Seattle City Council Briefing 5/17/2021

Good morning.

The May 17th, 2021 council briefing will come to order.

I am Lisa Herbold, council president pro tem.

The time is 9 31 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Peterson here.

So want present Strauss present.

Lewis present.

What Alice Mosqueda.

I'm here, thank you.

Very happy to join you all here today.

We'll start with the approval of the minutes.

There are no minutes for approval today.

And I'm going to start off with a short President's Report.

Items on today's agenda include a state eye report from our team at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, a preview of city council actions, council and regional committees, and an executive session.

I want to start today's meeting with recognition of the City Council and entire legislative departments' deep sorrow for the devastating tragedy experienced by our colleague and friend, Council President Lorena Gonzalez and her family.

I cannot comprehend the loss and the grief that they are all feeling losing Mary Lou Williams as mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother.

On behalf of the Council and Legislative Department, I want to extend our thanks to the first responders and the Harborview staff for all that they did in this terrible tragedy and our gratitude for everyone who is offering and providing support to this family that I know so many in our city and elsewhere care for.

We ask that everyone join us in holding this family in your thoughts and your hearts and for those of you of faith in your prayers.

One other item of general interest I'd like to mention before turning it over to our OIR team is Chief Diaz's decision to overturn an OPA finding in case 2020-03-34, otherwise known as the Pink Umbrella case.

In 2007, the Municipal Code has required that if the Chief decides not to follow the OPA's written recommendation on the disposition of an OPA complaint, the Chiefs shall make a written statement of the material reasons for the decision.

These are sometimes referred to as reversal letters.

In his reversal letter responding to the OPA's sustained findings related to the failure to disperse order and use of CS gas and blast balls, he wrote a reversal letter that decisions were made at levels of command above that bore directly on the named employee's action.

And the named employee was carrying out decisions made at a higher rank.

In response, I sent three questions to Chief Diaz asking why this information was not reflected in the investigation, and that if it was known that someone else was giving orders, why did not those individuals who knew that others were giving orders inform the OPA investigators of that information?

I asked, what were those decisions being made at a higher rank or level of command above?

and said that I would have expected that the OPA investigation to reveal this.

I mentioned that if the chief and other officers had this information, it should be made public just as it would have been made public if officers being interviewed as part of the OPA investigation had disclosed this information.

And then finally, I asked how these other the other individuals higher in the chain of command whose actions in this matter would be held accountable for misuse of force and unwanted dispersal order.

The chief replied to these questions, and he's also sent out a statement about his plans moving forward.

He states that there will be accountability for the totality of the incident, and that for this specific investigation and the resulting discipline process, as well as ongoing assessments of what occurred that day, additional information has surfaced which was not included in the OPA investigation and that he anticipates being able to quickly and fully reach a conclusion on who was accountable for the actions on this day.

And so I mention this because I know this is in I think there are still questions about the holding of the named employee.

judgment on that decision based on what we find out about the direction and the orders being given by individuals that are higher up in the chain of command.

And so with that, I think we'll just move on into the next item on the agenda, the State Legislative Report.

Folks joining us today are Dr. Lily Wilson-Kodega, Robin Kosky, Quinn Majewski, and Hannah Smith.

And they will provide an overview of the efforts and successes of the OIR team in advocating for the city's interests in the state legislative session this year.

And with that, I will turn it over to Lily, who I believe will do some introductions.

Thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem Herbold.

Before we dive in, I did notice that Council Member Andrew Lewis may have had his hand up with a question about your president's report.

I don't know if he's still there.

Thank you, Director.

I do not see a raised hand, but maybe that's because it came back down.

It wasn't urgent, Council Member Herbold, but I just wanted to ask a clarification on your report regarding the chief and the discipline of the incident commander during the pink umbrella riot or or rather police use of force on the crowd there in their declaration of a riot.

I I wonder, given with the new evidence, did the chief clarify your question regarding whether the chief is taking it upon himself to conduct this further investigation?

Or is the chief shared the information known to them, but that wasn't known to O.

P. A. With O. P. A.

so OPA can conduct the investigation.

I guess my question is, is the chief conducting an internal investigation, which seems it would be outside of the confines of the system we've set up where we don't expect the police to investigate themselves, we expect OPA to do it.

I'm just kind of curious where that stands and if that was in the answer to your questions.

There is a lack of clarity, I think, in the chief's statement, both in his response to me and the public statement that has been issued.

It refers to being able to quickly and fully reach a conclusion on who was accountable for the actions on this day, references additional information that has surfaced, which which was not included in the original investigation, but does not specifically address the question of the scope of this new investigation, who's conducting it.

And I agree with you, Council Member Lewis, those are really critical questions.

i mean i would just say it's extremely concerning if the police department was in possession of information that was germane to an ongoing investigation of the severity and decided to withhold it from the opa and that has to be something that there needs to be answers to and if they are still maintaining that information uh...

within the confines of SPD and not giving it to OPA, that's something that has to be addressed.

So I just wanted to put that out there.

It may be the case it's all been disclosed, but I would like that clarification from the department.

I know that our briefings here are watched by folks on the executive side, so I anticipate that these comments are enough to put them on notice that I would expect that kind of clarification.

And I think I speak for most of our colleagues here that it seems like some norms are not being followed.

And I would like to know when that information was discovered and how long they held it before they gave it to OPA.

But in any event, thank you.

Those are my only questions.

I appreciate that Councilmember Lewis.

I think you are putting a finer point on I think what was inherent in my original questions of concern and potentially alarm that the fact that there were others involved in the decision to make an order to disperse into decision to use tear gas and blast balls that apparently that was information that was known and was not divulged to the OPA.

But I do want to learn more before I write a judgment, but that potentially is a concern.

Thank you.

All right, so let's turn it over to our friends at the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

And I believe we were going to hear from Director Wilson-Kodega with an opening statement and an outline for today.

Thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem Herbold, council members.

We are before you today with our final sine die report, where we will review the council's 2021 legislative session priorities what bills and major budget items advanced, and what did not ultimately pass during the first session in Washington state to be held primarily online, which there were some concerns about, but turned out to be a remarkably productive one.

The sessions, this session, legislative leadership stated goals were to maintain a focus on four areas of policymaking.

And I think we highlighted that initially when we did our first round of briefings to you all, Those areas were COVID response and recovery, budget and revenue, police reform, and climate.

And they made significant progress in all of these areas, particularly in the context of a primarily virtual session, having advanced many longstanding democratic and progressive priorities, including investing a billion to address the COVID-19 pandemic through things like vaccine access, contact tracing, and public health worker recruitment and testing, over a billion in housing and homelessness, with $658 million specifically allocated for rental assistance and $300 million in capital investments, passing a 7% tax on capital gains in excess of $250K on a razor-thin 25 to 24 vote in the Senate, a longstanding Democratic priority and notably one of Speaker Jenkins as well, advancing several significant criminal justice and police reform bills Robin will review more extensively in her portfolio and report today, as well as a host of investments and support for working families, undocumented workers, and many in the immigrant and refugee community with the creation of a $340 million immigrant relief fund to assist many in our community, excluded from the last rounds of federal aid.

Teresa Mosqueda, Council Member Mosqueda, I think likely worked on this in her time as an advocate in the legislature, but they also finally funded the Working Families Tax Credit, which Hannah Smith will review in more depth in her Human Services portfolio, but just an incredible win for working families there.

And lastly, historic gains were also made in the environmental portfolio with sweeping restrictions on vehicle fuel and greenhouse gas pollution, both the Climate Commitment Act And clean fuel legislation finally advancing and an effort to reduce our state's carbon footprint and redirect those resources to a clean energy economy.

But Quinn will also dive into more extensively in his report on the council's environmental priorities.

In terms of format for today, this will look just slightly different than our regular briefings through the legislative session.

We're going to start focusing on budget with a budget overview.

Quinn starting with a revenue update.

Robin will speak to investments specifically in housing and homelessness for Seattle.

Hannah will go over child care and health care.

And lastly, Quinn will review transportation budget items.

If you all wouldn't mind holding questions until the end of this first part of our report, so we can lump all those budget questions towards the end, we would appreciate that just as many of these areas intersect.

And then after we respond to any questions that you have after we review the budget, then for part two, we will finish with a policy update and we'll go through as we have done through the legislative session with everyone reporting on their individual portfolios.

And if that format sounds good to everyone, I will turn it over to Quinn Majewski, our state relations director, to start us off on budget and revenue.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Lily.

And thank you, council members, for having us here this morning.

To kick things off, we're going to be speaking about the three budgets, the capital, operating, and transportation budgets.

And as Lily outlined, we're going to be talking about some of the major investments there.

We do have a more detailed summary that we provided over email.

We're not going to go through the individual budget items, but we're going to hit the highlights.

And if you have any questions about anything in there, we can address those at the end of our budget section.

So starting off with progressive revenue, the legislature took historic action this session in passing one of the most longstanding proposals for writing some of the upside down nature of our state's tax structure by passing the capital gains tax.

The proposal that they passed is in many ways similar to the ones that we have reported on previously during our updates.

It establishes a 7% tax on capital gains over $250,000 per year for single and joint filers.

That collection will start next year.

It provides a number of exemptions for retirement savings, for all real estate, and for the sale of qualifying small family-owned businesses.

Small family-owned businesses have to be under $10 million in gross receipts annually.

owned by a family member for at least five years prior to the sale, and a family member has to be involved in the operations for at least five of the past 10 years prior to a sale.

The final version that ultimately passed coming out of the conference committee, where the House and Senate sort of get together and agree on the final version of the bill, did add one, not exemption, but one additional deduction.

So up to $100,000 in charitable donations may be deducted from taxes owed for a given year.

So if you donate up to $100,000 to a qualifying charity, then that amount would be deducted from the amount that you owe over $250,000.

And then some changes were made in the final version for where the proceeds are directed.

The first $500 million in annual revenues are deposited into the Education Legacy Trust Fund, specifically for the provision of early learning and child care programs.

The Fair Start program, which is the omnibus child care legislation that Hanna will speak to, is not specifically named here, but it is the intent to fund programs like that with these these proceeds.

So investing in early learning and child care and then any amounts in excess of 500 million per year are deposited into the common schools construction account, which is a It does what it says it does.

It's an account that is used to fund capital improvements and construction of schools in the K-12 system.

That was the major action on progressive revenue this session.

Other proposals like the wealth tax and estate tax reform did not pass but will certainly be on the docket for next session.

But this is a historic and significant improvement to our tax structure.

I know there is some interest also in sort of the after effects here and the emergency clause and sort of what happens next.

We can speak to that a little bit.

The emergency clause which would stipulate the legislation goes into effect immediately and also typically has the effect of preventing a referendum from being filed.

That was ultimately not included on the capital gains tax legislation that was passed.

However, they did include a clause, a provision that has fallen out of favor, but was used more commonly in the 80s and 90s was called a necessity clause, which stipulates that the provisions of the legislation are necessary for the operation of of general government.

And this is believed and according to case law from from, you know, the 80s and 90s.

This will have a similar effect and in prohibiting a referendum from being filed.

There is already one lawsuit and there will likely be others related to the capital gains tax.

And so there will still be illegal challenges and nothing would prevent an initiative in future years, but in terms of the implementation, it is expected to move forward pending legal challenges this year.

With that, I will hand it over to Robin to speak to housing and homelessness investments.

Good morning, everyone.

So in both the capital and the operating budget, there were some fairly significant investments in housing and homelessness.

Though we didn't quite get to the level that has been proposed by Governor Newsom in California, we did get some very significant investments on the capital sides of things.

