Governance and Utilities Committee 7/29/2026

Good morning, Council President.

Good morning, Council Member Juarez.

We are starting.

Good to see you.

The July 29th special meeting of the Governance and Utilities Committee will come to order.

It is 9.33 a.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth, Council President.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Here.

Vice Chair Juarez.

Good morning.

Here.

Here.

Chair, there are five council members present.

Awesome, and I want to thank my colleagues for squeezing this meeting into their schedule.

I know there's a lot going on, so really appreciate you all taking the time to get this very important meeting for the Special Governance and Utilities Committee.

It's almost August.

The summer has flown by.

We have a packed agenda, so let's get started.

We're now going to consider the agenda, and if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

With that, we're gonna now open up the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should be related to items on today's agenda or be within the purview of the committee.

I see there's one signed up in person and one online.

Thank you for being here in person.

I'm gonna read the instructions.

Everyone's gonna get two minutes.

and then we will get it going.

So the public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in an order in which they are registered on the council's website or signup sheet available here in council chambers, starting with the in-person speakers first.

If you have not registered but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period.

before the end of the public comment period or on the council's website.

When speaking, please begin by standing your name and the item that you are addressing.

You will hear a chime with 10 seconds are left for the allotted time.

If the speakers do not end their comments at the allotted time, the microphone automatically shuts off and we are now gonna begin the public comment period and your name is Hannah, welcome, good to see you.

You're gonna get two minutes, we'll get the timer up and then we will get it started and then we'll go right online.

Hannah, welcome.

Thank you.

My name's Hannah.

I'm from Pioneer Square, and I want to address utilities cost, lighting in Pioneer Square and emergency efforts, and I thank you for your efforts towards this.

And when I think about utilities, the first thing I think about is my family member who helped raise me.

She's a hospital administrator.

So anything that goes wrong in that hospital, from medical equipment to emergency plans for hurricanes, she's in charge of writing that.

She does a phenomenal job, and she's the best in her county just for standing on business.

She doesn't even have a college degree.

Utilities are vital for productivity in the hospital as well as the city all across the world.

Seattle owns City Light, which is an opportunity for us to protect our local economy and livelihoods.

I've heard one person say they want to drastically reduce the cost of water, and I thought, that was kind of oddly specific, and now there's this meeting coming up, so I wanted to relay that to you.

10% cost increase is astronomical and fiscally irresponsible.

Cost increases of utilities should reflect inflation, and this is a chance for us to economically stimulate our city across the board from the bottom up, sideways, every which direction.

Otherwise, we're going to go backwards and inside out.

No one I know downtown, so like I said, I'm in Pioneer Square, so this is as far as I could see, I don't know.

But no one I know downtown says it's not adequately lit.

And we don't want our copper light posts replaced in the Pioneer Square protected area.

That's really important.

We need to protect the character downtown.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you Hannah.

Is that Evergreen College from Olympia?

you are the geodex that's your mascot awesome thank you Hannah now we're going to go online we have Mr. Alvarez you are up star six to unmute yourself and then David Haynes thank you and good morning there are affordability pieces in today's agenda water and power bills for people and discount programs

and for residents needing emergency bill assistance.

Yet, how much of this work and affordability will be negated by the budget cuts to critical services that President Hollingsworth and members Foster and Strauss will be proposing?

The mayor had provided a viable and fiscally responsible plan for universal meals for all children.

Now this critical need will be rolled into the budget deficit, pitted against other crucial services like today.

Before the weeks pass leading up to Council's actions in dealing with the budget, families and all residents should be given early notice that Council is aiming to cut services of people in dire need.

In one committee, you prop up the appearance of helping with affordability, and another, you will hurt families with all service cuts that they depend on, making all this work today performative and hypocritical.

Thank you all and have a good day.

Thank you, Mr. Alvarez.

Next we have David Haynes.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning, David Haynes.

It's a telltale sign that we have a racist, tainted, scornled experience that the council is looking through before they decide the fate of dollars and policies and spending priorities.

And it's kind of weird how the city council seems to like, it's almost like y'all want to tear everything down and then pick and choose skin color to prop up.

Whether it's you're raising the rates on everything so you can pay $4 billion to the tribes, and then you're immediately focusing on the majority of where the black community is on the socioeconomic demographic of 80% AMI.

We're saying we're gonna throw the majority of the assistance towards them because we're going to prop up them.

It's like it's evident that the leadership of the city council is conducting a race war based on some ignorant past that keeps getting regurgitated by you all and it's revolting and It's a real concern, especially when the Governance Committee took out the accountability because you don't want to improve the policies that were faked in the budget from the leftover failed mayors that keep undermining public safety and the homeless crisis and the housing crisis and the crisis for the workers.

Not just one skin color of workers, but all the workers who are being cheated out of the unforeseen capital gains.

It's like if you really truly cared, you would focus on legislation to discipline the greed of the non-working shareholder middlemen who keep draining the white blood of the working class.

And yet instead y'all rather play race war cards to pit one against another to distract from the fact that there is an immoral financial system and you all are not addressing it proper.

You take these ignorant ideas of the past, like, oh, something was done to somebody way back in the day.

So we're going to act like that just happened and we're going to retaliate as if it just happened.

Thank you, David Haynes.

If there's not any more public comment period, public comment period is now over.

We'll jump right into agenda.

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

Agenda item- Oh, go ahead.

No, no, no, you're good.

I just- Agenda items one and two, Council Bill 121246, an ordinance relating to emergency assistance for Seattle Public Utilities customers and Council Bill 121247, an ordinance relating to City Light Department's emergency bill assistance program for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

I know we have Brian Goodnight here at the table.

We'll make sure your mic gets fixed, no worries.

Good morning.

Is it good?

Okay, awesome.

Okay, awesome.

Go ahead and state your name for the record, Brian, and jump right in.

All right, thank you very much.

Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

So these first two bills, this is the second discussion for them as they were both presented by SPU and the committee discussed them at the July 9th meeting.

So these two bills relate to the emergency assistance programs offered by both Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light.

Although the programs vary slightly, they generally offer the same types of assistance, and the two bills generally propose the same types of changes to the programs.

So in summary, the bills would do a few things.

First, they would change the eligibility threshold for the programs from 80% of state median income to 80% of area median income.

Second, the bills would allow all customers to access the full amount of possible credit, regardless of whether they have children in the home, and they would reduce the burden on customers that are applying for assistance by automatically giving them the full maximum credit amount, rather than having the customers have to call back multiple times.

And then third, they would move some program policies out of the Seattle Municipal Code and into rules or policies that are controlled by department directors, and that will help with future administration of any changes that are needed.

Overall, the changes are expected to increase program access by about 13,000 customers for SPU and about 50,000 customers for Seattle City Light.

And then lastly, one amendment has been prepared for each of the bills.

So they're both titled Amendment Number One for each bill.

They're both sponsored by Councilmember Strauss, and they would change the effective date for the bills from April 10th of 2027 to January 1 of 2027. and although Councilmember Strauss can speak more fully to the intent of the amendments, in the simplest terms, they would align the changes in these bills with the effective dates that were in a prior bill that the council passed related to the utility discount program and also with the effective dates for forthcoming rate changes, both for SPU and for Seattle City Light.

Awesome, thank you Mr. Goodnight.

Colleagues, does anyone have any questions about the two bills before us?

I do support and I want to thank central staff and Seattle Public Utilities and also Council Member Strauss for his amendments as they just as plainly as Brian articulated to us that they just bring it into alignment with the start date of the program so we're all in alignment with dates and they can be effective once these programs, once they start taking effect with the expansion with adding additional households.

So really support these amendments.

Thank you Councilmember Strauss for catching that and I'll be supporting those.

Colleagues, is there any comments regarding the bills before us, before we start moving into amendments?

Awesome.

You all make it very easy my job, so I just want to thank you.

Okay, so I'm going to move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121346. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and second to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any comments on the bill?

I'm going to go ahead and move Council Bill 121246 as presented on Amendment 1.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and second to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 1. Council Member Strauss is the sponsor, and I will talk about this amendment.

As Brian had said, it's pretty straightforward.

This specific one just brings us into alignment with once the program starts, It just makes the date effective to expand when people are brought on in the household.

Did I say that correctly?

Yes, you did.

Okay.

And if I didn't, you could have said that too.

But anyways, thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

And are there any comments regarding the amendment before us?

Awesome.

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries.

An amendment one is adopted.

Are there any final comments on Council Bill 121-246 as amended?

All right.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill as amended?

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries.

Committee recommendation to pass the bill as amended will be sent to the August 4th City Council meeting.

I'm gonna move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121247. Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

On it.

This morning, I'm on it.

Sorry about that.

I was just saying I'm on it.

I'm very enthusiastic.

I apologize, Council President.

I'm just glad you're excited about utilities and water and discounts.

It's been moved and seconded.

My mother reminded me that it's not second.

It's seconded.

Thank you, the English major from HBCU to recommend passage of the bill.

Are there any comments on the bill before us?

So I'm gonna move to amend council bill 121247 as presented on amendment one.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on amendment one.

Brian, can you just refresh our memories what this amendment does for this council bill?

It does the same thing as the first amendment.

It does exactly the same thing as the first one.

Yep.

It just changes the effective date from April 10th to January 1 of 2027. Awesome.

From April 10th to January 1st.

So when these programs kick in at the first of the year, everyone is included on those.

So thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Excellent work.

So it's been moved and seconded.

Are there any other comments regarding the amendment and the change of date from April 10th to January 1st?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and Amendment 1 is adopted.

Are there any other final comments on Council Bill 121247?

Awesome.

Seeing none, I love this one is specifically to Seattle City Light, and I know that that is very important to folks, making sure that they have access to light and discounts.

So will the clerk, and emergency assistance, excuse me, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill as amended?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries.

The committee recommendation to pass the bills will be sent to the August 4th City Council meeting.

Thank you colleagues, thank you central staff, thank you Seattle City Lights, Seattle Public Utilities, and thank you Councilmember Strauss for your great amendments.

Now we're gonna jump into agenda item number three, which is Council Bill.

I'm gonna read it into the record.

Council Bill 121245, an ordinance relating to rates and charges for water services of Seattle Public Utilities.

This is for briefing and discussion.

And I believe we have SPU coming to the table.

And possible vote.

Thank you.

And possible vote.

Thank you, Alex.

Clerk.

And...

You will introduce yourself and jump right into the presentation whenever you're ready.

