Seattle City Council Briefing 4/15/19

Good morning, everybody.

Thank you for being here for our regularly scheduled council briefing on April 15, 2019. Why don't we go right to our state legislative session update and I'll come back with the president's report before we go through a preview of today's full council actions.

And so let's get a team forward here.

Yeah, just everyone has the April Bulletin and the updates.

Thanks for putting together such a comprehensive document.

I appreciate that.

Why don't we just dive in?

Absolutely.

Good morning.

Lily Wilson-Kodega, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Karen Cargill, State Relations Director.

Christina Postlewaite, State Lobbyist.

And we are nearing the conclusion of the regular legislative session.

Both chambers at this point are working to reconcile their respective operating capital and transportation budgets at this stage.

We have also passed some significant milestones recently, the April 9th fiscal committee cutoff as well as this coming Wednesday we face our April 17th is when the, when bills need to make it off the house of the opposite chamber or be designated as necessary to implement the budget if they are, going to continue to move on.

Many things moving quickly.

We really appreciate you all being available throughout the weekends and late into the evenings, particularly as it relates to issues around tenant protection, some incredible movement there that we'll be reporting on, automated enforcement, wrongful death, and the I-200 repeal specifically this week, which I know Council President Harrell will be joining us in Olympia for.

The governor has already started signing bills into law, and we will start reaching out to your respective offices if there are bill signings that we think you'd be interested in joining for, so.

It's still moving forward, and as soon as we, although it hasn't actually moved off the floor at this point, as soon as it does, and as soon as the governor has indicated that he will sign it, we will definitely let you know when that is scheduled, and we would love to have you there to participate.

And before we dive into individual portfolios today, I'm going to turn it over to Karen Cargill, our state director, for a legislative session update.

Okay, so we're on day 92 of the 105-day session.

So it's a little less than two weeks before sine die.

I mentioned last week that the rumors of a special session are circulating in Olympia and those rumors are still active.

Until they haven't passed a budget on sine die then.

They will likely remain rumors.

So, as Lily mentioned, negotiations are going with the budgets, but I know we talked last week that they are, there are some pretty significant differences.

We're looking at about a $600 million difference between the two budgets.

So, conversations about revenue, what those dollars are going to go for.

We're monitoring that very closely and engaging in those conversations.

So, a lot of work that still needs to be done.

So, it'll be very busy until the very last day.

Lily also mentioned cutoff.

Wednesday is the last day for bills have to be out of their opposite chamber.

And then for the remainder of session, the focus is on bills returning that require concurrence, dispute, or conference.

So that's what the majority of the focus is, other than for bills that are deemed necessary to implement the budget.

Budget related question because the Differences between the budgets are so significant and because this council has some strong preferences as it relates to some of the pieces of the budget Particularly one of the things that I've been monitoring are the both the capital and the operating investments related to drug treatment the ability to bring on drug treatment beds as well as the funding necessary to operate those facilities.

You guys have been really helpful in helping me tease through what's necessary to put into operation previous legislation under previous legislative sessions.

into place here in King County as it relates to treatment of folks who have drug addiction problems.

And so what's the best way for us?

And I'm just giving that as one example.

I'm sure there are other examples where this council might have strong preferences on which version of the budget gets through for particular allocations.

Is there a way, like we do sort of generally for our legislative agenda, is there a way for us to do that with the budget as well?

Yeah, absolutely.

Typically, so when the bills are initially introduced, and I know there's a very quick turnaround, typically the budget legislation is introduced as a title only, and then it's subbed in on an afternoon, and then that next, the following afternoon there's a public hearing, if not on the same day.

So sometimes it's difficult to be able to vet through all of the documents in order to have an impactful testimony or to be able to weigh in in the public sense.

A lot of different entities and different groups like to prepare letters and kind of outline what preference that they have.

like specific to behavioral health items, you know, these are the things that we'd like to see.

This was included in this budget, and we'd like to see this in the final version.

And so since I'm, I think, suggesting something different than what we've done before, I would, assuming that the council would be interested in doing something like that for the different budgets, would that be something that OIR could help us work through?

We already have one in the works.

So I'm happy to follow up with you and share what we have.

And we know that we've been talking to some, like King County specifically and some of the other stakeholders that have a lot to gain from these budgets.

Even though the budgets are on different pages, a lot of things, both budgets have put some significant dollars.

I know that there's still a little bit of confusion about what all those pieces are.

They're called different things in different places.

So, working through what that means is still, I think, an ongoing and part of the final budget negotiation.

But we have a relatively good outline of the things that the broader behavioral health community is going to be looking for and asking for.

So, happy to connect you with that and work on that.

I gave treatment as an example, but of course, mental health is the same situation, absolutely.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Okay, I'm going to start with education.

There was a lot of action on early education and ECAP last week.

I want to start with Second Substitute House Bill 1344 on page 2 that was introduced by Representative Reeves.

This would require the Department of Commerce to contract for a regional assessment of the child care industry to be completed by July 1st, 2020. This was voted out of the Senate on April 12th with a vote of 25 to 20. There were some amendments that were adopted while it was in the Senate, and that was requiring Commerce to work with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, in addition to directing OFM to develop a survey for state employees to better understand their challenges with childcare.

So this will require that the bill was going to head back over to the House for the choice of concurrence or if they have any issues, that they can send it back and that's the process for that.

But it will require an additional vote in the House, so it moves back over there.

The second bill I wanted to highlight is Senate Bill 5089 on page 2. It's towards the bottom.

And that's an ECAP bill put forward by Senator Wellman.

And this would allow the enrollment and ECAP for children who turn 3 at any time during the school year if the children's family income is at or below 110% at the federal poverty level and the children have received early intervention services or have participated in the Early Head Start Program.

This bill also passed out of the Senate on April 12th with a vote of 92 to 4. There were amendments that were put into this bill so it again was have to return to the Chamber of Origin for concurrence.

The last early learning bill I wanted to highlight is 5437 and that's on page 3 put forward by Senator Claire Wilson and this would allow the inclusion of children whose family income is less than or equal to 200% of the federal poverty level in ECAP as space is allowed.

There was an amendment that was adopted in the House, and that would, above the 130 percent of the federal poverty level, but less than or equal to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, the Department of, sorry, the children has to meet at least one risk factor criterion as adopted and ruled by Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

So, because that change was put in, it has to go back to the Chamber of Origin.

The last two bills you talked about, the Senate Bill 5089 and the Senate Bill 5437, how do these work together?

I mean, I think there's general effort to expand the number of students that are eligible to participate in ECAP, so I think they each kind of work on a different piece of that and are looking at different populations.

So, I don't think they take away from each other, but they kind of work as a.

Not conflicting.

That's not my understanding that they are, but I'm happy to confirm that.

Karen, just really quickly, which one of these bills included the revision around allowing graduate students, full-time graduate students to be able to still nonetheless qualify for child care services?

I think that was actually 1303. That was a child care higher education bill.

That's on page one.

Oh, it's the very first one.

The very first one.

I see it.

And that also passed out of the Senate on April 12th.

Yeah, I think that one's been a high priority for me.

And I know that there have been situations, particularly as it relates to the Seattle Preschool Program, where graduate students have tried to apply for CCAP, the Child Care Assistance Program, and have been told that they cannot qualify for that as a subsidy to be able to fully participate in those child care services.

So this, I think, is going to be a huge shift in how parents who are seeking to at the same time further their higher education and the long-term outcomes for their family are going to be actually able to access some of these wonderful programs.

So kudos to the folks in the state legislature.

There's music playing for the audience.

It's all for me.

I'm really excited about that bill in particular and want to continue to follow it to make sure that it gets signed.

Thank you for highlighting that.

I don't have any notes about whether any amendments were put on it, but I'll check that for you and let you know if it's going to require any additional action by the legislative body.

Yeah, that would be wonderful.

Thank you, Karen.

Okay, moving to environment on page four.

I want to highlight that our favorite electrification transportation bill passed out of the Senate last week.

No amendments were put on the bill, so it is passed.

It's going to the governor's desk now.

So you don't have to hear me talk about this one every single meeting for the next three years.

Another significant environmental win this past week was the Clean Energy Bill.

That's Senate Bill 5116 on page 6. That was the 100% Clean Energy Bill put forward by Senator Carlisle, and that passed out of the House.

Voted 56 to 42. There were some amendments for it, but again, significant, significant win for the environmental community.

Heads back to the Senate for a concurrence or dispute vote, but seeing some really good progress on those bills.

Hey, do you want us to send thank you notes on things like this, things that are important to us, but I'm just thinking about it with Ruben.

Thank you notes are always appreciated, Olympia.

You know, I know it's a lot of thankless work, so just any opportunity that, if there's an issue that you're interested in, that we could kind of give you some ideas for who to send thank you notes for.

I know that those are always appreciated.

Great.

For this bill, if you're interested, I know Senator Carlyle is a sponsor, but Representative Fitzgibbon and Representative Tarleton, all from our Seattle delegation, were instrumental in getting this off of the House floor.

So just want to give them a shout out that they deserve for that.