$1.75 million for the Housing Trust Fund, and then $120 million for rapid acquisition of shelter and affordable housing.

Another significant place of investment was $42 million for utility connection fees that are experienced while constructing affordable housing.

and then 10 million for the weatherization plus health program which the office of housing accesses to weatherize low-income homeowners homes across the city.

There were some set-asides in the capital budget, four million dollars for the bellwether project at north seattle college, five million dollars of the rapid acquisition fund for the clay apartments that the office of housing in cooperation with Lehigh helped to acquire that 80 unit building that immediately became, was purchased, had just been constructed, and immediately was turned into affordable housing.

We certainly hope to access some more of these funds to do more of that in the coming months.

And then finally, $4 million for the Cairo nursing home was another set aside that we received in Seattle.

As far as the operating budget goes, Lily mentioned there's $658 million for rent assistance, obviously a pretty big amount.

I spoke with the Department of Commerce late last week, And they informed me that they do expect to get those dollars out in the same way that they have with the previous dollars.

So that I predict that, and don't quote me on this because things may change slightly, but I believe we accessed around 30% of the funds in King County.

And so I think it's likely that that's what we'll see from this investment as well.

There was 187 million included for foreclosure prevention and a $26.5 million increase in the Housing Essential Needs Program.

I understand that that will allow us to serve the wait list of people who have not been able to access the program due to budget limitations.

So that is very good news and I do believe that many of those people are in King County.

We'll also be seeing $58.4 million for operations, maintenance, and services for permanent supportive housing from House Bill 1277 that I'll talk a little bit more about in the policy discussion coming up later on.

But that is up and above of the $37 million that's already in the budget.

So that is a very significant investment from the legislature in permanent supportive housing that we really need to make sure that when we make a capital investment in housing that we're able to operate the building for the low-income tenants that live there.

And then 22.1 million also from the document recording fees bill will go to fund unsheltered homelessness and includes project based vouchers, emergency housing, rapid rehousing, eviction prevention, rental assistance, as well as the possibility to use some of those dollars for acquisition.

And then finally, another significant investment of $19.7 million for long-term vouchers for people with behavioral health or substance use disorders.

Those funds are very significant as well as they intend to be, to recur and be an ongoing appropriation and not just a one-time fund.

And I think that's all that I have.

And now I'll turn it over to Hannah to talk about some other exciting budget investments.

Yes.

In the child care and early learning space, we had very significant investments given that the pandemic shed light on the existing child care crisis.

The legislature passed the Fair Starts for Kids Act.

I'll speak to the policies in that later.

But it also invested over $757 million in a variety of child care programs.

That includes $400 million for child care stabilization grants.

That includes payroll reimbursement and operating expenses.

We don't have details yet on exactly how those will be dispersed, but we believe that providers in Seattle will be well positioned to receive some of those funds.

The other investments focus on eligibility and rate increases for Working Connections Child Care Program and Early Learning Childhood Education Assistance Program.

That's $146.6 million for provider rate increases, over $100 million for eligibility expansion.

Nearly $25 million to expand the ECAP slots by over 1,200 in the next two years.

And an additional $84.5 million for the Fair Starts for Kids implementation and some other child care programs.

So really great investments there in the early learning space.

There's also a lot of great news in health care.

Advocates have been asking for increased funding for foundational public health for years, which has been chronically underfunded even before the pandemic.

And this year, the legislature invested $149.5 million in that space.

There's also $35 million in grants for those who are underinsured and uninsured, regardless of immigration status, and an additional $50 million per cascade care.

That helps with premium assistance for individuals earning up to 250% of the federal poverty level.

Some other significant funds with federal funding.

Lily mentioned the $340 million for immigrant relief.

There was over a billion dollars for COVID response and vaccine deployment and significant investments in unemployment insurance benefits and small business assistance.

I'll speak to some of the other significant safety net investments related to policy bills like the TANF and Working Families Tax Credit when we get there in the policy section.

I think with that, we'll turn it over to Quintin for transportation.

In the transportation space, the legislature ultimately did not take action on a transportation revenue package this session.

Towards the end of session, there was sort of a late push, but the House and Senate remained too far apart on the overall size of what a transportation revenue package should look like.

The final House proposal was around 22 billion.

The final Senate proposal was around 18 billion.

They remained far apart on the split between roads and highway investments and multimodal investments.

And there were a number of differences in the revenues proposed between gas tax, carbon or cap and invest revenues, as well as a smattering of others.

Those are outlined in the summary that we sent previously on the different proposals on transportation.

None of that's changed since we sent that a few weeks ago, and I'm happy to re-up that.

But ultimately, the House and Senate remained too far apart to reach an agreement prior to the conclusion of session.

There is still a significant interest in taking action on transportation, both because of the need for investment in infrastructure, but also because, as we'll get to in the policy section, two of the most significant environmental policies that were adopted this session, cap and invest program, as well as the clean fuel standard program, have both been made contingent.

Their implementation of compliance has been made contingent on a supplemental transportation revenue package.

And so there is going to be a continued and renewed interest on reaching an agreement.

There has been some talk about addressing that in a potential special legislative session.

And I just want to provide an update on what we've heard with regards to that.

This is all a transportation revenue packages.

Perhaps among the more.

I don't want to say secretive, but negotiations are often private between House and Senate chairs.

And so this information can change quickly.

But as best as we have heard from our sources and talking to legislators, it seems unlikely that they will do a special session only for a state transportation revenue package.

What is likely to occur is they would tackle transportation in a special legislative session if they needed to for another reason.

The most likely reason that would happen is if there was a federal infrastructure package that was passed, the legislature made it quite clear that they want to have a say in how federal dollars are allocated, especially when it comes to future stimulus packages and a federal infrastructure package.

They don't just want to leave that up to the state executive.

And so if a federal infrastructure package was adopted, it would be a potential for them to come back for a special session and they could tackle state transportation investments at the same time.

The other potential, hopefully less likely, but potential reason that they would need to have a special session would be if any of the federal funds that they appropriated ultimately are found to be not in compliance with guidance that comes out from the federal government on how that money can be spent.

There's no sense necessarily that that is going to happen, but it does have potential as we continue to get ongoing guidance from the federal government.

And so they could potentially need to come back for that reason.

So given those potential factors, it is likely that if there is a special session, it would occur sometime in the fall based on what we're hearing around the timeline for a federal package.

Given that, you know, it is also possible if it's late enough in fall that they would simply roll it into the 2022 legislative session and not have a special session.

So that's the current status of a transportation revenue package and the negotiations are expected to continue through the interim between the House and Senate chairs and ranking members and vice chairs.

I do want to speak quickly to just because the legislature didn't adopt a revenue package doesn't mean they didn't pass sort of the baseline current law, no new revenue transportation budget.

There's not a whole lot in there.

The legislature was actually forced to use a billion dollars in ARPA funding to meet its ongoing commitments and obligations in the transportation budget.

$600 million to shore up continued declining revenues, particularly gas tax and tolling, and then $400 million to meet the ongoing obligation for and removing fish passage barriers that the Supreme Court's decision requires.

There were a handful of investments that the city might benefit from, $5 million in additional funding for safe routes to schools, $5 million for the Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Grant Program.

$5 million for green transportation capital grants and $4 million for pre-apprenticeship and support services.

Those are all grant programs that we would need to apply for.

So nothing directly to the city, but some additional funding that might ultimately come to benefit us.

I believe that concludes our presentation on the budgets.

So I think we'll pause there for questions.

so much.

I do see some questions in the queue here.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, President Pro Tem Herbold.

Thank you, OIR, for all your work this session and for summing up the budget and really appreciate your continued gathering of information and intel on transportation in particular.

I'm disappointed that the state legislature couldn't come together to produce a transportation package, and then it's disconcerting.

While it makes sense, it's disconcerting that they would wait for the federal government to act since an infrastructure bill from the federal government will be potentially tied up by just a couple of U.S. senators.

And so I just want to signal my interest in making sure we tackle transportation budgetary issues this fall.

And we'll have to Our needs are so great with infrastructure in Seattle.

We should make a very strong down payment, I'm hoping, in this fall budget process with the city.

I do have a question about rental assistance, actually.

I was really heartened to see all the rental assistance and the need, the great need, especially during, to address the great need, especially as we emerge from the COVID pandemic.

I think this question might be for Robin in terms of, Were there any set-asides for students experiencing homelessness or children experiencing homelessness?

I know we're looking at some regulatory changes here at the city level, but just wanted to know if there were dollars coming from the state for those who are in school.

Yes, there were, Council Member Peterson.

And it's a little complicated because it's in several places in the budget, but there is 4.6 million for homeless student stability that would serve K through 12 students as I understand it.

But then there's also some funds through various different places throughout the budget, including the Student Achievement Council and the universities.

to serve students experiencing homelessness who are college students, and that's to implement House Bill 1166. I can certainly make sure that I go through and provide you with all of the details of each I think there's like a little bit of peppered through all of the different university budgets and I can go through and carefully look and get that to you.

And then of course, I mean, with that much rental assistance getting out on the street, obviously 658 million, I mean, that would be available for families as well, but there's definitely multiple ways for people to access rental assistance this year through the budget.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Just looking to see whether or not I see any virtual raised hands or real raised hands, and I see none.

So we'll move on to the policy bill updates.

And would you like me to pause after each policy area update, or would you prefer that we wait till the end?

That would be great.

Council President Pro Tem, if we could pause after each portfolio and give us an opportunity to ask questions.

And I think we'll go ahead and start with education.

Hannah Smith's portfolio to start.

Thanks, Lily.

The big news in the education space is the Fair Starts for Kids Act, Senate Bill 5237. It expands eligibility and decreases compayment for the Working Connections Child Care Program, expands eligibility.

For the Early Childhood Education Assistance Program, it provides rate increases, training, grants, supports, and services for child care and early learning providers, increases prenatal to three supports, and waives the work requirement for parents who are students in the Working Connections Child Care Program.

These are all just the policy accompaniments of that huge budget investment and some earlier Um, as mentioned, uh, and you've received a separate breakdown of all these funds, um, as a separate attachment, some other education notes, the legislature expanded college bound access and passed a bill to include anti-racism and diversity training and higher education institutions.

So those are the big highlights in the education space.

So I'll pause for questions.

Thank you, Hannah.

Any questions, council members, on the education updates?

All right, seeing no questions, let's move on to the next section.

All right, some rather significant pieces of legislation were adopted in the environmental space, and I'll do my best to cover them as quickly and comprehensively as possible.

Perhaps the most significant is Senate Bill 5126. This is the Climate Commitment Act, also known more commonly and colloquially as cap-and-invest or cap-and-trade.

This was sponsored by Senator Carlisle.

Governor requests legislation and it establishes a cap and trade system in in Washington state.

The legislative bill summary was 22 pages.

I did my best to condense that down and I'll cover that as comprehensively as possible in the signing die report, but.

It's a it's a big bill, and so if you have questions or any additional information, we can certainly follow up on those pieces.

So under the legislation, the Department of Ecology is directed to establish rules that require emissions reductions for covered entities.

Covered entities are stationary carbon emitters that generate more than 25,000 metric tons of carbon annually.

The first compliance period for covered entities starts January 1, 2023 and runs through December 31, 2026. And there is a detailed schedule of subsequent four-year compliance periods that follow, along with a parallel review and adjustment process by the Department of Ecology of that program.

Notably, in that review and adjustment process, Ecology must conduct an environmental justice review every two years to ensure that the program is achieving emissions reduction targets in overburdened communities highly impacted by air pollution and sort of tinker with the knobs and dials on the program if those goals are not being met.

