim piece.

Now part of part of, you know, is one of the proposals we've got in this budget is this idea of this rec in the streets, which is really sort of a way to formalize our understanding, we need to move our recreation and programming outside of the walls.

Not just, you know, this was even pre pandemic right we want to go out to communities that may or may not have a community center.

within walking distance etc but really trying to do as much outdoor programming as possible.

So we're certainly going to be doing some of that but but as you said this is a challenge that we're we're trying to resolve and working really hard to see what else we can do.

Great question thank you very much Council Member Herbold.

I'm not seeing additional questions Director Aguirre and as Council Member Juarez noted uh we see parts of parks represented in almost every presentation so thanks to you and thanks to your team members who we know have truly been essential in this time of the pandemic and in many ways have put their health and their family's health on the line too by being out there every day, but you have helped to create more healthy communities for everyone.

So please pass on our appreciation and we look forward to working with you over the next two months as we finalize the budget.

Lots of questions I think to come about how we can support you all and also make sure that we're appropriately housing our outreach and cleanup in the right spot.

And I know there's going to be future questions on that.

So thanks for the work you've done.

And thanks for the work you're doing on top of your already busy workloads amongst your staff members.

We appreciate you.

Thanks for being here today.

Thank you so much.

Oh, excuse me, Director.

I was just going to say, it's an honor to be a part of such a great team.

So thank you for highlighting that.

Very nice.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're going to go into recess.

If there's no objection, we will go into recess until 2 p.m., where we will have our final session on COVID response and HSD departments.

All right, hearing no objection, we are adjourned until 2. Have a great rest of your lunch break.

Bye-bye.