Maria Koh, Seattle Public Utilities Rates and Financial Planning Manager.

Hi, Maria.

And Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

Awesome.

Thank you.

We're looking forward to retail water rates.

Okay, thank you.

So this is, like the previous two items, this is the second discussion for Council Bill 121245, commonly known as the 2027 to 2029 water rates ordinance.

So I'll just run through some slides that largely mirror the contents of the staff memo that's attached to the agenda and that was sent to committee members last week.

And of course the memo provides more detailed information, but I'll try to run through these relatively quickly today.

So first, a couple of background slides.

Seattle Public Utilities, or SPU, operates three distinct utilities, drainage and wastewater, solid waste, and water.

Council typically considers rate-setting legislation for one of the utilities each year, with rates being set for a three-year period.

Council also adopts a strategic business plan every three years, and those plans have a six-year time horizon.

The council most recently approved the business plan in September of 2024, and SPU is expected to send over the next iteration of the plan next year.

Turning more specifically to the water utility, SPU's water system supplies drinking water to customers both inside and outside of the city boundaries.

Revenues for the system are raised primarily from three sources.

The first is retail water rates, which is the subject of this ordinance, and that comes from customers that the city serves directly.

The second is wholesale contracts, which are nearby cities and water districts that have their own water delivery systems and assets.

And then third, there's other non-rate revenues, and that's things like interest income and fees.

And within the retail grouping, SPU uses a complex cost allocation process to distribute costs among different customer classes.

A customer class are essentially groups of customers that have similar demand patterns, and also that cost about the same for the utility for the provision of services.

So as is shown on the slide, there are four retail customer classes.

The first is residential, and that's single-family homes and duplexes.

The general service class is commercial, governmental, and industrial customers, and it also serves multi-family residential buildings.

And then there's private fire, which is sprinkler systems on private property, and lastly, public fire, which are the governmental agencies responsible for fire protection and include things such as fire hydrants.

If anyone is interested in a more deep dive, the actual full water rate study document is attached to the summary and fiscal notes for the piece of legislation.

Moving on to the bill itself, so Council Bill 121245 does three things.

It establishes the retail water rates for 2027 through 2029. It revises eligibility requirements for the utility discount program.

And we'll come back to that topic in just a few moments.

And then third, it authorizes withdrawals from the Water Fund Revenue Stabilization Subfund.

And there's also a slide on that later in the presentation, so I'll dive into that more later.

But first, before getting to a few of the issues, or a few of the aspects of the bill, I just wanted to bring up this chart, which shows a comparison of the proposed rate increases for 2027 through 2029, compared against two different things.

The first are rate increases endorsed in the strategic business plans, and two of those plans are represented on this screen, both 2021 and 2024, and then the rate increases that have been previously adopted by the council.

So the light and dark blue bars on this chart show the business plan, rate increases that have been in the strategic business plans.

The gray bars show rate increases that have been adopted by council previously.

And then the orange bars show newly proposed rates that would be adopted by this bill before you today.

So as you can see, the proposed rate increases for 2027 and 2029 are lower than the increases that were endorsed in the 2024 business plan, but the rate increase for 2028 is a little bit higher.

Overall, the 4.3% rate increases for each year would result in a lower cumulative rate increase over the three-year period than the rates that were included in the business plan.

and at the committee's last meeting, SPU indicated that the rate increases have been moderated, at least in part by a more favorable capital construction market and also the department's good bond rating, which helps save in terms of the cost of debt service.

Okay, so the next five slides are intended to just highlight some of the aspects of the proposed water rates or the proposed legislation.

So this first one relates to the Utility Discount Program or the UDP.

Consistent with the executive's response to a council statement of legislative intent, or SLI, from last fall, the proposed water rates assume a change in eligibility for the UDP, and the bill proposes changes to the Seattle Municipal Code to implement that shift.

Earlier this month, however, this committee and also the full council passed Ordinance 127468, which made the same eligibility changes that are assumed in the proposed bill, moving from an income threshold from 70% of state median income to 60% of area median income.

Therefore, an amendment has been prepared, and it's listed as amendment number one on the agenda, sponsored by Councilmember Strauss, that would remove the now unnecessary duplicative code changes from this bill.

The second highlight from the bill relates to the revenue stabilization subfund, which is oddly known as the RSF.

So I think that's because of fund instead of subfund.

So when I say RSF, just talking about that subfund.

Section five of the bill authorizes the general manager and chief executive officer of SPU to make one or more withdrawals from the RSF up to a cumulative maximum of $19.8 million.

This authorization is contingent upon the RSF balance remaining above $17.1 million.

SPU expects to use the authority and funds from the RSF for possible capital expenses later this year, and the department would request additional appropriation authority at that time if needed.

So just besides simply highlighting this element of the bill, I just wanted to mention that amendment number one also amends the bill's title to call out this authorization, and that is just consistent with past practice for withdrawals from the RSF.

The third item from the proposed rates to highlight is in regard to rate smoothing.

By way of a little background, the council has established a set of financial policies for the management of the water system, and those were most recently updated in 2005. Typically, water rates are set to generate enough revenue to cover the system's costs and to satisfy all of those financial policies.

With the proposed rates, however, the increases are designed to smooth the impact of a capital program in 2029 that's larger than prior years.

So to accomplish the smoothing, the rates in 2027 and 2028 are proposed to increase above this minimum requirement amount in order to generate a cash balance, which is then used in 2029. So that essentially buys down the rate increase in 2029. So although this type of practice is entirely optional, rate smoothing has often been used by the city in order to prevent rate volatility and large rate spikes from year to year.

Another interesting aspect of the proposed rates that I wanted to highlight for the committee focuses on increasing the share of fixed revenue.

So as currently designed, water rates are a combination of a base service charge, which is essentially a flat fee that's dependent upon a water meter size, and a commodity charge, which is based on water usage.

So the base service charge represents fixed revenue in that the revenue is consistent from month to month, whereas the commodity charge fluctuates from month to month based on a customer's water consumption.

So the proposed water rates increase base service charges at a faster rate than commodity charges are increased.

As it currently stands, SPU generates about 28% of its revenues from base service charges, but the regional average for fixed revenues is about 40%.

So in this rate period, and in the last one as well actually, SPU is trying to nudge that revenue percentage a little bit higher for fixed revenues.

The benefits from having a larger portion come from fixed revenues is both for SPU and for the customers.

So for SPU, it provides revenue stability, and for customers, it results in more predictability from month to month on their charges.

and the last one.

So last highlight from the proposed rates is related to annual fire hydrant inspections.

At the last committee meeting on July 9th, SPU indicated that one of the new investments since approval of the 2024 business plan was the transfer of annual fire hydrant inspections from the Seattle Fire Department.

Currently, the fire department performs this work and it's funded entirely by the general fund.

In preparation for the upcoming proposed budget, however, the executive is considering options for shifting operational responsibility for this work to SPU.

Additionally, they're exploring whether SPU's water utility benefits from the inspection program and could therefore justify having the water fund cover some of the program's costs.

So for the purposes of the water rate study that underlies the rate proposal, SPU assumed a preliminary cost of approximately $273,000 per year for the water fund.

This is a relatively small amount of funding in terms of the context of both the proposed rates package and for the water fund generally, but this is the topic that the council can anticipate probably seeing again this fall during budget discussions.

And the final slide just relates to amendment number one, which I've discussed previously.

So the amendment does two things.

It would remove the duplicative changes related to the UDP, and it would add language to the title regarding the revenue stabilization subfund withdrawal.

This amendment can be viewed as purely technical.

It doesn't change anything substantive about the bill, but it's there for clean-up purposes.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Maria and I'll switch the slide presentation so she can talk about a follow-up from Council Member Strauss.

Awesome.

And I'll before we go into questions.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, no, no, you're good, Brian.

That was great presentation and thank you for your memo on it.

It was very thorough and just got a lot of information.

Wanted to pause here to see if any council members had any questions regarding this.

Council member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Mr. Goodnight and the central staff team.

A lot of interesting points that were raised that probably should be remarked on, because I think they're important, particularly for the general public.

One is just the base rate system.

You know, having this six-year look, you know, three-year solid, three-year, you know, guiding, but not set.

I won't speak for Council President, but I was flabbergasted that the county on the regional water side, the Waste and Treatment Division, WTD, did it year by year.

I hate to use the word winging it, but they didn't have the, you know, the depth that our system has.

And it shows in the situation that we're in, in terms of like the bigger picture with the WTD.

And I do believe that this process is really important to have the six-year lookout, you know, three solid and then three advised, you know, to set up for the next, you know, three-year period.

And I don't think people really appreciate that.

And it impacts where we are from a regional perspective because, you know, it's hard to play catch up.

You could see it in a graph, like with a three, leveling out, you could see what's happening and you see the thought behind it too.

So I think that's really important to raise and then show the contrast as well.

You quickly mentioned bond rates.

That's super important too.

Recently I've been talking a lot about affordability in the sense of the combination of between what we do here in the city but also the county and the state and its impacts on property tax, sales tax, and then obviously utility rates is another big issue here.

And as we've seen in Olympia, we're at risk from a state perspective.

The state treasurer advised the legislature and the governor on this and they went ahead and then now we've been given warnings.

If we were to have the same thing, this would impact our ability to do this from a financial perspective, because you made the very important point, bond rates.

And I just wanted to foot stomp that, because it was like one, two as part of the presentation, but there's a lot behind that, which I don't think a lot of people truly appreciate, and we need to protect that.

And we need to have this approach across the board, not just with utilities, by the way, and it's not just us, the city, the county, and the state, because ultimately it's going to cost us in the long run if we don't pay attention to these fundamentals, if you will.

So thank you for raising that, Mr. Goodnight.

I appreciate the work of my colleagues on the discount program.

That also goes to the affordability piece.

And even at this lower level, when you combine this with City Light, when you combine it with those that have Puget Sound Energy, and then with the sales tax pieces, and now I'm hearing there's gonna be another tax coming.

We could hit 11% by this time next year with a combination on that.

And I think the utility discount program can help those that are being most severely impacted by this combination that is being done with no apparent understanding of what the other element is doing.

I don't think we have any understanding of what the state and county are doing.

I don't think the county has any understanding of what the city and the state are doing.

And the state, as far as I can tell, doesn't care, doesn't have any understanding about what the county and the city are doing.

And that's problematic, and it goes to good governance.

