Good morning.
Thank you for being here at our regularly scheduled council briefing on July 22nd.
Just to sort of describe to the public that we are somewhat pressed for time in that we have two executive sessions scheduled and immediately after this briefing and the two executive sessions, we have a select committee on homelessness and affordability that we want to start at 1030. So we're really cutting it short because of if you look at the timing of that.
So having said that, there are three items up for vote relative on our full council agenda that I'll present.
We've talked about these before.
One is the Skate Plaza site transfer.
down at Seattle Center.
These are all relative to Key Arena, by the way, that's on our select committee.
So most of you attended the select committee for Civic Arenas.
So the first one is the Skate Plaza site transfer, where we're basically transferring jurisdiction on the vacated area around Broad Street from SDOT to the Seattle Center to continue the skating activity.
The second piece of legislation is the Storm Key Arena Facility Use Agreement, basically where we are incentivizing our great team, the Storm, to stay in town as opposed to going far north like Everett.
So it doesn't increase our liability as a city.
I think it's still 2.6 million, but it just sort of redefines cost versus revenue.
And that was an agreed upon arrangement, again, to incentivize the Storm to play locally.
By the way, they played at Hackett a couple days ago and won.
And so my family attended that game, but I couldn't make it.
And the last legislation is just the Saddle Center Arena Sign Overlay District.
And thank all of you for participating in, or many of you for participating in the discussion.
And we just were making sure we are monitoring and regulating the signs down there for wayfinding during all of the activity around Cure Arena.
So I'll present those three this afternoon.
And with that, I'll turn the mic over to Council Member Schwan.
Thank you, President Harrell.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
There are no items on today's City Council meeting agenda from the Human Services Equitable Development and Renter's Rights Committee.
The next meeting of the committee is scheduled for its regular time tomorrow, July 22nd at 2 p.m., where the Human Services Department will present on the out-of-school time meals program.
And as we know, during the school year, many Seattle students depend on free and reduced lunches.
During this summer, that nutritional support is not available, and so this program attempts to fill that void, and we'll be talking about that.
Thank you.
Council Member Bagshaw, before you begin, I forgot to do one thing.
Sure.
So we're joined by Council Member Swann, Bagshaw, Herbold, O'Brien.
That is O'Brien, isn't it?
Right, behind the beard.
O'Brien, Mosqueda, and Gonzalez.
And if there's no objection, the minutes of the July 15th 2019 meeting will be approved.
Hearing no objection, the minister approved.
Sorry about getting my rhythm together.
Council Member Baxter.
Thank you very much.
I'm reporting on behalf of Council Member Juarez.
A couple of things came out of her committee from last week.
Seattle Public Libraries presented their RSJI report.
They also brought forward the reappointment of our good friend Jay Rich for the Library Board of Trustees, so that will be coming up for final adoption this afternoon in Council.
Also, in Councilmember Juarez's committee, three items of business, Discovery Park, King County outfill legislation that maintains overflow.
Pipeline and Channel, that'll be up for vote.
Thornton Creek acquisition of 125th Street.
I want to say this is all about D5 and a parcel of property that Parks is purchasing.
Deborah worked really hard to make that happen.
I want to thank her.
and her staff.
And then also, the last committee that she has for the Civic Development, Public Assets and Native Communities Committee is scheduled next Wednesday, July 31st from 12 to 1.30 p.m.
So, I also want to say for our own committee, the Finance and Neighborhoods Committee, today we've got two items this afternoon.
All of you are well familiar with them both.
The short-term rental tax revenue and dedicated funds for EDI and also the ordinance that will create a dedicated fund for the sweetened beverage tax revenue.
I mentioned that Council Member Juarez's committee is going to be on Wednesday, July 31st.
Likewise, we will have a Finance and Neighborhoods Committee on Wednesday, July 31st in the afternoon.
And my normal committee day of this Wednesday, the 24th, has been canceled.
I will be out of the office for the last three days of this week on a family medical issue.
And I also want to just say thank you to Deborah Smith from Seattle City Light, also Deputy Mayor Mosley, and my buddy John Pearson fabulous event opening up the Denny substation this past Saturday.
So many thanks to all for making that happen.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So as far as items that I have coming up on the full council agenda, I have no items from the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, Arts Committee, but we do have a committee meeting this week on Tuesday.
We are going to get a briefing on what we're referring to as the Eviction Reform Harmonization Bill.
You may recall that the Seattle Women's Commission, working together with the King County Bar, issued a report last year called Losing Home.
The funding for that report was partially provided by my office.
We had briefings in my committee about the recommendations from that report.
We passed a resolution that identified the priorities for the council as well as priorities that we wanted to support in the state legislature for addressing several of the recommendations that came out of this report.
and created a timeline for for doing so.
The state legislature passed a bill that addresses many of the issues in the losing home report around eviction and that legislation it requires us to make some changes to our own just cause eviction ordinance so we're going to hear about that in committee.
We also have a couple of other bills that we're going to hear in the meeting, the first meeting in August, addressing two of the other recommendations coming out of losing home that weren't covered in the Just Cause changes in the state legislature.
