Public Assets & Homelessness Committee 7/7/23

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I think Council Member Morales did let us know that she would be a little late today.

Chair Lewis.

Present.

Chair, there are three members present.

Thank you, and I will update the record when Council Member Morales joins us.

As the clerk just indicated, she did indicate that she would be joining the meeting a little late today.

Approval of the agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Chair's report.

We have one agenda item today for which we have a presentation from Parks, so it shouldn't be too long of a committee meeting and looking forward to this discussion about Magnuson Park and the concession agreement.

So let's move to public comment to get to that item of business.

How many folks do we have signed up for public comment?

There are no members of the public signed up to comment today.

Then I will close the public comment session.

Items of business.

Will the committee clerk please read item one into the record?

Council Bill 120609, an ordinance authorizing the superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation to enter into a concession agreement with Sail Sandpoint to occupy and use a portion of the Magnuson North Shore Recreation Area at Warren G. Magnuson Park to provide sailing and boating programs and education, short-term boat rentals, and dry boat storage.

Okay, well we have a panel joining us from parks, headed by our recently confirmed superintendent.

This may be your first appearance AP, as the approved superintendent.

I think it is.

So welcome.

It's great to have you here in that official capacity.

And why don't you go ahead and start and introduce your panel.

We also have Tracy Rassler from our council central staff present.

But AP, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, introduce your panel and then feel free to kick off the presentation.

Why don't we go ahead and hold questions until the conclusion of your presentation and looking forward to digging into this.

Great, thank you so much, Chairman Lewis.

Good morning, good afternoon, Council President Juarez, Councilwoman Herbold.

I am joined by my colleague, Brian Judd from Seattle Parks and Recreation, as well as Seth Muir, the Executive Director of SailSandPoint.

Sales Sandpoint is a great partner for Seattle Parks and Recreation and for the city of Seattle.

As you know, a beloved and cherished concession that's been operating at Magnuson Park since the late 1990s.

They are an anchor tenant, which we refer to them as has been a longstanding and among the first organizations to really sort of look at Magnuson and develop the public-private partnerships for the park.

It's such a unique Asset and protected parkland for the city of Seattle cherished by many.

I'll note that we reopened officially the Magnuson community center yesterday, which was long awaited for the community and just a sign of many good things that are happening at this park.

As you may know, they are.

The sale standpoint is very well respected and loved by the community for the services they provide and for sailing for people of all ages from the very, very start sales standpoint has exemplified our parks and recreation mission.

They provide robust and numerous public benefits well before such benefits even became a staple of all of our contracts at Magnuson Park and so they.

How to report that they are a good partner that always has an eye on how they can do more and lean into our mission and help children.

We are excited to have you here.

Seth is the executive director.

He will join us for today's presentation.

He will provide an overview of the organization, its mission, and most importantly, I will ask the councilmembers to look at our program deliverables with the hope that you feel as we do that we are meeting public benefit to the maximum that we can.

travel and movement throughout Lake Washington.

This updated concession agreement before you reflects sales standpoints current operational footprint provides them options to renovate key park-owned facilities to ensure the public can access them for recreational programs and expands their public benefit deliverables aligning with our current expectations of all partners in this area.

Again you'll get more detail on what those public benefits are and how they are helping the citizens of Seattle.

So at this point, I will hand off the presentation to my colleague, Brian Jed.

Thank you, AP.

I appreciate that.

And good afternoon, everybody.

Very happy to be here with AP and Seth for this presentation.

And Jacob, thank you for bringing up the PowerPoint.

If you could bring it up to slide 2, that would be great.

So just restating here, what we're here to do is to propose entering into a new and updated concession agreement between Seattle Parks and Recreation and Sales Sandpoint.

and for the next two slides, I'm actually going to pivot to Seth to give him a chance to share with the council members today some background and information about Sales Sandpoint and its presence out at Magnuson Park.

So Seth, please take it away.

Great.

Thank you so much, Brian.

Thank you, Superintendent Diaz and members of the committee and council for considering this and for having me here today.

Sales Sandpoint, if you could go to the next slide, please.

is a 501 c three nonprofit, like Superintendent Diaz said we've been operating in North Shore since 1998 it's actually our 25th birthday this year so we're very proud of that.

And our mission is as a nonprofit is to bring the joy and life enhancing benefits of sailing and small boats to people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds.

We do that through myriad types of programs.

Originally, we were founded to serve mostly kids and we still serve about 70% of the folks who come through our youth.

But we start with kids in summer camps and we have adult programs.

We have an open voting rental program.

We offer racing support, race teams from a number of local high schools and the University of Washington all practice and compete at Sailsand Point.

We offer boat storage and probably the thing that we're most excited about and that provides a significant piece of the public benefit that we offer is the groups partner, the groups programs that we offer with about 25 to 30 different partner organizations throughout the year.

Sail Sam Point really is different than any other boating facility in the Puget Sound region in that we are a community boating center.

We're not a yacht club.

We're not a membership organization.

I think in some ways Center for wooden boats may be the most similar in that we're in a public space, but sales standpoint is striving to provide access to a resource that many simply don't have access to.

250,000 boats are registered in the state of Washington, yet only a small percentage of people have access to them.

So we really strive to be about getting anybody on the water that has interest.

And we do that through scholarships, volunteerism, low cost discounts, myriad other things.

If you could advance to the next slide, please.

As has been stated, we have a long-term relationship, and we really appreciate and honor that.

It's really a pleasure working with Brian and his team to maintain the facilities, to address all of the things that come up.

And we have 15,000 to 16,000 people a year coming through our programs, which makes us a really, really large player in kind of the regional fabric of voting opportunity.

Some of our highlighted groups that we partner with are local.

In fact, today through a nonprofit called Kids and Paper, students and youth living in Mercy Housing right in the park and attending programs with solid ground are coming to programs on the water.

We also partner with Outdoors for All, Seattle Children's Hospital, and a number of other youth agencies because we find that often Often youth who have not had as much opportunity to get on the water will have more success if they come together with peers, and perhaps an advocate in a community organization.

We're looking forward to a long-term concession agreement with the city because we have ambitious goals of renovation and rehabilitation of some of the area.

This long-term agreement will help us facilitate the fundraising that will be needed for that.

Because we want to continue expanding and growing the public benefit and the service to the community that we've been providing for 25 years.

Seth, thank you very much.

That was a wonderful framing.

So now I'm going to pivot us into a little bit of the nitty gritty around the agreements and then I'll probably pivot back to Seth in a slide around public benefit coming up here in a moment.

But for right now, On the left is a map of Magnuson Park, just to center everybody about which of our wonderful assets we're talking about today.

And on the right is a snap of the section of the north shore of the park where Sales Sandpoint currently operates to give people a little bit of bearings.

Next slide, please, Jacob.

So we do actually have a current lease agreement that we're operating from with Sales Sandpoint.

Some history on this.

Sales Sandpoint entered into this agreement with a group that was called the Building 11 LLC.