So I'm going to leverage this briefing and these different points you made, Mr. Goodnight, because they need to be made as part of this broader discussion that we're having.

Two questions that I had in addition to those points.

One was on the RSF authorization.

This also is a financial.

Reserves are really important.

and we've seen this.

We've seen it with the general fund.

We've seen it with the payroll expense tax reserve fund.

We see these in different places and then they get raided.

This is what happened in Olympia, by the way, which is what gave us, got us the warning as a state in terms of bond rates, for example.

And can you give, I mean, it makes all sense, but can you give some historical context?

Is this standard?

Like, you know, is this a repeated thing?

Are we staying within, our limits, are we testing those limits?

Are we going dipping below the kind of standard norm?

Can you give some context in terms, because the reserves is really important.

We've been loose with reserve across all elements of governments over the last few years, and I just wanted to have some context on that.

Yes, thank you.

So the last time the council updated financial policies for the utility was in 2005. So in that resolution, and there's a companion ordinance that goes with it, the minimum that SPU is supposed to keep in the RSF is $9 million.

From a practical standpoint, SPU essentially has been kind of inflating it for themselves over time.

So that's where that 17.1 million comes in.

So even though the council adopted policies say 9 million is the minimum, they are treating about 17 million as their minimum in the effort to be responsible and also to protect bond ratings.

So this withdrawal right now, the current balance is about $38 million.

So even if they took the full $19.8 million and spent it on capital expenses, they'd still remain above that limit.

So I think withdrawals occur from time to time.

The last one we did was to rebate some wholesale water revenues that had come in.

But I think contextually, this fits within the historical standard and isn't somehow outside of the norm.

Yeah.

Thank you.

You caught my attention there.

So SBU's being responsible by having at the 17 million mark, right?

Are we being irresponsible by having our set at 9 million?

Well, I think the council could look at it.

I mean, it's been over 20 years since we updated the financial policies.

20 years.

Yep.

2005 was the last time.

So I think it would be ripe to- 20 years.

We have the finance budget chair on the dais.

We have council president at the table.

And we have, you know, the Rivera due diligence, which if we stick it to this, I think could get some interesting results.

And of course, you know, our emeritus CP with longevity here on the council who can probably speak to this.

You mean old.

Elderly.

That's okay.

I'll take it.

I'll take it.

Which I'm pretty much there with you.

So that's kind of striking.

Hasn't been looked at 20 years.

And again, good governance, due diligence, any word you want to use, particularly in the context of where we are today across all elements of government in Washington State, I think this is something that we should look at.

So I would like to ask central staff.

I hate to, you know, but a request here from the dais, but I think we should look at that.

We have to be consistent.

If we talk about good governance, we talk about due diligence, and we highlight different pieces, and then we don't follow through, I think that's a bit of an issue.

So thank you, this is interesting.

The last one is, particularly as chair of public safety, I find this very interesting because fire department, the director of public safety upstairs, I did not hear that the fire department was looking to offshore, if you will, the fire hydrant inspections from the department to SPU.

So I'll have separate conversations with fire about that and learning, but going back to budget, again we have finance budget chair with us, This is a way to push things off general fund.

We do this all the time with all the levies.

And, you know, it's part of the, a bit of a, you know, the shell game as it comes to budgets and, you know, affordability and all these pieces.

So I understand 110%, I don't know if the general public understands why we would want, I think SPU probably can do it and do it well.

But it is a change and it's, you know, it's kind of like, hey, should we do a fire district?

It's all about shifting monies.

And so I just wanted to highlight this because this is more than just shifting from fire department to the actual inspections.

This is a financial budget move.

And it should be understood.

And partly because there's going to be others who will be saying, oh, let's do this.

They'll use numbers related to public safety and the general fund percentages, historical percentages.

There is so much shifting.

going on, that if somebody makes that argument, it's a bit of a joke.

And this is just another example.

You have so much shifting from general fund as it relates to public safety, whether it's, you know, things going into a levy, whatever it may be, or in this case, to a public utility.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

I enjoyed this conversation, Mr. Goodnight.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

You can always speak for me when you're talking about wastewater rates at King County.

So we're aligned on that piece and their planning.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, council president and chair.

I'm actually, I had similar questions to my colleague, council member Kettle.

So I'll just, I'll say a couple of things to underscore what he's already raised in terms of the revenue piece.

And also even the offshoring the fire hydrant piece to the utilities is, you know, what are best practices and industry standards for each of those in terms of, you know, the reserves and then also, you know, our other utilities taking up this fire hydrant piece or is that in other places very much squarely on the fire departments?

I think it's important Councilmember Kettle, you raise an important concern that I've had as well, which is we keep wanting to offshore more things to the levees that we collect.

That has a huge impact on that levees themselves, because now we're shifting burden to the levees and we're increasing levees in order to shift burden.

And if we do that, it should be this should be closely considered.

And so what does that mean in this context?

I'd love to find out more information about that.

And then, you know, in terms of does this limit the utility's capacity to do something else if this is getting transferred over?

So I know SPUs here maybe will be addressing some of these things later in the meeting, but just raise some of the things that are on my mind in terms of this and best practices industry standards because I know there are best practices out there.

I just don't know what they are specific to this for each of these pieces.

For today's discussion, Councilmember, I'll just chime in and say I think this is something that the executive is considering, and it struck me as a surprise at last presentation as well, which is why I wanted to highlight it.

I think if indeed the executive does propose it as part of the budget, that would be the moment where, like I don't think staff today is prepared to address these things, but certainly, like I was taking notes while you were talking, and these are things we'd be prepared to explore with them if indeed they do propose to, you know, propose the shift in the budget, yeah.

Thank you, Brian.

I'm glad to hear you're tracking it and definitely I'm looking into it.

I don't think we should wait until the proposal is made.

I think the fact that it's been raised is probably under serious consideration or we wouldn't be having this discussion in chambers.

So I think it's prudent for us to go ahead and and get that information sooner rather than later.

Sure, absolutely.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

And CP.

If there's not any more questions, Councilmember Strauss?

Thank you, Council President.

If we could tick back to slide four.

I just wanted to highlight this one more time.

I know you walked through this during the presentation from the light blue of what the 2021 strategic business plan was and then what the rates were and then the update of the darker blue of what was proposed and where we're at.

I understand that we have a lower average rate increase compared to the strategic plan, but I do see one of those orange lines a little bit higher than the blue line.

So can you walk us through just one more time to bring attention to the good work that the SPU has done to manage bonds, to manage costs?

Walk us through this one more time, please.

Sure.

I think what you see there is, well, there's two parts to it.

So they're both in the three-year period that they're proposing rates for, so they've kept this 4.3 consistent across the three years.

Part of that is because of the rate smoothing that they're proposing, right, to keep rates from spiking too high or too low.

So during that three-year period, even though you see the 2028 that is a little bit higher, the cumulative increase over that three-year period is lower than was adopted in the strategic business plan.

And then the slide, I don't have it ready for you this time, but what they presented last time, the committee, even over the six-year period, if you blend the proposed water rates with the drainage of wastewater rates and the solid waste rates, the average over the six-year period cumulatively is also decreasing from what the utility did.

So to your point, they are

trying to be responsible stewards, some benefit from a more beneficial construction market, so bids are coming in a little bit lower than engineers' estimates.

And then, obviously, they plan to have...

They plan conservatively, so when our bond rates stay good and everything is healthy, then we're getting better rates on our debt service as well.

And this is, excuse me, this is really good news beyond just us planning against ourselves and coming in with better outcomes, more affordable outcomes for Seattleites.

I noticed that there's a comparison chart attached to the Legistar item here.

I don't know if you have it handy, but I can just speak to it if you don't.

Showing our average monthly bill compared to our neighbors.

Only Redmond is lower I'll dig in why Redmond's beaten us on the charge there later, but not for today.

This is just a really important slide to show that beyond us hitting, making realistic targets, being able to achieve below those targets across not just this line of service, but all three lines of service, and then in comparison to our neighbors, we're still doing really well.

I guess I don't have a question.

I just wanted to bring some final attention to this to highlight the good work of Seattle Public Utilities for not only creating targets that are realistic, but then doing better than them.

When we talk about affordability, we've talked a lot about affordability through the Utility Discount Program, but no matter if you are or are not on that utility discount program additional rate increases can impact your bottom line and so that's where I'm just here singing your praises for doing good work and bringing us rates that are lower than what we said we might do and so I really appreciate that.

Council President would you like me to move my amendment to this bill right now?

That would be great, but I think we were going to hear information from Maria.

Was that correct?

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

I just jumped right.

You actually teed up my slide quite well.

Thank you.

That's okay.

And then we'll do your amendment.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Maria.

So at the request of Councilmember Strauss, we do have regional water bill comparisons.

This is the average monthly bill for each of our regional neighbors.

And you do note that, as he said, Seattle is is second to only Redmond.

We have been very aggressive in maintaining and managing our system, so we don't wait to get our capital improvements in.

We've been ahead of the game with a lot of them, even though we have a larger system than many of these.

We have tried to actively manage our system and actively be stewards of our financials as well.

So we do maintain.

We're AAA rated.

We maintain those.

We take advantage of bond refundings when we can.

we do what we can for construction projects and getting rates as low as possible.

So the result is, combined with a stellar conservation ethos that City of Seattle residents partake in, is Seattle does have a typical average monthly bill for single family residents of $50.71.

Redmond, part of their bill being lower is they have a lot of their own water in various aquifers.

So, yes.

Any further questions?

So it comes down to Redmond's Good Springs.

Yes.

Yes.

Part of their supply.

Yes.

Wonderful.

Well, just really good work.

Thank you for bringing this additional slide and doing the additional work on behalf of Seattleites.

Job really well done.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Okay, so we have this bill before us where we have an amendment from Council Member Strauss and I'm just checking with members because we have this scheduled for a possible vote and I just wanna check to see if this is something that we feel like we can get out of committee today.

I see thumbs up.

Council Member Rivera.

Well, I do have a question about these of transferring the inspections to the department and what consequence that would have for the department.

I know we talked about the potential money aspects with the budget, but I mean, I still don't know.

Yeah, I'll take a moment just to try to separate the issue from what's actually before the council today.

So the water rates, like any rate package, it's based on a whole bunch of assumptions, right, that go into how they're forecasting rates, both what we'll spend on capital, what the operating and maintenance will be, what inflation will be.

So there's a whole bunch of factors that go into it.

