Seattle City Council Briefing 11/8/21

Thank you, and good morning.

Good morning, I'm Dan Strauss, Council President Pro Tem.

Today is Monday, November 8th, 2021, and council briefing will come to order.

The time is 9.30 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson?

Present.

Sawant?

Present.

Herbold?

Here.

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Present.

Morales.

Here.

And Council President Pro Tem Strauss.

Present.

Eight, present.

Thank you.

And if there is no objection, the minutes of November 1st, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

And next item number two on the agenda is President's Report.

As Council President Pro Tem today, I have no report other than to say either happy belated birthday or happy early birthday to Council Member Warrens.

Council Member Warrens, would you like to add anything there?

Seeing no comments, happy belated or early birthday.

Item number three on the morning's agenda, briefing on clerk file 314459, the Grand Street Alley Vacation.

Today we have presenters, Lish Whitson from Council Central Staff, Beverly Barnett from Seattle Department of Transportation, Michael Jenkins, Executive Director of Seattle Design Commission, Matthew Richter, Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, David Tan, Executive Director of Mount Baker Housing, and Pat Foley, the Lake Union from Lake Union Partners.

Good morning everyone.

Please take it away and after that we will move into preview of today's City Council Actions, Council and Regional Committees.

Good morning, Lewis-Schwitzen Council Central staff.

I'm going to provide a little bit of context for your consideration of this proposed alley vacation, and we'll hand it over to the city departments and the petitioners.

Mt. Baker Housing and Lake Union Partners have petitioned the city for the vacation of an alley to facilitate an affordable housing project in the Judkins Park neighborhood, South Grand Street, between Rainier Avenue South and 23rd Avenue South, at the Southern boundary of council district three.

Vacation of streets and alleys under state law is a legislative act.

The council has adopted policies that include a two-part test for street and alley vacations.

First, you should look at whether the city is protecting the public's trust.

In other words, the reasons we have streets and alleys.

And second, you should look at the public benefits the project will provide.

First test considers whether the alley is needed for any of the following reasons, circulation, access, utilities, light, air, open space, public assembly, or free speech activities, and whether it's consistent with our land use policies and intended urban form.

Second, you should consider whether there is sufficient benefit to the general public in exchange for a permanent loss to the public of public space.

You can consider the intended use of the building and benefits provided by the project, but there also needs to be a long-term benefit to the general public.

Council's review of a vacation takes part in two phases.

The first is conditional approval, and that is the substantive decision.

It's where we are today.

And the second, if conditional approval is granted, the project will come back to council for final approval when all the conditions have been met.

There is a public hearing scheduled for this project at this afternoon's meeting, which will allow you to vote on the vacation as early as next week.

And I'll hand it over to Beverly Barnett to talk about the analysis city departments have undertaken, unless anyone has a question.

Okay, thank you, Lish.

And thank you, council members.

I think we're all really appreciative of the council setting a special time to hear this project with the way housing funds are dispersed, the timing was really difficult.

So I think we all really greatly appreciate that.

And I appreciate Lish's overview.

So I'm gonna spend just a couple minutes covering what SDOT looked at, and also wanna let you know how we're gonna handle this morning's meeting.

Lish and then me.

Next to speak is Michael Jenkins, then Matthew Richter, and then Pat Foley and David Tan, the joint venture partners, are going to just introduce themselves.

And then we're going to focus the bulk of our time on the PowerPoint presentation.

And David is going to go over this, and Natalie Quick, who's also part of the team, is going to run the PowerPoint.

We do have other staff members here that are subject matter experts, so if any questions come up, we can, you know, text them and get information.

We have their architectural team, Chris Snyder.

from SDOT, we have Jonathan Williams here who worked on their street improvement permit plan.

So we think we have everybody that's needed to respond to your questions, but we do really want to focus on the project.

My job in SDOT, SDOT administers the vacation program for the city council and it's our job to review the policies and a project proposal and make sure that the project is consistent with our understanding of what council wants to see.

And with this pro is a very strong project.

to recommend it and reall forward on their schedule of unusual things with t So you're going to hear community engagement and the art piece, which is a little bit different.

And we're going to hear from Matthew Richter about the cultural art space, which may be the first one the council has seen.

It's definitely the first space associated with a vacation.

And then when we go into the PowerPoint, you'll see the project design and the context of how it fits into the community and the really large-scale, well-designed public open spaces that are being created.

So for a project to receive a recommendation, it really just needs to meet the criteria established by the city council.

But we think this is an unusual project.

And one of the things you'll see when we get into the PowerPoint is by vacating the alley and consolidating the site, Mount Baker Housing is able to do more units of housing, less cost per unit and are able to add more family size units.

So that little alley really has a remarkable difference on the housing that's being created.

And so we look at the PowerPoint, you'll be able to see that.

So unless there's questions for me, we really want to focus on the other bits and pieces and get to the PowerPoint.

But we're all here and we're happy to answer anything now or later or before this afternoon.

So I think, Michael, I believe you're next.

Good morning, council members, and thank you, Beverly.

And just thank you to the Mt. Baker team and their partners for this very interesting project that the commission evaluated.

The commission looked at the project four times, twice on the issues of public trust and twice on public benefit.

Overall, the commission supported the vacation of the alley as not having a significant impact on the remaining right-of-way.

They certainly provided adequate access for the motor.

I think that's Dare Motors, which is a property to the south that will abut the site after the vacation.

Overall, the commission voiced their significant support for the project and the additional affordable housing that is achieved from the vacation.

Of the public benefit features that will be highlighted in the presentation, I think that the commission was most excited by and interested in how equity is being elevated in the proposed art and cultural space and the opportunities to elevate equity in the design of the plaza right away.