This is a group that no longer exists.

They were once under contract with Seattle Parks and Recreation to bring high revenue tenants to Building 11. When that relationship dissolved, we inherited this agreement in 2013, and some of the high-level terms are that this agreement currently extends out to 2059, and some of the language really doesn't align with what we try to do now with our legislated agreements, where You know, the public benefit language is not as strong as we would like.

It doesn't reflect Sales Sandpoint's full operational footprint.

And it also doesn't provide Sales Sandpoint a real incentive to do tenant improvements to some facilities that are currently right now not publicly accessible.

And we want to expand public access to those assets.

And so we're looking forward to walking through how we're improving on those three items amongst some other items as well.

Next slide, please.

So the concession agreement that we're presenting on today, this is some of the higher level details here.

It's a 15-year initial term, and there are two mutual extension options, which is a change from the current agreement.

The current agreement that we're operating under.

Those are options that are for Sales Sandpoint.

This new agreement makes it mutual, where we will come together and assess entering into that extension option, which provides the city a little bit of flexibility.

In addition to that, we update the public benefit language and include annual reporting so that Sales Sandpoint's public benefit plan can align with emerging Seattle Parks and Recreation needs and partnership opportunities.

and that's something we're doing for all of our agreements at Magnuson Park that we bring to council.

Sales Sandpoint will also provide us annual fundraising reports.

I'll mention this a few times.

There are a pair of outdoor restrooms in Building 11 that are public restrooms that Sales Sandpoint is actually the primary user of, particularly during the summer months.

This agreement will actually have them lead the maintenance of those and they will remain publicly accessible but it will actually allow us to extend our comfort station maintenance just a little bit more with that partnership.

So that's also part of the public benefit.

Next slide, please.

This is a quick one aspect of the map that shows really the breadth of sales standpoints operational footprint in the North Shore.

And also outline some of the areas where they're going to have some tenant improvement and redevelopment opportunities that we'll get into here in a future slide.

And I see a hand up, should I pause here?

And Council President?

Yes, let's go ahead and take this question from Council President.

You are muted, Council President.

Well, I said some pretty profound things.

I'll have to remember what I said.

Mr. Chair, I was actually focusing in on the next slide, page 9, on the public benefits.

That's where I was going to key in, so I apologize.

I kind of jumped the gun there.

Why don't we go ahead and go back and we can take those questions out of order.

I have a few there as well.

Yeah, page 9 for the public benefits.

That's where I'm having some questions.

And I'm glad Tracy is here because she understands how these concession agreements go.

So I don't know how you want to do this, Mr. Chair, if you want your guests to go through this slide or if we can just tee up our questions now.

Why don't we go ahead and let them present on slide nine.

And then why don't you start the questioning here.

I have a few.

So I think this is going to be the crux of our whole discussion.

So I appreciate the chase here.

So Brian, why don't you go ahead and give an overview of slide nine.

And then I'll turn it over to Council President for the first round of questions here.

Oh, that sounds great.

Actually, Seth and I are going to pivot on this one because we knew this would be the high interest slide of the presentation, and it is to us as well.

And so the annual public benefit value that we have outlined in the exhibit is that Sales Sandpoint will deliver $100,000 in public benefit annually, as outlined in the exhibit.

And this will include the public bathroom maintenance that I was referring to, and also they want to be a partner with us in the Swim Seattle initiative that is emerging this year, and we're excited about that.

But I'm going to hand it over to Seth because I asked him to come prepared to really kind of bring some detail on this slide and then this program, particularly how his organization is going to serve Sandpoint residents and Seattle Public School students with this particular contract clause.

So Seth, please take it away.

Sure.

I love talking about this stuff because this is why why I'm in nonprofits in the first place and why it's such a privilege to be in a public park doing this work.

I think it's also worth noting that in addition to this public benefit, we will be doing facility and site improvement work as well.

So keeping that in mind as a second value add, I think is an important piece of this.

But within the specifics of this $100,000 worth of public benefit, we're confident in our ability to do this because we already have been.

As Brian mentions, our service to the local communities and local high schools, these are partnerships that already exist that are ongoing even today.

So through our work with individuals, we anticipate providing a quarter of this value through scholarships to individuals.

So $25,000 worth of that.

And we find that the individuals coming to us come in a wide variety of different sort of programs.

We offer two out of every 10 spots that we have in a program, we hold for scholarship.

And in the aggregate, $25,000 worth of those are given each year, we'll be using the same process for validating the need that Seattle parks and rec uses to qualify, who is getting that that scholarship, but we know because we've been allocating that easily each year.

That or there's that much demand that we will be able to provide that much value.

We're proposing $20,000.

Additionally, in scholarship value for groups, and the difference there is that the groups are primarily.

social service organization.

So Mercy Housing come as a group.

Boys and Girls Club come as a group.

Certain high schools come as a group.

And we particularly focus our outreach on local and Title I schools.

So these are public schools already participating.

We have Nathan Hale, Ingraham, Eckstein.

I can't remember if it's Eckstein or Stein.

Please forgive me.

It's Ingraham and Eckstein.

Eckstein, thank you.

My Jewish ancestors would be horrified that I'm saying Eckstein.

Ballard High School and Sandpoint Elementary School.

And then we also focus a lot of our outreach early season and program development on Title I schools.

Again, Sandpoint, Olympic View, Northgate, John Rogers.

So that's sort of a sampling of the schools that we participate with.

Um, beyond that, we're anticipating about $15,000 in community outreach events.

We do a whole series of these throughout the year, free full moon sales season kickoff party.

And then a number of community barbecues which we basically feed all comers at.

We found that a lot of the success in getting the local kids who many of whom come down and swim at the north end anyway off of the beach.

We find that the success and engaging them and programs and bringing them into our community is a barbecue.

And so we do a lot of those.

And in fact a couple of local restaurants were have agreed to help donate some, some food to those kind of enriching our partnerships.

We anticipate about $12,500 in volunteer service events.

We do a volunteer day every week, and then a number of group volunteer days throughout the year, particularly at the beginning and the end of the season where.

three to four different groups of 10 to 12 people each, each with one of our staff, take on projects around the site.

And they're not specific to necessarily sales standpoints, small boats and boat racks and our assets.

You know, we'll do everything from removing blackberry to cutting back brush to moss removal.

to, you know, under the oversight of parks and rec, small building repairs, etc.

Certainly cleaning cobwebs and removing spiders is something we could do all day every day out at Magnuson Park.

We will be offering $7,500 in free open voting passes.

Every year we get requests from numerous partner groups and other social service agencies that want to put open voting passes perhaps in a fundraising auction or are requesting them for enrichment opportunities for their kids.

We will be donating a number of adult paddling passes and season passes to open boating within that program.

And I believe that That's the specific, no, I'm sorry, I jumped into scholarships and didn't mention the public access piece at the very top where $20,000 is the value of many of the assets that we offer free of charge.

So the bathrooms will be included in that and all of their maintenance.