I can switch the slide as well.

As was said, the assumption built into the water rate study, so when staff at SPU earlier this year was going through that process, they built in approximately $273,000 as additional cost each year for this program.

That is a drop in the bucket.

If the council in the fall or whenever the proposal, assuming it comes from the executive, happens, if the council said, nope, we don't want to transfer it, we're not going to do it, it wouldn't actually fundamentally change.

I had this conversation with SPU.

They wouldn't recommend that we adjust the rate package for the next three years, even with that amount of money.

So I think in terms of the kind of cadence of things or the sequence, I think today's action, it is informative that this is built in.

We know that it's there, but it's not such a large amount of money that it would impact.

It doesn't mean it's going to happen.

It's just allowing it to happen if that's what we should want to do in the fall.

Is that right?

So that we can go ahead and pass these water rates now versus waiting.

we're just saying this could happen and if it does we're okay with that scenario but we would still have to pass the budget and figure out how much that would be.

and it doesn't even mean that it's gonna transfer for definitively.

Right, the executive might decide through conversations that they don't wanna switch it and it would still be fully general funded.

Got it, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you, Councilman Rivera.

The due diligence of Councilman Rivera is always on point.

So I'm gonna move the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 121 245. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend the passage of the bill.

Council Member Strauss, you are recognized to move your amendment.

Sorry, I got confused with Robert's rules for the second time in a row there.

I would like to move amendment one version one to council bill 12145.

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 1. Councilmember Strauss, a sponsor, you are recognized in order to address it.

Thank you, Council President.

I'm glad I made my heart pause there for a moment.

If I might not get a second on this important amendment that brings this program in line with the utility discount program changes that we made just a few weeks ago as related to the Revenue Stabilization Fund.

pretty technical, just in line with the other two that we passed today.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Don't worry.

You got a second from me.

We're all good.

You have a second, third, fourth, fifth on this one.

Colleagues, are there any other comments regarding Council Member Strauss's amendment?

Okay, awesome.

If there's no comments, will the clerk please call the roll on amendment number one?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries.

Amendment 1 is adopted.

Are there any final comments regarding the bill, Council Bill 121245?

Seeing none, Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Rivera?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Aye.

Vice Chair Juarez?

Aye.

Chair Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries.

Committee recommendation to pass.

The bill will be sent to August 4th, City Council meeting, but if people need more time, don't mind bumping it to the 11th, but I will talk to you all about that.

But right now, it stands as the 4th.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you, Mr. Goodnight and Maria, appreciate you.

All right, we're gonna jump along to agenda item number four and thank you, Council Member Strauss for all the amendments that you brought today, just keeping us in alignment, which is great, just changing dates, making sure that we are crossing our T's and dotting our I's.

Will the clerk please read item number four into the record?

Agenda Item 4, Info Item 2889, Response to Statement of Legislative Intent ITD010SA2, Artificial Intelligence Investment and Usage Report for Briefing and Discussion.

Awesome.

Looking forward to this.

Good to see you all today.

And I do believe that this legislative, this slide was from Council Member Rink.

It was Council Member Rink, correct?

Correct.

And I believe she might be joining us today, but looking forward to hearing an update from our phenomenal IT department.

Please introduce yourself for the record, and you can go ahead and start.

Thank you.

My name is Shannon Smith.

I'm the Chief Technology Officer for the City of Seattle.

My name is Lisa Chan.

I am the City AI Officer.

Good morning, Council Members.

William Smith, Chief of Staff.

Awesome, welcome.

Thank you.

Well, first, I would like to thank Council President and Chair Hollingsworth for the opportunity to present at committee the quarterly AI usage report.

I would also like to thank Council Member Rink for sponsoring the statement of legislative intent, which produced this report.

I'd also like to thank the members of the Governance and Utilities Committee, Vice Chair Juarez and Council Members Kettle, Council Member Rivera and Council Member Strauss.

So with that, next slide.

So there is a lot of information on these slides.

We will go through the highlights in order to leave room for any questions that you may have at the end.

This is to read out the work that we did for the quarterly report that we have presented to Council.

So we are going to talk about the background and the responsible AI program.

We are going to go over the intake and review process, which we have developed as a result of this, and then speak to the response to the statement of legislative intent.

Workforce upskilling is not part of that response, but we want to include it because we know it's an important topic.

So with that, in 2025, the Council adopted the 26th Statement of Legislative Intent requesting Seattle IT provide a series of reports on the city's investments in and use of artificial intelligence.

So we presented a report on 4-1-26.

We are now presenting to you Q2, which is July 1st, 26. You will see two more reports, one in October and one in December.

It is meant to speak to the usage of AI across the city departments, the costs, the plans for partnerships, both private and public and academic, the lessons learned, and again, to speak to workforce upskilling.

The Responsible AI program is really to uphold the city's commitments in our partnership policy and practice.

So this is really focused on equity, security, privacy, and community.

We have a number of links here with the documents that we have created in support of our Responsible AI policy.

So you'll see here We have been doing this work for quite a few years, even before this legislation.

The first policy around generative AI was back in October 23, one of the first in the nation.

We have additional policies and plans.

This is all tied to the mayor's AI vision, which she released in May of 26, I was about to say of this year, but I just said that.

So we also appointed our first city AI officer who is with me today to help present this work.

So in terms of governance, again, we have a number of different items.

We have a toolkit, we do a review, which we're going to talk about today, and we have created, in addition to MITS, our mayor's information technology sub cabinet, we also have an AI work group, which has a number of department leads who are using AI or interested in AI, so that we have a combined governance and review of the work that we're doing.

Strategic alignment.

As I said, this is all aligned with the council's priorities, the mayor's vision, and with the responsible AI work that we have been doing.

We want to help accelerate a number of different city services.

I know you've heard a lot about permitting.

We also look at customer service tools, accessible and plain language communications, and digital workplace.

We evaluate these through a proof of value framework and we work with businesses, our labor, our unions and community leaders to develop these public policies and ensure that the protections are in place that we need to have successful implementation.

While environmental impacts again are not part of this official report, we feel that in light of the current interest in this space, and particularly because the Council adopted Council Bill 121214 and Resolution 32204, to enact a one-year moratorium on data centers, new large data centers.

We wanted to let you know that we factor that in to the work that we are doing.

So you'll see here some links to information and resources around energy, water, and community health.

And as the CTO, I just want you to know that Seattle IT is committed to supporting the interests and concerns of the council and the mayor as is appropriate.

So with that, I will turn it over to Lisa to speak to our intake and our review process.

Thank you, Shannon, and good morning.

So all AI software pilots and proofs of concepts within the city are required to pass a robust set of reviews led by the IT department.

So there are four mandatory review processes here.

So first, as the AI officer, I do an initial review of all requests where I assess the business justification and existing solutions.

The architecture team evaluates the quality and maintainability of the proposed software.

After that, the cybersecurity team reviews data protection and access controls along with AI-specific security risks.

And the privacy team looks at if the technology is compliant with our city's AI policy.

This is where we also assess environmental impacts, racial bias and discrimination risks, along with data retention and other privacy impacts and obligations.

So, in addition to these reviews, pilots and proofs of concepts must also include an evaluation and measurement plan, and we review that plan before pilots begin, as well as results after the pilot is complete.

And as Yana mentioned earlier, the MIS-AI working group holds the final decision-making authority, and this group has representation across departments and the mayor's office.

This is a summary of AI usage across the city.

In May, we rolled out co-pilot chat as the first AI tool that's available to all city employees.

Besides that, there are 20 departments that are currently using approved AI software that have gone through the review process I just outlined.

21 are in active use along with 5 AI pilots that are in execution and there are various other tools and pilots in different stages of approval and procurement and if you would like a detailed list of tools pilots as well as departments who are using them please refer to our quarter 2 AI report that was submitted on July 1st So here's some categories of AI usage across the city.

AI is used in public safety to improve dispatch decisions, enhance legal research capabilities.

In the permitting space, SDCI has piloted some technologies aimed at streamlining the permitting process and reducing backlog.

In transportation, SDOT has currently deployed AI-powered video analysis tools to support their Vision Zero efforts.

And across departments, AI-powered communication tools assist with many tasks like text editing, improving communications, and assisting in technical language and ensuring consistency in voice.

And finally, we have chatbot tools.

So Copilot Chat is a good example of that, of a general use chatbot that is accessible to all employees.

But besides that, there are other specialized chatbots that are in use across a few different applications.

Okay, this is the AI proofs of value concept that I alluded to earlier.

So all pilots and proofs of concepts are evaluated on a framework that has measurable results and performance metrics.

So this ensures that pilots are being evaluated on clear objectives, including business value, responsible use, and long-term sustainability.

So here's a breakdown of what we evaluate in that framework.

Here are a few examples of lessons that we have learned through pilots that have been evaluated through that framework.

So I wanna highlight a few examples.

The first one is around AI-powered permitting, pre-screening tools that SDCI has been working on.

These tools have been shown to be capable of reducing intake screening times by up to 46 days by looking at a permitting application before it is submitted to look for errors.

Co-pilot chat, it was run as a pilot before we launched it and employees participating in that pilot reported an average time savings of two and a half hours per week per user.

and finally, as a learning, SDOT ran a pilot with a third party vendor to improve operational efficiency and it showed really promising results but then afterwards the team discovered that productionizing and maintaining the software will require significant effort and additional staffing that made the investment too great.

So this is a valuable lesson where we don't want to be shifting resources from one team to another, and it can be applied to other projects as well.

So with that, I will hand it over to Will.

Thank you, Lisa.

And so part of our 2025-2026 AI plan success pillars was to make sure that we had effective AI partnerships.

And how we envisioned that to happen was through collaborating with academia, nonprofits, and industry leaders that had reflective shared values.

We engaged the public through educational campaigns, resident-focused tools, and community feedback.

We also aligned with other governments to monitor policy and advocate for reasonable and responsible technology legislation.

Then, of course, partnering with our labor partners to ensure proactive engagement that had clear communication.

So you may ask, how did we engage with the community?

One of which, we created a partnership with UW.

It allowed engagement with researchers at UW to help projects, development, and technical professional services.

We had a huge engagement with AI House, in which we also had partnership from the Office of Economic Development that the Academy itself had 210,000 investments from OED to support the programmatic needs and 400,000 from the Washington Department of Commerce for real estate.

So 24 teams recruited the incubators, 40.6 million raised, and 119 events were held with 11,153 participants.