Ecology has to establish a system of managing and auctioning allowances.

This is the trade portion of cap and trade.

Those auctions have to occur at least four times annually.

There's regulations around how much an individual entity can purchase of allowances at a given auction, and ecology must adopt additional rules to prohibit collusion between covered entities, minimize the potential for market manipulation, ensure there's sufficient incentivization to reduce emissions, and then smooth volatility by setting auction floor and ceiling prices.

adopt linkage agreements with other jurisdictions that have cap and invest programs, like California and British Columbia, wherever feasible to broaden the greenhouse gas emission reduction opportunities and achieve a variety of other goals.

Prior to entering these linkage agreements, however, ecology must conduct an environmental justice assessment to ensure that those linkages would benefit not just the overall program, but also vulnerable populations and reducing emissions in overburdened communities.

The legislation also establishes that offset credits are a permitted method of reducing, or for covered entities to meet their obligation requirements of reducing emissions.

Offset credits are generated by a covered entity investing in a project, a capital project essentially.

And those capital projects must demonstrate greenhouse gas, sorry, and those capital projects are not located on the facility, but they are located in other areas.

Projects have to demonstrate greenhouse gas reductions or removals that are real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable.

50% of those credits have to be located in Washington State during the first compliance period and 75% subsequent compliance periods.

There's also stipulations about how much of reduction obligations can be met through offset credits.

Those vary by compliance period and also whether or not the covered entity is on federally recognized tribal land.

The revenues from the program, the Capital Invest program is expected to generate some significant revenues.

Those revenues are directed to be allocated in sort of a variety of ways, but notably across all of these different allocations, a minimum of 35% of investments must provide a direct and meaningful benefit to vulnerable populations who are overburdened by carbon pollution and emissions.

So the program creates a variety of different accounts that are the recipients funds and then dole out the revenues that are generated.

The first account is the carbon emission reduction account.

This is the first recipient of revenues.

So it receives the first 5.2 billion over the first 16 years of the program.

and it receives a specific amount each year.

So it's not just the first 5.2 billion, but it's the first specific amount each year over using a sort of specific amortization schedule.

The purpose of this account, this is the account that is connected to the potential transportation revenue package and would fund transportation carbon emission reduction purposes.

It's specifically prohibited from being used for 18th Amendment purposes.

18th Amendment is highways.

After funds are received by the Carbon Emission Reduction Account, they are received by the Climate Investment Account, and then those funds in the Climate Investment Account are immediately subrouted to two different accounts.

75% of those funds are allotted to the Climate Commitment Account, and then 25% to the Natural Climate Solutions Account.

The Climate Commitment Account funds a variety of programs that are designed to transition to a more clean and just economy.

It's intended to fund implementation and ongoing funding for the Working Families Tax Credit, which Hanna will speak to a little bit more in a bit, supplement growth management planning and environmental review funds, and then support a whole array of projects, programs, and activities that reduce carbon emissions and promote electrification and clean energy.

The appropriations here are anything in Any appropriations for the climate commitment account and the natural climate solutions account are subject to legislative appropriation.

I think we're still looking to understand and rulemaking is going to take some time.

I'll speak to that in just a minute.

These will be subject to legislative appropriations.

It's not clear if that means that the legislature is sort of going to get into the weeds in identifying specific projects, or if like other grant programs that are subject to legislative appropriations, it'll be largely determined by Department of Ecology.

and then ratified by the legislature.

So that's something that we're going to look into.

And then the Natural Climate Solutions account, the second sub-recipient of 25% of the climate investment account, is intended to fund project programs and activities that increase the resilience of our state's waters, forests, and other vital ecosystems, as well as fund clean water investments.

I know at the The final briefing that we gave prior to this briefing before the conclusion of the legislative session, I had flagged that there were some late concerns about this legislation potentially preempting our ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in any way.

That did not come to pass, which is very good.

The legislation does make some changes to how local governments and state agencies, what they can do in terms of the climate space.

So no state agency can adopt or enforce rules or regulations or programs that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources except for as provided under this act.

So no other regulations by state agencies can be adopted outside of essentially transportation fuels.

And I'll get to the transportation section in a second.

No local government can implement a charge or tax based exclusively on the greenhouse gas emissions.

So it does preempt cities and counties from adopting essentially local carbon taxes.

And then the climate or the cabinet invest program also supersedes the state's clean air rule.

It's largely encompassing of those regulations, but it does supersede any existing regulations there.

And then finally, in this section, and I apologize for the length, it's just, it's a very long pill.

As I mentioned in transportation, this bill and the Clean Fuels Program, which I'll speak to in just a moment, are both contingent.

The compliance obligations are contingent on the adoption of an additive transportation funding measure that is defined as a gas tax increase of at least five cents per gallon.

So the rulemaking can commence immediately and is expected to begin soon by Department of Ecology.

That process is expected to take at least a year, potentially upwards of two years.

So the program can get off and running, but they do need to adopt, the legislature does need to adopt a transportation revenue package before compliance can begin, which is scheduled to begin in 2023. That is the Climate Commitment Act.

There are a couple other bills in the environmental space that I also want to review quickly because they are also significant.

The legislature also approved after, I believe, five years of really significant work by the prime sponsor, Representative Fitzgibbon, the Clean Fuel Standard.

This is House Bill 1091. This is, in many ways, almost similar to cap and investment for transportation fuels.

So it requires the Department of Ecology to promulgate rules that would require a 20 percent reduction in the carbon intensity of greenhouse gas emissions by 2038. There's also some subrequirements in there that stipulate that ecology cannot require carbon emission reductions more than 10% until certain factors are met.

15% net increase in in-state liquid biofuel production, at least one new or expanded biofuel production facility generating at least 60 million gallons per year.

In a review by JLARC, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, on the first five years of the program and the conclusion of the 2033 legislative session.

So some stipulations after the first 10 percent, but that first 10 percent is pretty well established.

And then the legislation also establishes that ecology has to create a system of bankable and bankable and usable credits for clean fuel suppliers, which includes electric utilities.

Electric utilities supply clean fuel for cars, electric vehicles, which includes our own Seattle City Light.

And then it also provides some stipulations for how the revenues that are generated from these clean fuel credits can be spent.

So 50% of those revenues have to be used for transportation electrification, and then the other 50% have to be spent on projects on a list that will be developed by the State Department of Ecology and State Transportation, which have to meet certain criteria that will also support transportation decarbonization.

And similarly to the Cap and Invest Climate Commitment Act, the rulemaking for a clean fuel standard can begin immediately, but the compliance cannot start until a supplemental transportation revenue package is adopted.

Two other bills quickly, the heel act, which provides for specific environmental justice requirements for state agencies was also adopted and approved.

So.

a number of state agencies have to incorporate environmental justice into strategic planning and agency budgeting, conduct environmental justice assessments on significant agency action, which is significant rules, grants, capital projects, and agency request legislation, and conduct specified community outreach and engagement planning for overburdened communities.

And then the one other piece of legislation, which is rather significant, but didn't get quite as much attention is Senate Bill 5022, which has to do with recycled content standards.

This would establish a schedule for minimum post-consumer recycled content standards, PCR standards, for some of the most problematic plastic items, plastic beverage containers, trash bags, household cleaning, and personal care products.

would also ban the sale of expanded polystyrene, more commonly known as styrofoam in Washington State, which is a particularly harmful and problematic plastic product, and then would also require that single-use utensils, straws, condiments, containers, beverages, those sorts of things can only be offered by restaurants upon request of the And then establishes a stakeholder committee, because the legislature loves stakeholder committees, to further, to recommend further post-consumer recycling standards for the 2022 legislative session.

Those are the main, those are the big high profile bills in the environmental space.

I know it's a lot.

I will pause there and answer any questions to the best of my ability.

Thank you so much.

That is quite a portfolio there, Quinn, and a lot of really impressive accomplishments in the state legislature this year as it relates to our environmental agenda.

Looking again to see if my colleagues have any questions.

I'm looking in the I just want to ask that people raise their hand in the participants panel because I cannot see everybody in real time, their pictures and their real life hands.

So not seeing any raised hands in the participants panel.

And so now let's move on to the healthcare policy bills led by Hana.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

I think we were out of order ourselves.

Quinn, do you have anything to highlight in government?

I think in the interest of time, there are more pressing issues.

I will just highlight that tax increment financing did pass, which I know is of interest to several members of the council.

So that is exciting, as did Juneteenth, which is establishing Juneteenth as a legal holiday.

I believe those are the The only items, and we've talked about them pretty extensively, so I don't think we need to get into them too deeply, but I would highlight those as ones that we have followed and are worth noting.

Great, thank you.

I will now scroll us down to healthcare.

One of the big bills to highlight in the healthcare space is 1477. That's the national 988 number.

The legislature established the bill or the number and call center hubs to expand the crisis response system to respond to both suicide and behavioral health calls.

The bill imposes a tax on radio lines to pay for the technology.

and creates a Crisis Response Improvement Strategy Committee to develop the Integrated Behavioral Health Response and Suicide Prevention System.

The committee will work to create recommendations to implement the response that includes mobile rapid response crisis teams, crisis stabilization services, an integrated involuntary treatment system, and recommendations to really focus on equity and services for individuals, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and also for tribe members.

There's a lot of pieces to this bill that we've been following and we'll continue to see how the implementation goes based on that task force.

The legislature also passed, again, the postpartum Medicaid bill.

You'll remember this passed last year, but was vetoed due to the budget crisis and the immediate COVID response.

So the bill passed this year, which is great news.

It requires the health care authority to provide one year of postpartum coverage through Apple Health through two phases.

And it's eligible for those who have an income at or below 193% of the federal poverty line.

Some of the other bills we tracked in the healthcare space, including establishing a universal healthcare commission, requiring health insurers to provide gender-affirming care, and requiring hospitals to provide opioid overdose reversal medication passed as well.

Those were the big healthcare highlights.

Thank you, Hannah.

Just taking a pause here to see if there's any questions before moving on to the next section, which I believe is housing and homelessness.

Not seeing any raised hands.

Robin, let's move on to housing and homelessness.

You're on mute, Robin.

Yep.

Somebody had to do it for our final report.

Hannah is just going to go back up to the housing and homelessness budget for a second because Council President Herbold pointed out that I may have misspoken.

There's $175 million in the budget for the housing trust fund as well as $120 million for rapid acquisition of housing and shelter spaces.

Under the operating budget, which is a little bit further down, there are 200, I think I may have said 22 million, but there's 221.92 million from the document recording fees that I'm about to speak to in a moment.

So just letting everybody know, clarifying those numbers to be accurate.

And Hannah, you can go back to the other part of the bulletin at this point.

Sorry to make you switch around so much.

So given the economic impacts of COVID-19, the legislature was very focused this year on housing stability and passed several important policy bills that work together to provide tenant protections and address homelessness in tandem with the rental assistance funds that are being deployed from the federal dollars that the state received.

And one of the first things that I want to talk about is the path that was provided by the legislature to end the eviction moratorium that was enacted by the governor through executive action in last March 20 of 20. And that bill is Senate Bill 5160 offered by Senator Cooter.

It does a number of things to back us out and provide an off ramp for the eviction moratorium.

The first of which is that it provides legal representation for indigent tenants and eviction cases.

This is quite historic.

We're the first state in the country to pass such a law.

And then it also creates the eviction resolution pilot program, which requires mediation before an eviction can be filed in court, hoping to avoid some of the actions actually moving forward to an actual court action and making sure that people don't end up with evictions on their record impacting their tenancy in the future.