In general government, on page 7, Senate House Bill 14, sorry, Substitute House Bill 1403, that's the B&O importionment formula.

This was the bill that FAS worked with AWC, Department of Revenue, and Association of Washington Businesses in order to simplify the the apportionment formula for the B&O tax.

There was a consensus language that was agreed on through a work group.

It has moved relatively smoothly through the process.

It also passed out of the Senate on April 12th, a very busy day.

47 to 0 with no amendments, so heads to the governor's desk.

Sure thing.

So on, is this on?

Is this the Sunshine Committee House Bill 1537?

So is that the one that everybody was, didn't want to share their emails?

No, this one's not that.

Yeah, that was a different issue, and the legislation died.

Senator Peterson was the one who put forward that initial proposal.

And as you know, there's a lawsuit surrounding that.

So I'm not prepared to speak to that one, but I can follow up with it.

But I know it's not that one.

On page 9, I want to highlight Senate Bill 5163, that's the wrongful death bill.

This bill is on second reading right now.

There's quite a bit of debate going on around an amendment that is being proposed for this.

And the amendment is an attempt to strip the joint and several liability protection out of cases involving the statute, which essentially means that it's like the parent making a claim for the wrongful death of an adult child, which is a significant component of the bill.

The people that are very supportive of the legislation feel that that pretty much takes any of the punch out of this bill.

So there's a lot of fighting going on on that topic, a lot of back and forth on it.

We want to thank Councilmember Gonzalez for sending a letter to several of the legislators who have, I would say, are undecided about what to do.

And I know that there's some conversation about doing an additional letter, and we're happy to work with you to have council support on that.

I want to thank you all for Continuing to fight the good fight on this one.

It's a really important bill and it's it's it's very wonky in a lot of ways but it is fundamentally a legislated injustice and how We value the loss of life and the harm in our society and there are many instances in which I had to turn away clients when I was a practicing plaintiffs lawyer because because it was an adult child that was lost in a really clear case, in some cases very clear cases of negligence or intentional intentional acts, and I think it's really important for us to make sure that people are able to access our justice system, and this is one way that folks are kept out.

So, in my instance, for example, I've only been married for a year and a half.

If I had passed away prior to being married, my mother, who depends on me for a lot of things in life, would not be able to have brought a legally viable claim against me if the reason I died was because of negligent acts in a car accident, for example, or some other type of government, you know, misconduct that resulted in causing my death.

And that's, you know, that's, those are really, those are real life impacts for families that, and this law just doesn't actually recognize modern day families in the way that it should, and in the way that we move around in the world.

I'm really excited about continuing to advocate for this.

I advocated for it when I was a member of the Washington State Association of Justice and on their board and continue to believe that this is a really important fix to a very archaic set of laws around how we value people's life and death and how we value people's familial relationships in modern day society.

So I've been in contact with OIR and I know that Lily is going to work on a letter for the full council.

It's a sign that I will be bringing to you all colleagues at today's 2 p.m.

full council meeting for signatures since we don't have it quite ready for this morning.

But happy to speak with any of you who might have concerns about the contents of the letter in advance of today's full council meeting.

And I think just given the, you know, the technical nature of the bill, clarification from allies here for a lot of the newer members in the legislature will be very helpful, just understanding that this is an important priority for the city of Seattle.

I think there's, you know, people are getting into the weeds and getting a little distracted at this point, so I think that will be very helpful clarification, and we appreciate those initial emails as well.

Thank you.

The last bill that I want to highlight under the general government section is Senate Bill 5376, and that's Senator Carlisle's Consumer Data and Privacy Bill.

I know we've kind of talked about like what that component is, but the main idea of this bill was to have consumer protection on their data and their rights on what they're able to do with that and telling people what not to do with that.

Last week, right before cutoff, the Appropriations Committee, in an effort to preserve its ability to continue to move forward, needed to strip the bill out of its content.

So right now the bill is actually just a title only and intent language bill.

So they're still working through some of the nuances.

There have been some concerns brought forward from the ACLU that the bill didn't go far enough.

didn't go far enough or there wasn't the ability for people to actually stop some of the stuff with their sharing of their data.

So I think some of those issues are still being worked through.

Just because there is no content in the bill at this stage by no means means that the bill is not moving forward at this stage and that that would be the final form of it.

So, with that, I will pass it over to Christina.

Good morning.

So, moving on to the healthcare section.

On the bottom of page 10, I wanted to highlight 1394, the behavioral health facilities bill.

We've talked about this before.

This relates to the behavioral health facilities and programs needed to ensure a continuum of care for behavioral health patients.

I wanted to highlight just a couple things that came out of the Senate Ways and Means Committee on April 8th.

So, two amendments were adopted by the committee.

One that clarifies that certified mental health peer respite centers must be provided by community behavioral health agencies, which is, you know, more options for people.

And the second amendment would remove language expanding the exemption to certificate of need requirements.

So, that would allow Navajos and King County to make a one-time addition of 60 psychiatric beds.

So this bill is now on second reading on the Senate Rules Committee and it awaits further action.

So those are a couple of changes to that one.

I also wanted to touch.

Can you talk a little bit about the funding that's going with this?

Because, you know, this has been an issue that all of us have been working on now for years.

And if we're going to expand the beds, which we need, we also need the resources to do it.

Yes, and that is an ongoing conversation.

We keep hearing out of both sets of budget writers, you know, we need more, we need more.

places to help people and places for people to seek help for a variety of different places that they're at at that moment.

It's my understanding this is not specifically in this one, but there is some funding as it did have to go through Ways and Means.

I wanted to also just point out with this one a point that is important is that it would also allow an enhanced rate to be paid to nursing homes.

that converted to assisted living or residential treatment facilities.

So again, creating more options this time within existing facilities.

It's a good boost to the number of places that we have for people who are in need of assistance.

And then moving on to page 11. At the bottom of page 11, 1870, so this is the patient protections under the Affordable Care Act.

This would.

I'm sorry.

Can I just ask one more question on that?

Yeah.

So, Karen just passed me a spreadsheet there that showed somewhere close to $90 million, I think.

Sixty-nine.

Sixty-nine.

What's the other one attached below?

I mean there's some there's 69 and then there's some additional or is that the same bill?

So there was one above that that was talked about had the 17.8 and but that was for a different issue that was for the Medicaid rate increase.

Okay so is that 69 million dollars is that statewide because you know that we could use that 69 million dollars multiple times over just in Seattle.

Yeah it is my understanding it is statewide although I do want to point out that in its current form, we could use funding that would be allocated under 1406, the local option bond bill, for a variety of capital improvements and potentially operations and maintenance, too.

So those would be local funds that we would keep within our own local community after, you know, we clearly have demonstrated a dedication towards providing funding from our own local resources through our repeated support of the housing levy.

So that would let us opt into using 1406 as funds which is bonding against the state sales capacity state sales tax and with the county with their Mid-money as well.

Yeah, that's so what's really important here And I just want to beat this bush as much as I have to for the state Is that we know what is going to make a difference in that is to get this medically assisted treatment available to people but it means more beds and since city does not have the sticks and the carrots that we've been hoping for statewide to get other cities in our region to step forward like we had hoped.

There needs to be that conversation is that we appreciate it.

Thank you for the 69 million, but it is a fraction of what we need to really be able to address this problem.

And this has been the forefront of many of the budget writers concerns too, just this is something that we, in every community, there's a need for increased funding.

It's, you know, it's the funding level that they're at right now.

That's not to say this is the final funding level.

We'll see what comes out of

And I would just say that's like it's a component to I mean there's a there was a much broader that was just one component of that that 69 million.

And I'm happy to follow with kind of like a list of the things that we're looking for like what our preferences from one budget versus the other that.

speaks to what our needs are in this area.

That's wonderful.

I think we talked about this last week or the week before, but the approach that we did in 1990s around the Growth Management Act, where there were carrots and sticks.

It's like the state's going to help, but every jurisdiction has to put forward its own growth management plan.

And if you don't, then you don't get the funding for the other things you want, whether it's transportation or whatever the cities were looking for.

And frankly, I think that this has arisen to be like the most significant issue in healthcare across the state.

And I'm just hoping that we are leading the conversation on this.

Absolutely.

I'd just like to add, you know, I think one, while we work in partnership with, you know, many stakeholders statewide and kind of statewide funding often helps get important proposals that also help the City of Seattle across the finish line.

There's an incredible opportunity for the behavioral health community this year in the development of the behavioral health innovation center.

So that would be right in our own backyard.

This is a huge priority for the University of Washington.

And there are still some things in play around the budget, but that is, I believe, referenced in the house at $34 million with significant investments in psychiatric residency program to address those workforce needs as well.

So those would be centered here in Seattle to address those needs of our community as well.

Good.

So it's $34 in addition to that $69.

It's not out of that $60,000.

That's on a capital side for the development of the facility and funded in the House budget, not in the Senate.

Good.

There's still some things to work out there, but a significant priority that would be very helpful to address some of the needs that we know are important to you.

Good.

Thank you.

Just returning briefly to the Affordable Care Act protections, I wanted to just let you know that this passed out of the legislature and is scheduled to be signed by Governor Inslee on Wednesday at 2.30.