We have a life jacket rental program.

We wheel a card out every day we're open with about 30 life jackets on them.

many of which are adopted and brought home and we just put more out.

And we have a filtered water system.

We also are the, we're the only safety boats patrolling north of the swim beach.

And so, it's sort of difficult to quantify that value, but it's significant.

If you're a boater accessing the water through the public access points in Magnuson Park and you go north, if you get in trouble, Sailsand Point is your backup plan.

We monitor the whole area with VHF radios and numerous times during a year we fish out kayakers, kite boarders, windsurfers, you name it.

And they don't have to be participants of our program.

Obviously, it's our responsibility if we're on the water with our assets to make sure that everybody is safe.

And that value we qualified or we quantified about $20,000 across the year, totaling $100,000 of public value.

Brian, is there anything else I should touch on that I neglected to mention?

I think you went through the Exhibit B1 in detail and we're ready for questions.

Just a quick follow up question about the only boat north of the swim beach.

Can I ask, and maybe someone from parks can jump in on this and then I want to hand it over to Council President for her questions.

Is it the same certification standards for the people who are doing aquatic safety?

I don't know, would lifeguarding be the appropriate term for me to apply to the work those folks are doing watching the water or something short of that?

And what are sort of the certification standards that people need to meet?

Shall I speak to that, Brian?

Yes.

Go ahead.

I see, okay, AP, please go ahead, sorry.

Yeah, Council Member Lewis, there are, we have certified aquatic lifeguards for both our pool aquatic programs and then our lake programs.

The lake requirements to be a lifeguard are more stringent for lakes because they require a different type of Rescue operation, um, ability to navigate lake water, et cetera.

So, they fall under.

Our employees that are, are staffed for those beaches and pools.

Fall under our purview, but they have slightly different.

Training certifications and requirements to.

So, if you need to be deployed to work at a lake.

You have to have a little bit more training.

So, I don't know if that answers your question.

Well, that establishes what the Parks and Rec lifeguards need to have.

So how does that line up, Seth, with what you folks are doing?

Yeah, sure.

So Sailsand Point is a U.S. sailing community boating center.

U.S. sailing is the governing body of small boat sailing in the United States, and every person who operates a powerboat at Sailsand Point, which is our primary means of rescue, you know, lifeguards on shore monitoring a swim beach on a lake, frankly, aren't going to be able to get to somebody out in the middle of Lake Washington who capsizes in their kayak, right?

So we monitor everything that we can see from our open boating desk.

And we have what we call our dockmasters with binoculars monitoring certainly all of our boats that are on the water, but then anybody that happens to sail through our area.

And we also in a ratio of 10 to one will have a powerboat for every 10 small boats that are out on the water.

So if we have a group of kids out in little sailboats will have a powerboat with them.

The instructors that operate those powerboats have to be at least US sailing level one certified.

Many of them are more.

They have to have first aid, CPR, something called safe sport training, which is specific to US sailing.

And additionally, they have to have a Washington State voter card.

And then beyond that, we do our own in-house trainings that are specific to the different boats that we operate.

Because as you can imagine, performing a rescue from a powerboat is a different skill set than performing one as a lifeguard.

I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

I'm glad Tracy is here.

The whole public benefits piece had to be revamped in a lot of these concession agreements.

A lot of these concession agreements in Lake Washington and other places hadn't been looked at since the 70s.

They just rolled them over.

So, let's start with the basic that if you're going to use a public asset for private purpose and open it to the public, then that benefit has to match or exceed because you're using a public asset, basically Seattle's property.

So I'll be real frank with you.

I'm really underwhelmed with page nine, because examples of public benefit, what we've normally seen is what the old concession public benefit looked like and what the new one will be.

So I understand you have annual reporting plan, and that's great, so we can see what's going to happen, but I don't A free public bathroom access?

There's no dollar sign to that.

I don't know.

Okay.

Access to free live jacks and wetsuits?

Okay.

I guess what I'm saying is, when I look at program scholarships up to 100%, how many?

Who are you targeting?

What is your outreach plan?

Is everything just north of the Ship Canal?

These are the same questions that we put to groups south of the Ship Canal.

What is your outreach and commitment to all of Seattle?

The boat storage discount, if you don't have access to boating and if we go through the language that we often use with low-income communities and your goal is to introduce these type of activities to communities that normally wouldn't have it, how is that a benefit that they're going to have 50 percent off on boat storage?

There's no numbers, there's nothing.

I don't want to vote no.

But I'll tell you, I'm really concerned that my other colleagues are gonna look at this and say, examples, I need to know outreach, deliverables, numbers, and what you intend to do differently.

your next annual reporting plan.

It does say many public benefits geared towards Sandpoint residents.

This is an asset that's owned by all of cities.

So when we look at Inner Bay, Shoal Show, Lake Washington, all those concessions, West Seattle, we have to make sure that those benefits are spread citywide because they never used to do that.

They used to just concentrate on that particular neighborhood and therefore only those people in that neighborhood got the public benefit.

And we took a lot of flack for that early on, myself and Jesus, our former superintendent.

So it's not granular enough for me for public benefits.

There's no dollar signs attached.

I don't see adding free life jackets and you get to use the restroom as a public benefit.

because it's a privilege for you to be using a public asset.

Now, I know there's some offsets there, but this is the problem of why we can't hold certain groups accountable.

I don't want to hear it verbally.

I need to see it on paper.

Now, granted, I did not, and that's probably on me, I did not read the whole concession agreement.

Normally, that would be something I would do, and I would look at the old one and compare it.

And I'm still having a hard time understanding, because I know you have the commitment to public benefits, but I really want to see the public in benefits.

And I don't see this on the slide, quite frankly.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President Juarez.

We have some more of this granular detail that you were talking about, which is in Exhibit B1.

It actually answers most of your questions.

I can have Brian walk us through that a little bit.

I can also, if you want some more time, I can work with Tracy to get a side-by-side comparison of the old and the new.

What you're saying is spot on.

I wanted to make a comment too about why we set an emphasis on the local community.

Since the last agreement, we've had some changes to the local community and I would be remiss if I also didn't acknowledge and thank Council Member Alex Peterson who has really challenged us to, we have now public housing directly in front of Magnuson and sometimes that community group was overlooked for our programming or it was seen as unapproachable, especially for a sport like sailing.

So we've asked Sail Sandpoint and to work with our recreation staff to really lean into that community.

and try to get those children since it's so close.

But you're right, it's a regional park, and we have an obligation to ensure that the benefits reach citywide.

But I just wanted you to know, when we're saying local, it's not just some of the traditional, more affluent local areas of Magnuson.

It's actually a focus on some of those new public housing.

But Brian, could you add any more that I may be

Before you go on, Mr. Chair, may I do a follow-up here with, thank you.

So when I look at slide, thank you.

When I look at slide four and you bring up partnerships with Mercy Housing Solid Ground, where are their partnerships?

Is that part of the public benefit?