It establishes reasonable payment plan parameters that are not to exceed one third of monthly rent.

It creates a landlord mitigation program where tenants who vacate are default on payment plans.

Landlords can access funds to make themselves whole there.

And it also creates a landlord grant program for direct assistance to property owners.

Finally, it prohibits late fee reporting of nonpayment and taking adverse action against tenants based on nonpayment of rent from March 2020 through six months following the expiration of the eviction moratorium.

The eviction moratorium does end on June 30th, and the bill was amended in the House to include a provision that says that the governor may not extend the current eviction moratorium that is in place right now.

There is some concern over whether the right to counsel provisions, as well as whether some of the rental assistance will fully be able to get out on the street by the time The June 30th moratorium expires.

And so it remains to be seen what will happen.

So we're continuing advocacy on this issue and we can let you know where we stand on that.

But certainly something to be aware of right now.

And then the bill that I mentioned, House Bill 1277, which adds an additional $100 to the document recording fees, that will raise $280 million over the biennia and is divided between the home security fund that I mentioned at $221 million It also provides funds for landlord mitigation, 11.6 million over the biennium.

And as I mentioned, that significant investment in permanent supportive housing operations, maintenance and services.

I know another bill that you were all quite interested in was the Just Cause Eviction Bill, which requires property owners to provide a reason to terminate a tenancy with some exceptions for fixed term and initial leashes.

This bill is a little bit complicated, but As far as specified time leases go with an initial term of 12 months and any subsequent term of at least six months.

Those leases may be terminated without cause, providing that a landlord provides 60 day notice and the bill does prohibit month to month leases.

from being converted from month to month to a fixed term except for 90 days following the expiration of the eviction moratorium.

There's sort of a grace period to allow landlords and tenants to agree to convert leases in that immediate period following the expiration of the eviction moratorium.

And then, as far as periodic term leases go when they automatically convert to month or month leases and or require just cause to terminate with an exception for initial leases that have a term of six to 12 months and same thing the landlord has to provide 60 days notice.

I think it probably makes sense for me to just provide an in writing summary of this bill to council members because it is a little bit complicated how it applies.

And I think the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance is also working on some summaries.

So I'll make sure that you all have detailed information about the parameters of the bill.

And then finally, the last bill that I wanted to mention was House Bill 1220. And this council wrote a letter in support of this bill.

It updates the Gross Management Act to require planning for affordable housing and to address racially disparate impacts and displacement.

And it also requires cities to include shelters, transitional housing, and permanent supportive housing in their zoning.

And that's all I have for housing and homelessness.

I'm happy to take any questions if there are some.

Thank you so much, Robin.

Looking to see whether or not there are any questions in this section.

Not seeing any questions here.

So we'll move on to also, I believe, in your portfolio, Robin, police reform and public safety.

Indeed.

So in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed in the summer of 2020, the legislature was very focused on policy to make statewide reforms to policing and passed over 10 bills.

The most significant of these included the oversight and accountability of peace officers and corrections officers, otherwise known as decertification, offered by a member of our delegation, Senator Jamie Peterson.

That's Senate Bill 5051. This bill expands the grounds for decertification of law enforcement officers, including use of force violations, failure to intervene, and dishonesty.

It establishes a database to track officers who are fired for misconduct.

It creates a requirement that officer misconduct investigations be completed once they have been begun.

And it also expands the background check requirements that law enforcement agencies must do in particular when they're hiring.

an officer who has worked in another law enforcement agency.

Also, the governor had proposed legislation on independent investigations, House Bill 1267, offered by Representative Entenmann.

This, of course, creates the Office of Independent Investigations within the governor's office to investigate deadly use of force by law enforcement.

And the operating budget also provided $22 million for the establishment and operation of the office.

Another significant bill, requirements for tactics and equipment used by law enforcement, House Bill 1054. This bill does many different things around tactics.

It limits the use of chokeholds and neck restraints, prohibits use of most military equipment, provides provisions around when tear gas may be used, when vehicular pursuits may occur, firing on moving vehicles and no-knock warrants.

It also requires the adoption of policies and procedures to ensure uniformed police officers are done identifiable and requires the Criminal Justice Training Commission to adopt model policy on the use of canines.

Also, there was a statewide reasonable care standard for use of force by law enforcement officers established by House Bill 1310. That was also offered by Representative Johnson.

And finally, another significant bill was the Duty to Intervene Bill offered by Senator Dingra, Senate Bill 5066, which requires on-duty law enforcement to intervene when excessive use of force by another law officer's witness and also requires reporting of such wrongdoing committed by another law enforcement officer.

I will pause there before I move to public safety and the state versus Blake decision, which is another mouthful.

I'm not seeing any raised hands.

I do have one question.

There was a bill that I know the Community Police Commission had some concerns about because it wasn't clear whether or not it would preempt our own independent community-based oversight system.

And just wondering, was that contained in any of the bills that passed?

No, that was not.

That was House Bill 1203, also offered by Representative Johnson.

That bill did not make it this year.

And I think that there was a commitment among the legislators that, you know, that would be something to be worked on in the interim.

And I think that we will definitely want to remain engaged in that conversation in Seattle to make sure that what is done is additive and not in conflict with what we already have here in Seattle.

Thank you, Robin.

One other question.

Has there already sort of through your work in staffing these various bills, has there already been an analysis for each of these bills of what changes to Seattle City law or Seattle Police Department policy will be necessary now that these bills have passed?

I don't think that we've done an analysis.

And I will say that, you know, many of the bills, I think, are kind of establishing a statewide standard for things that our Seattle Police Department already does.

So I don't think that there will be very significant changes.

It's possible that the police decertification bill will require some changes.

And, you know, we certainly should you know, look at all of the other bills.

But I do think that many of our policies that our Seattle Police Department follows are kind of the standard that the rest of the state is kind of catching up to.

And so for new requirements, such as, as an example, officer duty to intervene, is that sort of just for the state of Washington considered a new policy for all police officers that work within the state of Washington or without within the legislation and expectation that if that policy is violated, that local law enforcement departments take action.

What is sort of the enforcement side of a policy, a statewide policy like that?

I think it differs from bill to bill, but as far as the duty to intervene bill is, I believe the expectation of the sponsors of that bill and of the legislature is that every officer, every police department, every law enforcement agency around the state will adopt that standard as part of what they must do.

And I mean, I think that there's also a bill that passed around audits.

um, that allows the attorney's general's office to audit police departments to make sure that they are fulfilling all of the obligations.

So there was some thought put into how all of this would work together and what would happen if, you know, there was a police department that wasn't following what they were supposed to do.

There is that mechanism for an investigation to occur.

Um, so, um, you know, and, um, you know, I mean certainly, um, I think it's going to be interesting just to watch how this all plays out because, of course, you know, this is kind of new territory.

The legislature has taken up a space that they haven't done so in the past.

So I think we'll all just have to sit back and wait.

And, you know, we may see some areas that need some additional legislation next year when it, you know, the policies play out because, of course, sometimes in the rush of the legislative session, things get done very quickly and all of the consequences may not be thought about that happen as a result of implementation of the laws.

Thank you.

All right, seeing no further questions, let's move on to the public safety section.

Well, I believe in our last briefing, I talked about this state versus Blake decision that the legislature was trying to figure out what to do in the wake of the state versus Blake decision that struck down the Washington felony possession of controlled substances law, even if a person was possessing controlled substances unknowingly.

And they did manage to come to an agreement by the end of the legislative session.

And I would say that the thing that's most important to understand about where the legislature was going with this is that they really envision that people with substance abuse disorder will be diverted from the criminal justice system.

Law enforcement is required to offer referral and assessment to services in lieu of legal system involvement at least twice when they encounter someone, and then they may but are not required to make additional referrals.

Um, the bill also directs the healthcare authority to create a recovery services plan that is, um, drafted by a substance use recovery service committee.

That's also created in the bill.

And, um, the, uh, the whole idea behind this is to ensure a statewide treatment based approach, uh, for people with substance abuse disorder who come into contact with law enforcement or become engaged with the criminal justice system.

The bill does make knowingly possessing a controlled substance a misdemeanor with a sunset date of July 1st of 2023. By that time, the committee will have drafted their plan, and I think the assumption is that something else will be done at the statewide level to memorialize whatever the Substance Use Recovery Services Committee comes up with over the next two years.

It was also something that's a little interesting is that given the late timing of the negotiated compromise, the bill also makes $88.4 million in appropriations for Recovery Navigator Program, Homeless Outreach Stabilization, and other programs and services that aren't actually included in the operating budget bill because they just didn't have time to get them in there.

given the late stage of the negotiations.

In addition, the operating does provide about $85 million to the courts, the Office of Public Defense, the Office of Civil Legal Aid, and the Department of Corrections to address vacating and reducing sentences and to pay back legal financial obligations.

The full details of this are available on page four of the operating budget summary that we attached in our our email to you yesterday, so you can see all of the details of where all of the money goes and the allocations from the Senate Bill 5476, which go to a number of different programs.

I also just wanted to highlight the Open Carry of Weapons Bill, a fairly significant piece of gun control legislation that passed, which prohibits open carry of weapons at permitted demonstrations and on the State Capitol campus.

And then finally, I know many of you are interested in the suspension of licenses for traffic infractions offered by our delegation member, Senator Solomon, driving while license is suspended.

It eliminates the suspension of a license as a penalty for traffic infractions, full stop.

And then it allows for a person to admit responsibility for an infraction in court and then attest the inability to pay.

and requires the provision of information on how to prove that you are unable to pay and how to obtain a payment plan to meet the traffic infraction.

Of course, with the idea of, you know, attempting to address the disparate impacts of having people's license suspended and then, you know, having to drive to get to work, et cetera, et cetera.

It does contain a provision that says that the Department of Licensing must suspend the license for 60 days with a one-year probationary period if a person commits three or more infractions within a year or four or more occasions in a two-year period.

In that case, the license must be revoked for a period of 60 days and any new infractions during the probationary period also results in a 30-day suspension.

And then finally, the bill increases the time to respond to traffic infractions from 15 to 30 days.

So I'm happy to answer any questions on this section as well.

I just wanted to make a point of thanking Chief Adrian Diaz for his advocacy on Senate Bill 5038 on the open carry of weapons.

And then also just a question around the license suspension bill.

The allowance for a license to be suspended if there are three or more traffic infractions, are all traffic infractions treated equally under that scenario?

Anything from a busted taillight to a DUI, are they all treated equally?

I believe they are, but I will reread the legislation and get back to you.

I'm just looking for any other questions from council members.

Not seeing any, so we'll move on to the final section, which is the safety net and civil rights portfolio.

Again, going back to Hannah.

Thank you.

I have a couple highlights here that all go along with some great budget news in the safety net area.

The TANF bill extends a qualifying hardship to the 60-month lifetime limit that previously existed on TANF if people received a benefit after March 1st of 2020 and when Washington's unemployment rate is at or above 7%.

All families who received a TANF grant since March of 2020 are eligible for hardship extension.

The final budget includes 52 million for a 15% increase in the cash assistance grant, and $27.2 million for that time limit extension.

This means that the current maximum monthly payment for a family of three will increase from $569 to $654.

Paid family leave.

Representative Berry's House Bill 1073 expands the look back period for qualifying hours for workers infected by COVID-19.

It provides pandemic leave assistance.

Employee grants begin on August 1st, 2021 for leave claims and provides grant eligibility for employees that do not meet the eligibility threshold for hours worked in 2020 and through the first quarter of 2021. The final operating budget included $168.7 million for this implementation.