This is a great bill, a great hurdle to have overcome to get this through.

We're really excited about the progress this bill has made and we're very excited for it to be signed into law.

Good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

And then I wanted to also just briefly touch on opioids.

So page 12. If we look at 5380, so this again is the governor requested opioid bill focused on treatment and recovery, pregnant and parenting women, opioid overdose reversal medication, and people with opioid use disorder who are involved in the criminal justice system.

So this passed out of the House Appropriations Committee on April 8th.

There were two amendments that were adopted.

In that committee, the first removes requirements that Medicaid and state regulated health plans provide coverage without prior authorization of at least one prescription drug within the drug class of substance abuse disorder treatment.

And the second amendment would make some changes to the terms that are used in the bill.

So we're still getting our terminology right as we continue to talk about substance abuse disorder.

Those were changed in the bill.

So right now the bill has been placed on second reading in-house rules and so waiting for their action.

We're very closely monitoring this one.

Is this primarily a access to treatment bill?

Yes, yeah and I think also that especially the inclusion of pregnant and parenting women and as well as those who are involved in the criminal justice system was a great broadening too.

Are there any other questions about the healthcare section I can answer?

Okay.

Great.

We'll move on to housing.

So we have a couple on page 13. So the real estate excise tax, the REIT proposal that we discussed, this would allow cities and counties to use REIT II funding to continue construction of affordable housing projects.

And this would also push out that sunset issue that we had discussed maybe three weeks ago, two or three weeks ago.

So this passed out of this off the Senate floor on April 10th with a vote count of 34 to 13. So the bill wasn't changed by the Senate, so it will now go to the governor for signature.

So that was great movement on that bill.

So on that one, there was a sunset associated with the original underlying language of June 30th of 2019. So what was the, where did the language end up as it relates to, is it a permanent use now or is it just an extension?

My understanding, the sunset has been.

It's an extension.

Yeah, it has been pushed out.

Yeah, I thought 2026 or 2027. Yeah, so we have time to work on that.

This was a critical bell to move forward this year as the sunset was rapidly approaching for these funds to be used.

So we're.

So I'm sorry, the sunset's till June?

Yeah, I think it's the end of the fiscal year of 2026. 2026. Yeah, I think it was seven years.

Yeah.

So not eliminated, just extended.

Yes, but it was a critical extension as it was rapidly approaching and that would have been a big hit to a lot of cities too.

And so what's the work plan moving forward on that in order to you know, not be in the same situation that we were in this time where the sunset was upon us.

Yeah, the process that went into this bill being passed, it generated a lot of communication within different cities.

AWC was really helpful to this, that communication that's explaining why this is a critical need to move through the process and extend that timeline and also add additional possibility for use of these funds for affordable housing projects, that conversation's not going away.

I think this really pushed everyone to sit and look back and say, wow, we really need to keep this going and maybe make it easier to access additional funds.

So that momentum has taken place and that's how this passed this year.

I have to imagine that momentum is going to continue to grow.

I think that the deadline was potentially catching people off guard.

Now we know the new deadline.

We know we have a firm time limit we need to go about extending this or doing a potentially a permanent extension that's going to be up for others to decide.

But this is definitely one that will not soon fade from memory.

And I'm not seeing the other REIT bill in this section.

Is that dead?

The one with the progressive?

Nothing's officially dead.

It could always come back, but yeah, we're not seeing it.

The progressive real estate, that's part of the budget conversation.

So both budgets, the House and the Senate have that as part of that.

So the bills are necessary to implement the budget and still very much part of the conversation.

So they're utilized in slightly different ways, and so they're still trying to figure out what they're going to be, what it's going to be used to fund, and what those different tiers will be at this stage.

But very much alive still.

Just so I'm following the conversation, is the other REIT that Council Member Gonzalez is referencing the REIT 3 that we've talked about?

Sorry.

Oh, this is the Senator Nguyen proposal.

Yeah, so initially Senator Rolfes had proposed a REIT 3 that would be dedicated to very specific accounts within the state budget.

That failed to move forward, so Senator Nguyen took up the bill and he has been championing that through the Senate right now.

It's well known he has the blessing of Senator Rolfes on this one, so they're continuing to work on it.

There are specific pots of money.

We can get you that list, too.

I unfortunately don't have it memorized.

It's quite a lengthy list, but it would support a wide variety of projects, not just related to affordable housing, though.

Correct.

Well, the initial proposal by, yeah, there are multiple, three proposals.

The one that this is replacing was the one that Senator Rolfes had put forward a few weeks ago, and that was not focused specifically on affordable housing.

That was like this one, one that would provide pots of money, or money to different pots of accounts around.

the state budget.

There was a REIT for affordable housing proposal that was put forward to, I think there was a lot of conversation around REIT this year, which is good because that means we can continue to talk about it in sessions moving forward.

But it's my understanding that the REIT proposal that Senator, that the replacement for Senator Rolfes' proposal is the one that is truly still going.

And correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's the, That's the one that's still moving.

And when you say it can fund numerous pots of money.

Yes.

Including affordable housing revenue sources?

I'd have to go back and check.

I think that might be one of the pots.

Right now it's really trying to stick to the kind of traditional way that rates are carried out funding wise.

So, you know.

improvements to local communities, that type of thing.

It's also not proportional too, so that was something that we were a little disappointed to see this year.

We were eager to have a proportional REIT as Seattle and Key County would very much have generated the bulk of those funds.

We would like to retain some of those.

That conversation we pushed quite hard on, but I think at this point they're just focusing on getting an additional REIT period.

We'll continue to have those conversations, but Deputy Mayor Mosley was really helpful on that and Senator Nguyen as well.

Okay and then again our favorite bill well one of our favorites I have two in this section but 1406 the local option bonds bill continues to move it's been declared necessary to implement the budget we're doing almost daily vote count calls with the coalition of folks who have actually crafted this into the proposal that it is today.

This is very much a priority for leadership.

We're continuing to work on it.

And if it's possible, if we need help with different members, we would love to connect with some of you to help make some of those, help kind of touch them and remind them how important this is statewide and also within our delegation for Seattle and King County.

Oh, we will.

We'll keep you posted.

We really appreciate all the help you guys have lent to these issues.

I wanted to also pass along that 1923, the minimum density bill, it has passed off of the floor.

We imagine there might be some light concurrence that needs to take place, but that will be moving forward in the next few days.

So it did pass off before I wanted to make sure that you all were aware of that.

I know that was a big passion bill for you all.

And then 5812, which is the ADU bill, is still moving through the process.

There was some great work done on it coming out of the House Local Government Committee.

Representative Paulette and Representative Peterson were wonderful on those conversations, so we're continuing to track its development.

We are hearing that the Prime Sponsor is starting to socialize that he is not sure if it will move forward this year.

But I think the process that went into this was, no, the ADU bill, so that's 5812, that's the bill that was put forward by Senator Palumbo.

You know, there's mixed messaging going on out there, but I think just the policy discussion that went into this is so helpful.

It really showed how we could increase capacity and how we can also kind of work within communities to help them get there and help them, you know, not every community has, what, three or four floors in SMT of planners, so we need to be able to help those smaller communities with their own planning.

So I'm really excited about just the policy level discussion we had on here.

It was it was frankly one of the most Rewarding policy discussions we've had because it wasn't sides.

It was really just how do we achieve this together?

Yeah, so that's moving forward and then the SIPA bill which you brought up.

Thank you So that is on It's on the bottom of page 15. This is the SEPA exemption for city-sanctioned encampments and shelters.

So it is right now in rules.

We're working very hard to get it out of rules and onto the floor.

There were some great amendments that came out on the House side.

So when it came out of the Senate, there were a couple problematic amendments.

One was prohibiting the use of drugs and alcohol.

And these are meant to be used during a state of emergency.

And when we have inclement weather like we did this past year, that amendment would have prohibited us from allowing people to come in to safety and to warmth because they were active users.

That's something we never want to do.

We want to protect people.

The entire basis for this bill is to save lives.

So that was running counter to that goal.

So that has been stripped out of the bill.

Additionally, there was a proposal in there that would have severely limited locations where we could cite these by tying it to schools.

Schools is a very broad term.

Your traditional school, your early learning facility, a neighborhood daycare.

It would have had to remain a thousand feet away from that and we strip that back quite a bit So we do have more more areas we can put these bearing in mind that Seattle does a really great job of Doing a it's a community agreement I believe so when we do put these in we go and we talk to people in the community and we do really want to Understand we want others to understand that that's a great process to do within their own own communities as well when they cite these.

So like I said, it's in rules we are pushing very hard.

Senator Nguyen continues to be just a wonderful champion on this bill.

He's very eager to see it move, as are we.

So we'll keep you posted on that one.

Keep your fingers crossed, please.

If there aren't any other additional questions in the housing section, I'll go ahead and start on public safety beginning at the top of page 16. We continue to see, while there are significant differences around the different chambers around budget negotiations right now, We are seeing consistent, strong bipartisan and often unanimous votes on many of the council's public safety priorities.

