Seattle City Council Briefing 1/6/2025

Well, good afternoon and Happy New Year, everybody.

Today is January 6th and it's 2025 now.

The Seattle City Council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.02.

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Councilmember Rank.

Present.

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Council member Saka.

Here.

Council member Strauss.

Present.

Council member Hollingsworth.

Here.

Council member Kettle.

Here.

Council member Moore.

Present.

Council president Nelson.

Present.

A present.

Thank you.

Please note that council member Morales is excused.

If there's no objection, the minutes of December 16th, 2024 will be adopted.

Hearing none, the minutes are adopted.

All right, I want to start by welcoming everybody back to our first council briefing of the year, and I hope you all had a relaxing break and rejuvenating, etc.

I do have some sad news that I just wanted to mention in case you missed it.

A week ago Sunday, Jennifer Winkler, a longtime member, of the legislative department family passed away.

She was hired in September of 2001 as the city records manager and served in this role through her retirement in July of 2023. And most of you were not here, but if you, I'm perhaps seeing a recognition Councilmember Moore because she was here when we were serving Councilmember Conlon.

And so she passed and I just wanted to send my condolences to her loved ones.

So moving right along, we have one letter for signatures today, a presentation on the vacancy in District 2 and an executive session.

At tomorrow's City Council meeting, there is one item on the introduction and referral calendar, and it is the weekly bill payment ordinance.

The consent calendar includes the weekly bill payment ordinance, and there are no pieces of legislation from committees this week.

Finally, please stop by the second floor desk and welcome Dora Wren, the newest member of our Ledge Ops team.

All right, next up, we'll just go right into our presentation on the district two council position vacancy process.

I'd like to thank the staff who've been working very, very, oops.

Are you wanting, are you wanting something?

I saw you pointing to.

Oh, sorry.

No, I was asking the clerk if I needed to share my screen.

Great.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you so much for working very hard on this process.

There's a lot of background work that goes on when we fill a vacancy and you've been hard at work.

We do have that information on our website.

But I'll invite you to begin your presentation now and first introduce yourselves, please.

Yes, absolutely.

My name is Shireen Dedman.

I am the Seattle City Clerk.

And I'm Lauren Henry, the Legislative Legal Counsel.

And I'm going to take a moment to share the screen so that everyone can see the presentation.

And I hope I'm speaking loud enough for everyone to hear.

So, and I just wanted to take a moment, thank you council president for recognizing the passing of Jenny Winkler.

She came specifically from the office of the city clerk and it's a huge loss for our work group there.

One of the biggest things that I know of her is the Record Point, which is a city-wide program that affects every department.

And it took a lot of advocacy and hard work on her part to bring to our city.

And so yeah, I really want to thank you for acknowledging her.

So moving on to the position to vacancy.

And as we know, Councilmember Morales is, ooh, here we go.

So council member Tammy Morales is residing from her position as of today.

Therefore, the vacancy will be effective tomorrow, January 7th, 2025. The appointment process for this vacancy is 20 days as established by the Seattle city charter.

And note that if you do the math on that, it would have landed on a Sunday.

So by charter, that last day is the 27th.

whoever the appointed council member will be will serve until the next general election results are certified.

And so that would be general election of 2025. So until November, 2025. And then whoever is elected at that election, that general election will be the representative who is sworn in once the results are certified, much like we just saw with So there is public information available on the website dedicated to this vacancy.

And.

Applications are currently open.

The application period opened on January 2nd at 8 a.m.

Applications need to be submitted to the email councilvacancy at seattle.gov until, and they need to, to clarify very much so, they need to be received by the city clerk's office by 5 p.m.

January 9th.

And the reason why we say that, because if your email was sent at 5 p.m., but we receive it at 5.01 p.m., we cannot accept that application.

So it's very important to not send it at the last minute.

The application must include a cover letter, a resume and the financial interest statement form that can be found on the website.

This financial interest statement form, it's important to make sure that you have the correct one.

It will say that is for the position two and not position eight like the last vacancy.

So I want to make sure anyone submitting it is making sure they have the right document.

especially because this form has been updated to include the applicant's name and address, which we need to be able to verify them with King County elections that they are in fact citizens of District 2. So by state law and the city charter candidates must be a citizen of the United States, a qualified elector of the state of Washington, able to read and write the English language and a registered voter of the city of Seattle and resident of the district represented in this case, district two, for at least 120 days prior to filing the declaration of candidacy.

Once the application period is closed, well, actually I should say concurrently, we are also running application period for community organizations.

So according to charter, we ask community organizations to either submit an application to moderate the public forum, which is required for the vacancy process, where the public can ask questions and find out more from the candidates for the vacant position, or they can merely submit feedback about the recommendations for the form structure, questions that should be posed to the candidates and or any accessibility considerations.

And this application is running concurrently to the applications for the candidate.

So it's January 2nd to January 9th and they need to be received by 5 p.m.

And a letter of interest is submitted to the website, thecouncilvacancyatseattle.gov.

Currently on the screen is the tentative calendar of events.

So the vacancy, the seat is being vacated today.

The vacancy officially starts tomorrow the 7th.

The applications opened on the 2nd.

They will last until the 9th.

And the wonderful staff in the office of the city clerk will work to process these applications.

currently have where we're receiving them.

We have to send them to King County elections to be verified.

So there will be that time from the last application received to when we can provide a list of the qualified candidates.

So that will be till the 13th.

There will be the executive session where you all get to know the list of the applicants and discuss that and evaluate their qualifications.

And then council members will need to review these applications.

And then we have on the 17th, the meeting to name the finalists.

The community forum hopefully will be on the 21st.

Then we have a special meeting to interview the applicants.

And then that final meeting to fill the vacant seat will be on the 27th.

And as we know, if we do not fill the seat on the 27th, council must meet every business day until they fill that seat.

So that's all I have is a brief overview of the vacancy.

Are there any questions?

I do have a question.

I wanted to make sure people understand when you were talking, can you go back up to that calendar list?

You made a point of saying that it takes time between when you get all of the applications to when we see them and what you're doing in that period of time is you are redacting.

Thank you.

Yeah.

You're redacting information because these are public records, but we want to make sure that we are able to preserve that.

Yeah, the privacy.

So, you know, and I had said PII at one point.

So, you know, what is it?

A personal information or I've already forgot what the acronym means, but yes, we redact that information that's identifying to the candidates.

So usually on your resume, you'll have a phone number and address, and we will redact that out, email addresses and things like that.

So that takes some time.

I want to thank our public disclosure officer, Matt Jagger, because he came up with the idea of using one of our internal programs that easily redacts information.

Hopefully it'll get a little faster, but we also need to compile it into an easily accessible format for council members to be able to go through.

Like we don't wanna just throw a bunch of PDFs your way and making the best of luck with reviewing it.

So that does take some time as well.

And as I mentioned, so to get the information verified by King County Elections, who is in the middle of trying to run an election for February as well.

And that information once the information is provided to council members, but also provided to the public at the same time and will be available on the website by the 14th.

And so anyone who has submitted an application will know if their application was accepted and approved by that list.

Got it.

And how many people have applied so far?

Approximately nine.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you very much.

The reason that you said tentative, you and I have spoken about this.

There is the whittling down to a list of finalists.

We did that last time because we had about, what, 90-something applications.

Right.

That is, depending on the number of people we have this time, we might not have to go through that step.

I just wanted to make sure that that is why you put in the word tentative in your

Correct.

We're also waiting, just, you know, because this is what is being presented to council to approve and, or council president.

And so, but yes, part of that is that we had many more applicants.

I will say that if we have nine by day, What are we, the six?

