Seattle City Council Briefing 12/4/23

Today is December 4th, 2023. I'm Sarah Nelson, Council President Pro Tem.

The council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.01.

Will the clerk please call the roll, starting with Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council President Pro Tem Nelson.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

Moving on.

If there is no objection, the minutes of November 27th, 2023 will be adopted.

Seeing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Onto the president's report.

Today we have no presentations or proclamations.

We'll begin with a presentation on the city's federal legislative agenda by the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

A copy of the PowerPoint was included with this agenda and was published last week.

Following the presentation on the federal legislative agenda, we'll have individual reports from council members.

We will start with council member Peterson.

Marsha Croninger, Tomorrow's Council meeting December 5 will include an appointment to the renters Commission, which is on the consent account on the consent calendar and will also consider the appointment of colleague Morton Mortensen.

Ellis to be Executive Director of the Community Police Commission.

This appointment was recommended unanimously by the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

In addition, Council Bill 120714, legislation transferring the former Dumar-Rutt substation to the Office of Housing will also be considered, and Council Member Herbold, Chair of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, will speak to both of those.

We'll then be considering legislation which was sent directly to full council for consideration without committee recommendation.

These include the fourth quarter 2023 employment ordinance.

Council member Peterson will be speaking to this tomorrow.

We'll also be considering an MOU between the city of Seattle and the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

Council Member Herbold will speak to this.

And then in addition, tomorrow, the Council will consider a resolution creating the 2023 Housing Levy Oversight Committee and the appointments of 13 members to the Oversight Committee.

This resolution and these appointments were referred directly to full Council and did not receive committee review.

Council Member Mosqueda will speak to these items.

And then finally, tomorrow, the Council will consider three items recommended unanimously by the Select Budget Committee, including a resolution updating the biennial budget process, a bill establishing fiscal transparency program, and a bill establishing contracting requirements for human service provider pay.

And then Council Member Mosqueda will speak to all of those.

And as a reminder, on Thursday, December 7th, we'll be having our next select committee on climate action beginning at 930. Councilmember Herbold will be chairing this meeting, which is the second in two meetings.

Councilmember Herbold will be speaking more to this upcoming agenda.

And then finally, we'll have the final council briefing meeting of the year next Monday, December 11th.

OIR will be presenting the city state legislative agenda at that meeting.

Our final council meeting of the year will be Tuesday, December 12th.

And information about all of these meetings will be available online in advance of the meetings.

All right.

There are no proclamations or letters to sign today, so we'll move on to item four, which is the federal legislative update.

Today, I would like to welcome Gail Tarleton, Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Gail is joined by Deputy Director Sierra Howlett Brown and Federal Relations Director Michelle Nance, as well as Leslie Pollner from Holland & Knight.

They will be presenting the federal legislative agenda, and that PowerPoint was published last week with this agenda.

Our federal legislative agenda guides our work with our congressional delegation.

Director Tarleton, thank you so much for being here with your team today.

Welcome, and I'll let you take it away from here.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem Nelson, and to all of the members of the Council.

It's hard to believe that here we are at the end of 2023, providing you a a presentation on the 2024 federal legislative agenda and programs, and also an update on all things interesting happening in Washington DC with our US Congress.

But I just want to have a note of thanks to all of you for your extraordinary engagement and your support to the Office of Intergovernmental Relations team and to our federal lobbyist at Holland & Knight, Leslie Pollner.

It's been quite an extraordinary time and Your engagement on short notice with longer-term lead times, helping us navigate the situation in Washington, D.C., has been imperative, and I know our congressional delegation really appreciates it.

So with that, I will introduce Michelle Nance, who is our Federal Affairs Director, and she will kick it off and drive the train with Leslie to give you an update on what comes in 2024. Go ahead, Michelle.

Thank you.

Hi, everyone.

Thank you all for taking the time.

I'm going to be giving a federal update today, along with our amazing federal lobbyist, Leslie Polner.

Thank you, Leslie, for joining.

And we know that many of you will be moving on at the end of this year.

So we wanted to give you a final lay of the land.

And also, as Director Tarleton mentioned, also wanted to thank you all so much for everything you've done at the federal level and with our congressional delegation.

You all have been very present and really helped us engage with them, and it's been so helpful for all of us.

I am going to be sharing my screen here.

Let me know if you are able to see it.

Does that work for everyone?

Also, I can't see people.

So if you could just let me know.

Michelle, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

I'm going to be going through this a little, yeah, without, without seeing everyone.

So if anyone is raising their hand, please just interrupt me, but I'm going to, first of all, just start by going through the agenda really quickly.

So Leslie is going to give an update on the federal, the 2024 appropriations package, and also some other key legislation in Congress.

Then I'm gonna talk about at a high level, what we've been doing on the federal funding level, specifically talking about the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and earmarks, and then also federal engagement as well, like the tours and briefings and meetings that we've been organizing with our congressional delegation.

And then Leslie is gonna end with the political landscape as we head into next year, the 2024 elections.

And then we'll end with any questions.

And if you have any questions throughout, feel free to interrupt us and just, if I'm the one talking and I'm not able to see you because of the slides, just please someone interrupt me and we can definitely stop for it then or talk about it at the end.

We weren't planning on going through the federal, the 2024 federal goals.

I know I've met with many of you already and we're currently in the process of updating those federal goals.

We hope to have them, the final version ready in early January.

So once we have that finalized, we'll send it to you all.

Thank you all so much for your feedback on that.

We're just in the final phases right now of getting it all ready.

But for now, I will turn it over to Leslie.

Thanks so much, Michelle.

And thank you, Gail and President Pro Tem Nelson.

And before I start, I just want to also echo my thanks, not only for this past session, but for many of you.

We've had the opportunity to work together, whether that's been in Washington, D.C.

or in the city of Seattle for many, many years through some very challenging times.

And I just really want to say how much it's been an honor and a true privilege to get to work so closely with many of you and how much I will miss all of you that are leaving and coming off the council.