We had community innovation hackathons, We had one in September of 2025, where we looked to improve awareness and access to youth enrichment programs citywide.

In October of 2025, we streamlined permitting processes.

And then in November of 2025, looked to improve the customer service process or experience.

And we also had an event at the Jefferson Community Center, where our goal was to simply talk about AI from anyone that was willing to come and listen.

Our partnerships with labor is vitally important.

We wanted to make sure that the partnerships, we understood that there was engagement and communication across the board.

We communicated to our labor partners that we were invested in the professional development of our employees to protect their jobs and preserve the rights of workers while improving the essential services of what AI could offer.

The City Labor Partners, they brought a critical understanding of workflows working together that ensure that AI solutions are co-designed to enhance and not disrupt.

And we're here to make sure that that partnership continues through AI.

In our labor conversations, we're centered around to relieve the burdens of where employees might feel them knowing AI is something new, allowing us to make much better decisions as we create and develop, but also enable levels of high responsiveness to staff and community as we saw fit and that are currently possible.

Another important piece is around the upskilling of our staff.

So workforce upskilling is one of the four major pillars that we discussed earlier in the strategic plan.

Continuous training and education is within the AR journey altogether.

We want to support our employees and the city as we move forward as to what AI is going to be and what it currently is.

We've currently launched a comprehensive citywide AI training program, which is completed but also continuous and ongoing.

We are looking to reskill staff to navigate ethical AI usage and prepare for shifts in roles and responsibilities.

That is ongoing and planned to place to create in 2026 and throughout.

establishing continuous education and cultural change management, and collaboration with unions to support workforce transitions, which is currently in progress and will continue, and training and community of practice for approved, deployed enterprise AI tools that is also ongoing.

So with that, I'll pass it back to Shannon to talk about financial strategy.

Thank you, Will.

So, Seattle IT set a strategy in 2024 to not make major AI investments until 2025, 2026, because it was too early and dynamic, and obviously we're here now, so let me update you on what we've done so far.

We have been fortunate to obtain a significant amount of investments through grants, to cover the costs of the different pilots and proof of concepts across the different tools that we have now approved in our systems, as Lisa mentioned.

Investments have been small.

We want to try different things to see which ones have the right set of capabilities for the services where we feel it will be the most effective.

We are tracking one-time and ongoing financial costs closely.

Our biggest concern is when you move from pilot to implementation, we want to ensure that we understand the full costs if we fully deploy something moving forward to reflect appropriately in our spend.

So I wanted to thank you all for the Innovation Fund.

So you have approved the $400,000 for us to continue with pilots and invest in projects that deliver measurable community and staff benefits.

We have an additional two sets of funding around permitting.

So $750,000 for the purchase and ongoing subscription for permitting tool and then 750,000 for the work associated with permitting process improvements, which I know is an evergreen topic.

Okay, so this sounds like a broad range, right?

So our software has ranged from 199 to 289,000.

It depends on the tool, it depends on how many people are using it.

But this is still, as you can see, we're trying to have small investments that provide the most value to determine how we want to move forward with our roadmap.

There are different types of expenses.

As you see, some of them had no cost for the pilots.

Some had up to $60,000.

But it was very, it was buried.

And all of that is in the Q2 report.

So with that, we thank you for your time.

And I'm going to pause now and see if you have any questions for myself or the team.

Awesome.

Thank you all for that presentation.

Super helpful just to kind of get a layout where we are in terms of AI and the implementation that you all are doing in the city.

And so really, really the intentional approach as well.

Colleagues, do we have any questions?

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President, Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I really appreciate the update and to see our new AI person.

which is the focus of this briefing for the most part.

You mentioned there's 20 departments and of that as a subset is public safety.

I would love to get a meeting with you to discuss what's happening in the public safety space.

Is there anything you can say here in terms of the work AI, the AI-centered work that is being accomplished with our various public safety?

I have nine entities that report to my committee.

Two of them, City Attorney's Office and the Seattle Municipal Court.

I'm interested in your relationship with them, but generally your work with AI and the public safety element of city government.

Okay, would you like, you would like a briefing, not a committee briefing, am I correct?

Yeah, I would just like to have a meeting at my office just to, you know, dive in.

But if there's anything here generally or more general, whatever, that you can say to that, public safety and AI would be great.

Yes, this is, oh sorry.

These are a few examples that we shared on this slide here.

So a couple examples include using an AI powered dispatch tool to improved this past decisions for non-emergency calls.

I know SPD is also using Westlaw to enhance legal research capabilities so that it's easier for them to research policies.

and then there are a couple pilots going on, one which is in progress right now that is being built and is to kind of streamline some of the work that the department uses when they're looking up different policies and things like that.

So they're working on building out a chat bot to help the department.

Thank you.

I had heard of the first one, admittedly first through the Seattle Times.

Right.

That is correct, yes.

Which is a trend, actually.

Yes.

Not brand new, a general trend that predates 2026, too, I should add.

But yeah, the third piece is more general.

It would be great to get a meeting just to understand which departments are engaged and how they're using it.

And I'll engage with them separately, but I would like to get IT and particularly the AI team's view on that.

I think that's important to see how it's being used and the various pieces.

I'm always wary of AI.

I've had multiple meetings with AI with IT prior to January 1st.

and then on top of that, meetings with Amazon and Microsoft as well on AI.

And so I would love to delve in this a little bit more.

I'm a little bit of a, not skeptic, a little bit.

Yes, actually I am, you know, because it's, you know, In the information world, the intelligence world, there's degrees of confidence.

It's like, what's the source?

And the probables and the possibles and the like.

And that's an area where, and particularly with bad actors in today's world, there's no screen on that as opposed to the work that I did or others like that in terms of understanding that confidence piece.

And so it's important to understand that as it relates, particularly with public safety across the board, but particularly with public safety.

So yeah, I would like to do that when possible.

No rush, but not tomorrow, but would like to do that at some point soon.

On the labor piece, I understand the point about protect jobs.

Everything in that labor section, generally I'm in agreement with, yes.

Although I think when it comes to AI, it's not the job to really protect jobs as much as use the tools to augment the positions.

Correct.

It's an augmentation of the job, not necessarily protect the job.

Because, you know, the first thing that comes to mind, technology changes everything.

I mean, it used to be a day when switchboard operators used to go like this and, you know, to route calls and so forth.

And obviously, that job wasn't protected.

You know, there's people not in city government still today, you know, doing that work.

And so we need to be I'm mindful of that, but I do appreciate, you know, the idea that we should, it's like the old BASF commercials, we don't do the, we don't make the products that you use, we make them better.

You know, AI should be augmenting and allowing our workers to do better in the roles that they're filling.

Can I ask a question on AI?

Obviously, we're in a, and staff, labor, and so forth, we're in a very top AI level area of the country, of the world, frankly.

And there's a lot of competing demands.

I'm hearing about AI.

start-ups and more traditional companies like, you know, going over to Bellevue, and then I hear Bellevue's full, so then I hear more AI companies are setting up shops here in addition to the ones that are already here.

We do also have some data centers and so forth and all these different pieces.

How does that make your life better or worse in terms of trying to maintain staff, maintain expertise, and maintain the ability to work AI in a civil, in a city government kind of context.

Well, I think it also connects to your question or concern around the augmentation of AI.

We have to be very So, I think we're very observant of what's going on around us as it pertains to AI, because it's moving so quickly and rapidly, that how do we make sure that technology is moving, but also protecting the residents and our employees as what AI could be and what's going to be.

Just because it's quicker and faster doesn't make it better, right?

when you talk about augmentation, it's not only just with the roles and jobs itself, but it's also taking our employees along that journey as to what will your job look like in the future?

And how can we support you as an organization to get you those skills that you need to get there?

And so I think it's more, it's a lot internal, but it's also external to your point.

Thank you.

I've worked in local government in this Puget Sound area for almost 20 years.

In terms of competition, that has always been an issue, that we are competing against large technology firms.

talent acquisition is a little accelerated by AI, but it is not a new thing that we need to address.

I will say that I agree with you.

It's exciting, actually, to have so many opportunities with the startup community and the large technology companies.

Our focus is on where can we move folks to higher value work?

How can we use AI to upskill them or automate things that are more routine so that we can move them to the things that would be of more interest and therefore retain that talent?

Thank you.

I appreciate those answers.

And I'm also thinking in chaos, there's always opportunity.

And with the shifting of the tech community here and displacement of jobs in that world, there's probably some talent that's all of a sudden available that wouldn't have been otherwise for use at the local government level.

So thank you.

We're always scanning.

Yes.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you for the presentation.

Very helpful.

One thing I wanted to highlight was the piece about communications, in particular, translation.

and I'd love to hear more about how the city might be using AI to help supplement our ability to be able to, you know, translate websites and documents for folks in community.

I know that this is a subject that's been hard for the city.

It's just we haven't been able to do the level of translation, whether it's paper or whether it's physical translation for folks who need that translation services.

And so this is an area where I thought there could be opportunity and one that I just haven't heard the city really using more robustly.

I've had conversations with prior IT folks about it, and of course I've talked to you at the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs about the ability, but it's not just that office, it's just across the board we need to be able to provide information and languages that our residents speak.

Can you speak a little bit about that?

And if not, also happy to schedule something to hear more about how the work that you're doing is addressing some of this need.

Sure.

We're happy to schedule time with your office as is appropriate.

We do have a pilot right now, which Lisa can speak to.

There's one tool.

Yes, so that's something that we'll definitely get back to you on.

I think in general, we've looked at using AI tools to improve accessibility.

So that's a big area, including translation.

One thing that's really important is, I mean, algorithms and AI have been capable of doing translations for a while.

It's really important that the tone and the actual, you know, the translations are accurate and matches the cultural sensitivities of the communities.

So there's definitely still a human layer that's involved, but AI can be used to accelerate that process for sure.

So we can...

We're happy to brief you.

Thank you.

Of course.

Awesome.

Thank you, colleagues.

I don't know if there's any more questions.

Oh, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you.

I was just waiting to see if Councilmember Juarez, who is our AI hawk, was going to jump in.

I was going to let her go first, but I can jump in.

No, I did have my hand up.

I just, you know, categorically have some major issues with AI, but those are the hypercenters in what they're doing.

And I don't think we should, as I said before, outsourcing critical thinking.

And I think this bubble is going to pop.

But in the meantime, thank you for the presentation.