Can you actually say, hey, council member, we worked with Mercy Housing Solid Ground, Seattle Children's Hospital, and all these other groups.

These are the amount of outreach that we did.

This is what we got back.

This is how many kids and young folks we got enrolled.

This was part of our big rollout.

It just says partnerships.

I don't know what that means.

It just hangs there.

Now, you say over 300,000 in public value.

I don't know how that computes to 300,000.

That's the piece I need.

It's great.

I get it.

We're dealing with a lot of issues on getting the public involved in particularly healthy activities that other communities didn't always have access to.

We get more complaints about pickleball than people concerned about whether or not children and high schoolers have an opportunity to learn about to get on the water and be safe.

So I guess my point again is it's not enough to just have a bullet point.

And it isn't, I don't even want to get too granular, like two concession agreements and go through it like a lawyer.

But page nine really should reflect with some numbers and what you've done and what you're going to do.

When we look at why I won't be here but I'm sure other folks will be here in one year, because that's that's that's what everyone goes we zero in on and that's why we revamped all of those concession agreements, starting in 16, because we learned that people just got used to rolling them over.

And just kind of saying in a committee hearing or putting on a bullet point where we're going to do this and this and this, and then we never knew what the numbers were.

And without calling out any particular group, some groups did better than others because they control these community councils and these groups and these public assets for their community.

And we never knew what the outreach was.

That was 1 thing we hammered on with and when they created 1 roof.

If you're going to create this public benefit and you want children and young folks to learn about hockey, then you need to show us your plan about how you're going to do outreach, and they did through REWA and making sure that young folks, immigrant kids from Rainier, Beacon Hill, Lakeland City, Aurora, get bused to the Kraken Community Iceplex to learn how to skate and gave us the numbers and how much they're doing.

And that's a private facility.

So I would at least expect on our own land, with our own community and our own residents, that NINES should be much more robust.

bus than what I'm looking at.

And I'm just being honest with you so we can make this right.

I'm not trying to be mean or rude or too critical, but after looking at these agreements for almost eight years, this is one of the weakest ones I've ever seen.

So I kind of have two parallel thoughts here.

And AP, I'm assuming I can jump in here.

So what Seth verbally spoke to during this slide is actually in Exhibit B1, which will be our guideline for how we assess sales standpoint annually on its public benefit deliverables and its plans for the future.

This is the benchmark that we will follow.

And so that's kind of how we're doing the continuous improvement around public benefit for this contract and several others.

And that being said, when it comes to what's on slide numbers 3 and 4, Seth, I actually want to give you an opportunity to talk about your existing partnerships.

the $300,000 value to kind of address those questions.

You know, the slides here are a little bit high level in reference to the granular detail of the contract.

So, Seth, I'll give you a chance to talk a little bit more to those.

Yeah, sure.

And, you know, it only has a bullet on this slide nine but the annual report is pretty thorough.

And it's something that certainly has existed as long as I've been with sales standpoint which is five years.

And, you know, the, the, I forget how many pages it is it's between seven and nine pages, each outlining specifically not only what our plan will be for the following year, but reporting on what it was for the year.

And the way that we get to the value of these things is what would the fair market value be for a person participating in a program, and then when we give a full hundred percent scholarship like we do to groups and individuals.

That amount is the value.

I'm certain that that's fairly clear.

If we had 10 people at a program that was $400 each, that would be $4,000 worth of public benefit.

As far as our outreach goes, we have the benefit of having a very diverse and needy community right at our doorstep that has not been engaged particularly well in aquatics and particularly in boating.

And so we lead with our local partners, but we certainly have through connections to, for example, the YMCA we have groups coming from YMCA is all over the Puget Sound.

However, we found that we've had a lot more success engaging in multiple programs over multiple years.

with the local groups, primarily because of transportation challenges.

I'd love to see us address that, but I also would make the case that in certain places, a better, more robust partnership is going to present more naturally with the local parks.

And so we are really excited about getting kids from Lake City, Mercy Housing, from farther north, from South Snohomish County even, to our facility.

Because it's really, this is the access point that they'll be going to versus bringing folks in from maybe down in Rainier Beach or something like that.

We do have visions over the next few years as we emerge from COVID and do even more expansion.

of bringing our programs to other places, but we admit we haven't had a ton of luck busing people in from South Seattle, for example, versus bringing our programs to them.

But I certainly, within the annual reporting plan, there is a lot of detail that I think slide nine hopes to spare you.

If I may follow up, Mr. Chair.

Yes, please.

So looking at page four, let me just refine my questions a little bit.

I apologize if I wasn't clear.

North of the Ship Canal, access to Lake Washington is pretty much through Magnuson and Matthews Beach.

There's not much place because you have homes there and there's not a lot.

There's one small tiny piece of land that people fought over and eminent domain and the city took it over so they could have access to Lake Washington.

I can tell you that the people that fought for that little piece were not normally people that would be out boating.

It was people that lived there that had kayaks and sailboats and had access to that, and that's why they wanted it.

But it didn't happen, and I can understand why, whether I agree with that is another issue.

Looking at page 4, a good example is we've worked for eight years with Outdoors For All.

When they wanted to buy a building, and work with us on a building and the asset piece.

And I forgot who's the director there, and I should know his name.

He's retiring now.

Just retired.

I was talking to him last night.

There's a new guy.

I cannot believe I forgot his name.

He's been a friend for eight years.

Ed Bronston.

Ed is going to kill me.

I love that Ed would come to me, and I'd say, look, I'd give him the same thing.

I need a piece of paper that tells me exactly what you're doing and what the outreach looks like.

And he is working, as you know, with the disabled community.

and going out there and actually seeing what the public benefit and what the deliverables are and what the costs are.

So, on page 4, can you tell me, when you say partnerships, do you have partnerships?

I mean, it would have been nice to have a, if I had a slide and this was my job, I would have page 4 say partnerships.

I have them all listed.

And then I'd say, these are the things that we're providing.

These are the costs approximation what they're associated to.

This is the kind of outreach that we have done and plan to do, because then it tells me that there is a public in the benefit.

I'm not, I'm not trying to guess from a PowerPoint.

You see what I'm saying?

So, I'm not going to, I have everything printed out here.

So, when you are, if you're referring to exhibit B.

And A, I have a floor plan, I have a property map, I have the summary and fiscal note.

I mean, so I'm trying to help you tell your story to the city of Seattle that we should have this concession agreement agreed to because the public benefit we provide really is public.

And it matches up with the value added that we're getting to use your public asset.

It's that simple.

So do you have any agreements with any of these groups that you have listed on page four?

I'm sorry, I was waiting for Brian to respond.

I'm not certain that you don't have Exhibit B1 public benefit description?

I have Exhibit B, a property map, a floor plan.

No, I do not have that.

It's not listed in my supporting documents either.

Unless I'm missing something.

There's a concession agreement that was attached summary and fiscal note.

Summary exhibit a floor plan summary exhibit B property map and then the presentation.