So again, just echoing my deep appreciation and thanks.

And with that, let me turn to the mess that is Congress.

It never fails to disappoint.

But so first and foremost is really the federal budget and appropriations.

As many of you will recall, there was a debt ceiling deal that Congress and the president agreed to in June that set high level spending marks for the FY24 appropriations.

The Senate continued to mark up their bills to those agreed upon levels.

The House did not.

The House decided to go lower.

And as a result, it's been very challenging to reach any kind of agreement.

on the appropriations bills.

And so you've seen several deadlines now come and go.

There's been threats of shutdown, but so there have been numerous extensions that have been granted.

The most recent one that just was agreed upon just a few weeks ago, divide appropriations, the 12 appropriations bills into two tranches.

One set of bills will expire on January 19th.

The second set of bills will expire on February 2nd.

That's a really unconventional approach.

I can't recall it ever being done in two tranches.

And so what you're seeing now is the House and Senate trying to come to some agreed upon level.

And so there has been a tiny bit of progress here that happened just this weekend, where you actually saw the leadership of the Freedom Caucus in the House, which has been the most conservative arm, say that they actually could agree to the debt ceiling levels that had been agreed to in June.

Again, those levels are lower than any of us would like to see, but they are higher than what the House had been proposing.

And if you could get at least some agreement on that level, that's a very important first step into getting to some kind of final resolution by this January and February date.

Next slide.

And so what you've been seeing, though, is even within the House, and I think it's particularly notable here, If even within the House, they have not been able to pass appropriations bills separately, because even within the Republican Party, there has been disagreement about what the right spending levels are, what the cuts are.

And so, as you can see, there have been very few bills that have actually made it through the House and only one bill that has passed both chambers.

And so we've got a long way to go.

I think you'll continue throughout the coming weeks to hear about the possibility of a government shutdown.

Hopefully this bid by the Freedom Caucus is an important first step to not having that, but it remains very dynamic and precarious.

Excellent.

There's a number of additional pending items.

And of course, with appropriations taking up so much space, it's a little tricky to get to this.

Top of mind, of course, is the president's supplemental funding request, which would provide funding for Ukraine and Israel.

Over the weekend, the Senate Democrats had been working on trying to work on a bipartisan basis to come up with a border package that would accompany Ukraine and Israel spending because that was a demand made by House Republicans.

Those discussions have failed, and at this point, Leader Schumer is saying he may just go ahead and put the supplemental funding requests on the Senate floor to try to move this forward and negotiate on that at a later point.

The president also made a request for a number of domestic priorities, including funding to address fentanyl, funding to address the expiring affordable connectivity program, which has been very important in Seattle.

None of those are going to be taken up at this time.

um because they are very focused on trying to get ukraine and israel through and of course the larger appropriations funding uh looms in the background as well for domestic priorities on the national defense authorization act that's an annual bill it looks like they're going to get to agreement on that and that they may be able to move forward with that before the holidays on the farm bill they've given themselves an additional you know Almost 12 months, 10 months to negotiate that.

I will just note, just because I know nutrition programs have been important to the city and the city's been a leader here.

That House Republicans have been demanding cuts to snap, which is a non starter for Senate Democrats.

And so.

I think this is going to be, given the current makeup of Congress, this will be a tough one to get through.

And in some ways, an extension may be better until we have better, more favorable dynamics.

And finally, on the FAA, the FAA has been extended the reauthorization bill.

This is for the Federal Aviation Administration.

That bill was extended through December 31st.

They are nowhere close to having a final deal.

They are going to do another extension likely through March 8th.

so a lot to get done but front and center of course is appropriations thank you leslie and so now i am going to walk through our efforts at a very high level um to coordinate and go after as much federal funding as possible and there are two main buckets that i'm going to talk about first of all the bipartisan infrastructure law and inflation reduction act and then secondly earmarks on the bipartisan infrastructure law and inflation reduction act I'm going to go into this in more detail, but just at a very high level, what the bottom line is, the total number of awards that we've received at the city since May 2022, last year, 21 awards, and they've totaled about $95 million.

And some of these awards are spread out over multiple years, but it's nearly $100 million.

And then in terms of earmarks, you You will hear this called congressionally directed spending in the Senate and then also community project funding in the House, but just going to combine it and call it earmarks here to make it simpler.

For the fiscal year 23 appropriations package we received $5 million in earmarks and then for this upcoming year for the fiscal year 2024 We have about $7.2 million in earmarks that have moved forward so far, but these are not final yet.

And it's part of the overall 2024 appropriations package that Leslie was talking about.

So we will see what ends up happening with them, but this is the amount that so far has moved forward.

And I'll walk through the projects too in a bit once we get to that section.

Diving in a little bit more into the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.

So the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is also known, you might hear it called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

It was signed into law just a little over two years ago.

It provides $1.2 trillion over five years in infrastructure spending.

And there's $550 billion in new spending as part of that.

And then the Inflation Reduction Act, this is President Biden's landmark climate legislation signed into law last August.

It authorizes $400 billion in spending on climate investments, and it also lowers health care and energy costs.

And just really quickly on these two points, we have a group that's been coordinated by David Kim in our office and also William Chen in CBO.

They call it the Bill IRA Core Group, and they have been working to coordinate all of the funding, all the grants that we've been going after at the city to make sure that we know what everyone's doing and also make sure that none of the departments are competing as well in their applications.

And they've been doing a great job on that.

One interesting piece about the Inflation Reduction Act as well is it doesn't just give funding through grant programs.

It also gives funding through tax credits.

And there are these pre-existing programs clean energy tax credits that we were not able to apply for in the past, but through the Inflation Reduction Act, it expanded these credits so that local governments are now eligible.

So we have a small working group that we started to figure all of this out with both the city attorney's office, CBO, finance team, Essentially, we're waiting for a lot more information right now from the federal government, but we're trying to get everything in motion so that as soon as the registration portal opens up, we're ready to apply for these tax credits.