I'm going to start on the top of page 16 with sexual assault kit notice, the bill sponsored by Representative Caldier that would connect survivors to providers.

And although it removes the financial penalties that were initially in place in the legislation, I know that's a point of frustration for the council, I think work will continue to happen in this space and the advocates are, heralding this as a step in the right direction on providing appropriate care for survivors.

That passed the House unanimously, has survived all cutoffs to date, and is currently on the second reading calendar in the Senate.

On the bottom of page 16, I will highlight One of the most amazing achievements, I think, for victims of sexual assault this session, House Bill 1166, sponsored by Representative Orwell.

This is the proposal that would fund the backlog of untested sexual assault kits in Washington State, which passed the House unanimously on March 6th, and off the Senate floor with another unanimous vote this past Thursday, April 11th.

So, congratulations to many of you who've done a significant amount of work on this policy.

I'll then move to the middle.

Lily on that one.

In my conversations with Senator Orwell, we had some conversations around what Seattle has to do in order to address our backlog.

And there was a little bit of a back and forth in terms of Do we need to make amendments to our municipal code to be part of this or do we not?

And I think I'm still a little confused as to whether or not the bill that passed requires the city council to take some legislative action at the local level in order to be sort of part of the overall package.

My understanding is that these resources would be made to all communities statewide, so I'm happy to check on how that intersects with our local municipal code as well and let you know.

But my understanding is that this would address the statewide backlog of untested sexual assault kits, including what we submit to the state crime lab from the city of Seattle.

I think the issue is that there are things that we collect that are not collected through the Washington State Crime Lab that also are part of the backlog.

And I think that if those are not untested sexual assault kits, there's probably still some work that will need to be done around that evidence collection.

But I do know that the sexual assault kit testing is something that would be available to the city as well.

And I think Karen's been trying to jump in.

I'm just going to say that I do believe there are some requirements for what local ordinance adjustments that will have to be made to address the issue that you're talking about.

Okay, great.

So just so my colleagues know, I've been waiting for the state to take some level of action in this space before taking any action at the local level.

So I anticipate that we will be addressing some of the fixes that need to occur to our local ordinance to allow for the testing of our specifically collected sexual assault kits and other types of DNA kits that would be in compliance with the state law.

And there's an AGO that was put out specifically about this.

An attorney general opinion.

An attorney general opinion that does specify that there was some local ordinance adjustments that need to be made.

So we're happy to get you a copy of that.

I read that and it was a little unclear to me, but I'm nonetheless I think it's an important thing to be in the abundance of caution.

I think it would be important for the city of Seattle to amend our Seattle Municipal Code to bring it into compliance with us and to be able to qualify for.

some of these dollars in a very clear way, so.

And John Shockett's done a significant amount of work on that as well, so we could have the city attorney's office follow up with you on what those specific next steps would look like.

We are in contact with them, and I have a ton of material from them already, so we just want to let my colleagues know that that's something that's going to be on the docket for my committee in the coming months.

Great.

And then moving on to the middle of page 17, I'll just highlight domestic violence law enforcement, House Bill 1225, which is Representative Jenkins' proposal that would require law enforcement officers secure firearms when responding to domestic violence calls.

That passed the House 60 to 38 and then off the Senate floor this past Thursday, April 11th.

I will then move to Native American women on the bottom of page 18. We have some exciting news here on House Bill 1713, sponsored by Representative Mosbacher, that would create training and liaison positions to improve best practices relating to missing and murdered indigenous women.

That bill has also seen forward movement since our last briefing, as it passed the House unanimously on March 5th.

And since we briefed you last, it has also passed the House, excuse me, the Senate unanimously on Friday, April 12th.

We will keep you updated as that bill signing is scheduled, and it would be great to have you down in Olympia for that as well.

I was going to ask you, we don't have a signing date yet.

We don't, but we'll definitely be monitoring that and let you know.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

It should be relatively quick for bills that pass before signing day.

No, we're going to make it a big thing.

No, I meant not the ceremony, sorry, the length of time, but when it passes out of the legislature before the governor has to sign it for bills that pass before the conclusion of session.

Thank you.

Yes.

Absolutely.

And finally, in the.

Finishing in the public safety section, I'll just highlight death penalty elimination on the bottom of page 20, Senate Bill 5339, sponsored by Senator Carlisle, that would eliminate the death penalty in statute.

The bill passed the Senate 28 to 19 on February 15th, was exacted out of public safety on the 1st, and while it has not moved from rules since our last briefing, the governor has announced publicly he will sign it, so we do anticipate forward movement this year, and we'll continue to keep you updated on that as well.

And then moving to safety, net and civil rights towards the upper middle part of page 21, I will highlight certificates of discharge.

This is Representative Hansen's New Hope Act, House Bill 1041, that would address barriers to employment, housing and other obstacles by expanding eligibility to vacate certain nonviolent criminal records.

And that has also survived all cutoff dates having passed the House unanimously on March 1st and the Senate on April 3rd.

So congratulations on all of the hard work that went into that legislation.

Lily, have we talked about how people who are returning to their communities, how they can access housing?

Because I know that's part of what the certificates of discharge were doing.

I think around here we had something that, it was a different acronym, but it was like a certificate of restoration.

CROP.

CROP, thank you.

And part of the problem we had was to make sure the case managers could take people by the hand and help them move through landlords.

And so part of our landlord liaison program that we've set up was designed to do that, but I don't know if we've got a whole.

You know, what I'm hearing is little pieces, and whereas we really need to get our arms around this whole projects so that we can get people into housing.

Absolutely and I think um coordination at the local level when this you know I think given how significant this will be in terms of access to resources and re-entry um this is something we can certainly work on the back end to make sure that we're connecting around what um what resources we can provide locally to address that access here too.

Great thank you and I know Council Member Herbold and I had something we've been working on for a long time and Council President Harrell was a big supporter so let's see what we can do as soon as you know whether this gets through.

Happy to do that.

And then finally, I will highlight towards the bottom of page 22, wage and salary information, House Bill 1696, sponsored by Representative Dolan, would expand on the equal pay success last year by prohibiting employers from asking about pay history.

And that passed the House 56 to 40 and off the Senate floor 37 to 10 this past Friday, April 12. So, continuing to see movement forward there around pay equity.

And finally, I will highlight the LGBTQ Commission on the bottom of page 23, top of page 24, that is still advancing quickly, having passed the Senate 34 to 14 on March 6th, and off the House floor with a vote of 67 to 28 this past Friday, April 12th.

We don't, but we will monitor that closely and make sure to keep you updated about when that's scheduled.

On the wage equity bill, does this bill or was there another bill that also dealt with the pay transparency issue that ensures that employers don't take any sort of retaliatory action against employees who are sharing information with other employees about their wages or the level of their compensation?

In the initial Equal Pay Opportunity Act, any retaliation is prohibited explicitly in that legislation.

So I think this is just building on that, prohibiting employers from tracking, given a lot of a lot of folks are tracked into lower wages.

And then when you are gauging how much to pay someone moving into a new, in a new career, per what they had earned previously, that that is another part of the equity challenge that a lot of employers face by determining people's salary range on what they earned previously.

But that retaliation is explicitly prohibited.

And then I'll quickly do transportation.

Can I ask one question?

I don't think it fits under transportation, so we may have skipped it.

And this was Representative DeLeo and Pettigrew's work on URM funding and PACER financing.

Did that get through?

Where are we?

It did not go through.

I did, I apologize, I haven't read it.

I saw that there was an update on it, so I don't know if there's any adjustments or if it was added to another bill, but the original bill itself did not advance.

But let me follow up with you on that, just if there are any additional developments.

We've had some very interesting conversations with some folks that are looking at work in our international district as well as Pioneer Square.

And the pace of financing can be a big asset.

So if you can find out anything.

Yes, I will.

So quickly for transportation, motorized foot scooters in gross substitute House Bill 1772 on page 24 passed out of the Senate on Friday the 12th with a vote of 35 to 7. The Senate as a whole opted to adopt the amendments that were put on the bill and the transportation committee, so the insurance industry amendments.

Because of this change, it has to go over to the House for concurrence.

We know that there are many parties that are very eager to see this through, so we don't anticipate any issues.

So you anticipate that the folks who were originally supportive of it will still be supportive with these amendments?

I do.

Okay, great.

Well, just for our colleagues' knowledge, I received a handful of messages from our friends down in Olympia who are trying to move this scooter bill through, and they just wanted to underscore their appreciation for our willingness to work on amendments and to work through all of you to get this through.

So thank you very much.

And then the last bill I want to highlight is our automated traffic safety cameras.

It's kind of bottom of 24, top of 25. Officially resurrected it was pulled from the rules committee last week, which we were very excited We are hopeful that it will run early this week.

The amendments amendments are being put on the bar right now We've been kind of going through those and seeing what works what don't Which ones work and which ones don't?

but We have a pathway at this point, and we're continuing to work on that.

So I'll keep you posted.

And we really want to thank everyone for all of their work and their quick attention on this.

Working with such a large stakeholder group has been a significant effort.

Disability Rights Washington and Rooted in Rights have been extraordinary partners on this.