That's all on the on page 3 on the agenda.

Council President Juarez, if I can direct you in the concession agreement, Exhibit B1 is on page 41 of the concession agreement.

Okay.

Well, I did not print out the 42-page concession agreement because in presentations, my understanding is you are supposed to condense for us in your PowerPoint what is important for us to see.

I did not read the 42-page concession agreement or the attachments.

So that's not very helpful.

It is pretty hard to find.

It is deep in a 72-page document.

It's page 41 of 72. The total is, it's itemized for a number of different items, but the total of the public benefit is $100,000.

But I do want to just say that for instance, for the scholarships, that has a $25,000 value, but it's based on the average request from the previous five years.

And to Council President Juarez's point, you're basing your future public benefit on the average of what's been done in the past.

And I think the the emphasis that Council President Juarez is making is that a lot of the work that she did as chair of a parks committee in the past has really been to change the way we think about these public benefit agreements and have them be more stretched documents, that we're not just doing what we've done in the past and calling it a public benefit, that we're actually trying to figure out ways to be effective at doing more.

I'm pulling it up now.

But can I just say, and thank you, Mr. Chair, if I just may say something really quickly in response to Councilmember Herbold.

Yes, of course.

And for the audience, that wasn't someone from like our council staff, that was Councilmember Herbold.

Go ahead, Council President.

Thank you.

So I'm pulling that up now, and I just wonder, and I think you will remember this, Councilmember Herbold.

We did the same thing when we had to look at the redoing the.

Contract and concession and agreement with woodland park zoo, and we had 17 amendments.

and three hearings because district representatives and citywide representatives, and including district one way out in West Seattle had amendments and concerns that Woodland Park Zoo, that their public benefits piece, quote unquote, wasn't robust enough.

It didn't list out for them, and it wasn't incumbent on Council Member Herbold to read the 60-page agreement to find on page 19BA1, that yes, indeed, there are free tickets for this.

That's not our job.

And that was very painful for Dr. Alejandro, he was not happy, but he's a good sport and he came back with their team and we finally got it right.

We got the amendments passed, but we have more scrutiny on these public benefits now.

So I will leave it at that and I will pull up, what page did you say that was on, 42 or whatever?

Page 41. Thank you.

Yeah, 41 of 72. 41. Thank you.

I just add here, APDS superintendent for Parks and Recreation.

One, we apologize for not having the exhibit more handy and for condensing it, not condensing it and highlighting it more thoroughly in the PowerPoint presentation.

That's an area that we can improve on, but I do wanna, the fundamental core, I think, of what you're getting at, Council President, and that Council Member Herbold mentioned, I just wanna point out that you know your points are well taken and the concession agreement is not something that once passed you know we're going to put on the shelf and and not look at contract compliance administration and oversight the way this contract is structured through that annual report is that we are going to be evaluating that constantly and not just once a year because we are in close partnership with sales standpoint and they're close to our main headquarters and we interact a lot if at any time They're not meeting, you know, a public benefit if they're not living up to their plan, or we want them to adjust their plan.

We will not hesitate to call them out on it if it's such an affair that we don't want to get to it.

But if we need to call.

A potential contract default that needs to be cured with a time performance.

I have no problem having our staff do that.

So.

There, you know, again, the oversight is important to what you're saying, but.

Also, your seminal points are not lost and I know there was a lot of work here done in the city to make these concession agreements better for the public.

I'm a big proponent of that and, you know, once that we are here, I want you to know that we are going to be continuing to address that and if they're not.

meeting those needs.

If they're not reaching out to those local communities that we talked about, then we will certainly look at it.

And we're also happy to provide additional information after this meeting to, you know, address what you want to say or if you feel that we need to come back, we're happy to do that as well.

Yes, Superintendent Diaz, I appreciate those remarks, but I think the premise of the lines of questioning that are being raised by council colleagues is not necessarily the concerns about fidelity to the proffered public benefits.

It's whether the public benefit is robust enough or expansive enough.

So I mean, and just to jump into that, now that we're kind of into the, the exhibit B1 portion of this, which is basically, I mean, I should say for the viewing public, slide nine is sort of a summary of B1.

And in examining this, I do have a question specifically, I think this was alluded to a little earlier on the scholarships for individuals portion of this.

indicating $25,000 of the public benefit is going to be for the program scholarships.

My question is, like, I've got the dollar amount, and I see that it would be 100% coverage.

I just, I don't know how many slots that represents, right?

Like, are we, like, for $25,000?

Like, is it 25?

Is it 50?

Is it 100?

Like, I think these are the kinds of questions that I'm interested in digging into a little bit.

That, you know, as part of this this inquiry.

I mean, I have a few more questions for the stuff that's in this be one attachment, but I want to start with that one because I think that's one of the more.

I just want to learn a little bit more about the scope and extent.

It looks like Council President has a follow-up as well.

I do.

Just a quick one, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, and I apologize for interrupting you.

I didn't get an answer about page 4 on the partnerships.

Does the sales standpoint currently have partnerships with these groups?

Yes.

So do you have a partnership with Mercy Housing, and is it a standard partnership?

which reflects?

Mercy Housing is an interesting relationship because our partnership with the tenants of Mercy Housing is not with Mercy Housing itself.

The tenants and the kids of Mercy Housing attend several different enrichment opportunities, mostly after school and during the summer and on weekends.

One is they join the community center, which is just, as they said, reopened in the park.

and the other is they participate with Kids and Paper, which is a non-profit that runs after-school programming.

Same kids.

Solid Ground also does education enrichment programs for the families and the 75 families and the kids that live within the park.

Our partnerships are with Solid Ground and with Kids and Paper, and those all serve kids living in in Mercy Housing.

But Mercy Housing as an organization doesn't direct their tenants to programming.

They allow the partners to build those relationships.

So you basically are telling me that you have children from these groups participate anecdotally in these programs.

There's not a piece of paper partnership that says, hey, sales standpoint has this agreement with mercy, housing, solid ground sale, children's, whomever that we want to do outreach to get your kids in our programs.

So we can share the public benefit.

You're just saying we know for a fact that these kids attend these these things.

I'm respectfully we have contracts with each of the groups.

Okay, have an entire intake process with you know there's there's like there's a whole participant agreements we do pre and post surveys there's there's a whole litany of great paper trail on these programs that we, I mean there's actually one going on right now with 60.

Seth, I don't want to make you feel like this is the Senate hearing and you need a paper trail.

What I'm trying to get you to say is, tell me, is there some pieces of paper that tell me there are partnerships that you're not just saying, hey, these kids show up.

A hundred percent.

And it's been happening, you know, it's been happening for 10 years.

Many of these partnerships predate me.

That would have been nice to know that, but thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much.

And now I want to go back to my related question about the program scholarships in terms that we have the dollar amount.

I'm curious on like the number.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I would have to look back.

We have a massive Excel spreadsheet that shares exactly how many slots in each program.

The challenge for me to speak to that off the cuff is that our programs vary tremendously.