Beverly briefly alluded to the relationship of the project with the cultural space PDA.

We're just thrilled with this partnership.

meeting with Matthew Richter and the Cultural Space PDA in his role of staffing it.

And we're just really excited that this particular project provides potentially a blueprint for other street and alley vacations, looking at elevating equity through the provision of spaces that focus in on art and culture, as well as that reflect ever-changing demographics in our neighborhoods.

I'm going to go ahead and leave it right there.

If there are any questions or after you've been able to look at the presentation, ask me any questions about the commission's interest and support for the public benefit package.

I think without is, is it going to Pat?

Matthew.

Great.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thanks, Michael.

Thanks, Beverly.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Matthew Richter from the Office of Arts and Culture, and I'm presenting this morning on behalf of the Cultural Space Agency, the newest public development authority in Seattle, which represents really, by the square feet, the smallest piece of this whole project.

We're looking at acquiring a 1,500 square foot storefront in the Mount Baker housing project.

right on the front of the building on Rainier Avenue.

We're excited to turn it into some permanently dedicated cultural space on behalf of community.

This is space that you know since time immemorial has been indigenous cultural space and then over the course of the last 150 years this is a neighborhood that has really accepted multiple waves of immigration from Italian farming immigration at the turn of this century through Japanese Issei communities that came to town through this neighborhood, Vietnamese population that swelled in the 1970s, Latinx, urbanizing Latinx population, and most recently a burgeoning Somali community in this neighborhood as well.

Now that Housing is expanding and Seattle is growing.

We're looking at trying to ensure the retention of these cultural communities in this neighborhood.

And so what the space agency intends to do with this really exciting opportunity is create what we believe to be the first permanently dedicated pop-up space in the United States.

So this would be 1500 square feet of retail space that would be a series of culturally representative pop-up project, whether those are BIPOC-owned micro-businesses or arts projects directly, artists, small galleries, performance spaces in this storefront that would rotate every three months, every six months, but that would be permanently dedicated and curated by the Cultural Space Agency.

It's a super exciting opportunity.

It's a beautiful project and we're excited to be a part of it.

And I also will be here and happy to answer any questions about the project.

And with that, I believe I pass it to David Tan.

Yeah, next we're going to have Patrick Foley from Lake Union Partners and David Tan kind of introduce themselves.

And then we'll move, David will move us into the PowerPoint.

So Natalie can start prepping the PowerPoint.

So either Patrick or David, if you want to do a quick intro, and then we'll move to the PowerPoint.

Go ahead first, David.

Good morning, and thank you very much, Council, for the opportunity to appear in front of you today.

I'm David Tan.

I'm the executive director of Mount Baker Housing.

We are in partnership with Lake Union Partners on Grand Street Commons.

And I must say that Matthew has highlighted, in addition to the housing, one of the most exciting things for us about this space and this project.

I happen to be a musical artist, and I'm really looking forward to the pop-up space that the Cultural Space Agency is going to be placing in our project.

I'm going to hand it over to Pat Foley.

But before I do that, I want to mention that Lake Union Partners and Mount Baker Housing have entered into a development partnership with respect to Grand Street Commons, which I believe could potentially be a sort of model for the future for these kinds of development partnerships.

This is a really exciting one for us.

And I'd love for Pat to expound on that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

And thanks as well for allowing us the opportunity to be here today.

This is our second project of this nature.

The difference here, this was a contaminated site where for the last three years, we've been working with the Department of Ecology and the community, and we've cleaned the site, which now is allowing us to, as a private developer working with Mount Baker Housing and the city and the state of Washington, and to deliver 775 units of affordable housing, excuse me, of housing.

almost 50% of which will be affordable and we're super excited about that.

Our first project along these lines is Midtown Public Square in the central area where we partnered with Community Roots Housing and Africatown Community Land Trust and a very similar 50% across the entire block will be affordable and we have a strong focus on community commercial shops and retail and that are affordable and it allows us to recruit the types of businesses that the neighborhoods want.

So we're just really excited about the ability to deliver this much affordable housing at this location.

And thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Hey, David, it looks like you're on mute.

And I think now we're ready for the PowerPoint.

If Natalie can share her screen, and then we'll go through the PowerPoint and, of course, respond to any questions throughout or at the end of the PowerPoint.

OK, David.

Thank you.

And we'll take it away here.

The first slide here is a general rendition of what Grand Street Commons will look like.

It is, again, I wanna mention this again, it's a co-developed project, and it is a brownfield site that has been cleaned with the help of Department of Ecology, as Pat mentioned.

One of the benefits of this kind of co-development partnership is creating a very coherent and beneficial development for the neighborhood.

And I think this first slide is, representative of what it will look like.

That car you see there is moving north along Rainier.

If we could go to the next slide.

This slide gives us a, Natalie, if you could possibly move to the next slide.

Perhaps we are having a little bit of technical difficulty.

The next slide is a general overview of the region with the three blocks that are being developed highlighted.

And maybe we can get to those.

I guess one of the things that I would point out is, there we go.

This is an overview of the site location.

You can see Rainier Avenue South running along what would be the west or left side of this piece of property.

Grand Street runs through the middle.

There is a slide, which I believe is the next one, which shows where, nope, it's the one actually, Natalie, before this one.

Yes, there you go.

This slide shows In red, you can see that little red line running through GSC South, Grand Street Commons South.

That is the alley that we are requesting be vacated.

If we can go to the next slide after the next slide.

There you go.

The overall vision for this property is sort of shown there, but the highlight here is again, as Patrick mentioned, the number of residential units that this project is designed to provide, and the number of affordable units that will be a part of the project.