And so many council members have taken have gone above and beyond in helping us work with us.

This has been a true team effort, so thank you.

I really wanted to off my hat to you on this one, because when we were down there a couple of weeks ago, you thought, this thing is dead.

And we kept saying, we're not getting off this horse until we get some life back into it.

But really, thank you.

And I do want to acknowledge Roots is out there.

Rooted in Rights.

Rooted in Rights.

I was so impressed with that little one minute video they did.

I mean, if anything caught people's attention, it was that.

Yeah.

Well done.

Thank you.

Great.

I think that's it.

Great.

And if there aren't any additional questions, I think we're all finished.

Okay.

Get on out there and do what you do well.

Thank you very much for the update.

Thanks so much.

You're doing a great job.

Thank you.

Good job.

Look forward to it.

Okay, so let's keep going down the agenda.

Let me say a few things and then we'll go around the room and then we do have an executive session right after.

from the Governance and Equity and Technology Committee that no one's paying attention to because I can't even hear myself in the back of me.

We have the appointment of our hearing examiner, the final evaluation, and he's responded very well, at least in my opinion, to the questions we had of him, and so we expect that to be voted out of committee this week, actually tomorrow morning at 9.30.

two other appointments to the International Special Review District Board and actually two appointments there.

And I want to thank all of you for giving feedback on the hearing examiner and we again actually did surveys and questionnaires to employees in the office and constituents and tried to do our diligence and that looks very favorable.

I want to talk a little bit about the public forum, any questions on that but about the public forum this evening.

As you all know, on the applicants, we had 13. We have had one withdrawal, so we anticipate tonight from 5.30 to 8.30 in the Bertha Knight Landis room, 12 applicants for the forum this evening.

A little bit of description on the process we used.

We reached out with the clerk's office and our staff to about 35 to 40 community organizations, received a lot of questions.

Fifteen community organizations submitted questions and 14 community organizations confirmed their participation in tonight's forum.

over 50 questions that were, if you look at the total number of questions that had come forward.

And so we posted all of the questions.

We made it clear to the candidates that they can answer all of the questions, but they're not required to.

And to the extent they want to answer the questions, we'll post their responses online.

The format tonight, about 5 o'clock, the doors will open.

The applicants and the community organizations are asked to arrive, you know, around 5.15 or so, and then the moderator, Brian Callahan will start around 530. It'll start with an introduction, about a 90-second introduction by the qualified applicants.

The moderator will ask three questions comprised from the community groups, and then the community organizations will sort of be in the room at different tables, and then Brian will take questions from the audience and from the organizations.

We anticipate the hearing will last around 830 and at the end each of the applicants could give a closing remarks.

So that's the format this evening and it'll be broadcast live.

Council President Harrell.

Yes.

And I may have missed your summary of how many of the applicants have committed to attending.

12, but I must say that one of them, we're still trying to get confirmation, so 11 with an asterisk of the 12 and one person dropped out, and it is mandatory, our ordinance requires it's mandatory they participate, so we're just having some issues.

The one person, we're actually in contact with the person, and they are just not, they may withdraw, they may move forward, so we're just working on that.

So we'll have at least 11 confirmed, maybe 12. And one thing about, and again, publicly, I just want to make sure we're very open and transparent on what we're trying to do on.

So Wednesday, April 17th, I do have a question for you all to give me a little feedback on.

So Wednesday will be our opportunity to ask questions of these applicants.

And again, to Councilman Gonzalez's point, there will be either 11 or 12. The format that I'm proposing is that we have them all here.

and that we give them each three minutes to describe why they think they should be selected by us as sort of their presentation to us.

They've all been told they have three minutes to do that.

And then we would ask the council members, the council members, the applicants questions.

And the question I have is, assuming that there are 12, if we spend five minutes with each applicant, That would give them eight minutes total.

That would be one hour and 36 minutes.

If we allowed them seven minutes of questions, that would be two hours.

And so, I was leaning toward option two as I'm diagramming this, which would be about a two-hour hearing.

And each of them would have about 10 minutes of Q&A.

And there's certainly going to be parity in each how we ask them both questions.

And so, unless I hear a strong objection, we'll do the three minutes and then seven minutes questioning each one.

And then we'll sort of try to time that so we have some parity.

Council Member O'Brien, please.

On the parity front, with eight of us all very intrigued about who our future colleagues will be, we might all spend all seven minutes of their time asking the questions.

And so how you manage that, I appreciate your leadership, and I don't know how you're going to do that, but I look forward to seeing it.

Just so I'm understanding your concern, you mean our question may take too long as opposed to their response?

Yes.

Correct.

So we won't count our question as part of their response time.

So it's going to be much longer than two hours.

And thanks for allowing me to clarify that.

So their response time will be the seven minutes, not our questioning of them.

I'm wondering if, I could imagine a really good question that I would think up.

And I'd want to ask all 12 people that question.

And I imagine each of us might want to do that.

And that would start to get pretty long.

And so I don't know if there's a way that we can come up with at least, you know, maybe half a dozen things that we'd ask them to touch on in their remarks.

And then we could be doing more follow-up things or.

I realize it's only.

That's a good suggestion.

So what we'll draft up and we'll give it to them ahead of time is perhaps, and give me the feedback on what you want them to touch on.

You know, I'm sure most of them talk about the qualifications and their commitment.

But if you have ideas, maybe four or five bullet points you want them all to touch on, we'll let them know that even before Wednesday.

So hopefully they'll cover that.

You raised another good question on, The parity issue is going to be a little tough to challenge.

And there's no, we've checked with law and ethics, there's no requirement that everyone gets the exact same question.

What the requirement is is that they all get sort of an equal opportunity to display their abilities.

And so I do anticipate there's going to be different questions in, you know, these three or these four.

Because there could just be different points of inquiry you have on this one and not that one.

So we're not going to be strict on everyone has to answer the exact same question.

and sort of free flow a little bit.

But to the other point is, it is gonna be seven minutes for just a response, not our questions.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr. President.

So just to clarify, is there a certain date that you'd like questions from us by that you're gonna be sending questions to the candidates so that they have something in writing?

So, good question.

So, quite candidly, I was just gonna let that flow organically on your questions to the candidates.

And part of my thinking is, That's sort of what we do, right?

I mean, I don't know even the questions you're going to ask me.

So, we sort of want to see on a real-time basis how they respond to real-time inquiries.

So, Council Member Bakeshaw.

I think what Councilmember O'Brien raised I think is a very good point.

If we could have four or five areas that we would like each candidate to address during their two-minute conversation to us, that will give us an opportunity to focus on what it is that's most important to us.

We give them those hints ahead of time.

And then we'll still have however many minutes to ask specific questions.

But I think if we could get those questions to you by this afternoon so that you could get it out to them, giving them, you know, essentially 36 hours to prepare, that would be helpful.

I'll do that.

So I'll get that and we'll get that to them.

The other part I forgot to just mention, Councilor Herbold, is And after all of that we were going to give them we're looking at one minute to do a closing statement because there might be something they thought about after so after our Q&A of Seven minutes loop back and all twelve of them would have one minute of a closing comes from herbal.

Thank you.

So we have already provided sort of the opportunity to ask the, in writing, the candidates to respond to our interest in their qualifications with that sort of described in writing in advance.

I see this stage as being much like a job interview where we actually don't give the candidates our questions in advance.

So, I would ask that we sort of rethink that part of.

So, let me be clear what I'm hearing, what I'm saying.

So, I wasn't talking about giving them the questions in advance.

What I was talking about is in their introductory three minutes there could be some common things you want them to say.

Not so much questions, just make sure you cover this in your opening statement.

So, I was looking for that feedback.

On the questions, I agree with you that I was going to let that flow organically and just have at it with who you want to ask questions.

I just don't know how much we want to coach the candidates in...

In their opening statement?

In their opening statement.

I just think that that's part of this process is the individual, you know, telling the story and making a case for why they should be considered.

And that's why we're having this discussion.

So what I'm hearing you say is we're giving them three minutes and you're suggesting that let them use their discretion what they think is important for us to hear.

That would be my preference.

Any feedback?

So what I'm hearing you say, however, Council Member Bradens, you want to make sure something's covered and a common theme is covered in all of them.

There's a tension here and I appreciate Council Member Herbold's points too.

I'm thinking, for instance, maybe they're all watching right now, but I'd be curious to hear kind of what your land use experience is, given the likely nature to be chairing that committee.

And so something, I mean, that was kind of in, I think, the application, too, so hopefully that's fairly obvious.

But if there are a handful of points of, you know, we're curious to hear about your land use experience, what you know about the Race and Social Justice Initiative, a couple things like that.

I'm not competing to ask follow-up questions with everybody, with all of you in a limited time period.

Well, we could still come up with that question.

We just don't have to provide it in advance.

Except for we just did.

Right.

I guess my thinking is when we get to the Q&A period, I'm assuming that one or two of us might get to ask a question per candidate.

there's some things that I think if we all if we all agree on that you might be nice to do to say here are five points you may want to cover in your in your opening remarks but they are like least like you said councilmember Herbold if they're if they're gonna be successful they probably need to be breeding between the lines anyways and with the application it's probably pretty obvious what we wanted to happen.