You know, our shortest program is a two-hour intro to paddleboarding.

ranging up to a two-week-long, six-hour-a-day camp.

And so each of those types of programs has a different cost.

So when we offer somebody a scholarship to a two-hour intro to paddleboarding, that value in scholarship is going to be just a fraction of what the value in scholarship would be to somebody attending for free a full two-week program.

you know, I can give you numbers of how many people, but I would have to do some crunching to figure out, you know, how many attendance hours is that overall?

How many people?

And even if I said how many people, I'd want to qualify that, right?

Because somebody coming down for a two-hour program, I can count them as a person, but the person that comes down for two weeks of programming is certainly having a much longer tenure and you know, impact in our program.

Do you see what I mean?

So within the spreadsheet, I can certainly give you the numbers of, you know, whether it's 40 kids attending camp or 40 kids attending a one and a half hour refresher session.

But as far as making that apples to apples, I'd need to do some number crunching on how many participant hours that is.

Yeah, and I totally understand that that number might not be the best representative you know, representative statistic of the entire public benefit.

But I do think it would be irrelevant.

data point for me to understand what the full impact of the $25,000 is in terms of people served.

And we could certainly get to that.

I mean, the annual report that we put together from 2022, bearing in mind that, you know, 2020 was a low watermark, 21, 22, 23, we're just about to back to where we were in 2019. And we're anticipating that in, you know, in 2024, we'll be back to 2019, which is really our high watermark.

But the annual reports that we submit to Brian have in painstaking detail all of the numbers around how many kids in each kind of program, how many adults, how many families.

Yeah, understood.

Thank you so much for that.

And if you could send those my way, that would be greatly appreciated.

Sure.

Tracy, you've just been jumping up and down there to get in on this.

Not jumping up and down, but just to amplify the request, I'm presuming that you, Mr. Mayor, can provide the information even for this year.

I was doing a little bit of web research and saw that your scholarships for this year are already exhausted, at least according to your website.

if you have some sense, you know, given this issue about demand, if you have some sense about how many people actually applied for your camps, but you had to deny them because you ran out of scholarships for the year.

So that would be helpful information to the extent that you have that available.

It gives the council members, gives all of us a sense for, okay, you're offering this amount of money that might equate to this number of scholarships, but what was in fact the demand?

If you were able to meet more of that demand, what would that look like?

So I think that additional information, if you have it, could be helpful in terms of us understanding the need here, right, as well as what might be desired in terms of a little bit more public benefit.

100%.

Could I just respond with one kind of piece of overview?

There has been increased demand.

But I will also point out that, you know, Sales Sam Point is not is not generating a whole lot of revenue.

At best, we've been breaking even over the last couple of years.

And with this agreement, we're effectively doubling our rent.

The cost of doing business is going up significantly as well.

And so we have to balance our desire to do as much public benefit as we possibly can with our need to conduct business as essentially a small business in a place where all of our salaries have, you know, required significant increase over the last few years, and the cost of doing business has gone up.

So I do want to, you know, we anticipated that there would be, as I think, and all of us share the desire to do, you know, how much public benefit can we possibly do?

But just as somebody operating a business, you know, I do have to recognize that we, every spot that we give away is you know, revenue that we can't generate, we have to balance that with being able to stay viable as a business, particularly in light of this new agreement, which will essentially, you know, it increases our overhead and the need for us to spend money on fundraising as well to meet the goals.

I do think that just one more thing that has not probably been talked about a little bit here, a little bit more, is in fact the expectations of your capital fundraising and improvements that you will do to the facilities.

I think that's worth a few moments just discussing what you anticipate will be those improvements and contributions that you will be making towards those improvements that otherwise would require the city to be funding.

So I don't, that's really been covered and it probably would be helpful for the council members to understand that because it is a commitment that you are making.

I know that that commitment hasn't been completely solidified.

I've seen some, some evidences of what you're hoping to do, but I think it would be helpful for council members to understand what your hope is there and expectation.

It's a PDS superintendent.

It's actually on our next slide that we haven't gotten to, but that is also part of the public benefit is the.

Is the public the tenant improvements that are a key part of this agreement and that the concessionaire will be making relieving that burden from the city, which can be very costly.

I would like to ask councilmember Herbold whether she would be okay with us

the questions, if that would be okay.

Sure.

Okay, great.

So, Superintendent, why don't you guys go ahead and finish the presentation, and then Council Member Herbold will be first in queue.

I have a couple additional follow-up questions as well.

So, take it away, please.

Great.

Jacob, can we move to slide 10?

AP, thank you for queuing up the capital improvement aspect of the agreement.

This has actually been the primary driver of us trying to enter into this new agreement with Sales Sandpoint.

As I mentioned before, they have an existing agreement that we're operating from today that goes pretty well into the future.

And so one of the main motivators for us to begin this negotiation was the opportunity and the desire that Sales Sandpoint has to renovate a boathouse that is located up in the North Shore.

The condition, we received a conditions assessment, meaning the Parks Department did in late 2022, and the pilings underneath in the water were worse than we thought.

And it's actually currently not an accessible building because of its condition.

And Sales Sandpoint has a deep desire to renovate this and to expand it for public access as a part of their operation.

And this will be a major benefit as a part of this contract.

In addition, there's a room in Building 11 that we call the Weld Shop.

It's also called Room 160. It's located within a shoreline restriction zone.

So, Sales Sandpoint would like to renovate that into additional classroom space and it fits right into that use restriction.

And we also have a building there called Building 115. It's a little shed right behind where Sales Sandpoint's offices are.

they would also like to renovate that.

It's currently not accessible to the public.

Along with this really valuable and important public benefit conversation, I do want to underscore that Sales Sandpoint is looking to take on a significant commitment in partnership with us to renovate currently inaccessible spaces for public use on park property.

And so that's a major driver for us on this, this agreement.

So, Seth, do you want to speak a little bit more specifically to your plans around the boathouse and your fundraising plan and how driven your board is around this particular part of it?

Sure yeah and I would say that you know that is a major driver for us seeking this agreement is our interest in fundraising and what we've you know been told by private funders about their need for us to be in a long-term agreement with the city before they'd even consider us for funding.

We already have about $700,000 worth of earmarked state and county money for building 11, room 160. As soon as this agreement is finalized, we'll be able to begin the process of activating that.

Our intention long-term has been to renovate and redevelop building 31 and building 115. building 31, the footprint of it is central to our operations.

And we, you know, currently not being able to access certain parts of it is detrimental to our operations.

You know, we've been able to move things to other places, but we would very much like to see this done.

We've already spent significant money doing feasibility studies.

We went through a major projects grant program with with SPR in 2018 to identify kind of the rough scope of the building.

We've brought on a capital campaign consultant who's done a number of kind of feasibility assessments of our community to get us to the point where launching a capital campaign is a reality for us, kind of predicated on long-term access to the space.

Thank you, Seth.

And let's go to slide 11 really quick.