And as Lily mentioned, the Working Family Tax Credit was fully funded this year.

The minimum payment for workers without children is $300, and while the maximum payment for workers with three or more children will be $1,200.

The bill also ensures that children with individual taxpayer identification numbers qualify to receive the benefit.

And that includes $260.9 million in the final operating budget.

So those are the highlights in the safety net program as well.

Thank you, Hana.

Any questions or comments from council colleagues?

not seeing any.

Before I hand it over back over to Lily for closing remarks, I just want to thank the whole team at OIR.

This is just really an incredible agenda this year, unprecedented number of council priorities, city priorities I should say, included here successfully and I'm so grateful for not just your work with legislators but also your work with us in helping us find the right time and the right place to include our voices at hearings and lift the interests of our constituents here in Seattle.

So just really fantastic job and very, very appreciative.

Um, Lily, let's hear your closing remarks.

Thank you so much.

In closing, I would just like to thank the council and council staff for working so closely with our team to both develop the agenda this year and then going above and beyond to advocate for so many important city priorities this session.

I think you've seen the fruits of your labor.

Congratulations on so many city priorities moving forward.

Particular thanks to Council President Pro Tem Herbold for the extensive work with the stakeholder community around police reform this year.

We're so grateful.

And, you know, I think it opened the door to having, you know, continuing those conversations as things continue to advance down the road.

Many thanks to our city departments and department liaisons for all the hard work on bill reviews.

That's a lot of hard work, but a critical role for OIR, and we're very grateful for everyone who does that work through session.

A big thank you to our remarkable OIR team, Deputy Director Robin Koski, State Relations Director Quinn Majewski, and our Government Affairs Program Director Hannah Smith for their hard work and tireless advocacy through a very challenging session, and your overall, hashtag, you're on mute.

And then finally, the entire Seattle delegation, legislative delegation who have been great partners to the city with specific recognition to Senator Frock for his leadership in the area of capital budget and investments in affordable housing and homelessness.

Representative Macri, our champion on housing policy and funding for all things housing and homelessness.

Senator Peterson for his leadership on police reform.

Representative Fitzgibbon for his tireless and successful fight to advance a clean fuel standard.

Senator Carlisle for his leadership on the Climate Commitment Act.

Senator Saldana a tireless advocate for the city's transportation priorities, and finally, representative frame for her leadership on progressive revenue.

And with that, that concludes our sine die report today.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

And I did see Council Member Straus' hand pop up.

So yes, Council Member Straus.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

I just want to take this opportunity to thank the entire OIR team.

You have been amazing.

You have been giving me the updates I've needed to be successful, and I just thank you for the direction that you are able to provide me, whether it's when interacting with legislators or at Association of Washington Cities on behalf of the entire city of Seattle.

You each have done an amazing job this year with tight, tight timelines, tight spaces, and you've just given me the direction that I've needed to make sure our city has been successful.

You have all, and each of you, have done a great job.

Thank you.

We appreciate the partnership, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Swann.

Thank you, President Totem-Herbold.

I also wanted to add my thank you to the Office of Intergovernmental Relations for the diligent work that they have done in following up on all the questions and inquiries from our office.

Thank you.

Council members, congratulations on progressive revenue.

We're so excited to see that advance.

And I know Quinn has gone above and beyond as a great partnership with your team and really coming through those details.

So congratulations there.

Thank you.

And likewise.

All right.

Well, again, many thanks, and we'll move on to the next section of our agenda.

That will be the preview on today's city council actions, council and regional committees.

I will call on council members as 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, followed by Sawant, Straus, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, and then I will conclude the agenda discussion.

So with that, let's move right into Councilmember Peterson's report.

Thank you, President Pro Tem Herbold and Thank you for your opening remarks and your president's report.

My thoughts and heartfelt condolences are with Lorena Gonzalez and her family for their horrible loss over the weekend.

I also want to reinforce the comments our Public Safety Chair, Council Member Hermold made regarding Chief Diaz's action.

I know many of us were alarmed by the Chief of Police's action to overturn the conclusion of the Office of Police Accountability for one of last summer's most serious incidents against protesters.

And while I believe we should support the good work of our police officers and work harder to retain our good officers here in Seattle, Whenever police misconduct is confirmed, I believe SPD officials should be held accountable.

And in fact, by holding officers accountable, I believe we build trust and encourage good officers to stay.

The people of Seattle have a right to march, and I joined several of those.

and to protest the injustice to George Floyd and the generations of black and brown Americans.

Many of my constituents and I condemned last summer the misguided use by SPD of tear gas and blast balls against constitutionally protected protests.

After looking further into this incident on June 1st of last year, I agree with our Community Police Commission, which said last week on May 12th, we are concerned by Chief Diaz's decision to overturn the Office of Police Accountability findings in this case, the justice denied to peaceful protesters, and the harm this decision will do to trust in the Seattle Police Department and Seattle's entire police accountability system.

I did connect directly with Chief Diaz to express my concerns, and as Council Member Herbold indicated, he is apparently pursuing others to hold accountable.

He did not agree with blaming that lower-ranking officer.

I encourage the chief to complete this expeditiously.

I also want to follow up on Council Member Lewis's comments that the OPA must verify any conclusions reached by SPD.

After this incident is resolved and we finally have accountability, I believe City Hall should continue or double down on the hard work of revamping the expired police contract, revamping that contract, which I believe is unjust, inflexible and expensive.

Revamping it should enable us to retain a sufficient number of good police officers to address police misconduct and to deliver true safety to all communities.

The Transportation and Utilities Committee has one item on this afternoon's full city council agenda, the stormwater code.

At our Transportation and Utilities Committee meeting on May 5, we unanimously approved this update to the city's stormwater code, which is Council Bill 120044. The update was crafted by our Seattle Public Utilities after a long process and is required to comply with stronger environmental requirements from our state government.

Due to the larger amount of information, we delayed its arrival to the full city council for an extra week to provide additional review time for council members not fortunate enough to serve on the Transportation Utilities Committee.

And here we are.

We are required by our state government to have that updated code in place by July 1, and the ordinance needs 30 days to take effect, which makes today's May 17 vote time-sensitive.

If you have any last-minute questions about this update to our stormwater code, please reach out to our central staff analyst, Brian Goodnight, before today's full city council meeting.

Our Transportation Utilities Committee meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9.30 in the morning, and so our next committee meeting is this Wednesday, May 19. We have approximately 10 items on the agenda.

Four items on the committee agenda are simply renewing limited-term permits that allow the continued use of a skybridge and three pedestrian tunnels.

Our committee this week will also hear our amendments for the three surveillance impact reports that our committee learned about two weeks ago.

We plan to post those amendments on our committee agenda shortly.

Colleagues, as you may recall, we are working our way through several of these surveillance impact reports as required by our city's thorough surveillance ordinance.

We already adopted the group two, and now we're on group three, which includes three STD technologies.

I wanna thank Council Member Herbold for her work on amendments, which will be posted eventually.

And let's see, in District Four, this past Tuesday, May 11, my team and I hosted a virtual town hall for our constituents of District Four.

Over 200 people RSVP'd, and we were joined by our Human Services Department to discuss how we are addressing homelessness in 2021, including the important shift to a regional approach now that the new head of the Regional Homeless Authority is on board.

I want to thank our City Council Communications Team and City Council Information Technology Team for helping us, and of course, Malik Davis on my staff who helped to coordinate and lead the Town Hall with me.

You can watch the video of the Town Hall, just visit my City Council blog.

And one last thing, colleagues, as we know, the COVID-19 crisis magnified the disparities in our city along many lines, including access to reliable Internet.

Last year, we passed an Internet for All resolution charting the course for universal Internet access in Seattle.

So I'm pleased to share news about a new subsidy program from the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC's program started May 12 and it's called the Emergency Broadband Benefit or EBB.

Emergency Broadband Benefit is aimed to help families who are struggling to afford internet service during the COVID pandemic.

It provides discounts of up to $50 toward broadband service for eligible households, and in some cases, a one-time discount of up to $100 to purchase a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet from participating providers.

Please help to share the news of this new FCC program, EBB.

If you want more information, you can look on my blog on my city council website or go to fcc.gov forward slash broadband benefit.

That concludes my report.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

We'll take a pause here.

I understand you're also going to be delivering Council Member Morris's report.

And just want to see whether or not any council members have questions or comments about your report.

I'm not seeing any.

I just want to make note, you did reference the amendments that I will be proposing to the three technologies covered by the three bills in the surveillance portfolio.

And I'm looking forward to sharing those amendments so that you can post them.

I have been notified that the police department has some concerns and I'm waiting to review their feedback, have not yet received it yet, but would really like to hear their input before finalizing the amendments.

With that, do you want to go ahead and give Councilmember Juarez's report before I move on to Councilmember Solano?

Yes, thank you, President Pro Tem Herbold.

Council Member Jorge has asked me to read her report as vice chair of her committee, the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee.

There are no items of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

On June 4, the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee will hear the final two pieces of legislation regarding the Waterfront Lid Project.

All council members are invited to this committee meeting to learn more before a final vote of the full council the following Monday, June 7. The two pieces of legislation include a bond ordinance, which has already been introduced, and a final assessment role ordinance, which you will find on the introduction and referral calendar today under Council Member Juarez's name.

If you have any questions, please contact Eric McConaughey from our City Council Central staff.

Regarding parks, Council Member Juarez wanted to report on the Clean City Initiative.

May 2nd through May 9, the Parks Department picked up 50,860 pounds of trash from 27 encampment locations.

Clean City crew members also cleaned up 748 needles and deep cleaned two locations, Kinnear Park and Myrtle Edwards Park, during that reporting period, May 2nd through May 9. The Parks Shower Program served 290 users through the reporting period of May 5 through May 11. Parks Department also served 297 children at 17 child care sites throughout the city.

The Parks Department is gearing up for summer, and they are hiring seasonal staff.

The department is looking for motivated, enthusiastic workers for a variety of positions.

Please help get the word out.

Job postings can be found on the Parks website, Seattle And that concludes the remarks of Councilmember Deborah Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

We will hand it over now to Councilmember Swann.

Thank you, President Pro Tem Herbold.

Good morning, everyone.

Deepest condolences from me and everyone in my office to Council President Gonzalez on the fire that ravaged her home on Friday and on the tragic passing away of her mother-in-law, Mary Lou Williams.

Their loss is unimaginable, and we send our deepest sympathy to President Gonzalez, her family, and to everyone who lived in the building.

And I join Council President Pro Tem Herbold in thanking the first responders and all the staff at the Harborview Medical Center.

There are no items on today's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next meeting of the committee will be at its regularly scheduled time, Tuesday, May 25th at 2 p.m.

At that meeting, we intend to vote on legislation closing the fixed-term lease loophole in Seattle's Just Cause Eviction Ordinance and the legislation from my office to ban the eviction of schoolchildren, their families, and educators during the school year.

As I said in the committee, if the council members who are committee members are considering any amendments, I would urge you to please send those amendments to Arsha Venkatraman from central staff for the Just Cause Bill and to Jeff Sims for the School Children Eviction Bill.

As I said before, and if you also have questions about these bills, I urge you to ask those questions and reach out to my office, my staff members, rather than waiting for the 25th because that will help give renters rights activists and community members the opportunity to respond to any questions or concerns you may have.

Also on June 7th is upcoming the vote on the resolution from my office to extend the eviction moratorium to the end of this year as council members may remember we held the vote at that time because at that time The eviction moratorium both at the city and state level was extended for a few months, but now we know that the eviction moratorium sunsetting on June 30 is not going to be good for renters rights.