And as Councilmember Worris has recognized, I wanted the viewing public to watch and Sean, our number one fan here, to know that we have to have this discussion publicly to comply with the Open Public Meetings Act.

And that's why we're trying to make these administrative decisions now.

We were During executive session we were able to talk about the qualifications of the candidates We were correctly advised that the procedural issues on the format that is best reserved for an open session So to some extent I tried to do this one-on-one or I make discretionary calls, but this procedure is so important I think we have to have this public discussion on how we format this customer worse.

I

Thank you, Council President.

I agree with Council Member O'Brien.

I think it's no secret what issues are pressing on our city right now.

So it's not a big surprise.

I mean, homelessness, obviously, we could list a few more.

And I think to Council Member O'Brien's point, we don't want to be in the queue trying to raise our hand about the most obvious issues that I think they should be addressing if they're going to be a council member for the next seven or eight months in which We have the summer to get to and then a budget to do.

And there's other issues as well.

So it isn't anything new or surprising that this candidate or these candidates wouldn't already know about if they're not reading the news and they live here and they want this job.

So I think it's smart that if it's three or four questions that we say, you know, you don't have to, but these are four issues or four questions.

that you could touch on or not, but Council, this body is interested in how you would work with your colleagues in the city to address some of the most pressing issues.

So let me add to just get off, because this issue is not so insurmountable.

I think I sort of got a middle ground.

And so what I'll likely do is send them some suggestions, and they don't have to cover them all, but this is sort of things we're interested in.

I'll send an email to all of you to sort of see it.

I will send it to them.

But they may go off script, and we'll give them the latitude to go off script and say, I'm not answering that.

I'm going to tell you why I'm the best.

And so I'll come up with some general kinds of questions that they may want to consider in their three minutes.

The larger question I have is, and just follow my math for a minute, if you will.

If they have their three-minute introduction, and assuming there's 12, and we just spend seven minutes with each person again, And we allow them a minute of closing.

That still takes us to about two hours and 15 minutes.

And my concern is the seven minutes of Q&A with the candidate may go sort of quickly, because we have eight of us.

And that's just my discretion.

I could say 10 minutes an applicant, or I can say eight minutes.

But I actually looked down at five minutes, which was an hour and about 36 minutes.

Does seven minutes sound about right to you all?

Because I don't want to shortchange your ability to ask longer.

We could go three hours and 15 minutes if you want.

I do say, before you respond, that we have all the written materials.

They're in a community forum tonight that will be televised.

I'm sure we will all watch.

And there's really nothing prohibiting us from talking to them offline.

parameters that we're again we're trying to treat everyone the same but if you have follow-up questions and you may follow up with them all if you want so seven minutes sound like the the good balance there do you want a little more of q&a for each candidate i guess see thumbs up and nods

I just feel like seven minutes is not meaningful.

And I don't know, I feel like we're going in a little bit of circles here, because even three minutes to address five questions or categories is just completely unrealistic for those of you who have run for reelection recently.

And you get asked the question of, tell me how you're going to solve homelessness in the city of Seattle.

You have 30 seconds, go.

I mean, it's just...

I appreciate what you're trying to accomplish here, Council President Harrell, but I think I'm going to manage my own expectations about what I'm going to get out of that hearing in a span of seven to 10 minutes.

So seven minutes is acceptable?

I didn't understand.

I didn't think we're going in circles just because I'm trying to get some feedback of whether seven minutes is enough time or not.

So I'm hearing it is.

It's going to be condensed.

But I'm not hearing you say go any longer than that, so everyone's quoting the format.

I like what you said, too, is that we are free to contact them and them us.

Okay.

In the event that...

I mean, I imagine some of you, just like I have been getting contacted by the applicants, there is...

I just want to be clear that there's no prohibition on us talking to applicants, is that correct?

That is my understanding, that we're free to talk to them.

If we speak to some, are we required to speak to all?

That is not my understanding.

My understanding is that just as there are races going on, you don't have to speak to every candidate.

People are applying to pick and choose who you want to talk to, and there's no requirement that you meet with them all.

That's my understanding.

And if anyone differs, I'd like to hear that.

But that is clearly my understanding.

And I guess I just wanted to say that, I mean, my comments were not intended to, I hope you weren't offended by my comments about the seven to 10 minute window, but for me, I just really feel like I need, probably need to spend a little bit more time and be a little bit more understanding of where these folks are coming.

I'm not sure that we get that from 10 minutes, but knowing that that is something that we can layer on top of the overall process, I think is helpful.

Yeah, I agree with everything you said.

I mean, it's a tough process, but I'm just trying to manage it, and we don't want to do it for six hours.

There are other ways to get some information.

Plus, we want to bring the public in to the people we are evaluating.

So it is a job interview.

So I'm hearing not a strong objection.

Seven minutes.

It'll be hopefully.

Can I just?

Yes, please.

So on the calendar, it's already saved for three hours and 30 minutes.

I'm not sure at whose direction that was, but it is on our calendar.

calendars for much longer than this seven minutes allows.

No, that's because I don't know how long your questions are going to be.

So we err on the side of long questions.

Yeah.

Based on historical practice.

I'm throwing this out for an inquiry, not necessarily as a position that we all want to leap on, but does it make sense for us to present questions to you?

Have you asked the questions?

And then if there's somebody has a burning follow-up to do that.

So I'm going to decline on that opportunity.

So to Councilman Gonzalez's point, you know, we're well within our rights that if seven minutes even feels just too compressed, that if we extend it to nine or 10 on a real time basis, we just do it for everyone.

So, and I don't know again, how the questions are gonna be.

And so we blocked off some time for it, but on a perfect, if everything's executed perfectly, it'll be two and less than two and a half hours, but we'll see.

We'll see.

So.

Does that include, is there public comment at this meeting?

Good question.

There's public comment, that's why the longer period, there's public comment at the end.

I forgot to mention that, I'm sorry.

Okay, so we should definitely factor that in as well.

Factor the public comment at the end.

What time are we doing this?

This begins at 5.30 on Wednesday.

This Wednesday at 5.30.

And yeah, public comment, that was the other session, just forgot about that.

Okay.

Hey, we got a ironclad plan here.

Everything's gonna go perfectly Okay Councilmember any other questions on that?

Thanks for the feedback This is very helpful and we'll continue putting that I think the clerk's office in HR and central staff everyone putting all this together So it's a lot of work behind the scenes making sure we Make the right choice

And thanks to you as well, Council President Harrell.

I know you're making decisions with some discretion, so I really appreciate your willingness to engage with us on it.

And this can be a fun process.

Council Member Harvold, thank you.

Thanks so much.

So what I have on this council's full agenda, sorry, this full council's agenda today is a bill related to closed captioning in places of public accommodation passed out of committee on the 9th, and it was introduced and there were amendments passed to exempt programming where closed captioning has been waived from state or federal requirements.

And there was also an amendment permitting the limiting of closed captioning in TV showrooms so that at least one television of every model would have the closed captioning turned on, but not requiring all televisions to have the closed captioning turned on.

There will be an amendment, an additional amendment that you'll be receiving before noon today related to the racial equity impact.

And again, you'll be receiving it in your email by noon today.

We've been working with the Office of Civil Rights on it.

Happy to answer any questions that you might have.

No Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development and Arts Committee meeting this week, but we do have, thanks to Chair O'Brien, for the PLEZ Committee, a couple of bills that I've been working on.

One is a resolution on the North Delridge Action Plan.

The resolution recognizes the work of the Delridge community and the Office of Planning and Community Development to produce the North Delridge Action Plan.

The North Delridge Action Plan was actually finalized last August, but the community really wanted the council to take this action recognizing it.

Finally, we have an update on the vacant building monitoring program legislation that we passed during the budget process.

As part of our budget deliberations, we identified that the bill would go into effect in June.

And we identified some specific amendments that we wanted to address, some of them priorities of the executive and the Office of Department of Construction and Inspections.

And so we will hear that bill for the first time in committee this week on the 17th.

And as far as events going on this week, I'll be visiting with a class at Rocks Hill Elementary.

I'll be doing on Friday a tour of South Dow Ridge with SDCI regarding the vacant buildings there.

working to set up a tour with the East Junction Neighborhood Group regarding Sound Transit.

I believe Councilmember Bagshaw went on a similar tour, but in Delridge over the weekend.

Also, as related to Sound Transit, I just wanted to highlight the fact that a couple weeks ago, I requested that Sound Transit provide the public comments related to the scoping period to the stakeholder advisory group and the elected leadership group at least a week before the stakeholder advisory group meeting, which is this Wednesday, the 17th.

Originally, Sound Transit had provided to provide those comments just two days before the meeting, and I just want to publicly thanks Sound Transit for responding in a supportive and favorable way.

They actually were able to provide the comments a full week in advance of the meeting coming up on the 15th.

About 1,600 pages of scoping comments and it's one of those situations where be careful what you ask for, you might get it.