I want to highlight a few other things here about this agreement.

In general, it's looking to really strengthen our relationship with Sales Sandpoint.

We talked a bit about the public benefit exhibit.

This is an improvement over the current agreement that we inherited.

And I do want to just remind people and echo what AP said.

that the public benefit exhibit is a menu by which we'll guide our annual conversation about what will the public benefits, what are the public benefits that Sales Sample Light will provide on an annual basis.

We can shift, we can change, we can ask for more, we can ask for a new priority.

It really is a guiding benchmark, one that we take very seriously in terms of contract administration.

Another key component here is that sales standpoint, we've talked about the outdoor dry boat storage a little bit.

That is not included in the current agreement.

And the new agreement we will be collecting, meaning the parks department, 10% of the gross revenue annually.

And the report, you know, Seth and I talked last week.

In 2022, Sales Sandpoint brought in $155,000, which means that we will collect $15,000 annually.

That's $15,000 that we are not receiving today as a part of this new agreement.

So this is really about strengthening our ongoing relationship, one that will exist for a while.

And so I will yield to AP or further questions.

We're happy to entertain any further questions.

Okay.

Well, as promised, Council Member Herbold gets to go first here.

So, Council Member Herbold.

Thanks so much.

A couple questions more broadly, and I apologize.

I know I probably ask this question every time a public benefit agreement comes up.

But, you know, the conversation about what the the contractee can afford, given the business model, reminded me of the fact that it is still not clear to me how we go about creating a target number of dollars for a public benefit.

So if you include the the investments associated with the site and facility improvements, that's another $1.5 million.

So, you know, we're looking at 200, yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, 200 and, what are we looking at?

We're looking at $1.5 million plus, $100,000, is that?

Is that accurate?

So the $1.5 million is going to be 100% fundraised and financed by sales standpoint?

Yes, so they will, this is a part of the tenant improvement offset of part of this agreement, where Sales Sandpoint will do the fundraising of various kinds, whether it's through private fundraising, grant opportunities, and the contract offers them a 50% rent offset during the first, or actually during the life of the contract to help offset some of those expenses.

They will be required to pay prevailing wage, and they will implement that.

And that's a pretty standard practice at Magnuson Park in several of our contracts.

So are we saying that we should think of the public benefit value as $1.6 million?

Yes.

Okay.

So that's very helpful.

And I hope you can see how.

Because, you know, I'm scratching my head wondering, well, how do we, this is a public benefit, as Council President Juarez explained, public property, and it, it always seems like the public benefit seems to be this balance between what the contractee can afford and what we think the benefit of using the property by a private entity, what we think it's worth.

So it's never really clear how we arrive at the appropriate level of public benefit and maybe, if there is more clarity or a formula or something that is used, maybe Tracy can speak to that a little bit.

And then my other question is, as it relates to the agreement giving This is a PTA superintendent for parks and recreation.

hold of the lease is to provide exclusive benefit to stay in sale.

However, they are, they're open to us being able to use the facilities when needed for our programming.

There's always been a great partner there and an ask for us to do that.

And they've also committed to allow us to grow programs such as from Seattle for the public.

So We've had some opportunities where we'd like to run some workshops for kids on lake safety, and they've agreed to provide us the equipment free of use, the use of the beach areas.

So we feel very comfortable in the relationship.

And again, we have main headquarters in Magnuson that's very close to Sandpoint, so we're often there in nearby facilities.

So we feel confident that it's not going to be something that's going to be sort of once approved, you know, cloistered off.

They've been very receptive and will continue to do so, is our belief.

Thank you.

And then, Tracy, to the question I had, just broadly, not necessarily specific to this agreement, broadly, how do we determine what our target should be for the value of a public benefit?

Well, Council Member, I don't think there's really a formula that we have used, but there are certainly considerations, and you mentioned them, right?

Which is, you know, how much financially does the organization, can they contribute aside from the provision of what service they're providing?

Because there is some value that we see in them providing a certain type of recreational activity.

Even if people have to pay for some of that activity, there is some value there.

But it also is a matter of how much more can they provide in terms of free when they charge for those services, how much are they capable as an organization to be able to provide and that's the kind of financial analysis that I have trusted SPR to do their work on to determine This is what we feel like they can afford, particularly given not only what their financials are and their day-to-day operations, but these contributions that they potentially will be making towards these improvements that again, otherwise, we would, the city, be looking at having to fund.

It's a consideration about a number of these different elements.

Each one, as you can remember, because you've got history here, each one is so different in terms of these agreements and the type of activity that has been provided at Magnuson or at other parks facilities around the city.

but I think what I'm asking is the starting, this is a negotiation, is the starting point of this negotiation an assessment by the city of the value of the benefit that we're granting to the contractee?

It just seems like that should be, in the negotiation, we should start from, what the value is of what we're giving, and then layer into that conversation what the contractee can afford.

But I've asked this question enough to be pretty confident that that's not the approach that we use.

I am new here.

I am bringing some experience as well with these public-private partnerships that I want to implement.

There is a different approach, I believe, for example, in this situation.

We want to start by first looking at the organization.

Here, sales standpoint is a nonprofit organization.

we realize they need to grow, and as they mentioned, get back to pre-20 numbers, which they're confident that things are rebounding.

So we certainly take that as a baseline.

If this were a different, there are other models there, arena sports and other for-profit private organizations, then as a city, we need to approach that differently.

But here, Your points are well taken, but I think the start of the negotiation first looks at the type of business, what they're providing, what are things that we can't provide so that we don't have a lot of expertise.

I mean, we do, but we don't have expertise to run our own sales center independently with our limited staff.

We also don't have some of the resources needed to continuously improve those docs and the equipment and all of the things that the lake, you know, tears on a facility, especially dealing with Magnuson and all of the other huge major capital improvements that we have.

So those are some of the starting points we look at.

Their past history and then what type of tenant they've been.

But also, you know, again, what are they going to provide in capital and here also in programming?

And those combined, we believe, are a reasonable and actually a good public benefit for this location and for the unique services that they provide.

And again, you know, they are, like all businesses, of course, they want to do well, be profitable, pay their employees, their staff, but their main focus is not to make abundant profit at the city's peril and not really give back and get sort of a sweetheart deal for, you know, sort of the next 10, 15 years.

I think that's a great question.

Thank you.

My last question relates to something I hadn't heard before, and it sounded like there is a level of flexibility in the public benefit agreement that I was unaware of.

I thought I had heard Brian And that sounds new to me.

And it just makes me wonder why we vote and pass a public benefit agreement for a period of 15 years if there's this built-in flexibility where the menu of benefits can change without The awareness of of of those changes in a way that's in conflict with the agreement.

Well, I can address that.

I think there's sort of 2 things there.

1st of all, I'm not.

I want the council to know to that I want to evaluate I'm not a proponent of, you know, huge long term contracts.

I think sometimes cities have gotten themselves in the past with concessionaires, you know, doing agreements at 2025 years.