I really appreciate Washington Community Action Network, who have recently circulated a mass email urging Governor Inslee to extend the statewide moratorium as well to the end of this year and to quote the walk-in letter to ensure renters are able to catch up on rent.

We're calling on the governor to extend the eviction moratorium to the end of this year.

A report from policescorecard.org, which evaluates over 13,000 law enforcement agencies around the country, has ranked the Seattle Police Department number 477th out of the top 500 cities police departments.

They assign a score to each police department on a scale of one to 100. Departments with higher scores use less force, make fewer arrests, for lower-level offenses, solve murder cases often, hold police officers more accountable, and spend less on policing overall.

The Seattle Police Department scored 34 on their scale of 1 to 100, placing it 447th out of the nation's largest 500 cities, meaning it had one of the worst scores of the 500 cities.

This demonstrates, again, that it is totally insufficient to trust in the status quo of Seattle's accountability systems to hold officers accountable for abusing protesters and peaceful movements, and especially the targeting of communities of color, poor people, and our homeless neighbors.

We need an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police.

Yesterday I spoke at a demonstration in downtown Seattle of more than 2,000 people against the horrific attacks on the people of Gaza by the brutal Israeli right-wing regime.

Yesterday's rally was a powerful show of community resolve to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against these brutal racist attacks that began with an attempt to evict Palestinians from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem and the attacks on Muslims leaving Ramzan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the holy city.

The rally in Seattle included Muslims, Jews, Christians, people from other religious backgrounds, lots of young people, elders, socialists, union members, faith leaders and activists, people from all walks of life who are correctly appalled at the brutality of the Israeli military and the complicity of the Biden administration.

The fact that so many people in Seattle came together on such short notice to join up with worldwide and nationwide protests, including in Los Angeles and San Francisco, shows the near universal condemnation by ordinary people of the Israeli government's brutality.

At least 192 Palestinians have been killed in these attacks by the Israeli ruling class, including at least 58 children.

That is just stunning.

58 children have been killed.

Hundreds more have been injured and or lost their homes.

This comes on top of the ongoing Palestinian struggle to survive under conditions of the pandemic, of poverty and mass unemployment and misery, of intensified Israeli occupation, including extensive demolition of Palestinian houses, military and police brutality, arrest without trial, torture, and settlers violently preventing Palestinians' access to their farmland, conditions that are the direct result of the brutal ongoing blockade, conditions which the United Nations had described as, quote-unquote, unlivable.

Sectarian violence has now erupted on the streets in Israel, the worst since 2000. Lynch mobs are openly and directly being organized by the far right-wing Kahanist elements against Arab-Palestinian communities.

These extremist, racist forces have outrageously been receiving some backing from the Israeli government, with Netanyahu himself entering a formal electoral alliance with some of their parties.

On May 12th, one of these mobs was caught on live television in the city of Bat Yam, openly smashing storefronts and eventually pulling an Arab driver forcibly out of his car and attempting to lynch him.

No arrests have been made yet despite clear footage of the attackers.

Netanyahu's interim government has blatantly rejected all attempts to reach a ceasefire and cynically portrays its actions as being done in defense of civilians, even though it bears the overwhelming responsibility for the escalation of the attack.

Shamefully, Biden administration has refused to condemn the attacks on Gaza.

President Biden has instead engaged in the continuation of the decades-long policy of U.S. imperialism, supporting the Israeli ruling class's apartheid against Palestinian people.

Biden has again justified the violence by asserting that Israel has a right to defend itself.

Bombing children and bulldozing homes is not self-defense.

Let's be clear, Palestinians should have a right to protest and to organize and to defend themselves.

Yes, we should oppose, and I do oppose, indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilians in Israel.

As Congress member Rashida Tlaib said, quote, no child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will rain from the sky," end quote. Palestinian and Jewish people and immigrants were killed by rockets, including children. However, we have to condemn the outrageous attempt by the Israeli government to use these as justification for the immeasurably more devastating bombings and military attacks that they have wrought on countless defenseless Palestinian civilians. The continued occupation and repression of the Palestinian people has been funded and facilitated by the United States government. It has been part of a long-term policy of US imperialism to support apartheid against Palestinian people. Successive US administrations have attempted to portray themselves as honest brokers of peace, but have in fact blocked peace both diplomatically and by providing active military aid to the Israeli ruling class. I applaud Congress members Ocasio-Cortez, Talib, and other members of the squad speaking out against the attacks on Gaza and criticizing the Biden administration. I agree with Congress member Ocasio-Cortez when she said, quote, the president has said that Israel has a right to defend itself, but do Palestinians have the right to survive? The U.S. must acknowledge its role in the human rights violations of Palestinians. This isn't about both sides. It's about an imbalance of power, end quote. The squad now needs to use their balance of power in the House to put pressure on Biden to end the decades-long support for Israeli apartheid. This morning, I have circulated to all council offices an open letter to President Biden, a public statement to President Biden. and to the United States Congress demanding that they condemn the brutal attacks on Gaza and the Israeli ruling class's system of brutality and end all military aid and weapons sales to Israel. I will be circulating it for signatures at the full city council meeting this afternoon. I really urge all council members to join me in defending the right of Palestinians to survive. I would also inform the council that this statement has received a lot of feedback from community organizations. And in fact, that is why the statement has reached you this morning rather than earlier. I apologize for the delays, but it was because we were seeking feedback from many community organizations and we have incorporated that feedback. And so I see this statement as a genuine product of collaboration among people who are speaking out about these atrocities. We know protests are growing in the U.S. and globally, and we also know labor unions, including the United Electrical Workers and our own UAW 4121 here at the University of Washington, have publicly condemned the Israeli state's attacks, adjoining other labor unions from around the world in standing with the Palestinian people. International solidarity is crucial. What is even more important is a united movement of working class people in Israel and Gaza against the Israeli ruling class's policies. We will not be able to defeat this ongoing brutality without such a united movement of Palestinians and Israeli working people. I also wanted to let council members know that I have asked city council central staff to begin drafting legislation to prohibit Seattle from engaging with the police forces, intelligence agencies, security services, or other armed forces of any country with a consistent pattern of gross violation of human rights, including but not limited to Israel. The Seattle Police Department, unfortunately, has a track record going back nearly 20 years of having its officers attend trainings, either by the Israeli military or police or its proxies. Elsewhere around the country, Jewish Voice for Peace and allied organizations and activists have won a resolution banning these, what they call, quote unquote, deadly exchanges. And in consultation with local activists in the deadly exchange movement, I will be bringing forward legislation to do the same year. Given the brutal ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people, this is the very least our city should do. And I welcome other council members who would like to work with our office on this. Please contact my staff member, Jonathan Rosenblum. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Just checking to see if anybody has any comments.

for questions.

Just a question about the letter.

I really appreciate that you've distributed the letter among community members and community organizations.

But considering this is a letter from council members, I'm concerned that we are not going to have very much time to review it and provide input.

We are at 1113, we're at the top of our council member presentations and have not yet begun the executive session, which I understand is going to be a rather lengthy executive session.

And I, of course, understand the need and desire to get a statement out quickly, but I'm wondering, are there any other alternatives to allow your colleagues on the council to provide you some input?

People who, I think a number of us would be interested in signing the letter, but I, speaking for myself, want the letter to be from me and include my input in addition to the input that you've already collected.

Absolutely.

I definitely welcome input from you all.

I would, and I totally understand that this is short notice, especially given what we expect to be a relatively long executive session.

I would maybe urge council members to do your best to review by city council today, but I'm happy to talk about maybe an alternate timeline.

Maybe we can discuss that and then come back to it at the full city council.

I really appreciate that.

Moving on to the next person in the roll call order, we have Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council President Pro Tem Herbold, and my deepest condolences to Council President Gonzalez, her entire family for their loss this last week.

It's hard news.

shifting gears, you may be wondering why I'm wearing this sweater.

It is Sittende Mai today, which is Norwegian Constitution Day in Ballard.

It is one of the largest celebrations of the year.

This is Ballard's Seafair Parade.

We have been home to the largest Sittende Mai parade in the world outside of Norway for probably since we were our own city.

So usually it is a day of celebration.

So I just make that note that With the news that we received this last weekend heavy in our hearts.

Transition to a celebratory topic is just difficult at best.

From my committee, the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, there are five items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's introduction referral calendar, five appointments to the Design Commission, and we had previously discussed introducing legislation to preserve mobile home parks today.

We're going to wait an additional week to continue discussion with stakeholders and the property owners.

There are two items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full council agenda.

Council Bill 12067, which accepts the grant for Department of Neighborhoods consensus, census outreach, not consensus, their census outreach work, and Council Bill 12068, which extends the free street cafe permits for an additional year and creates a pathway to permanency for that program.

This legislation is co-sponsored by Council President Gonzalez and extends the permits for existing and new cafe display and vending use permit holders to use public right-of-ways for business.

I'll speak more to this at full council.

to the other reports from my committee are that the next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is this Wednesday, May 26th, starting at 9.30 a.m.

Last week, I was able to meet with the Finney Ridge Neighborhood Association.

I also met with Captain Brian Stample of the North Precinct on Tuesday.

My staff attended both the Ballard District Council and the Green Lake Community Council meetings on Wednesday.

I met with the Ballard Alliance on Thursday and attended the Association of Washington City's Statement of policy committee as well.

I had on Friday the opportunity to meet in person with a resident in lower in the Freelard industrial area.

I was able to meet with the owners of Ken's Market on Finney Ridge to discuss some issues that they're experiencing and I went for a district walk with the Aurora Reimagined Coalition along Aurora and 63rd Avenue on Friday afternoon.

This week I'll be celebrating Sint Maai by visiting Ballard Avenue.

There's a number of different walking excursions and a car parade.

I'll be attending the Regional Transit Committee this week and touring the Yesler Terrace with the Seattle Housing Authority on Friday to look at some trees.

Again, as always, I'll be chatting with my Ballard for my monthly questions and answers.

Here in District 6, last week I met with neighbors from Lower Finney, Gilman, two people on Finney Ridge, Freelard, Ballard, Greenwood, and Upper Fremont.

We discussed reactions to summer protests last year, perspectives on SPD budget cuts, how to have dumping or trash picked up.

Anyone who's interested to know more, please feel free to email my office.

I'll send you the links on how to best do that.

I also heard from residents about what life is like living in the Freelard industrial area, as well as living across from Gilman Playground over the last several months.

I discussed Green Lake Way closure and reactivating the Aqua Theater, which historically had been used for synchronized swimming, concerts, and so much more.

I continue to work on the Leary Triangle and 8th Avenue activation.

And just because we were talking about Green Lake way I want to put my comments on the record, which is that for it when it was initially closed, there were reasons to close Green Lake way due to construction that was ongoing and expand the amount of space in Green Lake because.

wheels, rolling, biking, they're not allowed on the inside path anymore.

And so to find a safe place for them to roll on the outside path really did require closing Green Lake Way in addition to that there was already construction going on.

Over the course of that period of time, I advocated to reopen part of the street so that there was still vehicular access between Finney Ridge and Stone Way.

SDOT and Parks Department worked to make this happen.

However, Our neighbors were not obeying the rules and we're driving the wrong way on the street, which is why the Green Lake way has had to be reclosed entirely again until a better design is able to be created and To ensure that neighbors are not misusing the street.

Now, long term, looking at the street I just want to put out there that there is room to have a two way bike path in two way traffic along that street.

If you look at re utilizing the shoulder on the west side of the street so all of that said.