But a lot of our community advocates who have been following this process carefully have their inboxes full of scoping comments to review before the stakeholder advisory group.

Yeah.

Thank you, Council Member Ball.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So, the Civic Development, Public Asset, and Native Communities Committee will meet this Wednesday at 2 o'clock.

We have an ordinance on the King County Conservation Futures Levy proceeds for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

The proposed ordinance will significantly streamline the Conservation Futures Levy, that's the CFL.

interlocal agreement amendment process.

This streamlined process will allow faster reimbursement for Seattle CFL projects that have been awarded funding by the King County Council.

So basically this is just, it'll make it easier for us to receive the money allocated to the city of Seattle.

So regarding the select committee on the library levy, as you all know, last Thursday the select committee on the library levy met to hold another round of discussions for potential amendments.

Central staff provided us with a chart to compare implications of each amendment on the residents as well as the proposed levy.

The amendment and proposal in full will be up for a committee vote this Wednesday at 2.30.

So it looks like we'll be doing that before we move on to the filling the seat of the council member.

So hopefully we can move quickly on that.

And then the final vote for full council on the library level will be April 22nd at council at 2 o'clock.

Very good.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, for your work on that too.

Council Member Begshaw.

Thank you.

I do want to acknowledge the library work and all of the folks that came out for the public hearing.

It was just a lovely, civilized approach to public comment.

I was grateful for that.

Thank you.

And thank you for your organization on that, Council Member Juarez.

So we have one item today from our Finance and Neighborhood Committee, and in essence, it's a cleanup.

It regards our waterfront local improvement district and supplemental appropriations.

This is going to authorize an execution of an MOA, a Memorandum of Agreement.

with the Washington State Ferries regarding provision of electrical service at Colman Dock.

It's going to accept non-city funding from Washington State Ferries.

It's also going to authorize the acceptance of non-city funding from the Washington State Convention Center, and that's for the extension along Pike Place Market from the market up to essentially, I believe we're going all the way up to Melrose in there in the Pike Pine Corridor.

And then it will amend our adopted budget accordingly to accept these funds and to amend our capital improvement program.

So, Eric McConaghy, thank you.

He wrote an excellent staff memo on this last week.

So, that's available to you if you want it.

And that's what's on today for our positive vote.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Bakeshaw.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Good morning.

Good morning.

There are no items from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on today's full council agenda.

On the introduction and referral calendar, you probably already saw that there is the confirmation of Amara Khan for our new Office of the Employee Ombud.

We are really excited to be able to bring this to our committee for consideration and just want to make sure that folks have a full sense of what the calendar will be.

You will also get a packet from us, a mini binder that includes this timeline if anybody's interested in participating in the confirmation process.

We plan to have Dr. Khan's appointment in the May 2nd Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee.

Please send your questions for this appointment to our office by 9 a.m.

this Friday.

Please send them to Freddy de Cuevas, and we will send you a reminder via email so you can respond to that as well.

All of the written answers will be shared with you all by Friday, April 26th.

That'll give us hopefully enough time, almost a week, to have you review the questions, or sorry, the answers to our questions.

And then we'll have a briefing and possible vote in our committee on May 2nd with the hope to have the new ombud approved in full council on May 6th.

Thanks again to the mayor's office for including many of the members of the interdisciplinary, sorry, interdepartmental task force who worked on harassment and assault and came up with the framework for the office of the employee ombud in the selection process of this new director.

Or I should say in the selection of the ombud, we're very excited that she received a lot of positive notes from those who participated in the robust process.

The next meeting of the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee will be Thursday, April 18th at 9.30 a.m.

That's this Thursday.

We have the first of a series of meetings on our Fort Lawton redevelopment plan.

As you also may have received already, and if you haven't, we'll get that to you shortly, a Fort Lawton binder.

This is going to be a series of meetings that will also be coming up.

There is an updated central staff memo from Tracy Radscliffe.

that we'll be sending around later today with the materials so that you have a sense of what is on the docket for us in hopefully closing this loop that many of you have been working on for, what, 10 years?

So we're hoping to have a 12 years.

Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw.

We will hopefully be able to get that updated memo to you later today.

I want to put on your calendar that there's going to be a public hearing in the evening to talk about the Fort Lawton redevelopment plan on May 21st at 5.30 p.m.

It will be downstairs in the Bertha Landis night room.

Downstairs, please plan to come and participate to all of our viewing public.

We hope you can come as well.

The second thing on our agenda is going to be the annual Office of Housing report and the slide response to the Office of Housing recommendations on the Home Repair Loan Program sponsored by Councilmember O'Brien.

We'll also have a opportunity to hear and discuss and possibly vote on the respectful workplace resolution that's pertinent to the legislative branch and our friends.

in our department here.

Thanks so much for the feedback.

We got overwhelming feedback and suggestions on the amendment.

All of you have received the updated draft, and I think that it was a really inclusive process for getting your thoughts and ideas for that work group that we will be creating.

And then lastly, we'll have a paid sick and safe time legislation briefing discussion and possible vote, which we will talk about later today.

I want to just sort of remind folks we did have a chance to hear from the folks at IUOE local 609 and from a member of the school board, Zachary DeWolf, who came to our last meeting to sort of tee up some of the issues that we're going to consider in this legislation.

Just by way of reminder, I'm also sending around a letter that we received earlier over the weekend regarding what this legislation does.

Really just as a reminder for folks, much of what we've done at the city level is already codified in the CBA, in the collective bargaining agreement for the unions who represent folks like the lunch folks that are serving lunch at schools, the folks who are cleaning the grounds.

These are both what they call pink-collar and blue-collar workers on our school grounds.

Much of what the city has done in terms of sick leave is already codified there.

One of the things that they're looking for, though, is to extend the protections that we currently have in our sick and safe leave rule in terms of Office of Labor Standards' ability to help out with enforcement.

And making sure that people feel like they have the protection of the law not just the letter of the law on paper So we'll talk a little bit more about that one and make sure that you had a copy of that that report that letter as well We have a question on that Okay, I'm done yeah, I thought she's moving on to another topic I thought Oh, you want me to keep going?

I do have some more things.

Oh, thank you.

Okay, so outside of that hearing coming up on Thursday, which, you know, very excited to hear more about the discussion coming up.

We just want to say thank you to our friends in District 4. I did see Councilmember Johnson walking around in the streets, too, and told them that I was representing his district well still, even though, you know, we are looking to fill that vacancy.

But it was a great conversation in District 4. We met with Family Works and Family Resource Center and Food Bank right there in the solid ground building, who provide not just food banks, but multilingual play date opportunities for families.

These are both families that are housed and not housed, a great opportunity to participate together.

in kind of a childcare-like setting.

They have drop-in offices so people can use a computer.

They have resources and supports that they provide for families throughout the area, not just in Wallingford there.

Great conversation with Solid Ground about the work that they are doing to help folks who are also not only experiencing homelessness, but the great work that they're doing to prevent homelessness through the prevention programs, which we're hoping to scale up.

as we go forward.

And really, I had a great opportunity to visit with the University Heights building, if you remember that old building, the school, yes, in the U District, and learn all about their dance programs, their childcare programs, their music programs, and their community organizations that are housed out of that old building.

It's beautiful, but needs some renovations, so I'll be working with you all, hopefully, on some capital budget ideas.

And thank you so much.

Get some words?

This isn't that earth-shattering, but I need to say it.

I forgot to say this because for 10 or 11 years, I've been fighting for this job, and I finally got it.

Here it is.

The Native American Law Student Association, NALSA, the UW, they have Salmon Bingo every year to raise money.

And I've been going for like 10 or 11 years, and I've always wanted to be the bingo caller.

Oh, wow.

And I said, I am Native American.

I do have a casino.

I have a little background.

And they've denied me every year.

And other people always win, and I'm always thinking it's rigged, but I go anyway, nothing against the UW.

But this year, I actually get to be the bingo caller.

So I'm excited.

It's this Friday, April 19th.

And I'll get you the information.

It starts at six.

And we've been doing it for, what, 12 years?

And it raises a lot of money.

It started out with like 14 people.

And now it's like packed.

But since I am now the attraction bingo caller, and I'm going to need an assistant.

So I'm hoping one of my colleagues will be a lovely assistant to help me call out these names.

So I'll let you know that.

Maybe an ex-Husky football player will be by my side.

I've learned in those kind of things you make one person happy and you tick off a hundred people.

Thank you.

One quick thing that's happening tomorrow, Tuesday the 9th, Council Member Mesquite and I are going to be touring our City Hall building and across the street, SMU, for a potential child care center.

You know we put this money in the budget.

We have been quacking about that for We are going to have a full-fledged child care center.

Councilmember Gonzalez has been weighing in with us.

Tomorrow we have experts that will walk around with us.

One of the things I'm advocating for is that if we cannot in 2019 have a full-fledged child care And I'm, like, very excited about this.

The mayor, we've been talking with her as well.

I think we've got her support.

And that this is something that we think is really critical.

And the infant care center, as we all know, is the most difficult, both to get And so we think that we should do that right here in this in this area and city council across the street.

So tomorrow we're having a tour.