Sometimes that's appropriate.

But for most contracts, I think we need to evaluate what's the good period.

For this particular agreement, I do think with the approximate 1.5Million capital investments for tenant improvements, we have to allow a reasonable opportunity you know, for them to recoup the benefit on that investment.

So that might require, if there wasn't such a significant capital program being applied, then we might want to consider a smaller agreement.

As to the sort of menu, I think that actually works in the city's favor because it's more on the programmatic issue.

And again, we can adjust that.

For instance, with Swim Seattle, if we're really doing well and growing that program and it's robust and we have people we want to bring in, We can go to them and say, you know what, we need you to increase these hours here.

We need you to work with us and find ways to accommodate more time.

And then if they're doing something that's not working very well, or doesn't seem to have a lot of attendance or bang for the buck.

We can tell them, you know.

Maybe we should work together to pull back this 1 thing you're doing.

But can you look at that?

So, in a traditional agreement where it's more of a, a divine space and less programmatic, we may not want that menu to your point.

Like, so that.

In year 2, they can say, oh, well, we're not going to do this because we had a sliding menu or scale.

But here, I think that it could work to our advantage.

I'm sorry, just to provide further, the agreement actually says in 5.11 that the concessionaire shall provide a level of public benefit consistent with those described in Exhibit B1.

The annual public benefit plan and deliverables can change in response to emerging needs.

This exhibit provides only a guideline.

So we do have some intent there about it being at a same level.

What that means to me is that $100,000 would be your level, right?

What makes up that 100 grand might be able to change depending on the emerging needs.

But my interpretation of it was that the more suitable analogy would probably be like the menu, the menu is fairly set, but in any given year, what you are ordering off the menu might be different based on the impending needs.

I mean, I think to Council Member Herbold's questions and concern, You know, I wouldn't want to be in a position where the council is approving a bait and switch kind of situation where, you know, the, the, the.

Uh, like, a completely foreign public benefit that we haven't vetted and discussed, for example, in this, you know, very, very, you know, as you can see, we do a lot of oversight here at the city council.

Right?

Like, appropriately.

So.

If something completely random came out later after we approved it, I think that would be the menu changing.

The way I interpreted it to be is of these various things enumerated and be one, in a given year, we might focus the benefit more in one place or another based on what our situation is.

And that might be the better analogy than the menu shifting.

I don't want sales to feel that

But I just want to point out that we have a lot of nonprofit organizations that use public assets, Seattle property, and operating on city property.

But I think why we're really pushing, I'll be polite because people love using this term, pushing back, is because this exclusivity contract is on a very, very valuable piece of property, unlike Washington.

And the access points in the campus itself, as you know, when that 30 years ago when the property came up and many people were vying for that property and Seattle got the property, we amended the deed to put low-income housing on that property.

We were very stringent in looking at the contracts and making sure that anyone who had a presence on that campus, on that property, that they were benefiting all of the city of Seattle.

So the lens was always let's change the deed, let's open it up so we can bring in nonprofits, bring in low-income housing.

At one point we were looking at trying to place a grocery store there because there's a food desert there, there's no grocery store in that neighborhood.

So you're part of a whole constellation of things we've been trying to do with that property.

So it isn't just about sailing, it's the location of that property the exclusivity of that contract and the value of that property and the access to Lake Washington, which for me has more heightened what is the public benefit.

That's what we were trying to get at today.

I hope you don't take offense to some of the questions or are taken aback by some of the questions that we were asking about the public benefits and where it was in the concession agreement.

I just wanted you to know that we're trying to pay attention to that piece because in the last decade and certainly the last eight years, seven half years that I've been here, That's been a real point of contention for neighborhoods that have never had access to these activities, to these buildings, to these docks, to these boat sheds.

They just never had access because no one ever opened it up and showed the public, this is what we're doing with your public asset.

And this is how we're recruiting.

This is how we're doing community outreach.

And if you're going to, you know, if you're a nonprofit and we've done these and Tracy knows this as well, we've done the same thing when people run concession stands like in West Seattle.

And that that's just what we do, because it's our property.

And so those are our values.

Those are our policies that we want to see.

And if we're going to put it within the 4 corners of a contract.

Then we want that intent there.

So I apologize for not reading the 72 page concession agreement.

But my homework to you is, I think you got to do a better job of helping me help you in selling why this is a good deal.

I don't have a problem with looking at reviewing the contract one time in 10 years or one time in five years.

And I certainly appreciate a $1.5 million capital improvement that you're intending to do.

And we've done that with other nonprofits as well.

So with that, I do want to thank you for being here and providing us with this information.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much, Council President.

Are there any additional questions from Council colleagues?

Okay, at this point it doesn't look like there is.

Just to take a temperature of the committee, we've gone over a lot of the agreement here and we've referenced a lot of the supporting documents.

Are committee members generally feeling like they're confident in the stated public benefit and the capital improvement program to take action on a recommendation?

Or would people rather consider these documents, spend a little bit more time with department staff, and consider at the next committee meeting final action on this?

What is people's comfort level based on our discussion today?

and the answers we've heard from the department and the supporting partners here.

Mr. Chair, when is your next committee meeting?

Gosh, this is an irregular meeting on a Friday.

Mr. Clerk, when are we scheduled for our next meeting?

The third Wednesday of the month is July 19th.

That'll be our next committee meeting.

If I may, Mr. Chair?

Yes, Council President.

I'm not comfortable voting today, and if we could have I don't know if you need to do a whole presentation again on the 19th, but if we can just focus the PowerPoint on the concession agreement and have them answer some of these questions because of the exclusivity of this contract and its location and the other non-profits.

I don't want to abstain and I don't want to vote no.

Thank you for giving us an opportunity to share.

I would welcome the 19th and maybe another PowerPoint that addresses the issues that we raised today?

I think that is an eminently reasonable request.

And I think that this discussion today, I think that would very much be an appropriate next step given the concerns of a variety of council colleagues.

So I think that we're going to do that.

Procedurally, I don't know.

that I need to do anything per the clerks.

I think we just basically put it on the agenda for July 19th, which I think makes sense.

Is there any strong concern from, like, does that delay of a couple days make a colossal difference on your end, AP, to take the committee action?

It would still put us on course to conclude this business well in advance of our council recess.

I think we should be okay.

We're in existing contract with the concessionaire.

We're continuing to hold over, so we should be fine.

Okay.

Um, my intent will be to have a vote one way or the other on the public benefit agreement on July 19th.

Um, but I think it makes sense given, uh, some of the concerns that were raised here and the, the interest in, um, uh, conveying and in a presentation on the record, a couple more of the concerns that committee members flagged to have that final action and, um, a supplementary presentation responsive to committee concerns on the 19th.

So that is where I'm going to leave it and appreciate folks making themselves available and answering these questions today.

But I think that that closes this agenda item.

So with that, we don't have any other items of business.

It is 3.29 PM.

Our next meeting is going to be on July 19th.

And with that, we are adjourned.