So you can see Grand Street Common South is Mount Baker Housing's portion of the project, and of course 100% of our units will be affordable.

But more importantly, for the overall project, nearly 50% of those 775 units This is a general overview of the project information.

I will just, rather than read everything here, I will leave this slide for a few moments and give you the opportunity to view it.

And if you have any questions, we can try to answer them.

If no questions, if we could move to the next slide.

Sorry, David, I see a question from Council Member Morales.

It's a broader question, not about this slide in particular.

And it might be a question for Beverly, but I am interested, especially in the right of way.

Some of the slides a little further, I think in the appendix, It looks like there's a big driveway that will be coming in.

Maybe that is Grand Street.

And given how busy Rainier Avenue is and how fast people drive down that road, I'm interested to know what kind of right-of-way improvements will be made and if there will be any crosswalks added.

If you're adding 700 units here for people presumably to walk up to the light rail station that's coming in or to move down into the neighborhood, I'm wondering if there's any plan to add some crosswalks near near this project.

That's a great question.

Beverly, would you like to?

Yeah, and Council Member, that might be a little more evident when we get a little farther into the presentation.

But I think, yes, what if you're looking at the Grand Street connection to Rainier is proposed to be an one-way northbound to emphasize the pedestrian character, so it's going to be narrower to slow traffic down and will be a curbless street.

That design has been reviewed by SDOT, by our traffic operations, and based on the traffic volumes, have approved that.

It's still in the final, final design, but I think what you're looking at really is a different vision of Grand Street And it's not a driveway.

OK.

Please go on.

I'm sure I will have more questions.

Natalie, if you could move to the next slide.

So this is a slide which shows the impact of the alley vacation.

In the upper left-hand corner, you can see the alley as it is now.

If it were not vacated, we would be on our block, on the Mount Baker housing block, sort of limited to creating a two-building project.

But with the alley gone, we can create a one-building project.

And the benefit of that is two things, really.

First of all, without the alley vacation, we would only be able to provide about 160 units of affordable housing.

With the alley vacation and a single building, we can do 206 or 50 more, approximately.

And another huge benefit here of the alley vacation would be the cost per unit, which would drop significantly by about $64,000 per unit.

Natalie, if we could move to the next one.

So this project and this design has, with the guidance of the Department of Neighborhoods, gone through some significant and required community engagement.

The community engagement started a number of years ago in 2019. I want to point out that the photograph literally is from one of the early community engagement meetings And I do want to point out that this was before the pandemic.

So I know there's a lot of people wandering around in a room with no masks, but this was from October of 2019. The engagement plan was actually quite successful, however, even though we went through 2020 as it was.

And, you know, one of the things that Matt Baker and Lake Union Partners did with some help was create a website, and you can see that there was a significant traffic on the website, and we received a large number of comments to the project, most of which, and many of which, of course, we've responded to.

If we could go to the next slide, that would be appreciated.

So this is an overview of the public benefits, Again, I don't want to go through this and read every word, but I do want to highlight that in the middle there, you can see the notes.

You can see the things that Michael and Matthew highlighted, the art and cultural opportunities and the community space agency used of Mount Baker Housing's 1,500 square feet on our commercial site for the pop-up.

And if there are any questions here, we can also respond to them now.

Thank you, David.

Colleagues, any questions on this slide?

If not, Natalie, we could move to the next and begin to look at some of the right-of-way benefits.

Here, Councilman Morales, Person Morales, you can see Grant Street does run off Rainier Avenue South, but it is quite narrow, which will slow traffic a great deal.

These are the locations where there are right-of-way benefits, in other words, landscaping.

You can see in the bottom left-hand corner, The commercial space, which the Community Space Agency will be taking, is on that corner, sort of facing Rainier Avenue South, and out in front of that space is a public gathering space.

You can see Public Plaza at right of way there in the bottom right-hand corner of this slide.

The Grand Street one-way street will be what we call a WUNF, which is curveless street and it's also walkable.

If we could go to the next slide.

This is a sort of more detailed vision of the plaza.

Natalie, if you could possibly show where the water feature would be just above Grand Street.

There we go.

And again, you can see there's a significant amount of walking space.

In addition, the 22nd Avenue South extension in the top of the space leads to the Judkins Light Rail Station.

and i might uh...

pop in here to ferment this is this is beverly again from that stop perspective so in looking at this uh...

that the idea to have grand street being one way it was intended to still provide for uh...

accommodation for the three blocks but uh...

to slow the traffic down and make sure that this uh...

is emphasizing that pedestrian character of the environment so that uh...

the staff in s dot look at see beverly may have frozen the perks of design features oh excellent beverly cut out midway through there but i think we got your point and okay councilman has a question

Thank you, Mr. President.

So I guess I certainly appreciate what you just said, Beverly.

And I am really excited about the Cultural Space Agency, about the space that is here, and the vibe that this could bring to the area.

I think it's beautiful.

what i'm still worried about though is not necessarily grant street but rainier because if if we're if the intention is to create a pedestrian friendly space here it is literally on a very unfriendly street for pedestrians and so my real question is about what improvements will be required of the developers on the sidewalk along Rainier, crosswalks for people moving in and out of this space, because there's a lot happening here.

And if the intention is to bring people who are walking, they may be very safe inside the space, but all around it, they won't be.

And so that's my real question is what is the perimeter around this?

What requirements will be made to improve the infrastructure and the perimeter of this space?

Yeah, I think Estat is looking at pedestrian improvements at 23rd and at Rainier.

The project itself doesn't trigger the requirements to do a signalized crossing at Rainier Avenue South.

And so we're looking at what other kinds of pedestrian enhancements can be required.