So, we're going to have this initial briefing on this bill, hear two others at the next meeting, and hopefully roll all three bills moving forward and hopefully get them wrapped up before budget.
Also in committee on Tuesday, we're going to hear from the Office of Economic Development on their Race and Social Justice Initiative report.
We'll be hearing from Seattle Public Utilities.
on the Bag Ban Compliance Report.
We'll be lifting a proviso for funding to help Town Hall that was approved in the 2019 budget.
The proviso lift relates to necessary public benefits required by this council in exchange for the funding.
And we're also going to hear a report and presentation from Arts Fund on the social impact of the arts.
No proclamations prepared currently, but just want to give folks a heads up that we're working with the People with Disabilities Commission to issue a proclamation recognizing its 10th year and the advocates who helped start the commission, including Julian Weaver.
And then finally, I just want to share with folks an amendment related to an item that I believe Council Member O'Brien will be talking about more, so I'm just gonna pass them out and we can hold discussion until we get into the presentation from Council Member O'Brien about the sugary beverage tax legislation.
Thank you, Council Member Herbold.
Council Member O'Brien, good timing.
Thank you.
The Sustainability and Transportation Committee doesn't have any items on this afternoon's agenda, nor do we have a committee meeting this week.
I will just follow up on two items that Council Member Bagshaw mentioned.
Ordinance related to the equitable development initiative and the ordinance related to creating a fund for the sweetened beverage tax.
Those are both pieces of legislation that I'm very supportive of.
And on specifically on the ordinance related to the sweetened beverage tax, there's a couple amendments that I'm aware of.
One is going to be circulated by central staff, Yolanda Ho.
It's a technical cleanup where there was some language that could be interpreted a slightly different way.
And so she has worked up a small change, and she will email that to all of you.
It doesn't change any of the substance we talked about at committee.
And then Councilmember Herbold has an amendment, which I support.
I appreciate your work on this, Councilmember Herbold, but why don't I hand it back to you to speak to it directly.
Sure, this just I think provides some certainty about the council's intent and the council's hopes as it relates to the things that we've heard coming out of the executive about the impact of the legislation that creates some sidebars through the fund to protect funding for programs that we've identified as a high priority for the sugary beverage tax funding.
Not just high priority, but the intended policy.
Council Member Bagshaw just suggested what I would consider a friendly amendment.
recital itself says that this legislation is not intended to reduce funding for any impacted programs and the executive is expected to identify other funding sources to maintain full funding for these programs.
This was written in such a way to emphasize the understanding that it is the executive that proposes the 2020 budget.
Council Member Bagshaw, expressed an interest in making some changes so that it says the executive and council are expected to identify other funding sources.
doesn't it's still I think clear that it's the mayor that proposes the budget but the council in its role adopts the budget and I think it can create some further certainty and clarity for the public as well as for recipients of funding that we're working together to make sure that funding is preserved for these programs.
Thank you for that.
So and council are expected
Okay.
That sounds great.
Thank you.
I have one amendment on the sugary beverage tax.
Yes, that'd be great.
Okay.
Yeah, let's take it up now.
Sure.
So I'm going to circulate it.
It is largely a technical amendment, but again, in the spirit of making sure that the language of programs that we intend to be funded that is consistent with the original ordinance that enabled the implementation of the sugary beverage tax.
We had some communications with some of our early learning providers, particularly in the space around the nurse to home partnership and the parent child home program.
that were concerned about some of the language that we had in the original amendment around early learning and prenatal services.
So the original version said that the expansion of evidence-based programs in this space would be for birth to age three and kindergarten readiness services.
And we just wanna make really clear that we don't intend to limit the expansion of existing programming and services that we provide in that prenatal space.
So we appreciate the outreach by some of our good partners who do this work to remind us that there's a lot of funding that happens in the before zero, age space.
And so we have stricken the word birth and inserted prenatal to acknowledge that full spectrum of services that the city currently funds through general funds and sugary beverage tax.
So I don't think it's controversial.
It's just a cleanup effort to make sure that, again, the original intent of the sugary beverage tax is continued to be fulfilled.
Thank you.
Makes sense.
Thank you, Councilman Gonzalez.
I fully support that.
Thank you for that change.
Thank you.
Council Member O'Brien.
And that is all from the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Esqueda.
Good morning, Mr. President.
Good morning, colleagues.
I have an update from Council Member Pacheco, who will be here later today, but couldn't be here for council briefing.
There is, on the introduction and referral calendar, the council has received a notice of intent from the Seattle Central College to prepare a new major institution master plan for Seattle Central College campus located at 1701 Broadway, project number 3034600 type 4. This application is now pending for the purposes of council's quasi-judicial rules.
Council members should avoid all communications about the merits of the master plan with proponents or opponents of the plan.
If you have questions about the council's quasi-judicial rules, please see central staff Kettle Freeman.
On full council, there are no PLEZ related items for today's agenda, and the next PLEZ committee meeting is on Wednesday, August 7th.
Among other potential agenda items, they will be discussing and voting on the annual comprehensive plan amendment docketing resolution.