And they just, in general, cover solar, wind, and batteries.

I'm going to walk through the next few slides, which show the grants that have been awarded so far.

I'm not going to go through every single grant because that would take a long time, but just wanted to highlight a few specific ones.

You can see here Safe Streets for All, the third row down, and that was over $25 million that we received earlier this year.

That is for traffic safety improvements, mainly in the Rainier Beach area, Soto, downtown, and also University District area.

But this includes improvements such as adding protected bike lanes, adding ADA accessibility to the roads, things that really help further our Vision Zero, overall Vision Zero plan.

And this is another slide.

I'm going to skip over to this one here.

Another one I wanted to point out is the All Stations Accessibility Program.

This is $15 million for renovating the Seattle Center monorail station and then the next one here i wanted to point out this last one it's the urban and community forestry program this is funding for community-driven urban forestry and job training and also to improve the delridge native forest garden and that's 12.9 million dollars and i wanted to point that one out because this is actually the first award we've received through the Inflation Reduction Act.

So the funding is just now starting to trickle out through the Inflation Reduction Act programs.

This is the first one that we received.

We're so really excited about that, but it's really early on in the funding that's coming through that pipeline.

So you can stay tuned for more on that.

Then I'm going to just quickly go through the earmarks too.

I think you all are familiar, but Just to make sure everyone's on the same page, earmarks are essentially federal funding for a governmental entity or a nonprofit to carry out a specific community project.

We really love them because they can be a little more flexible than the grant programs.

They're requested by members of Congress.

And as I mentioned earlier, they have two different names, Congressionally Directed Spending and Community Project Funding.

So our congressional delegation has moved forward four different earmark project requests for us this year.

We're really, really grateful to all of them for this.

And I'm just going to walk through at a high level what each of them are.

So the Care Department pilot program funding to help stand that up, both Congressman Smith and Congresswoman Jayapal moved that forward.

Then the next one is South Park stormwater improvements to essentially add a formal drainage system in much of South Park.

because much of South Park doesn't have that right now.

That was moved forward by both Senator Murray and Senator Cantwell.

The next one is South Park Passive House Multifamily Development.

You might hear it called the Henderson Street Project.

That was moved forward by Congresswoman Jayapal.

And then she also moved forward seismic upgrades to the University Branch Library.

And just to reiterate again, these landmarks are, you know, not finalized at all.

We'll see if they end up getting included in the overall appropriations package if Congress ends up actually passing it.

But this is what has moved forward so far through the process.

And then there's one last slide here.

We do a lot of tours and briefings and meetings with our congressional delegation and with our staff.

You all know this, but we have an amazing congressional delegation.

We are so lucky here in Seattle.

And their staff really take a lot of time to learn about what the city of Seattle's priorities are and to go on tours and hear briefings on different things.

So if there's ever anything you want to showcase for our federal delegation, just let me know.

Our departments are really great partners in all of this too and have helped lead these tours and briefings.

And this is just a sample of some of them, not a comprehensive list.

But now I'm going to turn it over to Leslie to talk through the political landscape.

I'll just spend a brief moment here, but needless to say, November 2024 will be a very big election.

We've got all the House seats up and 34 of the 100 Senate seats will be up.

And so, you know, in particular, I think the House is interesting, given the very, very narrow majority that Republicans currently have.

I think there is a lot of focus right now on the seats in New York and California as possible pickups for Democrats.

I think just to give you a quick, you know, the mood here is that the House is very much within reach for Democrats.

I think the Senate is a more complicated map, and I'll just show that in a moment.

But next slide.

So just to give you a flavor, not to run through any of this in great detail, but you're seeing a number of competitive races.

There have been an extraordinary number of retirements, even since Michelle and I put this deck together.

There have been a few additional folks that have announced that they are done.

Understandable.

But I think there is a real thought that the Democrats might be able to take over the House in November.

Next slide.

And then the Senate is a trickier map.

You've got far more Democratic seats that are up.

You know, you've obviously seen Manchin announced that he will not be running for reelection.

I think that will be a very, very challenging seat for Democrats to hold.

But, you know, we'll see with having the president at the top of the ticket, if that ends up helping in some of the key swing states as well.

Next slide.

I think with that, we'll take any questions.

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions here, but feel free if you if you think of some.

Oh, there we go.

Council member herbal.

Thank you.

I thought of something.

The request for federal funds for ReConnect South Park.

Can you talk a little bit about where that is in the process?

Yeah, so that is a planning grant.

It's not for any actual construction, but it is for planning.

My understanding, I don't think we've actually received the funds yet.

We were told that we were awarded it, but I know it's been a process.

to actually get the funds.

So I don't think we've gotten those funds yet, but I do know that the Reconnecting South Park team has been still working throughout this time.

And I know they put together a vision map that's online.

Maybe you've already seen it, Council Member Herbal, but I know that that was the latest step that I heard from them.

And then I think a month or two ago, they had a community gathering, a community stakeholder meeting to hear from people.

But that is really the extent that I know.

I'm happy to follow up, though, with you if more information would be helpful.

I wanted to confirm that the funds aren't among the funds that are being held up.

They have been approved.

That's what I was looking for.

Yeah, it's been approved.

I don't know if they've received them yet.

I think my understanding is .

I understand that.

I just wasn't sure.

They were appropriate.

Okay, perfect.

They were appropriate.

Okay, I have one question about page seven it's there was mentioned of lowering health care costs.

Was that referring to increasing medicaid reimbursement so was that something else, and if that's a big long conversation, then we can talk about it later.

It is not Leslie you want to go for it.

I was, it's not, it's not related to Medicaid reimbursements.

A lot of it had to do with prescription drug pricing.

And we can certainly send you a summary if that's helpful.

Okay.

Thanks.

Okay.

If there aren't any other questions, I'm not seeing any.