So about three days in.

I do anticipate at least doubling the number, if not more, because a lot of the applications received last time came on the last day.

But that is why I really do want to emphasize, please do not wait until 4.59 to submit your application.

People are proofreading.

Okay, thank you for that.

Let's see, I am going to open it up to questions here.

I'm not, do any of my colleagues have any questions about the process?

Wow.

See how experienced we are already?

Okay.

All right.

Well, if you do, we've got capable folks here ready to answer any questions that might come up going forward.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

And a word to the public, please, to individuals and organizations that want to be involved in this process and or considered for appointment to the vacancy, be sure to get your materials in by five o'clock on the 9th, but preferably well before that.

And we welcome your interest.

Yes.

I do want to make sure also to remind people that if they have any questions about the vacancy process, they can still email that same email address at councilvacancyatseattle.gov.

I check it.

We have at least two people dedicating to check it.

But also if they reach out to anywhere, the city clerk at seattle.gov or just call our office, we'll be able to answer any questions they have about the process.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Okay, moving on to the signing of letters and proclamations.

Councilmember Strauss has a letter for signature today in support of the Seattle Indian Health Board's Thunderbird Treatment Center on Vashon Island.

Councilmember Strauss, please lead the discussion on the letter for any additional feedback before I request signatures to be affixed to it.

Thank you, Council President.

And Council President, if I may, a moment of personal privilege speaking about Jennifer Winkler.

When I first came on as staff here, I took my training with Jennifer and the city clerk, Shireen Dedman, briefly mentioned this, but she created the program that we are all relying on within our outlook that both archives, the work that we do here for future, for posterity, but was also set up for the entire city.

And so without Jennifer, much like our last city clerk that took us from having binders here on the dais, which is why the dais was built without computer screens to today, it's just an immense amount of work to take us from analog to digital.

And Jennifer just did such an amazing job.

So here's to you, Jennifer.

What I've got before you today is a letter that circulated last month on December 17th.

We were hoping to bring this before recess, but I got the letter in on a Thursday rather than a Wednesday.

And so just speaking about this, the Seattle Indian Health Board, it's in support of the Seattle Indian Health Board's Thunderbird Treatment Center.

And members of the Indigenous Advisory Council reached out to me as the chair of the FNC committee regarding this.

And so in this letter, it talks about that the opioid crisis continues to be one of the greatest and deadliest public health challenges of our time.

And we know that the impact is being felt especially hard by our Indian and Alaskan native residents who are dying of overdose at a rate more than five times higher than non-Hispanic white residents.

The City of Seattle's Indigenous Advisory Council has also sent a letter supportive of the Thunderbird Treatment Center to King County.

And in their letter, they point out, despite various efforts to address this issue, there remains a significant gap in access to comprehensive treatment services for those struggling with addiction.

Today, there are currently only 148 inpatient beds in King County, and Thunderbird Treatment Center would increase that by 62% to 240. And so colleagues, I urge your support.

We've been asked to support this by members of the Indigenous Advisory Council, not as the council as a whole, but would love to earn your support on this.

Thank you.

Thank you for putting that forward.

I, of course, will be signing this, and I just want to provide a little bit of context.

On October 28th, after meeting with Budget Chair Strauss to share my budget priorities, I put out my newsletter listing seven of them, and one of which was to proviso $1.6 million of jumpstart funds in 2025 for appropriation to the Seattle Indian Health Board for capital costs to build the Thunderbird Treatment Center.

And I provided this background quote.

In 2020, the Seattle Indian Health Board closed its 65-bed inpatient drug treatment center in the Pioneer Square because it was aging and could no longer accommodate the increasing number of people seeking treatment.

The Seattle Indian Health Board is scheduled to open the new Thunderbird Treatment Center on Vashon Island in mid 2025. It'll have 92 beds and offer a 45 day long course of treatment based on a model called Indigenous Knowledge Informed Systems of Care or Indigeno.

which blends modern treatment plans with traditional medicine and culturally attuned care.

There is a 1.6 million dollar gap in the Thunderbird Treatment Center's capital construction budget resulting from increased financing costs.

Filling it is a priority for me because A, the Health Board's previous facility made up 20% of the city's stock of state licensed treatment beds and had the lowest relapse rate in the state and B, until a recent investment in Valley City's behavioral health The only Seattle funding for comprehensive residential drug treatment was 300,000.

I got into the 2024 budget.

That's not enough.

Although the facility will be located on Vashon Island, Health Board President and CEO Esther Lucero expects that 70 to 80% of the patients served at Thunderbird will be from Seattle." And so again, these are our residents, even though they're going to Vashon to be treated and healed, this is going to largely support and serve Seattle residents. And so I do very much appreciate if people would sign on their support and I hope if anybody from the county is hearing that they could see the importance of this for the mental and spiritual health of our, well, for our, urban tribal peoples and also just because it's the right thing to do. So I think, I do, I will put a plug in if there's anybody from the budget office listening, I think that it would be also if we could eventually find funding or whenever if there's a possibility to provide some Seattle port at some point because it didn't get into the balancing package. valid as well not to discourage the county. Are there any other comments? Okay. I will then ask since they're seeing there is no further discussion on the letter will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the letter in support of Thunderbird Treatment Center.

Council member Inc.

Yes.

Council member Rivera?

Aye.

Council member Saka?

Aye.

Council member Strauss?

Yes.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Councilmember Moore.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Eight signatures will be affixed.

Thank you very much.

Okay, now it's time to begin our discussion on the preview of city council actions and council and regional committees.

And the order of discussion is established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings, which is designated alphabetically by last name and with the council president called last.

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

Councilmember Rink, please begin and then hand it over to Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Yeah, fabulous.

Happy to kick us off in the new year.

Hi, everybody.

Just starting us off with the committee that I chair.

So Sustainability City Light Arts and Culture will be having our first meeting of the year on the 17th of Friday.

at 9.30 AM, where we'll be receiving a briefing and a download from City Light about the outages from the windstorm.

Looking to external committees, the Regional Policy Committee will be meeting this week, where they'll be approving a work plan.

We'll also be receiving reports on an annual update related to health through housing, as well as the Mental Illness Drug Dependency Program, but also looking and discussing to place a proposition for a special election ballot related to the regional automated fingerprint identification system in King County.

So looking forward to that discussion.

And then since we've been on recess, I don't have too much to report to in relation to community, but would share that I had an amazing opportunity to speak to the Washington Institute for Democratic Future, talking about experience as a young leader and just really incredible group of young leaders that will be serving our region.

ages 21 to 39. It's a statewide cohort, and it's just always very encouraging to see again this next generation stepping up to lead in our city and in our state.

And lastly, would just voice again in recognition of Councilmember Morales' departure today as her last day, and as we're looking towards appointing someone to the D2 position, want to ensure that we are bringing someone on board who can authentically serve the distinct and unique needs of District 2. Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Hello, colleagues.

It's nice to see everyone again after our Council recess.

I know many of us were working remotely, but we haven't seen each other.

So it's nice to really be back and seeing all of you again.

I hope you had a restful and peaceful time with your loved ones.

This week, many of you have meetings on your calendar to have preliminary conversations about the upcoming Families Education Preschool Promise Levy.

Since my office will be leading the renewal process on the legislative side, I've scheduled meetings with all of you in the next couple weeks.

I look forward to having conversations with you every step of the way and hearing from you all on your initial thoughts.

This week, I will also be attending a community council meeting in Ravenna Bryant.

I look forward to hearing from those neighbors.

They have lots of questions about the comprehensive plan and what the proposed zoning changes will mean for their neighborhood that they would like to share with me.