But around the two blocks to the north and on the Mount Baker site, developers are always responsible for doing code required improvements around the site.

But this project, it did not trigger a signal at Rainier Avenue South.

And I think that is, something that we're still looking at how we can, what enhancements can be.

There will be conduits put in place so that when a signal is triggered, it can be put in more readily.

And I think the commission did look at this, so it looks like Michael wants to add something on that too.

You beat me to the punch, Beverly.

Council Member Morales, there was significant discussion by the commission Looking at the balance between, because there's not a SEPA requirement triggering the improvement, there's a lot of discussion about the relative cost of signalizing, and even if a signal intersection or crossing, excuse me, could be permitted because of the nature of the arterial, the relevant cost weighed against some of the other commitments that they were able to make to the plazas, now to the Cultural Space PDA, I think that certainly the commission explored that with them.

And Beverly, thank you for reminding us that there is a conduit improvement to the north that would allow for a signalized crossing when SDOT approves a warrant for that.

and that sidewalk on rainier will be widened to eight feet uh...

so it does create out a bit better of a pedestrian environment just that that sense of that dimension uh...

and i think the the entirety of the design uh...

on the site is intended to create a place for pedestrians uh...

the design of the plaza certainly needs to look at sounds, knows the volumes from Rainier, but it's part of being in an urban neighborhood.

Thank you.

That's very helpful information.

Council Member Morales, do you have a follow up or do you want to maybe, I'm seeing no.

Thank you for those questions.

Colleagues, we have five minutes left scheduled for this presentation.

Just want to check in to see if we have other questions at this time.

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. President Pro Tem Strauss.

I'm excited to have you at the helm today.

Also just wanted to say thank you to all of the presenters.

I will be flagging an amendment for our consideration this afternoon, so I just wanted to make sure that I was in the queue for when the presentation wraps up.

So I can hold Mr. President Pro Tem if you'd like to take other questions about the presentation and just wanted to let colleagues know You should have heard from my office as well, midweek last week about the amendment.

So happy to talk about that this morning as a preview for this afternoon.

Thank you.

And just as I'm stepping into the role of Council President Pro Tem, it is my understanding we'll have a public hearing this afternoon.

And then clerks, can you remind me?

I thought we were voting next week.

Are we voting today?

We are voting next week.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Peterson, and then we'll bring it back to Council Member Roscado.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and President Pro Tem Strauss.

So I really appreciate this presentation.

We actually had a similar presentation at our Transportation Committee several months ago.

It was very thorough.

And just because it's a vacation of an alleyway, They normally go through the transportation committee, but in this case, because we want, we don't want to slow down the production of any affordable housing.

I appreciate the accommodation to have this briefing today, the public hearing this afternoon, and then we'll vote on it next week.

I'm supportive of this vacation of the alley.

I want to do that lightly.

I want to maximize public benefit whenever we're giving something up that is the cities and in this case, the alley.

However, the public benefits here seem very thorough.

Obviously there, while only half of the units will be low income, it's a lot of units.

It's 360 of portable units, and I'm pleased to see it at 60% AMI, 60% of area median income, appropriate and necessary to support low-income residents.

And I'm happy to work with, for whatever, as Judkins Park Station opens in a couple of years, a few blocks to the north, and then we have Mount Baker Light Rail Station to the south, I'm happy to work with Council Member Morales and so on to make sure there are, we're getting people safely to those light rail stations so that they're walking safely there.

So thank you, I just wanted to provide that additional context.

Thank you, Chair of the Transportation Committee, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Other colleagues, we have two minutes left.

Otherwise, I will turn it back to Council Member Mosqueda to walk us through her amendment.

Thank you very much, Council President Pro Tem, and I want to thank everybody who's on the line here today from all of the departments.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to work with you on the amendment in front of us.

Colleagues did want to flag an amendment for your consideration, and thank you to the chair of transportation for reminding me and Mr. Chair, Chair of Land Use, that this is a briefing and hearing this afternoon and then a vote the following week so you'll have a whole week to sit with the amendment that I'm talking about.

Amendment number one that we will be bringing before you is discussed on page five of the central staff memo.

This amendment would remove the requirement that Grand Street partners pay the appraised value for the alley space.

Adopting the amendment would reduce the MHBAs and the city's costs to develop affordable housing on site by at least $400,000.

Our overall goal here is to create affordable housing and to make sure that every penny goes back into the public good, as was just discussed.

And I believe that this amendment is one part of a larger conversation we will soon be having about how we can create more opportunity for those precious dollars to go directly into building affordable housing.

This amendment to this individual street vacation is a precursor to legislation my office will be working on with Lishwitson and I want to thank the chair of transportation as well for their ongoing conversations with our office about how to create an exemption for all city funded affordable housing projects.

The amendment in front of us this afternoon and for your consideration next week will remove an internal barrier for affordable housing and allow us to save precious affordable housing money that could be used to create more homes.

This amendment aligns with legislation that I sponsored back in 2018 that prioritized city-owned surplus property for affordable housing.

This was the surplus land bill, if the folks remember, that asked our city to preserve affordable housing opportunities on publicly owned land and when there's surplus property to offer it to other city departments.

And if city departments aren't interested, then to offer it to those who develop affordable housing so that we can preserve public good on public spaces.

By removing hefty fees associated with the charges associated with the needing to acquire the areas of city-owned rights of way, then we use, then we, We are able to then advance our goal of creating more affordable housing.

I think that this is going to be a more efficient and effective way to remove any unnecessary administrative processes associated with transferring city funds right back to the city.

I really appreciate the ongoing conversation that we have been having with individuals who are represented here from the various departments and the city partners as well.

to help remove the required pay street vacation fees, making sure that our limited public housing dollars go right back into building affordable housing.