And if any of you are interested in joining us, it's in the afternoon.

Love to have you.

Very good.

Excellent.

Customer O'Brien.

Who are we ready for this?

Councilman Gonzalez, do you want to go before me?

That'd be great.

I gotta go.

I gotta go.

So nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the Gender Equity Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

We will be having a special committee meeting this Thursday, April 18th at 2 p.m.

The committee will consider seven appointments for cpc.

That's the community police commission commissioner positions four of those will be council Appointments one will be a mayoral appointment and then we will have one reappointment from the cpc and one New cpc appointment and that is for the spog representative.

So all seven of these appointments are on this afternoon's introduction and referral calendar.

And in addition, my committee will consider several other CPC appointments and reappointments at my next regularly scheduled hearing on Wednesday, April 24th.

Also during this special committee meeting on Thursday, the 18th, we will hear and possibly vote on the amendments to the families education preschool and promise levy implementation and evaluation plan, that's a mouthful, and we'll also have an opportunity to consider partnership agreements that will help make the FEPP implementation evaluation plan operational.

Amendments for the FEPP levy will be presented as a consensus package unless a council member would like to pull a separate topic out of the consensus package for discussion.

There are nine amendments.

Most of the amendments bring the implementation plan draft into closer alignment with what council passed in last year's ordinance and companion resolution.

Some of the more notable amendment language includes a requirement for modifications to the implementation plan to be approved by council.

It revises the Seattle Preschool Promise tuition scale so families are paying a set percentage of their income to the cost of a preschool slot.

We also added more steps, what are referred to as steps, in the income sliding scale.

This amendment is intended to minimize the impact of any potential benefits So instead of having 25 scales, we're going to expand that a little bit up to 30 to make that transition a little easier.

Another issue we are looking into via an amendment to this plan, would create more space for Seattle Promise students to attend that are attending in a part-time status.

So during our deliberation process, we learned that there is a significant number of graduates from public schools who enroll part-time at Seattle colleges.

If I remember that number correctly, it's well over 40% of students who go into a community college from Seattle Public Schools are actually attending part-time.

the current plan as proposed does not.

account for part-time attendance in the Seattle Promise program, so important modification there.

There is also an additional amendment language for Seattle Promise to specify certain topics to be included in DEEL's racial equity toolkit analysis, such as students who wish to enroll on an exclusively part-time basis and the potential impacts of what's referred to as satisfactory academic progress requirements.

When the FEPP levy ordinance was approved last year, we included language to ensure that prioritized students would also include refugee and immigrant students, English language learners, LGBTQ plus students, and students experiencing homelessness.

And we have modified the language through an amendment that makes the language consistent throughout the plan.

We also have an amendment to ensure there is language consistency on K-12 investment area goals.

There will be an amendment for Thursday's committee to ensure K-12 and community-based investments are also centered on academic outcomes like increased instructional time, expanded learning opportunities, and social emotional skills building, as opposed to being solely and squarely focused only on college and career readiness.

which is what the current plan provides.

So we will then be joined by, we will be joined by DEEL, Seattle Colleges, Seattle Public Schools on Thursday for a conversation around the Community Partnerships Agreement.

Those are the agreements that operationalize our relationship with Seattle Public Schools and Seattle Colleges.

And I think that is it.

So I wanna make sure that you all recall that we shared a memo from Brian Goodnight and Allie Panucci.

That memo is dated March 27, 2019 and that provides all of the background information as I've just described it.

So we're expecting to have a very dense committee meeting this Thursday.

My hope is that we will vote it out of committee and that we will be able to consider it at full council on April 22nd, which I acknowledge.

know is a very full council day already, but excited to have an opportunity to get this out of council so that those partnership agreements can become functional.

Last thing I'll report on, actually I have two more things.

I have a proclamation that I'm going to pass around.

I'm sorry that I'm talking so fast, but I have to be somewhere at 1130. And I have so much information to share with you guys.

So we have a proclamation that I'm going to pass.

There will be about 13 members from the Cambodian community who will be joining us this afternoon at full council.

Khmer Holocaust Remembrance Day is upon us, and I have a proclamation here that we drafted together with community to acknowledge the genocide of Cambodian people in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime.

And we do this about every single year, so this is the time for us to again acknowledge and stand with refugees from the Cambodian community in the face of that atrocious historic event.

And lastly, I will say that this week I will be attending the following in community events today at 11 30 a.m.

I am gonna stand with representatives from labor and community at a tax fraud day of action so this is a opportunity for us on tax day to to talk about the amount of construction industry tax fraud that occurs within the construction industry, and I'll be joining Mayor Jimmy Malta from Burien, Monty Anderson from the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council, and Larry Brown, who is the new president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, at 1130 to talk about how we can serve workers in the construction industry better, including here in the city of Seattle.

Tuesday, April 16th at 2 p.m., I am excited to be able to go out and do a tour of the Vietnamese Friendship Association and Seattle World School.

On Friday, April 19th, I will be taking a tour of the new affordable housing development that just opened up in District 3 at Liberty Bank.

So very excited about being welcomed there and having an opportunity to experience how we can do more of these projects throughout our city.

And then I will also be meeting and taking a tour of Urban League, also in District 3. And then Saturday, April 20th, there will be a Washington Ceasefire Columbine Memorial Rally right here at City Hall.

It starts at 10 a.m., ends at 12 p.m.

It's hard to believe that the Columbine shooting, school shooting, occurred now 20 years ago.

And I'm excited about being able to join Ceasefire to commemorate the day and to also continue the movement and the mobility towards more And then lastly, on Saturday, April 20th at 530 p.m., I will be attending the API CHIA gala that evening at the Seattle Westin.

API CHIA, for those of you who are unaware, is an organization that focuses specifically on addressing and ending gender-based violence within the South Asian community and the API community in general.

So really excited to be able to join them for that opportunity.

Thank you Councilmember Gonzalez.

And thank you Councilmember O'Brien for letting me jump the line.

You betcha.

So, I'm going to speak briefly to Sustainability and Transportation Committee and the PLUS Committee.

First, we'll start with Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

Oh, sorry.

First, we'll start with this afternoon's agenda.

There's nothing from either of those committees on this afternoon's agenda.

The Sustainability and Transportation Committee will meet tomorrow afternoon.

We have a handful of items on that agenda.

We will be making appointments to the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board and the Urban Forestry Commission.

We will also get an annual report from the Urban Forestry Commission and an annual report from the School Traffic Safety Committee.

We will receive an initial briefing on a street vacation proposal that would facilitate an affordable housing project on South Willow Street.

And then finally, we'll have a public hearing and a possible vote on legislation that would update our land use code to require new construction to be electric vehicle ready in parking spots.

So this is legislation that would require, put some requirements in about electricity being available for charging stations, for all new construction where there's parking provided.

One other thing I'll mention on the transportation front, this afternoon's introduction and referral calendar will have a resolution that will come back to full council the following week, and that's a resolution providing an honorary designation of 22nd Avenue Northwest between Northwest 56th and Northwest 57th, so Ballard Library, Ballard Commons Park, to designate that as Rob Mattson Way.

For the Planning, Land Use, and Zoning Committee, we will be meeting Wednesday morning.

Three items on that agenda.

Council Member Herbold mentioned two of those already, so a cleanup ordinance on the vacant building monitoring policies, and then also the resolution, what's the right word I'm using here?

Recognizing.

Resolution recognizing the North Railroad Action Plan.

We will also have, taking up a piece of land use that came through the council last year that's quasi-judicial.

This relates to the project located at 7009 Greenwood Avenue North, so on Finney Ridge.

There's a contract rezone that came through the council to go from NC 240 to NC 255 with an M designation.

This was remanded to us for a piece of the legislation from King County Superior Court.

And so we would be taking up the court's direction on that.

There will be as this is a quasi judicial Proceeding we have agreed to allow testimony from both the applicants and the appellants and so I believe they'll have five minutes each to address what the court decided and Then hopefully we will be making a decision based on on the court The court's direction and what we hear from the public Thank You customer Brian Okay

One last note on the public forum tonight, I want to just publicly thank many organizations that have come out to help coordinate the community event tonight.

I want to call them out by name.

Transit Riders Union, Transparent Seattle, the U District Partnership, Welcoming Wallaford, the Tree Pack, The Associated Students of the University of Washington, the U-District Community Council, the U-District Small Businesses, the U-District Advocates, the Northeast Seattle Social Justice and Equity Council, the NAACP, the Wallingford Community Council, STCC, Stronger Together, and the Ravenna Brandt Community Association.

Our office reached out to many organizations, and many of them will no doubt still participate, but these certainly confirmed their attendance this evening, and so we want to thank them for being part of that process.

Okay, unless there's anything else, we're going to go on to executive session.

And as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle Council will convene an executive session, and the purpose of this executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation, and this gives us an opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters with our law department as authorized by law, but a monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to make sure we reserve questions of policy for our public open sessions.

I expect this session to last 30 minutes or less, and so it will conclude at 11.45, and if it goes beyond that duration, I'll announce in public session its extension and the expected duration.

So without that, let's move into executive session.