And I'm looking forward to engaging in conversation with them.

On Friday, I'll be appearing on the Seattle Channel's Council Edition with host Brian Callanan along with my colleagues, council members Moore and Rank.

I look forward to that conversation.

Also on Friday morning, I will be attending the memorial for Sean Yim, the Metro bus driver who was fatally stabbed.

in the U district right before the holidays.

Um, and I will, I will say that, um, I did attend right before the holidays, a candlelight vigil, um, that had been held by his colleagues.

at Metro and the ATU, the union, the driver's union.

It was a really touching vigil.

And I know that the drivers are very concerned, as am I, about public safety buses.

It's something that we keep talking about I appreciate Councilmember Saka your during this last budget process giving attention to this and it's something that you know looking toward Metro and the county on how we can make sure that we are providing a safe environment for our workers that work on the buses and also for our riders I am someone who's a big proponent of public transportation.

And as we look toward our climate goals, we really do wanna make sure that people are taking our transportation options and we need to make it safe for people to ride.

And so this is an ongoing conversation.

I know all of, there isn't anyone up here who doesn't care about.

And so, you know, I look forward to the continuing conversation with all of you and King County Metro who oversees the buses obviously and Sound Transit for that matter.

And I've talked to Sound Transit also about safety on the light rail.

So anyway, all that to say, continuing conversation and also I will be attending that memorial on Friday.

Maybe I'll see some of you there, and it is very sad, and my heart goes out to his family.

Thank you.

Unless there are any questions, I will turn it over to Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

All right.

Happy New Year, colleagues.

Welcome back.

I'm personally excited to be back after a wonderful recess break.

and ready to hit the ground running.

And we started that this morning bright and early with the chair of Hollingsworth's select committee meeting on the comp plan.

And I feel, I haven't felt more energized or moved to go even harder in the paint this year on all things legislatively and constituent issues and including public safety.

So, And also, again, thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth, for your leadership in stepping up to shepherd and lead the con plan process.

I'm grateful for you and staying ready to support you in any way I can in that effort.

And I'll try to be a good colleague as best as I can.

A good separately-elected colleague.

All right, on the Transportation Committee, Our committee meeting tomorrow morning is canceled.

So colleagues that sit on that committee, no worries there.

We're finalizing the agenda of our next one, which will be on Tuesday, January 21st.

And so we're again in the process of finalizing the agenda there.

So working on the nuts and bolts of transportation policy at the city level here.

keep our city moving safely and efficiently.

And, but in terms of policy areas for 2025 this year and transportation, you know, there's a number of things.

And I kind of shared a lot of this in even more fulsome detail at the committee level, but I'll share it at a slightly more higher level here as well, where we're gonna be focused on.

A couple of things, speed camera deployment.

There's been a lot of funding for speed cameras of all types, including, speed cameras in schools and also non-schools so keenly interested in making sure you know we we actually bring that to life and and build it get those set up and deploy make them operational execute if you will also we're going to be taking up the transportation levy proviso the mega levy or super mega whatever levy, I don't know, that budget chair Strauss called it, figuring out the process for considering removal and lifting of that.

Also transit security, it's huge.

Been a loud squeaky wheel on that.

My first year, the whole time, unapologetically, and I'll continue to do so, more on that to come.

Confirmation process of the Levy Oversight Committee and Transportation Funding Task Force, those will be coming through committee.

As will eventually, once the mayor makes his decision on a replacement for an SDOT director, that will invariably come through our committee as well.

and plus many more topics.

So exciting times on the transportation policy front here in the city of Seattle.

I guess in the community, I just wanna note that I'm really, really excited.

I'm gonna be attending the West Seattle Chamber luncheon event later this week, I think on Thursday, and I'll be delivering the keynote address there for the small business community in West Seattle.

Excited for that.

And also, I guess, on the topic of transit security, Councilmember Rivera, thank you for bringing it up.

As Councilmember Rivera noted, we lost Sean Yim.

Sean Yim was his name.

He was a transit operator, bus driver, went to work that evening on that shift with reasonable expectations that he's going to be able to come home to his family whenever his shift was over.

And he was tragically murdered, and his plans were cut short.

His family is forever impacted, and our city and Metro, I know, is impacted forever as well.

So...

look, I attended, right after that happened, I attended the...

there was the ATU Local 587. President Greg Woodfill organized a presser the morning of, actually, and was honored to attend that.

It's good to see Council Member Brink there as well.

under such horrible circumstances and other local elected officials.

Later, during our recess, as Councilmember Rivera noted, there was a candlelight vigil moving.

It happened in her district.

It happened in Councilmember Rivera's district, but it could have just as well happened in any of our districts.

To be honest, it could happen anywhere outside of the city as well.

And so it was good to see Councilmember Rivera, Councilmember Strauss, Councilmember Rink again.

There was other officials.

I think the city was well represented.

I think I even saw City Attorney Davidson was there.

but it was good to honor in a candlelight vigil capacity the life and legacy of Sean.

And I too am going to be honored to join and prioritize attending the official memorial for him on Friday, this coming Friday.

And wanna continue to show up and support the family, Metro, the transit union here, the ATU local 587 and the community as best as I can.

And like I said, I've unapologetically, unapologetically been talking about transit security all last year, screaming it from the loud, like from the rooftops as loud as I can, to the dismay of some transportation policy advocates and experts at least so self-proclaimed.

Why are you talking about that, Rob?

It's not a shiny new thing.

I'm gonna expose the deep, dark underbelly for a moment of what I've learned in my first year in office and a year before that on the campaign trail.

The topic of transit security doesn't get a lot of attention.

We talk about it, we do a lot for it, we fund it, we fund initiatives, we've done that, we'll continue to do that.

It doesn't get a lot of attention or even press coverage.

for that matter.

And I think there's two reasons for that, two main reasons.

We're not, when we talk about transit security, it doesn't involve us lining or launching a shiny new thing, a shiny new object.

There's no cool ribbon cutting ceremony that we can attend and get cameras in front of.

This is number one.

We do is, and this is more difficult, as we stay in local government, but it requires us to collectively acknowledge our shortcomings and imperfections.

The state of transit security isn't where it should be.

We have opportunities to make more investments and more improvements to improve people's lives, and in some cases, many cases, save people's lives.

But at its core, the second piece there is it requires us to acknowledge that it's not, we have opportunities.

It requires a certain level of being vulnerable.

And that's hard to do.

As leaders, at the elected level, at the department level, it's hard.

but I've been talking about it for a long time, alongside many of you all as well.

Council Member Public Safety Chair Kettle has been a champion of this, Council Member Rivera, champion of transit security, council president, champion.

This is something we all have an opportunity to further invest in and strengthen on a going forward basis.

And I don't care if there's not a shiny new thing attached to this, a ribbon-cutting opportunity.

I have no author's pride in this first year.

We'll continue to acknowledge our shortcomings and acknowledge our opportunities to get better.

And it's not a reflection or indictment of any one department or any one agency or any one jurisdiction or city, Seattle included.

And I think President Woodfield of ATU Local 587 made that clear.

This is a collective opportunity that we have.

It's counterproductive to sit here and point fingers at Metro or Sound Transit or any transit agency or any city.

This is an opportunity that we all have collectively to do better.

And we've done a lot as Council Member Rivera noted already.

This past budget cycle, we funded $2 million, $2 million colleagues, $2 million.

We built upon another advocate of transit security is Council Member Strauss.

He led the effort to get guardians or excuse me, ambassadors, ambassadors, ambassadors, transit ambassadors.

And we built upon that effort during the budget and now allowed more social workers.

So transit ambassadors and social workers.