Now moving on to my updates, Mr. President.
Thank you.
We have one item from the Housing, Health, Energy, and Workers' Rights Committee on today's full council agenda.
That's Council Bill 119537. I want to be really clear, this is not a new piece of legislation.
We're actually amending existing ordinance from about five years ago.
The existing notice of intent to sell ordinance requires sellers of multifamily properties of five units or more with at least one unit renting at 80%.
of the area median income to notify the Office of Housing of their intent to sell and provide a 60-day window before any transaction to allow an opportunity for affordable housing developers to submit an offer should they be interested in acquiring the building.
After having many conversations with tenant advocates and nonprofit developers and organizations who are interested in especially addressing the displacement issues that many of our communities at risk of displacement are experiencing, we've worked together to come up with legislation that amends the existing ordinance.
So I want to first thank Councilmember Bagshaw and Councilmember Herbold who've worked with us on various amendments to this proposal.
There's some things of note in the legislation.
First, we want to make sure that it's clear that this amendment to the existing ordinance does really three things.
It creates a tiered notice system.
First, owners post and submit their notice of intent to sell.
This is now not only available to the nonprofit developers, but also to community groups, and really importantly, the tenants who live there, to indicate, to give those three entities an opportunity to indicate whether they're interested in purchasing the building by submitting a statement of interest.
And then the third tier is that the submittal of documentation and the financial ability to purchase a building needs to be submitted.
And finally, there's a period of time that owners must hold the building to give time for the tenants or nonprofits to submit an offer.
It does not have to be completed within that window period.
I think this is really important.
We are broadening out the definition from five units to two or more units.
We're also making sure that the tenants of the building get notification just like the nonprofit developers.
and that community organizations that are increasingly interested in entering the affordable housing and development arena also get that notification.
This is really trying to facilitate the opportunity for us to create both first-time home buyer options for those tenants who can come together and purchase as a co-op and also opportunities for non-profit developers and non-profit organizations to have an opportunity to create or preserve affordable housing, especially in areas of high risk of displacement.
I also understand that there is information that's out there that's been posted by the Seattle City Council Insight blog and while we really appreciate the ongoing interest in the legislation, we have already looked into the matter and its legality and we've already talked to law And we have the memo from law that I'm happy to share with folks.
There was some interest in making sure we dotted all I's and crossed all T's as it relates to the legality of this legislation.
And I can assure you from our city attorney's office that this is very different from what was covered in the blog post.
Unlike the court case referenced in the blog posts and the reference to the Washington State Supreme Court announcement 20 years ago that Mr. Schofield referenced regarding Manufactured Housing Association versus the state of Washington, a Washington State Supreme Court ruling from 2000 in which the court invalidated the state law to give mobile home tenants the right to first refusal to buy a mobile home park where their homes were situated.
I want to be very clear, this bill would not force a landlord to sell to anyone.
In fact, it requires notice of intent to sell, enables tenants and housing providers to give the landlord an opportunity to potentially sell to those tenants, non-profit developers, and non-profit organizations.
One could argue it helps to level the playing field and gives more opportunities to sellers to have even more potential buyers when we're creating opportunities for those tenants and non-profit organizations to have access to information that the Office of Housing is now going to be providing with some of the amendments that Council Member Herbold worked on to make sure that the information was robust.
And thanks to Council Member Bagshaw for helping to make sure that we have a look back period to see that it's working.
So I just want to make sure that it was super clear to folks.
There will be no committee meeting this week.
Our next scheduled committee meeting is August 1st and we will have the MFTE renewal.
and report and we will also be having a briefing and discussion again on our hotel worker legislation.
There was a revised version of the agenda that was sent around so folks can see the full timeline for that as well.
Let us know if you have any questions.
This week I will be headed to our local progress annual convening in Detroit.
I know Council Member Gonzalez will be there as well and maybe some other council members.
I look forward to seeing you all there and that's it for me Mr. President.
Thank you Council Member Esqueda.
Council Member Gonzalez.
Thank you.
My report is going to be very short nothing on this afternoon's agenda from the gender equity safe communities new Americans in education committee In light of the fact that I will be out of town beginning tomorrow to Attend both the local progress board meeting and the annual convening for the rest of the week I have canceled the regularly scheduled committee for this Wednesday And that is my report.
Thank you.
Councilman Gonzalez Okay With that, we're going to move into executive session.
So as presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene in executive session.
And the purpose of this session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.
And this gives us an opportunity to discuss confidential legal matters.
with our city attorneys as authorized by law and a legal monitor from the city's attorney's office is always present to make sure we reserve questions of policy for our public open session.
So I expect this, we have actually two sessions to last combined about 45 minutes.
So we'll say, okay, who's got up 9.54 and 45 minutes.
So let's see.
We'll say 1041, something like post like that.
1040, how's that?
It's going to go to 1040. Actually, it's going to go to 1030, because we're going to start our select committee at 1030. So I'm still on the record.
This is going to go to 1030. And if it goes beyond that, we'll announce it in public open session.
Thank you very much.
Let's move into executive session.