Thank you very much, OIR team.

We feel for you.

Go through back there.

Thank you for all the hard work.

And we'll be in touch.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council President.

Have a great holiday and be safe, everybody.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

All right.

We will begin our next discussion on the preview of the City Council Actions Council and regional committees.

So this is where we go around.

It's hard to remember when you had kind of a regular briefings before, but 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 pro tem called last.

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

Councilmember Peterson, please begin and then hand it over to Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem Nelson.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

There are no items from our Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee on the full Council agenda tomorrow afternoon.

On tomorrow's agenda, there will be one item related to the Governance Committee, Council 120709, since our esteemed committee chair council president Juarez is excused tomorrow afternoon I'll be speaking to it as vice chair council bill 120709 is the fourth quarter 2023 employment ordinance our central staff analyst for these matters Karina Bull has indicated that the council is relatively standard if you have any questions please contact Karina Bull on central staff again that's council 120709 Our final meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, December 5, at 9.30 a.m.

We will have a packed agenda as we strive to complete several items requested by the two departments, SDOT and SBU, before the end of the calendar year and before the final council meeting on December 12. We will attempt to move quickly through the items to be able to adjourn by noon.

However, I ask that committee members reserve time until 12.30 p.m.

in case the meeting runs long.

Here's a preview of some of these items.

At our December 5 committee meeting tomorrow, we will vote on two reappointments to the MOVE Seattle Levy Oversight Committee.

While that levy is expiring next year, its original authorization ordinance still requires ongoing oversight.

In addition to those reappointments, we'll hear from leaders of our Moved Seattle Levy Oversight Committee who will provide a high-level preview of their forthcoming recommendations on a potential new capital spending package for transportation.

That formal input of the Oversight Committee is required by Section 9 of the original Ordinance 124796, approved in 2015 for that nine-year, $930 million property tax levy.

as required by that ordinance between january 1 and april 30 of 2024 the oversight committee is requested to make a recommendation to the mayor and city council regarding the advisability of proposing to the voters of seattle another levy to authorize additional property taxes for implementation of transportation improvements the factors to be considered by the oversight committee in making any such recommendations will include but are not limited to the city's success in project implementation including its ability to manage and control project costs the availability of alternative revenue sources that provide a more direct link between the tax or fee paid and the use of the city's transportation system and the underlying need for funding to support the uses identified in section six that's safe routes, congestion relief, and repair maintenance.

The mayor and the council will consider any timely recommendations that may have been made by the oversight committee.

So that's in the actual ordinance.

So during our committee tomorrow, we'll receive a high-level preview of their forthcoming recommendations.

our committee will also consider a few other updates from the seattle department of transportation including railroad agreement updates final approval for an alley vacation a bill clarifying indemnification provisions of title 15 of our seattle municipal code an easement acceptance from the Washington State Department of Transportation, an agreement with local tribal governments regarding the columns of the West Seattle Bridge, and a potential briefing, well actually a briefing confirmed on the asset management plan for city-owned bridges.

For more information, Calvin Chow has written three memos that cover six items of legislation.

These memos were circulated in an email, I believe on Monday, November 27, and you can find them attached to the agenda.

There will also be two technical amendments, one for Council Bill 120713 and the other for 120715 that Calvin will walk us through.

Council 120724 is a street vacation in District 4 that returns to our committee for final approval.

SDOT will be at the committee tomorrow to attest that the developer has satisfied all the conditions outlined in the Council's conditional approval, Resolution 314380. For more information, Lish Whitson wrote a memo that he circulated on Tuesday, November 28 from City Council Center staff.

You can find that attached to the agenda as well.

From our Seattle Public Utilities, we will hear their annual Race and Social Justice Initiative report for briefing and discussion.

We will also vote on Resolution 32119, which will designate South Mount Baker Boulevard between 31st Avenue South and 32nd Avenue South as Cheryl Chow Boulevard.

As we know, Cheryl Chow was a school board director and a city council member who spent several decades in various public service roles and as a mentor to countless number of young people.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for sponsoring that resolution.

And finally, we'll take action on Council 120658, also sponsored by Council Member Morales.

The sidewalks legislation is a proposal to require sidewalks to be fixed or installed in conjunction with major street improvement capital projects that are led by SDOT.

A special thank you to Disability Rights Washington for their support of that legislation.

We first heard that item back on September 19th and tomorrow we will vote on it and including a clarifying amendment that was circulated today and is also attached to the agenda.

This past Saturday, December 2nd, we celebrated the first annual Malik Davis Day.

As you may recall, the larger than life legislative assistant Malik Davis passed away at his home on February 21st earlier this year.

His family and I are very grateful that on March 13, this council and the mayor signed the proclamation celebrating Malik's life and designating his birthday December 2nd as Malik Davis Day.

The proclamation we approved deliberately had no year on it, so it can be easily continued to be celebrated each year in the future.

Malik Davis began his legendary work for Seattle City Government with Seattle Public Utilities back in 1998 before serving as a legislative aide for City Council President Margaret Pageler.

After working for his beloved University of Washington and a local nonprofit that helped people experiencing homelessness, Malik returned to City Council to work with my office.

I'm forever grateful that I was able to spend that time with him.

Malik's enthusiastic spirit lives on in his family as well as with his neighbors, colleagues, and friends who always remember and hopefully pass along his lovable life lessons.

Finally, in District 4, if you're looking for some bright holiday cheer during the rest of December, you can visit the world-famous Candy Cane Lane.

As you may know, this annual blaze of lights and decorations is open to everyone and located at the corner of Northeast Ravenna Boulevard and Park Road Northeast.

For decades, Candy Cane Lane has provided peace and good tidings and great joy throughout the holiday season, especially the tiny tots with their eyes all aglow.

This concludes my report.

Any questions before we move forward to Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I just wanted to check in with you regarding your culturally modified tree bill for tomorrow.

How you'd like to proceed with that?