And we also added another, so $1 million for that.

We also added $1 million for extra contracted transit security, and including transit police, whether it's Metro police or emphasis patrols and SPD, whatever, that we can figure, work with the executive departments to figure out what's the best way to spend that money.

But we did a lot through pure raw investment power this past budget cycle, writing a check.

We also did another important thing, exercised our power as well.

Doesn't, didn't get, probably any, press coverage or attention, but really, really important.

The other thing we can do here, we can write checks and we can compel the departments to provide information and disclose information.

There was one transit security slide that we did, co-sponsored by Public Safety Chair Kettle, and I think you as well, Council Member Rivera, that required enhanced reporting and transparency on the incidents of transit security and align on a high level, provide a path to align on a plan for ultimately a regional approach to transit security.

So we did all those great things.

Good start in 2024. But sadly, despite our efforts at the council level, and in the city, it couldn't help the family of Sean Yim.

The ink was still drying on the mayor's budget legislation signature.

So couldn't figure out a way to actually spend it and contract for that money.

And of course the department is still working with other, there's a lot of dependencies working with other departments to collect the data to bring to life the sly.

We did a lot.

We'll continue to do more next year, or this year rather, and we need to do better.

If you don't like me talking about transit security, it doesn't get better for you this year.

I'll be perfectly blunt about that.

Make no apologies about that.

Transit security is one of those things where I'll take an analogy to what I heard Council Member Moore say appropriately early this morning in another context of the comp plan.

Transit security is not like the field of dreams where if you build it, they will, or transit service is not like the field of dreams.

If you build it, they will come.

Can't just blindly expand and add new service lines and oh yeah, if we build it, people are gonna take it.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

We need to create the conditions where people are delighted to take it, wanna take it, are excited to take it.

That means keeping it safe, not just reliable, not just expanding frequency and reliability, keeping it safe.

End of the day, transit is a choice for many.

And I've been there, I've been transit dependent before.

It's humbling for me.

Now I sit on the Regional Transit Committee at the county level where we're talking about potentially adding rapid ride service to the old bus line I used to take from my apartments in the Valley of Kent to take me to work at South Center Mall, the Route 150, talking about making that a rapid ride.

So I've been there before.

I know what it's like.

Not everyone is transit dependent.

We need to create conditions, and this is uncomfortable conversations.

We need to make transit safer for all.

And that means riders, that means operators.

And ATU, I know President Woodfield was calling for two main things at a high level.

In light of Sean's murder, he's calling for enhanced protections for their drivers, which I strongly support.

and look forward to partnering Metro and anyone else to figure out what they might need from a city perspective to build and implement.

We're talking about protective barriers and cages amongst other things.

If that means we have to pay a little more for the transit service, fine.

So he's calling for extra transit security to protect their drivers.

Also at a high level calling for us to finally align on a regional approach to transit security, which we don't currently have today.

And I strongly support that.

That sly, that little nitty gritty sly with all kinds of cool details and like policy wonky stuff, doesn't get covered or reported.

put us in the right direction to help us directly achieve that.

But we need a regional approach to transit security.

And because Sean Yim's service to our region and ultimately his sacrifice is my commitment to make sure he wasn't killed and wasn't murdered in vain.

We need to do more.

We need to treat this with the urgency that this issue with the urgency that it deserves.

It's boring to some, I get it, I don't care.

All right, get off my soapbox, but rest in peace to Brother Sean Yim.

My thoughts and condolences, and for me, prayers are with him and his family.

Look forward to making sure we make sure his sacrifice wasn't in vain and we protect riders and do more to protect riders and operators alike.

Thank you.

Council member, I have a question.

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you for those moving words.

collecting myself.

So when is the budget actions that we took for security personnel on Metro buses, when does that go into effect or what were the dates that were specified in that legislation?

Thank you, Madam Council President.

I have some initial thoughts on that and I welcome if any clarification tweaks that our budget chair might have, but we appropriated that money to be spent in 2025. So it's in a line item that the executive departments can and should spend and start contracting for today, yesterday, tomorrow.

So we've appropriated, so ASAP yesterday, needed it yesterday.

But I understand it takes some time on the executive department side to operationalize this.

I do know we have a strong partner in the mayor's office and the mayor.

And I think there's opportunity for further partnership there to expedite this and do it more quickly.

But I know that the mayor's committed to the same priorities that I share.

And I know that many of you all colleagues share as well.

And I think that members of the public share.

That's my initial reaction.

If you have any other comments on that?

Yeah, thanks, Council Member Saka.

I mean, really well said.

Just to add on to that, a year previous was at a time that there was some challenges in front of the county courthouse, and so Metro security was increased, but they didn't increase any on-bus whether it was security or ambassadors.

And so it was at that point that I passed a proviso on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District to add ambassadors to any bus going to light rail or downtown.

And you and me had a little bit of a back and forth on the dais later at the end, just because it was a year later and Metro hadn't delivered.

And I think that that's where my frustration sits right now, right?

Seattle pays our Seattle Transportation Benefit District at a rate that Metro can't spend.

At first they said it was on, they couldn't hire enough operators and that's why we had to cut buses in our city.

And then, so I gave them an off ramp of saying, if you can't hire operators, can you hire an everyday person to be on that bus so that the operator doesn't have to play the recording of please turn down your music, can be a safe person for the kids who are riding the bus for this first time, can ask people to, you know, pick up the rolling bottle that's been rolling around the back of the bus for the last three miles, right?

A year later, they couldn't deliver.

And so I don't know.

And it's something that I'm going to be working with you on this one, Rob, because it's not a press conference.

It's an outcome.

And something that you were sharing during the budget process is that outcomes are the thing that at times we're lacking and that we really ought to focus on.

And outcomes are way more important than pomp and circumstance.

And so I just thank you for what you said.

I'm with you.

Because it was really good to see both you and Council Member Rivera at the candlelight vigil.

This was a preventable death.

This was an unnecessary death.

We can't lose sight of how Sean lost his life.

Councilmember Rivera?

Thank you, chair.

Thank you, council member Saka and count for those moving words.

I really just wanted to add that, you know, I wanted to acknowledge Timothy Nelson, who's a fellow driver who was driving the bus where the suspect entered the bus and he bravely and very calmly called Seattle police.

so they could come and apprehend the suspect and they did so safely and without incident.

And so I really did wanna acknowledge Timothy as well.

Thank you for what you did.

I cannot imagine how You know, all the emotion and the feelings that Timothy would have had when that happened.

But like I said, he was very brave and they were able to apprehend the suspect.

a suspect has been apprehended and charged.

And I wanted to add that just so folks know where where this was.

And then Councilmember Strauss, thank you for that last piece, because, you know, I too, I'm very interested to hear.

You've heard us say You know, we don't oversee Metro and we don't oversee Sound Transit.

We are partners.

We do give money to those agencies.

And so how do we partner to make sure that the safety piece is being done?

Because one thing, well, many things, but I just noted at that candlelight vigil the frustration from the many drivers that showed up to pay respect to their fellow driver, Sean.

is that they've been asking the county for certain things to be put in place, certain safeguards, and those have not happened, including some kind of barrier.

And it seems like some of these things are no brainers.

You know, I can't imagine putting a barrier would be very costly or that that can't happen on those buses.

I don't know why.

And so I am interested in learning more about that.

But these are the conversations that we need to have.

And then we need to make sure that we're following up with both the county and sound transit on in general, because I know that there are safety concerns on the light rail as well.

Although I understand the drivers on the light rail are protected, sometimes they have to respond to things that put them in harm's way.

So not to take away from the Metro, they definitely need some kind of barrier.

I very much support that.