And I'll save the rest of my comments, Mr. Chair, for this afternoon, but do wanna thank all of the conversations, thank all of the individuals here for the conversations we've been having about how to remove this fee specific to this property, again, allowing for around $400,000 to be invested right back into affordable housing, and I want to thank Aaron House and Lish Whitson for their work along with the chair of transportation who will be considering the larger bill that accompanies this concept in the transportation committee on December 1st and then I will have the final vote and conversation in our committee on December 7th with an expected hopeful vote in council on December 13th.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and happy to address any questions that might come up from council members either this afternoon or throughout the week as you consider Amendment No. 1. Again, summarized on page 5 of the Central Staff Memo.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Very helpful, and we always appreciate the early warning, and I'll take this opportunity to again highlight Council Member Juarez's request to have any amendments on the zoo agreement by November 30. It's a separate topic, but in the spirit of early warnings and information being received early on, I'll take this moment to make that plug again.

From our presentation panel today, do you have any further comments or colleagues, any further comments?

I do see we are now two minutes over the allotted time.

Seeing none, I really appreciate you all coming out.

We will have the public hearing this afternoon and then take the bill up next Monday, so a week from today, at full council.

Thank you, Patrick, David, Lish, Michael, Matthew, Beverly, really great to see you all.

Thank you.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone.

Moving on to item number four in today's agenda, we will begin our next discussion on the preview of today's city council actions.

Council and regional committees, and I will call on council members as established, are the rotated roll call for the city council meetings, which is designated alphabetically by last name and with council president called last.

This week's roll call begins with Council Member Mosqueda, followed by Peterson, Sawant, Herbold, Juarez, Lewis, Morales, and then I will conclude this agenda discussion.

Welcome Councilmember Mosqueda, please take it away.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Thank you for the opportunity to give me one second while I got that sunshine out of my face.

But we are very excited that there is sun out today.

Colleagues, I appreciate all of the work that you have done on budget.

This is now getting into week seven.

of eight weeks to come.

We have this week to discuss the chair's proposed budget.

Then we will have the following week to look at any proposed amendments with the desire to conclude our city budget proposed balancing package with a final vote on November 22nd.

So all week this week, all week next week, and then we will end with the final vote on November 22nd.

Tomorrow we will have an opportunity to talk to council members and community about some of the priorities that you've flagged in your budget amendments that you've put forward.

I'll be making sure that we have dotted every I and crossed every T with central staff who has been diligently crunching the numbers day in and day out over the last to make sure that we have an accurate assessment of both how the revenue forecast that we received last week impacts our proposed budget, the proposed budget that we had been crafting to amend the mayor's proposed budget.

The intent is to make sure that we publish this proposed draft budget for your consideration and discussion in an initial briefing on Wednesday at 9 a.m.

Please do note that this starts at 9 a.m., not at 9.30, to make sure that we're accommodating for some of the other meetings that our council colleagues need to attend on a regional basis.

So please do make sure to join us at 9 a.m.

We will walk through the chair's proposed budget.

We will not start with public comment.

Our intent is to make sure that all of the public comment is heard that Wednesday.

But as a reminder, we have the evening dedicated to just comments.

So that will be the public hearing that starts at 5 30 p.m.

In lieu of having public comment at 9 a.m We will go directly into over an overview of the chair's proposed budget so that all of you council colleagues All of the members of the community and any members of the press who are following this as well We'll have a chance to dive into the budget have a in-depth discussion on an analysis of that presentation by council central staff High-level overview on Wednesday morning gives colleagues the opportunity throughout the day to identify any questions that they have and members of the community to really go into the budget so that they can be prepared for that evening's public hearing.

Again, public hearing starts at 5 30 p.m.

so this is an opportunity for you to sign up for public hearings starting at 3 30 p.m.

you'll find the sign-up sheet on the council's website.

I want to thank everyone for the opportunities that they have provided for us to hear directly from you from each of our Select Budget Committee meetings over the last eight weeks.

We have had an opportunity to have public comment at every single meeting, so much of that public comment, in addition to the various ways the community has been engaged with each of our council offices, be it individual meetings and calls, Town halls, as I know many council members have had.

Office hours, which many council members have flagged as well.

Those have all helped inform those amendments that have been submitted and we are working again very diligently to try to include those in our shares budget proposal.

You will also note from the revenue forecast that was shared last Wednesday that we are experiencing now about a $20 million net drop in expected revenue from the revenue forecast.

That means at least 20 million is being redistributed, excuse me, has to be reduced from the mayor's proposed budget.

In addition to wanting to make sure that council colleagues priorities and budget amendments were accommodated to the fullest extent possible.

It's been a tough few weeks in this last week since Wednesday and receiving that information.

There has been around-the-clock work from central staff and I want to thank every member of central staff who has been doing tremendous work to try to identify revenue that is available for council colleagues for us to invest in priorities as well as making sure that we're protecting our most vulnerable, investing in workers, investing in small businesses and our most vulnerable across the city in this time as we seek to recover from COVID and to create a more equitable local economy.

I am excited about the budget that we have to present to you all on Wednesday morning and we will continue to work to to make sure that your investments are reflected in the budget before it finally passes.

Obviously we're very thankful for for the conversation at the federal level, both about the infrastructure proposal and the Build Back Better Act, which is soon to be passed as well.

It's great news on Friday that the infrastructure proposal was passed and much more to come through the Build Back Better Act.

Having this support from the federal government, from our congressional partners, as well as the leadership of our local state legislative members, along with partnership with King County Council, I believe our budget coupled with these other three investments and resources will help to make sure that we are creating a more equitable and just economy.