I think it's important.

I'm just hoping Sales City Light can get up to speed too with the AI, the infrastructure, and how the teams, because no one can understand it at this point.

People are still trying to figure it out.

So it was good presentation, it was good facts, and we're gonna be working with Seattle City Light.

And thank you, Council Member Strauss for pitching it over to me for that.

So I'll leave it at that, thank you.

No one can say it better than Councilmember Juarez on these topics or many others, and to her point, listening to the radio this morning about the story on AI that the laboratory and the classroom are usually pretty far apart, and right now, and that's across all spectrums, right?

The things that we are developing between the things that we are teaching are usually somewhat distant.

English is learning English, learning reading, those are great examples, right?

but for AI, that space is intertwined right now because there's so much development going on.

So quickly, and the Council Member Kettle's point, we don't want to replace, we want to supplement or augment.

And how do we use these tools effectively while protecting our data, that we have as the city, protecting our residents from inaccurate information, from protecting critical thinking skills that only humans have, our city, our amazing Seattle City employees who make the city hum.

I appreciate all of your presentation today.

I just bring those highlights up.

Thank you for coming quarterly.

What should we expect between now and the next quarterly report?

What is on the horizon for your work right now?

So for us, we're in the process of partnering with the mayor staff to determine what are the next steps.

We need to put together a more continuing work plan around taking the vision and taking the work that has been done previously and putting it into work streams that address things like upskilling the internal workforce, how do we have community partnerships, how do we have good governance, and then we have a lot of things that we need to do on the technical side to ensure that we're meeting all of these things in a robust fashion.

I think we will have more information on that before the end of the year.

I'm not sure about the timelines because the budget cycle is in that same timeframe.

We just want to be sensitive to that.

Thank you.

Maybe the question rephrases, are you working on a strategic plan where you have a certain body of work every quarter?

And if so, what should we expect for the next report, no matter when it happens, whether it's in budget or December?

Okay.

Sorry.

Let us follow up with counsel in your office in the next few days.

We are starting to draft that, but I don't have a specific body of work at this time because those meetings are just starting to occur.

Thank you.

No, that's helpful.

I mean, and that's all the information.

I'd like to know where are we today, where have we been, and where are we going?

Sure.

It sounds like you are now drafting your next version of your strategic plan with the new mayor's office and getting underway.

Is that a good status update for position?

Plan for the plan.

All right, well, then we're excited to hear about the plan at our next meeting.

Okay.

Thank you, friends.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, IT.

Great presentation.

It's just good to get a ground floor of AI and how we're doing it.

And thank you, Council Member Strauss and Kettle for those comments about not supplement, replace, whatever that word you said, but supplement, augmented, thank you, but supplement, thank you.

but you said supple, anyways, you said it, Councilor Mercer.

Okay, can we read item number four into the record?

Five, item number five into the record, I'm sorry.

Agenda item five, info item 2924, technology matching fund program overview for briefing and discussion.

Awesome, thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

If there's no, Councilmember Rivera will be excused for the rest of the meeting.

Awesome, thank you.

Looking forward to the Technology Matching Fund, hearing information about that, and...

July has flown by.

I'm filling time, but it's flown by.

Yeah, Council President, a personal privilege, just noticing Vin Tang in the back, sitting, making sure that all of this work comes to Council.

He hasn't been up to the committee table today, but just wanted to note, the last presentation was 21 slides.

This presentation is 30 slides.

That is a lot of information that you are providing us today.

So I just wanted to take a moment to thank Vin for being extremely diligent.

Director, I know that you have a lot to do with this, but just wanted to take a moment to thank Vin.

I'm very fortunate to work with Vin.

He has been super hopeful.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Yeah, if you all want to do an expedited version of the 30 slides, that's more than welcome.

Just however you move through.

That is the plan.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you.

Please introduce yourself for the record, everyone, the new folks that are at the table, and then we'll just jump right in.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Mira Jo, Digital Equity Advisor with Seattle IT.

Good morning.

I'm Jenny Crooks.

I'm the Community Grants Manager at the Department of Neighborhoods.

Okay.

So thank you again, Council President Hollingsworth and Chair, for this opportunity to present on a great city program called the Technology Matching Fund that directly benefits our community.

It is a yearly grant program that has been a cornerstone of our digital equity program since 1998. As part of showcasing this, we've invited recent recipients of the grants, which is where we spend the majority of our time today, and they will have the opportunity to briefly speak to what it means to be representing the community and closing the digital divide.

We also have our partners from the Department of Neighborhoods and the Community Technology Advisory Board.

With that, I will pass it to Mira, who manages the Technology Matching Fund Program.

Thank you.

Since 1998, the city has awarded over $9 million to 480 community-based organizations, and these organizations have matched the city's investment by contributing over $10 million to digital equity projects.

The 2024 technology access and adoption study demonstrates the ongoing digital equity needs of Seattle residents.

We learned that 63% of residents do not have all their internet device and digital skills needs met.

In 2026, the city will be investing $455,000 to fund 11 community organizations implementing digital equity projects with an additional 60,000 from Comcast, $15,000 from T-Mobile, and $5,000 from Verizon.

With these corporate partners, four more technology matching fund projects have been funded.

This year we partnered with the Department of Neighborhoods to select 2026 TMF grantees and I invite Jenny Crooks from the Department of Neighborhoods to provide information about the 2026 TMF grant cycle.

Thank you, Mira.

Neighborhood Matching Fund staff carried out the 2026 Technology Matching Fund RFP process as part of this pilot partnership between ITD and Department of Neighborhoods.

The goal of the partnership was to increase outreach and access to city resources for community, as well as shared learning and opportunities for alignment across processes and programs.

The partnership with Dion's staff, in addition to the work of the community grant staff, included a collaboration with our community engagement coordinators and intentional outreach efforts from our communications team.

A team of community reviewers in alignment with the Neighborhood Matching Fund and TMF review processes, reviewed eligible applications, and the resulting recommendations were presented to the Community Technology Advisory Board and CTO for approval on March 10th.

While there has been an increase in need for resources, applications, and the competitiveness of grant programs like TMF, the benefits of this cross-departmental partnership meant programs could learn from one another and staff could connect applicants to additional resources across our departments.

The Technology Matching Fund Grants Overview Geo-Equity Dashboard overlays TMF outcomes with data from the city's Racial and Social Equity Index, illustrating that the TMF programs are offered in the most inequitably impacted communities.

Over the next year, 2026 TMF awardees will address the ongoing and evolving digital equity needs of Seattle residents by providing digital literacy instruction, digital navigation, devices and technical support and internet connectivity.

I invite TMF awardees to present their projects for the 2026 grant cycle.

Asian Counseling and Referral Service

Can we just have you join us to the front?

How many groups do you all have invited?

Should we have them all?

12, and so it would be helpful to have this mic set up so we can get through them.

They can all just come up to the table.

Why doesn't everybody come on up?

We were just teasing you about the time.

Oh, okay.

Don't worry.

Council Member Strauss was.

I was joking too.

Cracking but packing.

We have a lot of folks who are excited to speak to you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Everyone can come up.

Awesome.

I didn't know this.

I didn't know this was happening.

No, I just would like to know, Alex, that this was happening.

Awesome, welcome.

This is great.

Thank you all for coming.

This is excellent.

Do we have enough chairs?

If not, we have this chair in front of this clerk right here.

There we go.

And then here you go.

And then we need one more chair, is that right?

Perfect.

There it is.

We have enough chairs.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

We're all set.

So we got all the groups.

Okay.

This is a welcome surprise.

I wasn't aware of that.

So thank you.

It took me by surprise.

I just thought people were interested in technology.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Very interested.

So Asian Counseling Referral Service.

Hi, so this is Enoch Wong from ACRS.

Digital literacy is a basic requirement for participating in modern life, applying for jobs, accessing healthcare, connecting with family, and engaging with city services.

Nearly all of it now happens online.

When residents lack these skills, they are locked out of opportunities that should have been within everyone's reach.

So that's why ACRS offers digital literacy classes at three levels, helping job seekers to be more competent, Level 1 builds foundational skills like sending email on computers and smartphones.

Level 2 focuses on safety like protecting personal information, spotting and avoiding scams, and steering clear of malware.

Level 3 prepares for people for the workforce, using AI tools to build resumes, apply for jobs, and practice for interviews.

This work matters for Seattle's future.

It makes the community to be more connected, secured, and economically resilient.

Thank you.

Creation culture.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Paulo.

I'm very thankful to be here, so thank you all for coming.

I just want to step into imagination here.

So imagine your life if you never found your passion, your giftedness, the thing that you absolutely love to do.

And every year, I see hundreds and thousands of young people abandon their graphic design goals because of the high cost of education, digital literacy barriers, and lack of access to professional mentorship.

Seeing this happen repeatedly, I knew something had to be done.

So that's why I launched Creation Culture.

We're a nonprofit graphic design mentorship studio that provides paid opportunities, creative tools, and professional mentorship to high school youth.

In partnership with the Seattle Boys and Girls Club, the Metropolitan Urban League, we run in-person graphic design programs where youth design brands and build real app prototypes.

based on real community needs.

From our students, they described, reported increased confidence in digital designing, feeling empowered to create on their own.

And they have an increased interest in creative careers and mentorship To name a few more of our partners, we partnered with PCs for People for affordable computer access and giveaways, Fathers and Sons Together, a youth organization in Rainier Beach, and AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Artists.

Creation culture is here to be a beacon for young people who may not otherwise have access to creative careers, digital tools, or professional mentorship in our city.

We're building an accessible pipeline into the design industry, where Seattle youth can learn real design skills, work with professional mentors, and build meaningful projects.

So thank you Technology Matching Fund for helping make this happen.

Awesome, thank you.

Prescolas.

Good morning, committee members.

My name is Brian McRae.

I'm managing director of Prescolas Seattle, proud recipients of the Technology Matching Fund Grant.

For five years, Prescolas has provided tuition-free technical skills training right here in Seattle for high-demand careers like IT support, cybersecurity, and cloud computing, all of which includes industry-recognized certifications and all of which are now AI-enabled training.

Programs like ours are vital to Seattle.

not only to advance digital equity, but to equip local adults with the technical and AI skills needed in today's competitive workforce.

Looking at Prascolas within, 85% of our learners are people of color, 41% are women or female-identified, and 30% enter Prascolas with nothing more than a high school diploma or a GED.