So looking forward to all those conversations.

But like I said, wanted to really acknowledge Timothy Nelson and SPD for apprehending that suspect.

Thank you.

Madam Council President.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Rivera, Councilmember Strauss for adding, building upon what I said, thank you.

We're a team here.

Especially want to acknowledge, thank you Councilmember Rivera for calling out Tim, had a chance to meet Tim, Operator Tim, at the Candlelight Vigil.

Silver lining in all this, Tim is a hero.

And so I appreciate Tim and all the operators that they do every day to keep us moving around the city efficiently and effectively.

And I take transit personally myself, like regularly, almost daily, and I'm proud of it and will continue to do so.

And...

By my initial read, I think that's why I want more data around it.

It's why we call for the sly.

But by my initial read, I think what's been reported to me so far, without my requests, the numbers of incidents of crime and violence on transit seem to be down.

Overall, well, the trending, trending, trending, incrementally, year over year.

And that may be true.

Maybe not, I don't know.

We'll learn more when we get this slide, but it's disrespectful AF.

We say that right after Sean Yin was murdered.

We can say, oh, the media sensationalizes all these things, and oh, well, you know, the media, like, okay, maybe.

It's not as bad, the problem isn't as bad as, hmm, I don't know.

Perception is reality.

We have just as much of a perception problem and just as much of a outcomes and results problem underlying all this.

So I'm committed to doing more in the ways I mentioned, working collaboratively alongside you all and the mayor's office and all the many stakeholders involved, ATU, local 587, mayor, Metro, so many people, so many folks.

So in any event, I'll stop there.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

And on your point, within the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments and select budget committees, there's not much on the docket right now.

What I can tell you is that we're taking this month of January to reflect on almost an entire year worth of briefings and analysis and then budget work of last year.

And so we will be creating a A continued budget reform document can help everyone understand what went well, what were the lessons learned, and taking from years previous to influence how we move forward in the future.

Because your SLI was one of many that we have to, if we don't receive the information from, then it was just a piece of paperwork, right?

We need to continue this budget reform work.

And there's no committee this week, although I see another council member's taking the sweet time, that committee time for another committee.

Nice work.

We will later this month and council president, my office will be working with yours.

It's my understanding that there may be a few land use items that need to be passed before the appointment is done.

And so if that is the case, I'm happy to use my finance native communities and tribal governments time slot for land use, because I know all of the land use committees are taken up by the select committee.

comprehensive plan.

I'm going to let you and I'm going to let your staff and my staff work that out, but I'm sharing this for us as a group here that this is what's going on in committee.

On my external committees, I will be attending our Seattle City Employee Retirement Services Board of Administration meeting this Thursday and then Sound Transit System Expansion Committee.

Councilmember Rivera, I hear your comments.

There's always more to do to make Sound Transit better.

I will tell you anecdotally, I've heard Sound Transit is operating heads above Metro as far as transit security.

The fun fact, I don't know if you all know this fun fact with Dan today, is that Sound Transit is operated by Pierce Transit, Metro, and Community Transit.

Sound Transit pays the bills, they put the names on the side of the buses, but it's all run by Metro drivers, by Pierce County drivers, by Community Transit drivers.

And so when we were at the, candlelight vigil, I was talking to some of the folks that are metro employees that are on the rail division.

Light rail, right?

And so if we have the same people doing the same work in generally the same places, why are we having two very different outcomes?

I know we've had this conversation.

I just share that because Sound Transit was on my meeting notes.

We will also, so in Sound Transit expansion, we're going to be having an administrative agreement regarding the Stride I-405 rapid transit project, as well as we're gonna be working on the operations and maintenance facility south as that's coming into development down in a federal way.

And so we'll need to purchase some properties down there and we're gonna be working on the draft committee work plan for the year.

I do not have office hours this week, as it's the first week back after recess.

We did hold over 20 hours of office hours in three weeks in December, on top of going on walking tours with residents.

We do have office hours next week, the week after, and the week after that.

We have times held in February, but we haven't opened them up for scheduling yet.

So thank you, colleagues.

That is my report.

If there are no questions, I'll hand it over to Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

I appreciate that.

Parks Utilities Technology Meeting will be Wednesday, January 22nd at 2 p.m.

We are working on the agenda right now, so please, I know you all are anxiously awaiting for that, so please be patient.

We'll get that.

on the docket.

And I also just, I've said it before, but just wanna thank you all again for being at the 9.30 AM select committee for the comprehensive plan.

Our next meeting will be January 15th at 2 PM.

We will, after the mayor sends down his plan.

Thank you, Council Member McCattle.

After the mayor sends down the executive sends down their plan.

I will be scheduling meetings with everyone, just one-on-one, connecting with folks, just making sure that, you know, just behind the scenes stuff, we can get some information through to everyone.

So please stay forward with that.

Look forward to that.

Otherwise, one thing I wanted to mention, I know public safety is huge and we've talked about it and I think we've made a significant progress in Public Safety Committee.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I wanna say this publicly, I'd sent the Chief Scoggins a email last week.

There was a gentleman who had overdosed in the park right by my house, and I sat there in my car and watched how firefighters responded and they performed CPR on this gentleman for 20 straight minutes.

They did 10 rotations of two minutes while their arms got tired, and they rotated to the next person, to the next person.

I for sure thought this gentleman had passed away, was gone, but they never gave up.

And the last round, they found a pulse, and this gentleman survived.

But it also was a bigger picture, because this gentleman had been in the park on fentanyl for weeks.

And I want to say this publicly because I've said this privately before, but I don't know what the answer is.

I know we have, we are making progress, but what's going on on 12th and Jackson on Broadway and John and North Broadway and other places in the district.

It's really heartbreaking and it really has impacts.

And a lot of these places are also by schools.

So I'm looking forward to working with council member Rivera on the family education levy, because I sit here and say, what about the children?

What about our kids right now that have to walk through this and be exposed to this and endure a lot of these, you know, just unfortunate sites and seeing people suffer right now.

And I just really want to thank our fire department because they are right now, they are, we have put them in very uncomfortable positions, in really tough positions where they are stressed out to the max, where they're responding to these calls so often.

And I just, we're very thankful for them for that, but it took a lot, a toll on them.

So anyways, I just wanted to point that out that, you know, I've seen it, I've been around it, I get the emails constantly about it, especially people's kids that have to walk through it, get off at a bus stop, and see it, and smell it, inhale it, and be around it.

And I'm looking forward to us to figure out to find some solutions, but what we're doing right now, we just, we gotta get better.

So I just wanted to throw that out there, and looking forward to working with Councilmember Rivera in your office.

with the family education levy to figure out safety measures for our kids and activities for our kids so we can continue to keep them safe during this process.

So anyways, I will stop there.

Another interesting fact, if you're born this year, you are in a new generation, you're generation beta.

That sounds very scary to me.

It sounds like a controlling generation full of cool things that they'll do technology, but generation beta.

So looking forward to generation alpha, which is our young generation and generation beta is the next up and coming generation for our kids.

Thank you.

Council member Kettle.

Thank you.

Hold on a second.

Council member Moore.

Sorry, can I ask you a question, Council Member Hollingsworth?

Absolutely.

And maybe you don't want to share about it, but are you prepared to talk about Broadway Flats and an update on that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for the question, colleagues.

There was Broadway Flats incident where there was an encampment that was resolution and members were moved into Broadway Flats, which is off of Broadway and John in my district.

I've never had an issue with the fact, you know, this is how we're housing folks, which is incredibly important.

It was the process.

and the process was offering wraparound services to our individuals that need help and addressing that immediately with the assessment as we move them in and also understanding that it's a process and the long-term care of what that looks like.