There will, I'm sure, be some desire for additional information and some questions that come, so we will make ourselves available once you see that proposed budget.

Our office and central staff will be working to answer any questions you may have.

And colleagues, after the information is provided, about our chair's proposed budget on Wednesday.

We will have the opportunity to do an in-depth discussion on Friday morning starting at 9 30 a.m.

where council members may want to ask specific questions to central staff.

We will have a department by department presentation on Friday morning with the hope to hear from any council members 48 hours later on that Friday at midday.

If you have desired amendments that you'd like to see, central staff would like to start working with you ASAP.

And a reminder that those amendments that you will be discussing, if you have any on Friday, will need to be self-balancing.

I hope, colleagues, what you'll see from us on Wednesday is every effort to make sure that we try to accommodate each council member's desired additions in the midst of a bad news budget week last week with the downturn in the revenue forecast.

Again, as a reminder, we did, as a council, ask many questions about the use of baseline forecasting versus the pessimistic forecast, just noting that we continue to deal with various waves of COVID and the economy in terms of return to work is not fully back.

here in Seattle nor around the country.

So we have worked to be cautious about the revenue to come even after the news from Wednesday and we'll continue to work with you to make sure that we are both investing in what helps create healthy communities, vibrant local economy and that we are preparing for potential downturns in the future given the tenuous nature of both the health of our community and the health of our local economy.

So more to come Wednesday morning at the very latest.

That is it for me, Mr. President, and I am happy to take any questions you may have.

Thank you, Budget Chair Mosqueda.

During the budget process, you should probably always go first because that was very helpful information as we map out our week.

Colleagues, any questions for Chair Mosqueda?

Seeing none, we'll move on to the next Council Member in rotation, Council Member Peterson, followed by Council Member Swann, and then Council Member Herbold.

Good morning, Council Member Peterson.

Good morning.

Thank you, President Pro Tem Strauss.

Good morning, colleagues.

Our Transportation Utilities Committee meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9.30 AM, except during our fall budget season.

So our next committee meeting will be Wednesday, December 1st, and we'll have another Transportation Utilities Committee meeting on Wednesday, December 15th.

Our committee has one item on this afternoon's full city council agenda.

That's the public hearing about the alley vacation we just discussed, the mixed-use, mixed-income transit-oriented development, Grand Street Commons.

It appears on today's agenda as a public hearing item with clerk file 314459. Speaking of transit-oriented developments in District 4, this past week I toured the low-income housing development that's under construction called Cedar Crossing.

It's right on top of the new Roosevelt Light Rail Station.

This welcoming new low-income housing project follows in the footsteps of Projects like Gossett Place in Marion West, built by Lehigh, Bora Court, built by Bellwether Housing, the solid ground housing at Magnuson Park, Mercy Magnuson, and other projects in District 4. This is Cedar Crossing nearly complete thanks to a joint partnership between nonprofits Bellwether and Mercy.

It'll have 253 apartment units on top of the Roosevelt Light Rail Station.

100% of the units will serve low-income, very low-income and extremely low-income residents.

It will also have high-quality childcare on the ground floor, as well as retail, such as a restaurant, and space for nonprofits.

One of my favorite parts was on the roof, there are some solar panels which will power part of the building.

It's everything we could really hope for in a transit-oriented development at Cedar Crossing.

And they hope to pre-lease the residential rental units early next year and open next summer.

That concludes my report.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

And I know Budget Chair Mosqueda inadvertently left an item off of her report.

Just checking.

Councilmember Mosqueda, would you like to...

Apologies, Councilmember Swann.

We'll circle right back to you.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Apologies, Councilmember Swann.

I did not scroll down on my script.

And thank you very much for coming back to me, Mr. Chair.

I did just want to note, One additional thing outside of budget, I wanted to send a huge note of congratulations to the Department of Early Learning.

The Department of Early Learning spent education and early learning through the leadership of Monica and Director Chappelle spent all last week working with the city's child care recognition payments.

These are the appreciation allotments that council had included in our Seattle rescue plan act from this this summer.

We included in that a Seattle risk plan $3 million to go out to child care providers as an appreciation of one time pay for all of the work that they have done throughout the last 18 months, and it was open to any child care provider, both center-based and home-based providers who were interested in providing payments to their workforce.

It's direct pass-through to their workforce.

Child care resources worked with all of the providers who submitted applications.

78% of the eligible center-based and home-based child care providers applied for this.

And once all of the applications were received, which by the way, a very simple one page application, hearing directly from providers and workers that they really wanted to produce the administrative paperwork associated.

It was basically an attestation that they were interested and that they were going to pass it on to their workers.

Child care providers across the city will be receiving $835 in appreciation pay.

for their hard work and dedication to the service of Seattle children and families during this COVID pandemic.

Again, this is a huge opportunity for us to appreciate and respect the very hard work of being a child care provider and to make sure that they have an appreciation, especially right before the holidays makes me very excited.

And I just wanted to thank all of you for your support for that piece and specifically thank the partnership with the Seattle Child Care Business Coalition and the direct service providers who wrote in and requested this allotment from the beginning.

This is thanks to the hard work and coordination that DEAL has done directly with child care providers to make sure that it was easy to apply and get these dollars out.

Huge congratulations to DEAL, their team, and every child care provider in our city who continues to do the heroic work of caring for our kiddos.

and making sure that our economy runs relies on making sure that child care providers are well paid, have respect in the workplace, and that they continue to have opportunities to grow more home base and child care centers and see this as a true career ladder for us to have a good stability in child care and child care providers.

So thank you to all the work that you all have done.

Just wanted to flag how wonderful it is to have received that news.