As a result, 80% of our graduates land jobs within a year, in many cases tripling their pre-training income.

To date, we have trained over 600 local residents, most of whom live within the city of Seattle.

On behalf of the Pascolas organization, the entire organization, we'd love to thank you for believing in us.

With your continued partnership, we will train 120 job seekers this year on our path to reaching 300 annually by 2030, moving more Seattleites into lasting high-wage careers and less reliance on public assistance.

So to learn a little bit more about us, I wholeheartedly invite all of you to join us at our next graduation in November, where we're going to be graduating about 20 learners who have gone through our new program called NextGen AI IT Support.

So thank you very much.

The graduation event is wonderful, so I encourage people to attend and see all the good work that they're doing.

Simulated immersive experimental realities.

Good morning, and thank you for having us today.

My name is Audrey Lane, the interim executive director of 6R, who is a Seattle-based nonprofit empowering underrepresented communities through immersive storytelling, media arts, and emerging technologies.

To us, digital equity means giving people the opportunity to learn, create, and tell their own stories exemplified with emerging technologies.

We provide hands-on education in immersive storytelling, virtual reality, and AI-assisted creative tools, digital media production, and other creative technologies.

Many of the communities we serve, including BIPOC, immigration and refugee families, LGBT plus youth, and low-income communities, have limited access to professional creative tools.

This grant will help 6R build portable creative technology labs.

The equipment allows us to bring immersive technology education directly into schools, cultural centers, youth programs, and community spaces across Seattle.

Mobile technology expands access by meeting communities where they already gather.

Participants will gain technical skills, creative confidence, and industry relevant experience.

They will develop a pathway into higher education, entrepreneurship, and careers in media arts, immersive technologies, and the creative economy.

Our goal is to empower the participants to become storytellers, artists, entrepreneurs, technologists, and community leaders who can help shape a more inclusive digital future.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Carrie Jenkins.

I'm the executive director of Unloop.

Unloop is a Seattle-based nonprofit that for the last 10 years has been solely focused on digital equity and technical skills building for formerly incarcerated adults in the Washington state and primarily Seattle area.

So many of the people we serve leave incarceration with little to no prior exposure to the daily tools that all of us use every single day to access all of the things we need to participate in civic life.

So on top of all of the other barriers these people face, they have access issues to employment, to housing, to education, and to the support benefits.

So one of our participants recently had never used a smartphone, the internet, or a computer.

His very first video call was orientation for our program.

So what we do to address this gap is provide live cohort-based digital skills training led by an instructor who is not only a technical expert, but has lived experience of incarceration.

And one of the big barriers for our participants is access to devices.

They can't participate if they don't have a laptop or internet connection.

So what the funding we received this year does is allow us not only to provide a laptop and or internet connectivity, but to gift it.

which is a huge part of the benefit of this program because then they can continue to build skills, they can continue to access education, employment, housing, and benefits.

Our theory of change at Unloop is that that access leads to functional independence, which will lead to more economic opportunities and mobility.

So I wanna have a huge thank you to Seattle IT Matching Fund and Verizon for the funding they provided this year.

For many people, this is the first laptop they have ever owned.

Thanks.

Oh, I'm sorry.

We're gonna come back to Horn of Africa.

Local Connectivity Lab.

Hi, my name is Esther Jang.

I'm a director of the Local Connectivity Lab.

At LCL, we see internet access as a critical public utility that should be universally accessible to all, and this need will not go away.

To that end, we educate and enable local communities to build and sustain our own network infrastructure as a community grassroots project.

Especially in Seattle's homeless shelters and low-income housing, we see people striving to find jobs and housing and upskill, which requires internet, but we see unaffordability and lack of resources for client internet and devices.

Our grassroots project, the Seattle Community Network, builds and provides internet service for over 300 users at 14 tiny house villages, shelters, and low-income housing sites, and we also refurbish and donate laptops.

The funding we received this year from T-Mobile will help us keep existing sites online, install new hardware and upgrade hardware at villages, and hold a public educational workshop on community networks to grow our movement.

Long term, we invite the city to consider internet access a public utility and work with us to achieve universal access.

Solid ground, Washington.

Hi, my name is Jen Zugg and I'm here on behalf of Solid Ground.

Our Sandpoint housing program is home to over 400 Seattle residents exiting homelessness and living on low incomes with access to case management, supportive services, fully wraparound.

Today, as we know, we all rely on the internet for almost everything we do, such as paying our bills, looking for work, making medical appointments, checking our email, and for our children to do their homework.

At Solid Ground Sandpoint Housing, we remove barriers to accessing reliable internet service for residents exiting homelessness so they can fully participate in an increasingly digital world.

Our challenge has been that the WiFi infrastructure in several of our pre-World War II buildings, which are made of concrete, is more than 10 years old, resulting in frequent outages, weak coverage, and dead zones with no connectivity at all.

This project will upgrade and expand Wi-Fi infrastructure in two residential buildings and bring internet access to a resident community center for the first time, replacing aging cabling and equipment access points and improving coverage and increased service reliability.

Approximately 240 residents, including more than 150 children, will gain free, reliable internet access in their homes, and approximately 400 residents will gain access to free Wi-Fi in the community center.

Our goal is not simply better Wi-Fi, it's greater opportunity for all because reliable connectivity is essential for workforce development, economic mobility, educational opportunities, health care, homework resources, and supportive services while maintaining housing stability.

Thank you.

Chinese Information and Service Center.

Hi.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Caria Wong, and I'm with Chinese Information and Service Center funded by a group of volunteers in high school and college.

We have been serving the communities since 1972, and our mission is to help immigrants and their families succeed while honoring their heritage.

Digital equity is essential to this mission because technology is now the gateway to jobs, education, public resources, community engagement, and civic participation.

This need is significant and nearly 90% of our clients speak, lead to, to no English.

And while most of them are comfortable with smartphones, 62% are not comfortable with using computers and many struggles with emails, online applications, and accessing resources online.

Our project breaches that gap by using touch screen laptops and bilingual culturally responsive training.

We help participants to build practical skills for employment, online safety, and navigating digital systems.

Our goal is simple, to help people gain the confidence and independence to use technology on their own, opening doors to greater opportunities, economic stability, and long-term success.

And thank you so much for the Tech Matching Fund and make all this possible.

Thank you.

Hello, good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Gladys Clemente.

I'm the Skills and Leadership Development Manager at Villa Comunitaria.

Villa Comunitaria's mission is to cultivate leaders to create a stronger community.

Digital equity is directly connected to that mission because technology is now essential for education, employment, healthcare, and civic participation like this one, you know.

Through our work, we have identified that many families face barriers beyond simply having internet access.

Parents often need support navigating school platforms, communicating with teachers, accessing online services, and building confidence to use technology independently.

Our project, Familias Digitales en Acción, digital families in action in English addresses these needs by providing digital literacy classes, 101 digital navigator support and leadership training for parents' leaders known as digital education promotores.

These promotores, with the help of other families in Spanish, will provide Spanish access technology and engage more fully in their children's education.

Our long-term goal is for parents to become confident, technology users, stronger advocates for their children, and leaders with their communities.

We want families to feel empowered to access these opportunities to support students' success and fully participate in today's digital work.

Thank you for supporting the Technology Matching Fund and for investing in digital equity projects like these ones.

Thank you.

And then I'm going to add a 2025 TMF grantee, Cambodian American Community Council of Washington.

You can move that microphone.

Good morning, council member, and thank you again for giving me the opportunity to speak.

My name is Sambad Iit.

I am with the Cambodian American Community Council of Washington, and we are here to empower and uplift our Cambodian American community, not just here in Seattle, but across the state.

So we are a part of, just like we were saying, it's part of the 2025 matching funds, and our projects that we created was called the Technology as a Third Language, where we provide digital literacy to older, mainly older adult, with low English proficiencies to build skills that do they need to use technology in their daily life.

Our class just go beyond just teaching them how to use their devices, but we show them how to communicate with their family members, communicate with doctors and other services and using various translation tools.

We help them access important information independently and how to use, importantly as we talk about AI, how to use AI such as ChatGPT safely, because a lot of seniors still don't even know what an AI is.

So we mostly doing like, you know, just to say basics, but we want them safe.

So that's why we want to introduce that to them.

So this allowed them to better understand these tools and hopefully incorporate them into their daily life with safe and practical and hopefully meaningful way.

And one greatest impact that I saw and witnessed through this program is seeing our community members, our seniors become more independent and more knowledgeable about a few of the technologies.

and one of the seniors, she shared with me through our classes that she's no longer have to wait for her children.

Usually she wait for boys to translate, but because I showing her using that translation tool, she's able to use that tools to translate some of the information that she received.

So that was very, very refreshing and very helpful for me as I run this program.

So as you see, this program is a really true power of digital equity when it is implemented with thoughtful and effectively.

So it's not just about access to technology, it's also about independent connections and dignity and especially belonging for our seniors and other low English proficiency folks.

So at the end, I just want to thank the Seattle Information Technology and the matching funds for investing in our communities, and especially for residents with limited English proficiencies.

And together, I hope that we can make technology not a barrier anymore, but an access to opportunities, to resources, and to fully participate in our evolving and crazy technology as we witness.

So thank you.

And then we have three presenters or virtual presenters.

The first is the Lighthouse for the Blind.

Sean.

Which individual is this?

Sean, Lighthouse for the Blind, Sean Dobbs.

They're being made a panelist now.

Can I say that one more time?

They're being made a panelist.

Hi, Sean.

We believe you're a panelist now and you can go ahead and unmute yourself and give us your presentation.

Hi, Sean.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Sean Dobbs.

I'm Senior Vice President of Administration and Communications at the Lighthouse for the Blind Incorporated.

Our mission is to empower people who are blind, deafblind, and blind with other disabilities through sustainable employment and transformative services for independence and career advancement.

We work through this by being able to provide to the people we serve the resources, skills, and tools necessary to use technology in the workplace and in their personal lives.

People who are DeafBlind experience numerous and disproportionate barriers to technology, primarily due to a lack of accessible technology and also not enough technology instructors to meet the needs of the folks who are DeafBlind in the Seattle DeafBlind community.

The Digital Technology for Deafblind Adults Project allows individuals to work one-on-one with a digital navigator at the individualized program to develop the technology skills that they need.

As a result, people who are deafblind are now able to access calendars, read and send emails, they're able to schedule doctor's appointments, read books, and actually have greater access and participation in the community.