And so we have made strides.

I'm really happy with the response that we've gotten from King County Regional Homeless Authority and also the community organizations that are pulling forth and saying, hey, this is the services.

what we deliver care has stepped up.

Urban League is one of the contractors.

All these people have stepped up and I've been happy with the response, but I wanna make sure that this does not happen again.

And we have to have processes and procedures in place for which when we move people from encampments into buildings, that we are addressing some of the issues and some of the needs immediately.

for some of the activity that was just completely unacceptable in that building.

So anyways, I wanna thank some of my council members, cause I know that you all engaged in that process and we had a bunch of meetings behind the scenes and I'm very encouraged about moving forward what this looks like to make sure that people are safe, they're healthy, and we can make sure that, you know, we're getting people the right help that they need.

But I really appreciate that question, Councilmember Moore, because you sit over the Housing and Human Services and really appreciate that, you know, you brought some concerns as well and council president as well.

So just thank you both.

But we did get that resolved and I really am encouraged of the pathway forward that King County Regional Homeless Authority and other folks are taking.

Thank you.

And I'll note that you and I also serve on the Board of Health and this is another area where last year I put, I had an amendment to the work plan to put our response to the opioid crisis and we only got two briefings on what is already happening and we have to really We have to be on that and make sure that it is a priority, not just to brief the board, but to do something different.

Because it's great that we have focused on reducing overdoses, fatal overdoses.

That is excellent by the widespread distribution of Narcan.

But we have to, as you noted, work on the prevention side, especially with our youth.

And it's all tied together.

I believe that on all of the boards and external committees that we all serve on, we have to make sure that we are representing the interests of our constituents and focusing on the things that are absolutely 100% urgent.

And I would say that, of course, public safety and also a more robust response to the fentanyl crisis is right up there.

Council President.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth, and I look forward to working with you on the FEP levy.

I also know that, you know, we are currently funding the hubs, the community safety hubs that are helping kids and Council Member Moore and I and Council Member South was interested in the north hub and we're going to be creating a north hub.

to manage for some of this with kids.

And then also I know you put in a slide about the youth programs and what that, because this is all connected, right?

And so I'm looking forward to getting the results of this slide.

I'm looking forward to the conversations with the Human Services Department.

on the work that they're currently doing on the hubs and some other youth violence safety programs and also our parks department who hosts teen nights and things of that nature and looking at, you know, what are the results of all of this?

Is this helping?

Is it not helping?

What do we need to be doing?

And of course, working with Councilmember Kettle on the public safety committee side of things on How do we ensure that this activity is not occurring by schools and by playgrounds?

Um, because really right now there is nothing in place that I know of.

I mean, you know, to really address these activities happening near schools and playgrounds and that's all public safety related.

And so I wanna hear more, I know that this will be the topic of conversation for public safety this year as well.

So wanted to say yes to more of all of it and acknowledge that we've all asked these questions and we've all worked together to address some of these things and the outcome pieces are important because we don't know how to help if we don't know if what we're doing is working or not currently.

So yeah, thank you for raising that.

Um, thank you everyone for joining us at our public safety committee meeting today.

Actually, you know, first I wanted to welcome, normally in council briefing we don't have an audience, but I just wanted to welcome those that are in chambers today, sir, and apparently a family.

I'm reminded last year of a father who brought two scouts with him to see democracy in action.

Excellent.

I like it very much to see that, so welcome first.

Two, on the public safety points, We are in a new year.

Obviously, we've done a lot on public safety in 2024. In 2025, some main areas are going to be working ordinances that need to be updated.

Separately, the criminal justice system is of concern to me.

And that's an area that we need to kind of bring some daylight to.

And a third one that kind of came out of the budget piece too and it was just referenced is, you know, the community safety piece.

I think it's important for the committee to look at that because this is kind of like the next layer of alternative response.

And looking at this and going through budget noted that, you know, sometimes they report to department neighborhoods, sometimes human services department, maybe, you know, carers involved.

and these different pieces.

And I have a sense that nobody keeps the big picture.

So I think it's important for the committee to do this due diligence from a public safety perspective and to Chair Strauss at the other end of the dais, you know, from the budget piece too.

And this is kind of goes to, you know, committee work, preparing and supporting budget, in this case 2025. So I look forward to that.

And of course, for those that are not on the committee, Council Member Rivera, you're always welcome in that, particularly given the education angle.

And because as Council Member Hollingsworth noticed, we have to do as she would normally say for our babies.

And I think that's very important.

Also brought up today, transit security, I just want to thank Transportation Chair, Saka, for his work on this.

Clearly, we've been doing a lot of work, conversations, like ahead of the levy, the transportation plan, a lot of things ahead of those two actions, because obviously transit security is very important.

And it plays into our relationship.

It goes into our strategic framework plan, and I will say pillar six, working with the county and the state.

The county, in terms of King County Metro, but also the King County Sheriff's, you know, and we've engaged hard.

We kept the press on, as everybody knows, last year.

We'll continue to do this year this year.

And that's where it shows up, like with Third Avenue Project and so forth.

But we need to do more in terms of engaging with the county.

And you know what?

Sometimes we have to do our bit, and this is where the budget action is so important because we're putting our money where our mouth is, you know, where we are standing up to contribute and to participate.

And in terms of, you know, the tragic incident, you know, with Mr. Yim and really for the whole ATU local 587 family is that we have to do transit security better, you know, and this is broader too.

This is public health, you know, where are we with addiction, working with the county, the state, mental health.

If we never address the public health and mental health aspects of what we're facing, As I've often said, we won't succeed in public safety until we do so.

So with that said, and going back to council briefing, our first public safety committee meeting of 2025 will be on the 14th, the morning of.

where we'd be looking, as I noted, ordinances that will be updated.

In this case, the less lethal ordinance crowd management.

I do have a chair amendment package that we'll be refining this week.

And I need to, I've talked to many of you.

I definitely need to talk to Council Member Moore.

We've tried many times, but we will meet to talk about the chairs package.

And as a reminder, due to the unique circumstances as how this plays into the consent decree, with the federal monitor and so forth.

Amendments are due by the 9th, and Mr. Doss is our point of contact.

Separately this week, in terms of community and regional organizations, we have South Lake Union Community Council this Tuesday, and on Thursdays, the PSRC Transportation Policy Board Friday I'll be meeting with the the marine exchange of Puget Sound and also the port of Seattle and then after that and I bring this up because this is another public safety piece as well I will be having a meeting with SDOT director spots and new Pike Place PDA executive Littenberg and this is important obviously with the tragic incident in New Orleans in terms of the killing of so many with the, sadly, the veteran who committed that heinous act.

We need to look at the public safety as it relates to Pike Place by bringing in the relevant players together, Pike Place PDA, SDOT, and then set up moving forward.

And I have received a number of emails on this.

I hear them.

I haven't had a chance to respond.

But this will be part of the discussion on Friday with those two individuals and maybe some more given Director Spots will be resigning, to set up the bigger stakeholder process, which came out of the Seattle Transportation Plan.

And we will work this, and I spoke to new PDA Director Littenberg, by the spring, April probably, we'll have that meeting to look at what we can do ahead of the summer season to ensure that we have a functioning Pike Place Market, but then also offers that opportunity for a great experience for those that come to include those pedestrians.

Next week, mentioned Tuesday is the Public Safety Committee.

Thursday is the King County Board of Health and also the Regional Water Quality Committee that I serve with Council Member Hollingsworth.

And then also on Friday, I'll be joining OPCD with the Queen Anne Historical Society as they talk about the comprehensive plan.