The street is temporarily closed.

I am working with SDOT and parks and they are being responsive to looking for a way that we can reopen vehicular traffic and ensure that there is a safe place for people to ride and roll around the lake since the inner loop is not open for them.

I also sent a letter in support of the Green Lake Boathouse with Councilmember Juarez to Senator Murray.

And as always, I'll be hosting district office hours this week on Thursday from 1 p.m.

to 7 p.m.

If you're interested in meeting with me directly, please do sign up on my website.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you, colleagues.

That is my report.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Do we have any questions or comments on Councilmember Strauss's report?

Seeing, hearing none, we will move on to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam President Pro Tem.

I want to begin by joining my colleagues in expressing my I would like to offer deep and heartfelt condolences to our colleague Councilmember Gonzalez on the unimaginably tragic loss of her mother-in-law Mary Lou Williams over this past weekend.

I'm sure I speak for all of the people of District 7 in how unbearable this tragedy is, and our thoughts are with you as you go through this process of mourning and remembering her memory.

And I just, I can't, the news of losing, Such a valuable community member and Mary Lou Williams, who was so dedicated in contributing back to her community in West Seattle, really hit me this weekend and personally, it was really a difficult time for me and my household.

So I can't imagine, I cannot imagine, what Lauren and her family are feeling and she is in our thoughts even though she's not physically with us this morning.

Moving to my updates on this week, there are no items on this afternoon's agenda from the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments, nor do I have any legislation on introduction and referral.

I will be attending the Magnolia Community Council tomorrow, May 18th, for a quarterly check-in to give an update as I do with all of the community councils in District 7. I am also looking forward to meeting with Regional Homelessness Authority Director Mark Jones for the first time one-on-one this week.

to get updates on Mark's imminent plans for the authority and how the progress is going with Mark settling in to their duties after their first month on the job and look forward to reporting back on that conversation.

I will be attending the King County Regional Homelessness Authority on May 20th to review and advise on the staffing plan that Mark is putting forward beyond the initial positions that were budgeted and provided for under the interlocal agreement.

and look forward to duly considering that proposal and how it will impact the timeline of standing up the critical role that the interim, or rather, sorry, that the Regional Homelessness Authority will have as we go forward to address our ongoing state of emergency on homelessness.

I will also be attending the Board of Health on Thursday, May 20th, and look forward to getting continued updates on the state of the COVID-19 response, as well as the state of other public health initiatives relating particularly to hepatitis A outbreaks, as well as other areas of concern that we are typically briefed on at these monthly meetings of the Board of Health.

Finally, I do want to share that we will be having on Wednesday, the 26th of May, the next meeting of the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments.

This committee meeting, as I mentioned last week, will involve follow-up from a number of different themes that were touched on at our meeting earlier this month of the committee.

We are also going to be taking the opportunity to hear from the work that the Consortium of Care Providers, known as Just Care, has been up to in the Pioneer Square in Chinatown International District.

They will be presenting on their progress and presenting on some opportunities for scalability and the increase in emphasis to the approach that they have been using in engagement, shelter, wraparound services, and what we can learn in cooperating with the county on that model in more of the neighborhoods and business districts around the city of Seattle.

among other topics, that agenda is still being fleshed out.

With that, I don't have any additional updates this morning, and I will turn it back to you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any questions or comments from Council Members on Council Member Lewis's report?

Seeing none, we'll hand it over to Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I'll make this brief.

I am a little under the weather today.

I do want to join my colleagues in extending my condolences to President Gonzalez and her family.

My thoughts are with them as they begin to cope with this tragedy and really with the grief of losing their mother and grandmother, Mary Lou Williams.

There are no items on the full council agenda from the Community Economic Development Committee, but we do have several items on the introduction and referral calendar.

Council Bill 120071 is an ordinance relating to commercial tenancies.

This is Council Member Herbold's bill that I will leave to her to describe later.

We also have Council Bill 120077, which is an ordinance relating to the termination of residential rental tenancies and providing a defense to eviction for rent due during the COVID emergency.

I do want to speak to this for just a minute.

We know that according to the National Equity Atlas COVID Rent Debt Study, King County renters owe an estimated $4,900 in back rents on average.

That's the highest in Washington State.

In the county, we also have an estimated 44,000 households facing financial hardship through the COVID crisis, and that's more than double of any other county in the state.

So while 55% of people facing endemic-related financial hardship are low income, 62% are people of color.

And over 70% have lost income because of lost employment during the crisis.

So we know that Black and Latino and Native communities have been most affected by this.

We know that Black renters are facing the greatest challenge 41% facing financial hardship and rent debt.

It's been brought on by the pandemic.

And we know that Seattle had Hoovervilles during the Great Depression.

We had lots of them in my district.

And if we don't help shelters now, we will see a large scale increase in homelessness across the city over the next couple of years.

Even if half of that 44,000 households becomes homeless overnight, that would really dwarf the crisis that we're facing right now.

So renters deserve to stay securely in their homes without the threat of losing everything.

That's why my office has been working along with renters and advocates to introduce sound at home eviction defense, which is Council Bill 12077, which would protect renters who are facing financial hardship during the pandemic.

So we will be talking about this today and lots of other attempts that we are making as a council to protect renters.

Wanted to give everyone a little bit of a heads up about that particular bill.

Last item I want to discuss is the proviso lift for participatory budgeting.

It is still being reviewed by law, but we will release the draft and discuss it as an information item in tomorrow's Community Economic Development Committee meeting.

That's at two o'clock.

And just to give you a little bit of information about that, the bill lifts 1.07 million, and give that budget authority to OCR to hire three staff members.

Staff would be responsible for developing and issuing an RFP to hire a third party, lead the participatory budget process, and staff would also provide office administrative data analysis and logistical support to the process.

The third-party vendor would be responsible for hiring and managing the steering committee, and other staff and volunteers would provide the technical support and expertise to the actual process itself, and would also manage the funds to reduce barriers to participation.

I've said before, I had hoped that we would already be in the idea gathering stage in this process.

Nevertheless, it has been delayed.

So part of the language also includes the intent that funds would carry over for 2022 and 23, so that once we get to idea gathering and voting and the contracting process, there's still funding for staff to work through that.

During this portion of the agenda tomorrow, we will hear from New York City Council Member Osman Chaka about how the program works for them in New York.

I think he is especially gonna talk about their voting process.

We've got a lot of questions about voting.

So he will be talking about that.

And we'll also hear from Sean Good of Choose 180, the kind of community alternatives that could be supported participatory budgeting.

We hope to officially introduce the legislation on May 24th, and my hope is that we can vote in our special committee, which we have scheduled for June 3rd at 2 p.m., so that we can get it through full council.

And my hope is that by at least providing the draft legislation today as an information item, we will have, my colleagues will have enough time to review and ask questions so that we can We can move this discussion forward.

Our community is waiting, and I'm eager to get this done.

And then finally, tomorrow's agenda will include a briefing and discussion of the fossil fuel transition study that was conducted by the Office of Economic Development.

PD staff and researchers will be present.

But we will also have a community panel, including labor and some environmental justice advocates, discuss opportunities for job creation as we look to just transition away from fossil fuels.

And that is all I have.

Thank you.

Sorry, you're not feeling well, Council Member Morales.

Just a couple words about the bill that I'm sponsoring coming into your committee.

This is ordinance, sorry, a council bill to amend ordinance 1260-66.

That ordinance was the commercial rent control and rent protections legislation that I sponsored last year with Councilman Morales.

This legislation updates that bill to ensure that rent installments paid according to a payment plan negotiated under Ordinance 1260.66 cannot be considered late.

This clarification comes at the request of a commercial tenant whose landlord is attempting to exercise a non-renewal clause in their lease regarding late rent, even though that rent is being paid according to a mutually agreed upon payment plan.

I really appreciate you, Council Member Morales, for allowing this in Tuesday's Community and Economic Development Committee, so that if approved, it could be potentially in effect before the end of the commercial eviction moratorium on June 30th.

Just opening it up here before moving on to Councilmember Mosqueda for any questions or comments on Councilmember Morales' report.

Seeing none, passing it to you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold-Pro Tem.

I appreciate the opportunity to start as well as many of my colleagues did with sending my deepest condolences to Council President Gonzalez, to her husband Cameron, and to their entire family on the heartbreaking loss.

of their mother-in-law and the tragic incidents of the fire in their home in the condos that they both shared in the building.

And we'll continue to send our not only condolences, but to stand there with you in any moment that you need us.

We are ready to provide the care for your family or lend an ear to talk more about what's happened, but just wanted to make sure you all know we're thinking of you and to thank Cameron and Lorena for always being there for us as well.

Today, there are a few items that I wanted to reiterate from Council President Gonzalez on today's full council agenda.

The council president had asked me to speak on her behalf related to item number one, which is on the council's agenda, Council Bill 12066. This is the first quarter employment ordinance.

This is routine legislation that makes technical changes related to personal matters for positions in various departments across the city of Seattle.

And this legislation would do three things.

It would retain six positions to the civil service system.

The second is adjust the pay bans for three job titles.

And number three, amend the Seattle Municipal Code to reclassify two exempt positions.

There would be no direct costs associated with these employment actions and the Governance and Education Committee considered this legislation on May 11th and unanimously recommended the city council pass this bill today.

There are no items from me or the Finance and Housing Committee on today's full council agenda or on the introduction and referral calendar.

Our next Finance and Housing Committee meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday, May 18th at 9.30 a.m.

There will be a presentation from the co-chairs of the Domestic Workers Standards Board on their recommendations for council, and we will have as well with us members of the Domestic Workers Standards Board who will be able to be there to answer any questions and be part of the dialogue as well.

We'll have a presentation from Ali Panucci, Deputy Director at Central Staff on the ARPA Direct Aid, the American Rescue Plan Act Direct Aid Conversation, where we'll be able to go through the high-level overview of what guidance we received as of late as of last Monday.

So that's breaking news that we want to make sure to share with everyone.

And we'll have a briefing and discussion on the transparency requirements for contract workers, a bill led by Vice Chair Herbold, who I will speak to that as well during her presentation.

We do expect that this meeting will wrap up before 1 p.m.

And I want to note for folks who will be attending and also members of the viewing public that we will be providing simultaneous translation on this first agenda item related to the domestic worker standard boards per the request that we have simultaneous translation and not consecutive translation.

I am thankful for members of the domestic worker standards board for initiating a conversation here within council about how simultaneous translation can be offered in more of our council settings.

And I know that this is a conversation that will be ongoing and including the Council President.

So just want to make sure folks know that during the first half of the presentation, there will be an opportunity to hear from folks who are speaking Spanish and to accommodate the simultaneous translation.

We will be using the translation feature on Zoom for this item.

We're asking folks to log in 15 minutes early for council members so that you can go ahead and set up your device to show the interpretation tools and be able to access the listen in line for the presentation to be translated simultaneously for council members who speak English as a first language and for any of the viewing public who also wants to be able to get access to translation services simultaneously.

We will be streaming this through Seattle Channel.

My team through Feride Cuevas will be sending your offices instructions in writing as well, but very briefly want to walk you through how it's going to work.

At the beginning of the meeting, once we end public comment, I will ask the presenters and the attendees in Zoom to find the interpretation tool on the control panel at the bottom of the screen, which looks like a small globe.

You should then choose the language of your preference in which you'd like to hear the presentation.

there are two choices that will be listed, English and Spanish, and you need to choose one of those to be able to listen to that language, and otherwise you won't hear anything, because the line kind of goes to a soft mute, and that way the translation can occur over the person speaking so that it's audible, the language that you're choosing.