I know we received a communication from the Muckleshoot Tribe expressing a desire to engage further on the bill before we take a vote.

Mark Warren, Yes, we received an endorsement from the agenda advisory Council, and then we also got a letter that you referenced and the office of intergovernmental relations is engaged with Michael shoot and it would be on next week's agenda if we were to hear it, but not tomorrow.

Mark Warren, So we have already from the fifth until next week at the earliest.

Mark Warren, yeah it's not on tomorrow's agenda.

Mark Warren, Okay, great well keep following up with you offline.

Any other questions?

If not, pass it over to Councilmember Sawant.

I don't think she's here.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I'm looking for this going.

Yep.

Councilmember Strauss, go ahead.

Sorry.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem Nelson.

There are no items from the Land Use Committee on tomorrow's full City Council agenda.

Matthew Shackley, In our, as you all know, I like to have bills before my committee twice before voting them out, and so we look at.

Matthew Shackley, This set of meetings post budget pre end of the year, we have a number of different things that we're working on, so we have two bills.

One is a master use permit extension bill, which we and then the second is a maritime and industrial zoning change for medical exemptions.

So those two bills were heard in committee last week.

They will be heard in committee this Friday, and we will need to suspend the rules for both of those bills to allow a vote on the same day as a public hearing.

as well as voting all of the bills that i'm about to talk about voting on to suspend the rules to allow them to be voted out of committee and sent to the next full council because the meeting is after thursday at noon the other items that we've been working on is the transportation resolution regarding the maritime and industrial zoning changes my office has we are almost finished wrapping up stakeholder outreach we should be complete by tomorrow for the maritime transportation resolution we plan to get this information out in the public so that there's no confusion i know last time it was scheduled for a full council hearing folks in the community didn't realize that we had a substitute bill as a draft as a change for that resolution and so i want to make sure everyone has access to the full information before we bring it to full council In this week's land use committee, we are in this set of meetings.

We also have a contract rezone set for this upcoming meeting.

We do have some design review board and equitable development initiative reappointment.

So design review board appointments and EDI reappointment.

We haven't gotten a full, we haven't gotten all of the appointments transmitted to us.

And so we're going to make a determination on whether to send them all to full council on the 12th or how to proceed because we'd like to give everyone the equal opportunity to engage.

We also had the permit audit review, the second of two meetings.

We had this in committee on October 20th.

As well as last week, we've had the high-level broad strokes on October 20th, and then this last week we had SDCI at committee to respond.

There were many issues raised.

SDCI specifically has begun to address many of the issues within their purview.

And there are many more departments involved.

We will have the audit team and departments return next year to the Land Use Committee to review the audit together and outline next steps because many of the departments were not able to join us at committee this week.

And so we want to make sure there's an opportunity to engage every single department that touches permits.

Just for people's general awareness, there are also review desks that are outside of the City of Seattle's purview.

So we will in the coming year review each recommendation.

So we're going to go recommendation by recommendation, because if you go back and watch the tape from the two committee hearings, you can see that there is a large depth of information.

I feel like we've only been able to really get the tip of the iceberg.

And so we're going to need some time to go one by one on those recommendations.

This week's meeting will be the second time we hear the two bills in committee as the typical procedure.

Um, and again, we are only hearing, uh, the appointments and possibly hearing the appointments and the contract rezone once in committee as a standard procedure.

So again, needing to suspend the rules to vote the bill out of committee the same day as the public hearing and to send the bills to full council on December 12th since Friday's meeting is past the Thursday noon cutoff.

The next final land use committee of 2023 will be a special meeting this Friday, December 8th at 2 p.m.

we will hear for the second time the master use permit extension which this legislation will extend the life of a master use permit approved for issuance from march 1st 2020 to december 31st 2026 from three years to six years colleagues if you have concern questions or concerns there was a very good graphic in last week's presentation that demonstrates the continuity of people being able to apply for extensions versus just having one long block of the life of that MUP.

I am likely going to be putting forward an amendment to change the start date from March 1st, 2020 to September 1st, 2019, because we know that master use permits take a long time to get issued and then take a really long time to utilize along with the building permits that also need to be issued.

What we know is that this bill is in response to the COVID pandemic, where a lot of assumptions were put on pause in March of 2020. And regarding master use permits, a lot of the assumptions that we had to change in March of 2020 were assumptions that were made possibly years in advance, which is why I'm looking to extend that window by six months.

The second bill we will have in committee this week is regarding industrial and maritime medical use size limits.

This legislation would change the maximum size of use limits for existing medical services within the manufacturing maritime and logistics zone east of Airport Way south within the Duwamish Mic.

One of the reasons that we have had a tight Tight restriction around medical uses in industrial zones is so that we do not displace maritime or industrial sector jobs or uses by large medical facilities.

And so I think that this is a narrowly tailored amendment specifically about existing medical uses.

Again, we have a number of appointments to the design review boards and a reappointment to the Equitable Development Initiative.

As I said a moment ago, because we have only about half of these appointments through the irc this week we'll be making a judgment call whether to send them to full council or to hold the cohort for next year lastly we have the clerk file 314400 which is a contract rezone for 1620 16th avenue from low rise 3 to neighborhood commercial 3 with a 65 foot height limit and this would also come with a property use and development agreement And Council President Pro Tem, that is the report from the Land Use Committee.

Thank you very much.

Let's see.

Council Member Herbold, you're next on the roll call, it looks like.

Appreciate it.

Let's see here.

So for full council tomorrow, we have a couple of items coming from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee and then some other bills as well that I will be speaking to, as mentioned by Council President Pro Tem Nelson.

As far as the legislation coming from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

Two items that we'll be hearing at full council include the appointment of Callie Ellis as the Executive Director of the Community Police Commission.

Interim Director Ellis has been operating as interim director for about a year now.

And she has been brought forward by the CPC itself as their desired appointment.