And then on Friday, we'll be meeting with the St. Paul's constituency meeting, you know, in terms of uptown and some of the challenges and what's happening in that neighborhood.

So that's it, Council President.

I turn over pending questions to Council Member Moore.

Go ahead, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, thank you very much, and Happy New Year to everyone, and it's nice to see all of your smiling faces, and I'm looking forward to our second year together.

So lots of good things ahead, I believe.

So the next meeting, the Housing and Human Services Committee is this Wednesday.

On the agenda, we have nine commission appointments.

We also have the Office of Housing's RSJI presentation and HSD's presentation on the city's general response to commercial exploitation.

We do have a human trafficking proclamation that will be coming forth and I just thought It would be nice to have a little bit of context and background on what's happening with human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in the city, as it was a major topic last year of legislative action.

And it's just something that we need to continue to be mindful of.

For external committees, I will be attending the Regional Policy Committee, as mentioned by Council Member Rink, and I will be also attending the Aging and Disability Services Committee this week.

A couple of things.

I will also be appearing on Council Edition on Friday, so I'm trying to get my research so I'm prepared.

for the questions from our Emmy Award-winning program and presenter.

I was able to meet with a number of District 2 potential applicants for the vacancy, unlike the last process when I did not meet individually I decided this time around to do so, so I'm more than happy to meet with anyone who's seeking that appointment, so please feel free to reach out to my office.

Additionally, I am starting up office hours again, so we will have office hours this coming Wednesday evening, remote hours, and then moving back to our regular Thursday afternoon hours.

We'll be meeting later in the week with CEO Kenison, KCRHA, based on the events that happened with Broadway Flats, and I'm really pleased to hear that that seems to be resolving in a positive way.

But I think it did raise a lot of concerns for me, and I think also for Council President.

So as the representatives on KCRHA governing board, certainly something that I will be bringing forth for discussion about how we can make sure we have all of those things in place so that we don't have the kinds of really difficult issues that occurred at Broadway Flats.

I also had the opportunity to do two, unfortunately, brief, well, it's not that they were brief that was unfortunate, it was the fact that I had to do them, which was two interviews.

One was relating to a mid-afternoon shooting just two blocks off of Aurora in a residential neighborhood.

on a Saturday.

It was a week ago Saturday.

One pimp had cornered another pimp in their car, got out of his car in the middle of the day, 12 o'clock, no concern about the people walking their dogs, about being actually caught on video, and unloaded 10 to 12 shells into this other car and then proceeded to chase it.

This is an individual who is known to the police to be a pimp.

They were able to get the license plate number.

And again, as I said, it had wonderful footage of this individual's face.

And needless to say, the neighbors, residents were extremely concerned.

SPD opened an active investigation, and I believe that they, based on conversations with Captain Agard, were actively pursuing an arrest.

And they did also ask that if people continue to view, have sightings of this car in the neighborhood, to please call 911. So I just bring that up because unfortunately we are still seeing gun violence in District 5 and along Aurora.

We're still seeing gun violence that's directly associated with the commercial sexual exploitation that is going on up there, which was the impetus for the legislation that we put forth and passed.

And I'm also concerned that The process of getting things in place to begin enforcement, both relating to sellers, but more importantly relating to buyers and to the pimps themselves, is moving a little bit slowly.

And so I would like to, I'm just telegraphing that I will be reaching out to SPD HSD and the mayor's office to set up a meeting so that we can, I think what we need to have is sort of one point person to keep track of all the different pieces and bring it to fruition.

Because we cannot continue to have people feel to brazenly engage in gun violence and feel that there are going to be no consequences for that.

And we need to make sure that the commercial sexual exploitation is being addressed.

It shocks me to have heard that there are many officers in the North Precinct who are unaware of the fact that we actually reinstated the loitering law.

And I'd just like to note for the record that while there is a significant curriculum and training requirement relating to its enforcement around sellers, There is not a similar requirement around enforcement against buyers.

And the emphasis of this bill was to arrest and prosecute buyers as well as those who are doing the exploitation, i.e. the pimps.

And so it concerns me that we've not had the law enforcement who was requesting the reinstatement of this tool has not necessarily been made aware of the fact that it exists or that it's being slow to be implemented.

And I understand that policy has to be written, there's a process, but it's also important for law enforcement to know that we have been responsive to their requests for tools.

Just so that they are aware of that, when constituents ask them about what's going on, they're able to give accurate information as well.

The other interview related to trees.

So we continue to see sort of the indiscriminate cutting of trees relating to development.

And unfortunately, the tree ordinance, that piece of the tree ordinance continues to not work well.

We had Legacy Capital, who has been a repeat violator of the tree ordinance, again engaged in I would go so far as to say, certainly they did not comply with the requirements for notice.

It was only because of the efforts of alert neighbors that several trees were not illegally cut down.

So this remains a problem, and this is an issue that I've committed to addressing.

I know that we will have the opportunity through our comp plan to begin to discuss trees, but I'm also thinking that we need to do something sooner than just the lengthy comp plan because we are losing trees at too rapid a rate in terms of private development.

And it is undermining our very good goals of increasing our tree canopy across the city, particularly in the south end and on private land.

And so again, I remain concerned about what's happening at SDCI, either not having sufficient staff or commitment to being able to be responsive when they are notified of potential violations.

not getting people out to the site on time to look at what's happening.

Actors such as Legacy Capital who seem to be the ones who reoccurringly show up with these sort of attempts to circumvent the parts of the tree ordinance that are there to protect and provide due diligence and notice.

continue to be able to act without much, with sort of a minor slap on the hand, and that's problematic.

So I just wanted to bring that up.

And then the last thing that I will mention is, I don't know, given today is January 6th, the certification of the federal election, national election, Over the holiday, I was reading an article where noted that Steve Miller, who is going to be Trump's Deputy Secretary of Policy, his America First organization had sent out a letter to 259 jurisdictions and representatives who are in what we quote unquote called sanctuary cities, threatening all of us with arrest and prosecution should we implement our municipal law.

and those who we asked to implement those laws.

I looked at every single letter.

Seattle was not listed there, but Washington was, and I'm not sure if that's because Washington has a state law and many of the other jurisdictions were municipal jurisdictions.

But I found it deeply troubling, needless to say.

I'm not sure that it could legally be implemented, but the fact that a member of the Trump administration feels at liberty to send a threatening letter to elected representatives who are simply executing their responsibilities as they were duly elected to do so, I find deeply, deeply troubling.

And I am going to make an official request again that we have a council briefing, and maybe it needs to be an executive session.

I want to hear from our city attorney.

What does this mean to have this letter sent to jurisdictions that qualify or constitute sanctuary cities?

And I also want to know, what are we looking at going forward in our relationships and interactions with the Trump administration around immigration?

We have an active protective, we have an Office of Immigrant and Refugees Affairs.

We are actively resettling people.

And I feel completely at a loss in terms of how are we prepared to deal with the executive order that I anticipate will be coming in short order mandating mass deportations.

And I also want to know how we're going to be dealing with housing funding.

Do we have, is our funding going to be threatened based on what we are simply doing here as we believe?

as our laws require and as we've been elected to do so.

So I am respectfully requesting, Council President, that we have some kind of briefing along those concerns.

And if I have no questions, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for mentioning that.

We have, my office has been in communication with your office and council member Rivera and the mayor's office to respond to your requests for information about how are we responding at the state and federal, how are we responding to federal actions here locally?

And then also specifically when it .

when it comes to immigration, et cetera.

So I have two council members that I am responding to and it's just a question of what is the date of that briefing with OIR and provisionally it is, we're thinking about on the 13th and then possibly also followed by an executive session.