If you do have any comments and questions during the presentation, which we encourage you to write those down, because we're going to be asking you to hold those to the end of the presentation, and then go ahead and say them, Make sure to speak slowly so that the interpreter can capture what you're saying, and please refrain from using acronyms, legal jargon, and this is always appreciated in general, but also very difficult for translation purposes.

At the end of the Domestic Workers Standards Board presentation, the interpretation mode will be turned off by IT, and all Zoom participants will be back on the same, quote, channel to continue with the other agenda items.

And I do want to thank Freddy De Cuevas for really leading this effort within our office and working with members from the clerk's office and IT to make the translation simultaneous for tomorrow's presentation purposes.

And again, I know that there's members of the public who are going to continue to want us to upgrade and enhance our translation services, which we are all committed to doing.

If you are not a member of the Finance and Housing Committee and are planning to attend, you're always welcome to make sure to let Feride Cuevas know.

And at the beginning of our meeting, we have been starting with the ARPA discussion.

So I want to make sure that folks hear that if you're coming for the ARPA discussion, that will actually be in the latter half of the presentation during tomorrow's meeting to accommodate the translation services.

If you're interested in the ARPA meeting and would like to just tune in for that point, please do let my office know as well, because we can notify you when we're getting closer to that item.

Two departments to provide updates from today.

The first update comes from the Office of Labor Services.

They want to make sure that we're continuing to amplify App-Based Worker Appreciation Month, which is May.

This is a continuation of the May Day celebration and in recognition of all of the app-based workers who continue to provide support for our families and communities during this pandemic.

I appreciate their continued recognition of the app-based workers.

OLS also has launched a YouTube channel that provides videos and webinars about ordinances that we have passed at City Council to lift up worker protections and make sure that businesses know the responsibility and their rights under the law.

And you can visit that YouTube channel by going to my Twitter.

I just decided to post it this morning so that it was easier to read that out to go to our Twitter instead of the entire URL.

Please check it out.

And also the TNC Driver Deactivation Rights Ordinance public comment on the proposed rules is now closed as of May 7th.

OLS is currently considering the comments that were submitted and aims to finalize the rules in the upcoming months.

This will be made available through OLS's newsletter and also the website.

And finally from FAS, FAS continues to support the daily operations at the community vaccination site at Lumen Field, which now administers, which now administered nearly 85,000 vaccines just on Saturday.

Please check out my Twitter again for a recent video compilation.

of the work that they've done and the impact that these vaccinations have had in our community here in Seattle.

FAS continues to store and deliver vaccines including Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to Seattle Fire Department vaccination sites and a supporting public clinic for city employees at St. Charles on May 14th.

FES has provided information and assistance to a number of other cities regarding a different topic, and that is the work that we have done here on best practices related to cannabis, cannabis regulation, including strategic planning, interjurisdictional regulation, and industry development, diversity, and inclusion.

So thanks to folks in the city of Las Cruces, the city of Oakland, and Los Angeles, and New Jersey, Chapter of American Civil Liberties Union for reaching out to seek best practices here from the city of Seattle.

And finally, FAS has received Departmental Corrective Action Plans, or CAPs, from 22 of the 24 departments who were in need of providing reviewed policies related to Americans with Disabilities policies.

They've provided feedback to 15 of those departments already, and FAS plans to and is anticipating receiving the drafts from the other two departments by quarter two of 2021. So again, very busy working on a number of things.

In closing, I did want to reiterate some of the comments that were made in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

I want to echo the words of so many elected leaders across this country from those that were expressed today, and also from the words of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and so many others.

These comments were raised in rallies and in protests internationally over the weekend and over the last few weeks.

And these also include local elected officials as well.

I'd like to reiterate some segments of a letter written by my colleague on the city council of Alexandria to illuminate the call from East Coast to West Coast from local city council members demanding action.

Council member Mo Sefeldin wrote, indeed, The loss of life and injuries are heartbreaking.

However, there is nothing complex about the continued human rights and international law violations by the Netanyahu government.

The international community recognizes these violations, including settlements, de facto annexation, construction of barriers and excessive use of force.

The International Court of Justices opined that Israeli's actions in the occupied Palestinian territory violate international covenant on civil rights and political rights, international covenant on economic, social, and cultural rights, United Nations Convention on the Civil Rights of the Child.

Similarly, the United Nations Security Council has said on at least six occasions that Israeli settlements are a, quote, flagrant violation under international law and have, quote, no legal validity, a position backed by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Additionally, both Human Rights Watch and the Israeli Human Rights NGO determined that Israeli's actions met the legal definition of apartheid.

This year, the International Criminal Court launched an investigation into Israeli's repeated military operations in the Gaza Strip including the war of 2014 and its expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem in occupied West Bank.

I wanted to highlight these four citations from this letter to really reiterate the international community's condemnation of what is occurring right now and echo Council Member Seifuddin's urge to publicly recognize the human violations in Palestine and urge the President of the United States not to block, not to block diplomatic efforts through the United Nations and call on our U.S.

Congress to look into these violations of U.S. laws by actors who receive U.S. aid.

He concludes his letter by saying the world is watching and history is judging.

And I think it's important to lift up not just the stories, which are very important, which we continue to hear, but these citations internationally, which have condemned the actions that we've seen over the last few weeks.

Appreciate your time, council colleagues.

And that concludes my report.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Checking to see whether or not there are comments or questions about your report.

As it relates to your report, I want to mention an item that, as you mentioned, is coming up in your committee, the Finance and Housing Committee.

We will hear an update from central staff on the introduced legislation, but we will not be voting on the legislation itself, just an update on potential amendments to the bill.

And with that, I will move into my report.

Just get myself...

in the area.

for my notes here.

All right, so no items on the full council agenda from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

There were two bills that moved out of committee and were sent to the full council on the 21st.

The first bill would transfer 9-1-1 call center positions and parking enforcement officer positions from the Seattle Police Department to the Community Safety and Communication Center, as was laid out in Ordinance 12-62-33.

that the council passed unanimously during the budget process.

I am considering bringing forward an amendment to that latter bill that would allow us to pass the transfer of the 911 call center positions on the 24th and hold the parking enforcement officer positions until a later date.

And there is some time sensitivity around this without taking some action by June 1st.

We need to take action by June 1st in order to allow the folks holding these positions to be paid.

And so considering that there is a change of heart on the behalf of some council members on the transfer of the PEO positions.

I think it might be wise to have an ongoing discussion about that, as was suggested by Council Member Lewis, and make a change in our proviso that will allow us to do so without negatively impacting the payment of the folks in those positions.

There is no Public Safety and Human Services Committee this week.

I want to make a point of addressing some issues related to an ongoing issue in District 1, specifically in the South Delridge neighborhood.

really want to appreciate and acknowledge the efforts to address concerns related to an outdoor encampment on Delwich Way Southwest, just north of Roxbury, still within the city limits.

Over the last several months, beginning, I think, in mid to late February, I've been hearing from concerned residents, business owners, and workers in the area And I've been working to advocate for additional resources and actions to address the safety, cleanup, and obstruction concerns of neighbors there, as well as the survival and shelter needs of residents.

In response to my inquiries, the Seattle Public Utilities began weekly trash collection services to the encampments in early March.

and worked to have outreach workers with REACH to visit residents there to assess the impacts and understand the needs of the residents better and provide services.

Before I talk a little bit about the REACH engagement, I want to really thank the business owners in the area.

Many of them have been providing meals on an ongoing basis.

To folks in the encampment, the owner of the Triangle Tavern has been both providing sharps collection containers at his own expense as well as contracting with waste management for additional garbage pickup because the weekly trash collection services provided by Seattle Public Utilities was not sufficient.

I heard from Reach Outreach workers a couple weeks ago, or maybe a couple weeks ago, yeah, I think it was a couple weeks ago, and hearing the difficulty that they were having accessing safe shelter and housing referrals.

intrinsic to any successful encampment relocation is, as we all know, the access to alternatives.

And the Reach Outreach workers that are part of the HOPE team deployment explained that the problem that they were continuing to run in at this location is a lack of services, shelter, and options across the board, as well as a lack of transparency and access to the options being offered by the city.

They report multiple outreach workers have said that they have tried using the prioritization assessment to get folks into the Executive Pacific Hotel and have made many referrals for vulnerable folks at this particular location.

However, they did not hear back from the city and they did not see the referrals going towards other priority areas, regardless of the needs or vulnerabilities of those living in that site.

So the efforts of CoLEAD began a couple weeks ago now, and it's both fortuitous that the site manager, I'm sorry, the program manager for CoLEAD, Um, lives in the area and I also, um, reached out to him with my concern hearing from, um, the city contracted outreach services, their difficulty in, um, accessing the housing alternatives.

And colleagues started visiting the site.

They partnered with a number of different other service providers, and between The work that they were doing, it looks like in that particular location, 100% of the encampment residents have accepted referrals to shelter.

And again, this is because COLEAD has housing resources access that is simply just more flexible than the resources that the city contracted outreach providers have available.

So it's really important to highlight this example of the importance of those safe shelter referrals.

In this case, city departments and outreach workers have been aware of and engaging with the encampment and its residents for months.

Months providing service and mitigation in place.

I really appreciate their efforts problem solve with the community members, but the experience of bringing in co lead with its safe shelter resources really shows how essential their engagement is in locations like this.

On my public health update, I want to uplift that FAS and its partners provided nearly 8,500 vaccinations at Lumen Field on Saturday.

This is likely the largest vaccination site in the U.S. this past week.

Today, nearly 95,000 total vaccinations have been provided at the city-run vaccination site at Lumen.

It's just really incredible, a cause for hope.

And just thank the team at FAS and the other departments that FAS has been working with to pull off this really huge and successful task.

Last week, the governor announced a possible statewide reopening date of June 30th.

This hopeful step is possible because of our progress on vaccination.

Washington state has administered over 6 million doses of vaccine and 56% Washingtonians have started vaccination.

The full reopening could happen earlier than June 30th if 70% or more of Washingtonians over the age of 16 initiate vaccination.

If the statewide ICU capacity reaches 90% at any point, activities will be rolled back again.

And just letting folks know out there who have kids who are age 12 and older, they are all eligible to get vaccinated now.

It's easier than ever to get vaccinated.

Many providers are offering vaccination on a walk-up basis as well as via appointments.

Even if you got your first shot out of town, you can get your second shot close to home.

you could check out the city's vaccination website at seattle.gov vaccine or call the Customer Service Bureau Monday through Saturday.

It's 606-684-489.

Just a quick update from the Human Services Department.

As of May 7th, the Hospitality Worker Relief Fund has distributed 1,315 checks, totaling nearly $1.8 million in cash assistance.

In December, the council and mayor created the Hospitality Worker Relief Fund to provide one-time financial relief to low-income hospitality workers who lost their jobs or experienced a pay reduction due to employment changes and business closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city partnered with Wellspring Family Services to provide this one-time cash assistance to meet the basic needs of workers.

Let's see, as far as upcoming items this week, I will be attending the Seattle Police Department African American Community Advisory Committee this week in the evening on Thursday, and on Friday, I will be attending the Clean Water Plan Elected Officials Work Group.

This is their second sort of teach-in around the Clean Water Plan.

And with that, we'll take a pause to see if anybody has questions about my report or comments.

Seeing none, we will move into the final item.

On our agenda today, as presiding officer, I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an 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 that the council reserves questions of policy for open session.

I expect the time of the executive session to end by 12.45 p.m.

If the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I will announce the extension and the expected duration.