Secondly, we will be hearing in full council a property transfer for housing development of former Dumar Seattle City Light substation in the Highland Park neighborhood.

This is a piece of property that community has long been interested in making available for affordable housing and some sort of ground floor retail use.

In addition, the items that are not coming from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, but that are on the full council agenda, one of those items is Council Bill 120720, what we have been referring to as a side agreement with Seattle Police Officers Guild that serves as a memorandum of understanding to address several emergent issues related to the old contract that we pulled out from the negotiations on the larger contract in order to just get some resolution on those three issues.

The three issues are allowing response team to have more flexibility to respond to people in mental health crises.

The second is allowing the parks rangers, which are currently limited to downtown parks to operate throughout the city.

And then lastly, it also enhances flexibility to use civilian for special events.

when a sworn officer is not required.

And in exchange for that additional flexibility to SPD to use non-sworn officers, it also accompanies a premium pay bonus in those cases where officers must be used.

Central staff, Director Esther Handy sent us all a memo about the site agreement on Friday.

And just again, as a reminder, this bill is not the overall collective bargaining agreement with SPOG.

The September consent decree ruling by Judge Robart states, if you recall, that the city will be required to submit to the court within 30 days of reaching that tentative agreement, an analysis of the effect of the agreement on SPD's accountability and review systems and implementation of the city's 2017 accountability ordinance.

If you're looking for accountability items in this MOU, you will not find them.

But there is a process in place where the judge is going to review the tentative agreement on the larger contract to determine whether or not we are maintaining compliance and meeting some objectives that the court has identified as important.

Lastly, the last item that the City Council will be hearing tomorrow, not coming from my committee, but coming from the Budget Committee instead, is the bill related to human services contract provider pay, requiring that provider pay, when appropriated by the council or mayor, and identified as wage equity funds, that those dollars be only used for increases for human services workers.

This is in addition to the inflationary adjustments, but the ordinance itself establishes some contracting and reporting requirements regarding the use of such appropriated money to confirm that the funds are being used in a way that is consistent with council intent.

As far as the next and last Public Safety and Human Services Committee, thus far we've got one item on the agenda that's coming up next Tuesday on September 12th, and that will include a lead on the LEAD program and its third quarter metrics.

There's a possibility that we'll have another item on the agenda, but that's the one that we have confirmed thus far.

Next committee report out is the Select Committee on Climate Action.

And many of us, I think most of us were present for the Select Committee on Climate Action meeting last week to hear a briefing on the proposed emissions performance standard legislation.

Thank you so much for being present.

The committee will meet again on Thursday and is scheduled to vote at that time.

And just reporting out that thus far, no amendments were received from council members by the deadline of noon on Friday, but there will be a technical amendment to address an error that council staff identified.

Committee meetings, council meetings aside, just a quick update on last week's regional committee.

On Friday, I attended and chaired the Domestic Violence Prevention Council.

There were two issues covered at that meeting.

One was related to a a presentation of the recommendations from the Seattle Community Responses to Domestic Violence Workgroup.

These recommendations derived from a budget action that I sponsored in 2021 to the Office of Civil Rights to include recommendations on non-criminal legal system responses to domestic violence for individuals who cause harm.

Of the recommendations that we heard about, in the Domestic Violence Prevention Council on Friday.

Just another opportunity from from the presenters, from the workgroup to recognize not only the fact that council passed a budget action to get them moving in the direction that resulted in these recommendations, but that the recommendations themselves were acted on by the council in this budget cycle.

We did provide some funding to partially address some of those recommendations.

And there's, I believe, going to be soon the announcement of another funding opportunity to address the rest of the recommendations.

That's really exciting.

get this program up and running.

The second item on the DVC domestic violence prevention council meeting was a presentation related to implementation of the seek then speak program.

This is an innovative response to the mayor's executive order last year to address the backlog of sexual assault reports in the city.

Things come up this week, I'll be having my regular meeting with Chief Diaz on Thursday.

That was supposed to happen last week.

It's been rescheduled to this week.

And also meeting with Inspector General on Friday.

That's all I've got.

And if there are no questions or comments, seeing none, I'll pass it on to Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Herbold, and definitely looking forward to that next committee for the Select Committee on Climate Change to consider the BEPS legislation again.

So thank you for that update.

I will be hopefully brief with my updates this afternoon.

We will be having our first committee meeting since mid-September on December 6th at 2 p.m.

The items on the PACT agenda have been posted and definitely want to flag that this meeting is likely to go on for a while as the last one of the year with so many items on the agenda.

We will be considering personal guarantee legislation that was first introduced by my office in the late summer.

We will also be receiving presentations on the Race and Social Justice Initiative progress from the Seattle Center and the Seattle Public Libraries and Parks and Recreation.

So we look forward to hearing updates from 2023 on race and social justice initiatives in those respective departments.

We have five reappointments to the Seattle Center Advisory Commission, which will be handled as a consent package.

And we are also going to be hearing an ordinance establishing new appointment terms for the Central Waterfront Oversight Committee and creating additional positions on that committee.

There's going to be an ordinance, finally, relating to utility easements in Magnolia to King County for the purpose of operating a combined sewer overflow pipeline.

So let's stay focused here for the last meeting of the year and look forward to hearing...

from committee members this Wednesday on that agenda.

Finally, our partners at the Seattle Public Library have given me a couple of updates to share with colleagues in the general public.

The Seattle Public Library has selected Rob Gannon as the new Director of Administrative Services.

Rob comes to the library after stints with Seattle Public Schools and King County Metro.

The library is excited for Rob to begin work on December 11th, and thanks Valerie Wonder for filling in as an interim in this critical role over the last several months.

Valerie will be returning to her role as the downtown regional manager for the Seattle Public Library.

With that, colleagues, I don't have any additional updates, and I will pass this along to Councilmember Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

I do have a committee meeting of the Neighborhoods Education, Civil Rights and Culture Committee scheduled for Friday at 930. I am still awaiting confirmation that I will have quorum.