So thank you to the City of Seattle and the Technology Matching Fund for empowering people who are deafblind.

and then we have Horn of Africa services.

So we're going to go back to the 2026 grantees.

Sagae, are you online?

Sagae?

Yep.

Oh, I think we have a panelist.

Sagae, you just press, go ahead and unmute yourself and you can go ahead and give us a presentation.

Good morning, City Council members.

My name is Gaye Gebru.

I am the Executive Director for North Africa Services.

I'm sharing this comment to strongly advocate for the express our deep gratitude for Technology Matching Fund.

The Technology Matching Fund is one of the most vital CTOC initiative.

It supports our communities in numerous ways, including providing free internet for community-based organizations, crucial funding, and many other digital equity resources.

Order of Africa is one of the organizations that has directly benefited from this fund.

Since its inception, our community has greatly prospered because of this, including our seniors, youth, and small business owners.

However, the needs remain profound.

Many of the community members who are still in critical need of basic computer skills and technology devices.

As frequently, a portion of our population has passed through immersed trauma while living in refugee camps or feeling political persecution in their native countries.

Coming from this difficult background, adapting to the digital first society is a steep challenge.

The Technology Matching Fund is one of the greatest funding resources available to directly address this gap by offering this community essential resources such as refurbished computers and digital devices that they otherwise could never afford.

Thank you to the support our organization has been able to provide these life-changing services.

As a grant recipient, this money is crucial for our organization and our committee.

Through the matching requirement, our volunteers provide services that multiply the impact of every dollar.

The Technology Margin Fund is a smart, compassionate investment that empowers our communities and strengths Seattle as a whole.

Thank you for the time and the continuous support of digital equity.

Thanks so much.

The Community Technology Advisory Board plays an important role in the TMF process, voting on award recommendations and providing a forum for recruiting community volunteer reviewers.

I invite CTAB Chair Philip Ming to speak about their support of TMF.

Thanks, Mayor.

I'll keep my remarks brief.

I'm very happy to join this presentation.

CTAB was instrumental to supporting TMF's establishment back in 1998, and we've been proud to be part of this process since.

It's very inspiring every year to learn about these organizations and work with Seattle IT, Department of Neighborhoods, and other city agencies in making this happen.

And then our community partner Digital Equity Learning Network provides practitioner support to our TMF organization.

So I invite Catherine Van Henley from DELN to speak about our partnership.

Thank you, Mira.

Thank you, council members, for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm Catherine Van Henley, Program Manager for Digital Equity Learning Network, and we are a coalition of over 100 organizations across King County, including most, if not all, and if you're not with us, I'm gonna come find you after today.

We're working together to do everything you've heard today so far, provide access, skills, and support needed for our residents to fully participate in today's digital world.

And while DELN and our member organizations have made a lot of progress expanding access and skilling, the digital divide has not disappeared.

It's changing and it's evolving.

More essential services from healthcare, employment, housing, SNAP, Medicaid, enrollment are moving online.

Even in the previous presentation regarding AI and city services, we can't assume that all of our residents have access.

And without trusted support, such as the support they receive from TMF grantees, some residents not only risk being left behind, but left in very vulnerable circumstances.

DELN as a coalition exists to strengthen the organizations who are doing this work.

We connect community partners, we provide training, we share resources and best practices, and help organizations like the TMF grantees to learn from one another.

so that their impact extends beyond a single project.

As a coalition, we're building a stronger digital equity ecosystem that helps Seattle residents thrive.

Thank you.

I know we've gone over time, but thank you so much for your patience and your understanding as we provide this platform for our community organizations to share about their excellent work and to share about our technology matching fund.

Awesome.

Thank you all so much.

I am very blown away and I don't want to speak for my colleagues, just blown away by the impact.

It's one thing when you see it on a presentation, you see the numbers, you see the organizations, but to hear you all come here, take time out of your day to come and speak about the impact that it's had for the various communities is absolutely impressive and very motivating for us to continue supporting this program as well as we are navigating all the things that come with cable and technology and AI that is here.

So just to hear it in person from you all about the impactful programs that you are running is absolutely impressive.

And I don't want to speak for my colleagues, but I know they would probably say the same thing.

I will pause here to see if my colleagues want to say anything.

Thank you.

This is the best 30-slide presentation I have had all year long.

Just really, like the Council President said, blown away.

It's one thing to read words on paper, and it's a completely different experience to get to see you all here in person.

A couple highlights that I have to think about.

This is also about affordability.

We continue to have the affordability conversation here at Council this year.

Thank you to Council President for ushering that conversation.

and through the affordability conversation it is so critical that while we provide affordability assistance to all Seattleites that the folks that need the most help get that extra help and that's what I'm seeing around this table today.

You are helping us and this grant funding is helping us make Seattle more affordable for people who need it most.

Over the last two weeks we've had an interesting series of presentations, so I'm going to call out Asian Counseling Referral Services in a really good way.

You are living the legacy of Uncle Bob Santos here today with us.

And last week we had a presentation about how Bernie White Bear's United Indians of All Tribes is going to be expanding its operational footprint at Discovery Park and they had Pow Wow last week, two weeks ago, continuing to live that legacy of the Gang of Four.

We had Elmer Dixon here in Council Chambers who founded the Seattle chapter of the Black Panthers that Larry Gossett was a big part of here in Chambers in this last week.

And so I just wanted to take that moment to recognize that those legacies were not points in time in the 1960s and 70s.

They're continuing to live through the work that you're doing, through the work that we're all doing here together.

So thank you.

Just wanted to highlight that.

I guess we need to have El Centro de la Raza come down sometime this week, and then we'll have a complete set of four.

So thank you for living that legacy.

Also want to highlight Solid Ground, the work of Frank Chop, who was not part of the Gang of Four, but he was running around being his old self, building buildings and such.

Solid Ground was the Fremont Public Association and it's just really incredible to see all of the work that Solid Ground does beyond just Fremont now, across our entire city.

That's another legacy that you are living today.

And then for everyone else here at the table, something that I think about when I receive presentations like this and when I'm having conversations about intangible benefits that we're providing we never know what impact we'll have on some young person's life or even an older person like myself.

And we don't necessarily know today what that legacy impact that you are creating by the work that you are doing to change somebody's life forever, or generationally, or just for the next 15, 20 minutes, which is also important.

And so just, I'm excited to see what legacies are born from the work that you're doing today.

Just no questions for you all, just a moment of gratitude, but Council President, I would say maybe we have a picture with everyone after.

Absolutely.

You read my mind, Council Member Strauss.

Yeah, we'd love to have a picture with everyone just to capture this moment because, again, you can highlight it in words and put it on paper, but to see the people that it's impacted and all the great work that you all are doing is phenomenal.

So just really grateful.

As you said, moment of gratitude.

Councilmember Juarez, I don't want to put you on the spot.

Do you have any comments before we end?

Actually, I'll be very quick.

So I've been around a while, but looking at this PowerPoint and going through, you certainly showed us today that you have upheld the vision of empowering historically underserved communities through community-led solutions for advanced digital equity.

I mean, 28 years, $10 million, all these community organizations, this is what we had envisioned, we certainly provided for in the budget.

And also a big thanks to the 10-member board, the Community Technology Advisory Board, and I'm hoping that we can have more organizations and close that, what they call the digital divide.

So thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today and thank you, Council President.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I'll tell you all this quick story before we jump back to you all for your ending comments.

We know that we have a ton of, and I heard some of you talked about like helping onboard our elders and making sure that they had access to technology.

And we're gonna see a lot, we have a lot of baby boomers that are in our city and that barrier to technology.

a ton of people that were in different neighborhoods in Central District and South End who were having a really hard time of getting online and applying for property tax exemption.

And the county was just trying to figure out what this issue was.

Why couldn't they get online?

And so this one organization got a technology grant and they went door to door and they would go online and help people enroll and show them how to do it and that was the difference of getting people property tax relief, just sending someone out to help them be able to navigate that and how important that is for people.

Oftentimes you have to have a person intervention and help with technology access and so thinking about it that way to see that the work that you all do, it's not just about the internet or installing fast wifi or putting a QR code on a piece of paper for people to scan.

My parents don't even know what that is.

My mom's like, what is that?

But to be able to translate it for people make sure it's in their language, make sure that they have that connection.

That for me was very eye opening that it really sometimes takes door to door and that's what you all are doing every single day.

So just very grateful for that.

So is there any closing comments that you would like to add?

Yeah, I would like to end our presentation with some comments from community organizer Sabrina Roach and also member of the DELN steering committee to talk a little bit about how our program fits within the context of the greater ecosystem in Seattle.

just right here it's full of surprises today we got a bunch of guests it's great anywhere you can go yeah anywhere that looks anywhere that's comfortable you're all good thank you and then you'll go ahead and grab that mic and just pull it towards you and it should be green

Thank you.

I'm actually feeling a little emotional about all of this.

So thank you so much for doing this.

My name is Sabrina Roach.

I've been on the DELN steering committee for maybe six years now.

and I'm the chair of the Washington Digital Equity Partners Coalition, a statewide coalition of folks who organize around this.

It just takes a big grassroots effort.

There's not a lot of money in digital equity, and we all worked real hard together to pass state legislation.

We worked on federal legislation.

A lot of that is zeroed out at this point.

But the creativity and big hearts of all of these folks and so many more who aren't in this room have really made it happen.

And the partnership with folks in elected offices is just so key.

Representative Mia Gregerson has been our prime sponsor on this legislation, I guess for six years, seven years.

Was there anything else you wanted me to say?

Just sort of a moment of thank you and I'm very moved.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

That was phenomenal.

You said exactly what needed to be said, and we saw and felt your emotion there, and that said more than anything words could say.

So thank you so much.

Colleagues, before we end the meeting, well, we'll end the meeting, but after, we would love to take a photo.

Councilmember Strauss and I, I know some of the committee members had hard stops, but love to take a photo with you all after this as well.

and so that brings us to the end of our July 29th governance and utilities meeting.

Thank you everyone and thank committee colleagues for all the work that you all do and for squeezing the special committee meeting in today.

With that, we have no other items on the agenda for today and if there's no further business, this concludes our July 29th meeting of the governance and utilities committee.

Our next meeting is August 13th, 2026, 930. that is our last meeting before council will go into recess on August 21st.

So that will be our last meeting, not for the year, but before we do our recess that we do every year.

All right, it is 1142 AM.

The meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.