And congratulations to all the child care providers out there on this appreciation allotment.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Council Member Swann, good morning.

Good morning.

The next meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee is scheduled for November 30th at 2 p.m.

At that meeting, I hope to discuss rent control legislation that my office unveiled all the way back in September, and I've mentioned in successive briefings that that will be part of the agenda for that meeting.

And I would also note that I've not heard from any council members yet about that legislation, and I would urge you all to take the time to look at the legislation and let my office know your feedback on that because this is a massive issue for the renters of our city and we know the renters are the majority of working people at this point and the rental and affordable housing crisis is absolutely unprecedented.

Even though it has been going on for decades, it has never been as bad as it is right now.

At that committee meeting, we will also be discussing very likely the legislation from my office, giving the Green New Deal Oversight Board the opportunity to support the Stop the Money pipeline movement by raiding financial institutions, bidding on city contracts, city of Seattle contracts, to urge the city not to contract with banks and insurance companies that also back fossil fuel infrastructure.

The council members have heard me talk about the ongoing struggle of renters at the Rainier Court apartment buildings.

This is over 500 nearly 550 apartments and very likely.

600 tenants, probably more than that.

The renters of Rainier Court have achieved a massive victory as a result of their courageous organizing alongside community supportive organizations, faith leaders of color, and my council office.

On Thursday, just hours after the tenants and my council office announced a rally and march to CEDD offices, CEDD as a landlord, tenants in my office were informed that the landlord, CEDD, had been forced to meet the most prominent demand of our fighting struggle and is rescinding the exploitative rent increases for all of the nearly 600 low-income tenants who are mostly black and brown.

They are mostly seniors.

Many of them face disabilities.

This stunning victory, forcing the landlord to retract exploitative rent increases and retract it for all apartments, comes after a little over 10 days of serious organizing by the tenants with my office around a fighting strategy.

Rainier Court, as I've mentioned before, is a complex of four buildings and is owned by Seed, which is a nonprofit organization that receives public funds and is managed by a for-profit property manager called Coast.

The vast majority of tenants, as I said, are working class, fixed income seniors from the Black community.

They are East African community members.

Many face disabilities.

Many are on the federal Section 8 housing vouchers.

For months, and in some cases years, they have been contacting the landlord and property manager about pervasive problems in the apartments, such as lack of heating, In addition to that, there was a lot of garbage, mold, bed bug and cockroach infestation, hallways with accumulated garbage, the absence of Internet access for low-income residents, broken stoves and refrigerators, non-functioning toilets and leaking ceilings.

On top, SEED had the shamelessness to increase their rents by an exploitative $100 or even more in some cases.

I talked to a tenant who is facing a chronic illness, who is a Section 8 voucher holder, who's a senior, who is a black community member born and brought up in Seattle, and who was told that she had got a $240 rent increase.

My office was contacted last month by a number of the tenants and after and this was after they had struggled in vain for years to get seed and coast to address their concerns and then they had received these understand increases.

I joined the tenants at an important rally Wednesday, October 20th.

which was covered in a Como story and in articles by The Stranger, The Emerald, and the Capitol Hill Seattle blog.

Then on Wednesday, October 27th, my office and the tenants and other organizations who joined us, like the Tenants Union in Seattle, we had a press conference where many tenants offered moving testimony about the deplorable living conditions they have faced.

they're faced for months and even years and the outrageous increases.

That same day I sent a public letter to Seed and Coast demanding that they immediately rescind the rent increases and fix the numerous housing code violations that have led to the deplorable living conditions.

My office has also been in touch with the Department of Construction Inspections who are facing a backlog because of the pandemic but are looking into the housing code violations and making sure that they record them and make sure that they hold the landlord accountable.

My office has also contacted the City of Seattle Information Technology Department to immediately begin addressing the obstacles that the tenants have faced for having low-cost, affordable internet access.

I particularly want to thank the tenants themselves above all for having the courage to fight for understanding that solidarity among tenants is not an optionally positive thing to achieve, but that solidarity is decisive in determining whether their struggle will win.

and for understanding that a fighting approach is necessary, which includes publicly calling out exploitative landlords and building broad community solidarity around the tenants.

I also want to thank Alvin Muragori, Bia Lacombe, and Nick Jones, who are community organizers in my office, who have doorknocked and talked to literally hundreds of the Rainier Court tenants for well over a week.

We have held an organizing meeting of Friday, we have two tenant organizing meeting.

The last, the most recent one and the most electric one was on Friday, October 29th, with over 75 tenants in attendance.

And following that, as long as there's no tenants spoke eloquently at the city council, a public comment during the meeting last Monday.

I also thank the Tenants Union and B-Seattle, who have been really supportive of the tenants.

Thank you to the community supporters, especially Reverend Robert Jeffrey Sr. of the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in the Central District, and Reverend Angela Ying of the Bethany United Church of Christ on Beacon Hill.

Also, local small business owners, all people of color themselves, and actually who are tenants of SEED themselves, who have strongly supported the tenants' struggle.

A landlord being forced to rescind exploitative rent increases and for so many hundreds of tenants is a huge victory.

It cannot be underestimated and it happens only when tenants get organized with a fighting strategy and community solidarity.

However, we cannot afford to be complacent On Friday, about two dozen of the senior tenants, my staff and I, along with Reverend Jeffrey and Reverend Ying, marched to the SEED offices to keep the pressure up to demand that SEED fix the egregious housing code violations that have led to years of deplorable living conditions.

These problems have still not even begun to be fixed.

So that is an outstanding demand that the tenants are fighting on.

The tenants also need all the rent increases that they have already paid in October and November to be refunded.