So it's all being worked out and I'll be letting you know more.

I'll just add, thank you, Council President, that I did have a conversation with the mayor's office because I had requested our Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to come to committee, since it's under the committee that I chair.

And the conversation was it was best had that at a full council so we all would hear the information and that OIR would come and then OIR could come as a part of that, but just a more holistic on all the items that you just talked about.

So that was requested and now this is how it's come to, a bigger thing, a bigger, a broader, I shouldn't say bigger, a broader to the full council session.

Just a second.

Council member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

I wanted to thank Council Member Moore for her remarks on different pieces to include the sexual exploitation in the SOAP bill.

And to Council Member Strauss's point, if we don't follow up, it just ends up being a piece of paper.

So in that order, I just happen to be scheduled to meet with Chief Rohrer on Wednesday.

I'm already going to be asking, but I would say to you that, and as you said, kind of telegraph a bit, that I will ask about what we did in 24. And I'll start off with soap.

and then soda, and then the technology, ALPR, CCTV, and RTCC, how that's coming along.

For council president, I'll ask about recruitment and incentives, and along with street racing, which I think I heard this weekend at 6 o'clock in the morning from my house.

SO JUST TO FOLLOW UP IN TERMS OF WHERE WE ARE WITH THOSE BILLS AND THESE PIECES IN PLACE, BECAUSE IT IS SUPER IMPORTANT THAT WE DO SO, BECAUSE IF WE WANT TO MAKE MORE PROGRESS IN 2025, THESE PIECES NEED TO BE BUTT IN PLACE AND THEN, YOU KNOW, TO FULL EFFECT.

SO THANK YOU, COUNCILMEMBER MOORE, FOR BRINGING THAT UP.

AND BY THE WAY, SINCE I MENTIONED CHIEF WORE, We will have Chief Barnes as well.

I did meet with him in November.

And once we get dates that we'll be working out as well.

Sorry for not mentioning that earlier.

All right, well, let's just continue this theme here.

I'll talk about what's happening in my committee, which is this Thursday in a moment.

But I do want to note, you know, it seems like we are engaged somewhat of a public safety committee meeting.

And I do want to note the press release that I sent out this morning on behalf of, well, as from the office of the president urging continued focus on public safety in 2025 after record number of bills passed in 2024. And so we've spoken about some of those.

I sent that out today because it does coincide with the receipt of an email from Adam Schaffer in the executives today, basically sending down the paperwork, making it official as of January 25th that we will have an acting chief of police in Sean Barnes.

And so now is the time not to rest on our laurels, but to to build on our momentum as the legislative body.

We can pass the laws, they need to be implemented.

And so this press release was basically saying, and it came with a...

a list of 14 public safety related pieces of legislation that council passed last year.

And it is the basic message is simply, okay, we passed this legislation, we need to keep our foot on the pedal in moving forward on public safety.

We are not done yet.

And we need to work well with the executive.

And I was personally welcoming acting Chief Barnes and just saying that council serves, council is here as a willing partner in making our city a safer place.

And in this press release, I do mention the soda and soap legislation that was passed and I note that it is now up to the municipal court judges and SPD officers to implement.

And so, you know, we all have to do our part here.

And so I do recommend that people read that, take a look at the list of legislation that was passed in 2024. And I look forward to continuing our focus on that.

Thank you very much, council member and also public safety chair Kettle for contributing a quote in that press release, because as we've discussed all afternoon, this is top of mind, even though we've got A HUGE PROJECT ON OUR PLATE WHICH IS THE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN UPDATE AND FILLING OF THE DISTRICT 2 VACANCY PUBLIC SAFETY REMAINS OUR CORE RESPONSIBILITY AND WE CANNOT UM WE CAN'T WE WOULDN'T LOSE FOCUS I'M SURE BUT WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE ALWAYS THINKING ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING IS INTERCONNECTED IN WHAT WE DO UM SO AND IN ALL OF OUR ACTIONS AS I SAID ALSO IN OUR EXTERNAL COMMITTEES SO All right, as I said, this Thursday we'll have our first meeting of the Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee at two o'clock on Thursday.

And we'll be having our second discussion and possible vote on the Q4 Employment Ordinance.

If you remember, we had our first discussion at our last meeting last year, and I'm looking toward a possible vote, but I will check with you, Council Member Rivera, to make sure that you've gotten your questions answered because you had some, so I wanna respect that as well.

And then also one thing I'm very much looking forward to and excited about, we'll be having a round table discussion with a panel of respected and experienced architects of commercial, residential, and mixed use projects of all different sizes to discuss persistent problems with our permitting processes.

And this is at the behest of Jim Graham, founder of the world famous Graham Baba Architects.

And the list of presenters will be finalized later on this afternoon.

But why is this important?

It's important because whether you're trying to remodel a kitchen or build a mixed use project in one of our neighborhood districts or get them up, approved, it seems as though some of the same problems keep coming up over and over again with permitting.

Common complaints is that there is no, there is a lack of predictability about when all the permits will be approved and there seems to be some, you know, the iterations of corrections And those are just a couple of the systemic problems that we've had.

We have had an audit on our permitting system and that has been presented as well to council and this group within this.

So this falls in the accountability department and we've got some industry experts that are coming to just make sure that we're focused on some of the things that are holding up their work and economic activity in the city.

and some practical recommendations that we might be able to follow through on.

And I have spoken with Marco Lowe in the mayor's office, our CEO of the city.

And so it's not as though he is unaware of this and he is going forward with alacrity as well.

So that will be an interesting discussion.

And I invite folks who aren't on the committee to also participate.

You're very welcome.

All right, I'm gonna skip everything else I was gonna say because it is 3.37 and we do have an executive session today.

But hold on a second, I just wanna make sure that I'm not saying something.

Wait a minute, please, I'm making sure that I'm catching.

Oh, one more thing.

Coming up this week, I will be emceeing the legislative employee service recognition ceremony, and I look forward to honoring the service of our long-time staff.

So that is coming up this Thursday.

Of course, you're all welcome, and I hope to see you there.

Yes.

Thank you, Council President.

Just noting for the record, I don't need a response.

I'm just stating for colleagues point of information, which is that I have never in the past seen a body of work removed from a committee and placed in another committee.

I believe that your panel that you're going to have, it sounds absolutely perfect.

It is absolutely supposed to go to the land use committee.

I'll just leave it at that.

This is a practice that I've seen employed a couple of times, and I'm just going to raise it every time that I'm seeing it happen.

Well, this, I, I, disagree that this is an irregular practice.

It's all in how you look at an issue.

Like I've said, we've had public safety issues in my committee.

One of the themes of our discussion is that things seem to be all connected.

And if you are perceiving this as a slight or as going outside my bounds, I will simply say that the title of my committee is Governance, Accountability and Economic Development.

And as I noted, our issues with permitting do slow economic activity.

And this is an accountability issue because if things aren't getting better, even though they have been addressed in another committee, it is our responsibility as an oversight body to make sure that we're doing absolutely everything that we can to improve our city's processes.

Is there anything else that people would like to say?

Okay, if there is no further business, we'll now move into the executive session.

Hearing no further business, it's now time.

I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will convene into executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

The council's executive session is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open discussion.

And so I expect this, the time of the executive session to end by 4 40 PM.

It's always given an hour.

It could end earlier than that.

If it does, um, the, this meeting will end automatically, but if the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I will announce the extension at the end, the expected duration.

All right.

So the council briefing meeting will officially adjourn and the next regularly scheduled council briefing meeting is on January 13th, 2025 at 2pm.

Thank you very much, everybody.

See you in a few minutes.