But assuming that we have that, the meeting will be at 930. Friday, we do have 29 items on the agenda, there'll be 26 of appointments to boards and commissions, as well as two executive appointments for the mayor's director candidates at the Office of Arts and Culture and the Department of Neighborhoods.

There will also be a vote on landmark legislation to landmark the pink elephant carwash sign.

If we cannot confirm quorum by Wednesday, it is possible that we will cancel that committee meeting and those appointments will need to be moved to next year.

Tomorrow in the Transportation and Utilities Committee, I have a resolution, as Councilmember Peterson mentioned, to rename a portion of South Mount Baker Boulevard in honor of Cheryl Chao.

We also have sidewalks update to the complete streets ordinance.

Also in tomorrow's committee meeting, we'll have our second discussion and hopefully a vote to update the complete streets ordinance that my office has been working on.

The update would include sidewalk construction and repair in major road repaving projects.

The legislation was developed alongside the Disability Rights Washington Disability Mobility Initiative, Smart Growth America, Commute Seattle, Seattle Neighborhood Greenways, former SDOT Director Sam Zimbabwe, and America Walks.

And the legislation is supported by the American Heart Association.

I do want to thank Council Member Peterson for including it on the agenda tomorrow.

And I'm really looking forward to the conversation and to the legislation moving to full council before the end of the year.

Thank you.

Additionally, as colleagues are aware, my office has been working with the OPCD and the Seattle Within Reach Coalition, a cohort of over 35 community organizations on phase two of the equitable development zoning legislation that we passed earlier this year.

This phase known as the Connected Communities Development Pilot was previewed in my committee before the budget process.

And as a reminder, the legislation would provide several substantial incentives for development of affordable and social housing in areas of the city, the history of racially restrictive covenants and redlining.

So these developments would include equitable development and residential anti-displacement components.

Since drafting began, my office has heard from at least a dozen of at least a dozen different projects that could benefit from this pilot, including just this morning.

We met with an affordable housing developer about two projects in District 2 that could take advantage of this pilot and add hundreds of affordable rental and housing units to the district.

So looking forward to that conversation.

My goal is for the legislation to be introduced into the Land Use Committee.

early in 2024. And then the last piece that we're working on, as colleagues might be aware, my office has been working on legislation that would set parameters for homelessness response during severe weather events.

The legislation is based on a successful program in Edmonton, Alberta.

that prioritizes connection to shelter and services during extreme weather events.

And my goal is for that draft legislation to be ready early next year.

So just wanted to give folks a heads up about some of the things that we're hoping to get done before the end of this year and some of the things that we will be moving into 2024 with.

And any questions about that bill could be directed to Devin Silvernail, my policy director, for more information.

And then finally, my district, my office has been in touch with SDCI this year, several times throughout the year, about a string of fires that have been occurring at vacant buildings, particularly on Rainier over the last few years.

The Boricini's, Burger King, Auto Depot, And just last Tuesday night, there was another fire, this time at the Jumbo Lot, which is at 4220 Rainier Avenue South.

I've received a lot of inquiries about that site in particular, but also kind of the string of events that are happening from constituents regarding any investigation into these fires.

So we are in touch with Seattle Fire Department and with SDCI because these buildings have been vacant for some time.

So we are just trying to make sure that we get briefed on what's happening with those investigations so that we can pass information to constituents.

And those are conversations that will continue so that we can keep everyone informed.

Colleagues, that's all I have.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Just confirming, I am going to be attending your Friday committee.

I'm pretty sure that we communicated that, but I just, since you were talking about it, I wanted to make sure you knew.

I appreciate that.

Good to know.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I'm not seeing any, so I will hand it over to Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning.

Good afternoon.

Everyone.

Thank you so much council member.

Morales colleagues we do have 3 items on the agenda for tomorrow's full council as you'll recall last week on November 30th.

We had our last select budget committee meeting.

We voted out the following items.

This is resolution 32116, which is a resolution related to the city's annual budget process, updating and modifying our, our biennial budget process.

and establishing guidelines for the mid-year changes as well as reporting and data sharing requirements.

It was accompanied by Council Bill 120716, which is an ordinance related to the establishment of a fiscal transparency program.

Basically, these are policy guidelines for the city budget's office and the city as a whole requiring periodic and consistent reporting and monitoring of city budget, financial, and fiscal policy information.

This is in the spirit of providing transparent information in a timely manner to the legislative branch as well as to members of the public as we create the final changes that are necessary for the balanced budget every year.

And as we move to biennial budgeting, whether it's a midyear adjustment or mid biennial adjustment or creating the full two year budget cycle, having access to this information is greatly appreciated.

Again, those two items coupled together.

reflect a handful of the recommendations that came from the statement of legislative intent that I passed in 2022 asking CBO and central staff to work together on updated recommendations to the budgetary process.

So thanks again to CBO and central staff for that work group that they created that led to various recommendations that we have now moved forward.

And lastly, we will have Council 120717, which is an ordinance related to the human service contracts we have listed on that council member herbal as the sponsor.

And this is an item that compliments the work that we did in the budget process, but sets forward a desire to ensure that the human service contracts that that have.

uh received funding from the city in the past that those fund that the funding that goes to human service provider pay is appropriated and increased so that we can have the human service workers have not just an inflationary adjustment but also have the base pay adjusted for so that there is truly a parity being offered in the wages that we are offering and that there is no longer a pay a penalty much more work to be done on that but thank you to council member herbal on council 120717 which we also passed last week we are um now complete with our select budget committee process so thank you so much for all of your work with this uh falls budgetary actions both track one and track two once we vote on those items tomorrow that will complete our budget process for this year We are also finished with our Finance and Housing Committee meetings.

We do not have any meetings for December set, so you can rest assured that any items that are on your calendar that relate to Finance and Housing, those are not active meetings.

We have tried to delete those, but just want to make sure that you've received the notification that those have been canceled.

In addition to that, tomorrow we will have the Housing Levy Oversight Committee appointments and resolutions.

These items went directly to full Council with the successful passage of the 2023 Housing Levy.

The Council now needs to take the next steps of establishing the 2023 Housing Levy Oversight Committee that provides policy advice and oversight of the new levy.

these proposed council and mayoral appointments include 13 new housing levy oversight committee members that will be up for discussion and vote at tomorrow's full council meeting the oversight committee performs a critical role not only in providing governance and accountability for levy programs but also providing advice and input on design and implementation the proposed members have expertise in affordable housing in finance and development and operation and management and behavioral health, residential services and homeless services, as well as policy advocacy and local government.

The committee will be extremely diverse in terms of background and experience with members representing community based organizations, public and private funders, developers, service providers and associations, just to name a few.

Roughly half of the committee served on the previous Housing Levy Oversight Committee, bringing with them valuable experience and continuity to complement the fresh perspectives of members who will be serving on the Levy Oversight Committee for the first time going forward.

In addition to the December 12th meeting that we have coming up, the council will discuss and vote on resolution 32117, which sets the terms of the office of the new 2023 housing levy oversight positions.

As you might remember, the 23 housing levy ordinance required the establishment of the oversight committee and sets out the responsibilities for this committee after approval of the levy by voters.

Again, last week we circulated the list of appointees and the resolution to the floor.

If you have any questions about the appointees, please do not hesitate to reach out to me or Erin House, my chief of staff in our office and lead on all things housing.

If you have questions about the resolution 32117, please reach out to Jennifer Labrack on central staff.

Again, that full list of 13 members has been circulated to you.

Um, I also wanted to note that we have on December 12th, an item that will be coming up and Madam President pro tem.

I just want to provide a quick heads up to folks on that since it will be on next week's.

Docket for vote in our final full council meeting.

On December 12th, there will be three substitute bills that synchronize the city's four-hire legislation with the county's companion legislation that has also just been passed last week.

These will be up for discussion and vote by the full council on December 12th.

FOLKS MIGHT REMEMBER FROM OUR FINANCE AND HOUSING COMMITTEE MEETING, WE DID PASS THOSE OUT OF COMMITTEE PRIOR TO THE BUDGET PROCESS STARTING.

WE HELD THOSE AND DID NOT ADVANCE THOSE TO FULL COUNCIL WAITING FOR THE COUNTY TO ACT AND HARMONIZE THEIR LEGISLATION.

THE COUNTY HAS ACTED AND PASSED THEIR FULL COUNCIL PROCESS.

SO WHAT WE ARE DOING NOW WITH CENTRAL STAFF IS JUST MAKING FINAL TWEAKS TO ADJUST TO WHAT THE COUNTY HAS PASSED.

really the ultimate goal here is to pass a complementary package that does not deviate in policy so thanks to karina bull from central staff for working on the policy again these are three pieces of legislation that propose to modernize and update the city's policy related to for hire taxi cab industry to allow drivers to more successfully complete and increase earnings and the legislation was voted out of the finance committee following a robust discussion and deliberation At 2 of the finance and how's the committee meetings on prior to September 20. Seattle and King County have been working for more than two years.

Over the last several years, we have been working with our partners at King County to streamline and align the taxi industry regulations and the legislation in partnership with the package that King County just passed will accomplish this goal.

Colleagues, the legislation anticipates that the impact of technology, That it the legislation anticipate anticipates impacts of technology on taxi dispatch services and provides guardrails to protect customers and drivers through those transitions.

Including regulating and capping excessive fees, following the finance and housing committee meeting we again held the legislation.

so that King County could pass it.

The city and the county legislative package must be nearly identical.

The county finalized their process on November 8th.

And again, thanks to Karina Bull and Lauren Henry on Seattle Central staff, in addition to the city attorney's office, finance and administrative services, And the King County staff, we have been working to make sure that any needed non-substantive changes are made to the city legislation for your consideration on December 12th.

I believe Karina Bowles circulated that information.

If you do have any questions, please reach out to Karina and she is sending a memo to the full floor of summarizing the harmonization effects of the amendment that we will be considering next week.

Thank you very much, Madam.

President Pro Tem.

And just wanted to flag that for folks as you will be receiving a pretty detailed memo from central staff here soon and not voting on that tomorrow, but next Tuesday, December 12th for our final committee action.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

I believe I am done.

Do I hand it off to you, Madam President?

Yeah, I think so.

Any questions there?

Not seeing any.

Okay, so there are no items from the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee on the agenda tomorrow, and our last meeting of the year on December 12th has been canceled for lack of legislation to process.

Let's see, just a brief report of last week.

Last Thursday, I attended the jam-packed annual Urban League Breakfast and Fundraiser.

And while the special guest was Trevor Noah, I have to say that the highlight for me was hearing of all the great work that the Urban League is doing to provide housing and job jobs and job preparation, and also to meet and listen to the folks that won the awards this past year talk about their work.

So that was a great event.

I encourage anybody to go in future years.

This morning, I joined several community service officers and representatives from AT&T and the Seattle Police Foundation for a volunteer event assembling cold weather kits for SPD to distribute throughout the winter in the city.

This coming week on Wednesday, my staff and I will tour the base of Seattle City Lights Skagit River hydroelectric project and we'll visit the Ross Lake Dam and end our tour with a visit to the George Powerhouse.

So that's way up Highway 20. This is a trip that has been it's taken about two years to actually execute.

So we're really looking forward to that.

And if and I will be that's partially why I will be missing the the the committee meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, in addition to getting back late on Friday.

Let's see.

that's all the detail I have to discuss if there does anybody have any questions about my report okay it looks like we've reached the end of our agenda for today and if nobody has any other business before we wrap up we'll adjourn for the day the time is 312 and this concludes our council briefing meetings you all tomorrow at the full council meeting at 2 p.m thanks everybody bye