They need seed to refund all the rent increases and they need seed to publicly promise no rent increases through 2022 because we're talking about hundreds of low-income community members and the vast majority of them are low-income community members of color.

The rally that we had on Friday began outside of the Rainier Court Apartments and culminated in a short bus trip to the Seed offices in Columbia City, where tenants hope to speak directly with Michael Severett, the Executive Director of Seed, which is the nonprofit that owns this increasingly dilapidated cockroach, bed bug, and mold-infested homes.

And at the rally at the Rainier Courtyard, tenants made it very clear that low-income people are human beings and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

And so we need quality affordable housing.

We need affordability and we need quality affordable housing because all human beings deserve a decent home.

We arrived at the SEED office and were graciously invited into the lobby by the receptionist, so we all went in and stood patiently and respectfully waiting.

We were then told that no one from SEED had come to work that day despite it being a workday afternoon and SEED executives likely having received prior notice because my office had sent both a press release and a press advisory, both of which mentioned that we would be going to SEED at that time.

Instead, shockingly, a man from inside the office building approached the tenants and, unprovoked, began to aggressively shove elderly tenants and the faith leaders of color aside to force the lobby door closed.

Diane Earle, a senior tenant who has been diagnosed with lupus, was injured as the man shoved her not once, but twice, with increasing aggression.

The second time, Ms. Earle was shoved back so forcefully by the man that she was knocked into the people standing behind her.

The man also grabbed angrily at Reverend Jeffrey who held his hands up peacefully and said, do not touch me.

Reverend Jeffrey later at the rally we had outside seed offices said, quote, I have been protesting in this city for over 25 years and not a single person except the police has ever laid hands on me like that man did, end quote.

It was an appalling display of aggression towards senior tenants and community members and faith leaders of color who had come only to make their needs heard in a peaceful manner.

Reverend Ying and others were also physically harassed by the man as they attempted to shield the elderly tenants from his reach.

The man also shoved me personally.

No one in the tenant group laid a hand on the man despite his repeated attacks and multiple people attempted to de-escalate the situation and speak calmly with him.

After the man shoved Miss Earl the second time, I was able to quiet the commotion and calmly address the group, saying that the man was behaving extremely inappropriately and was clearly unbalanced, and we stepped outside to have our political rally.

My office staff, Bia, Alvin, and Nick, have also recently been told by building security at Rainier Court on the premises that they are prohibited from door knocking in the buildings, including facing threats that the police will be called on them for criminal trespassing.

This is in spite of the fact that my city council office and staff have been explicitly invited in by dozens and dozens of the senior tenants to continue helping them by talking to their neighbors alongside them about their ongoing issues and demands and about continuing to build the struggle.

The Rainier Court tenants themselves, above all, have a right to get organized and they have a right to ask my office and others in the community for help in their effort.

It is...

fifth of Councilmember Strauss, these are issues that affect tenants.

Absolutely.

I am not saying that.

I am just noting that we are two people through this agenda item.

I understand that, but I have to finish speaking.

This section is reserved for regional and council actions.

Are you saying that the struggle of hundreds of low-income tenants inside the city of Seattle is not city business?

Please let me finish.

I'm saying that this is for city council actions.

City council and regional committees are being energized by the victories that they have already won with just about 12 days of organizing and and are ready to keep up the pressure on Seaton Coast.

We have a long list of abuses to answer for in their meeting with tenants this coming Monday, today, in addition to the question of future rent increases.

I cannot thank the renters of Rainier Court enough.

on behalf of renters everywhere around the city and in the region.

My office has heard from many renters over the past weeks in buildings across the city who are facing endless similar problems with their landlords and council members.

If you actually care about your constituents you would care about this issue because this is affecting tenants in all renters in all the districts and renters from all the districts are contacting my office because They understand that my office is fighting for them, and they have been inspired to defend their own rights by the courageous stand taken and the incredible victory won by the renters at Rainier Court.

And of course, my office is following up with all the other tenants who are contacting my office.

And like in all struggles, what they can win will depend on organization and activism of themselves and how they build solidarity across the community.

Several renters have also reached out to my office to ask when the six-month notice requirement for rent increases will go into effect.

This major renters' rights victory, again, also was won by renter organizing and community organizations supporting it, including the Renters' Commission and organizations like Real Change B, Seattle, and the Tenants' Union.

That legislation was returned unsigned by the mayor on October 8th, one month ago, which means that as of today, it should be in effect.

If I'm wrong about that, I hope the clerk or somebody from central staff will correct me.

And I would appreciate accurate information on that because as I said, many constituents across the city are contacting my office and I wanna be able to give them accurate information.

And basically this means that if the law has gone into effect, then landlords are required by law to give their tenants six months notice before raising rent.

On today's introduction and referral calendar is the legislation from my office that I briefly mentioned during council briefing last Monday.

As council members know, Mayor Durkan has issued an emergency order to reinstate hiring bonuses of up to $25,000 for police officers.

Ironically, her excuse for this emergency order to give police even more money is the COVID-19 emergency.

Her argument is that because so many police officers are endangering the public by refusing to be vaccinated or wear masks, they need to be giving the police more money.

Essentially, that's the argument.

As I explained last week, the mayor is showing a shocking double standard when she advocates for hiring bonuses in the Seattle Police Department.

The police are some of the highest paid people among city of Seattle employees, making more than double what is paid to social workers like homeless service workers.

The mayor has claimed in the past that she could not open homeless shelters and tiny house villages because there aren't enough homeless service workers to staff.

Well, that's because they are not being paid enough so that they can survive without the turnover that social services experience.

For years the Seattle Police Department has used the police contract as an excuse for failing to hold our officers accountable and yet here we are in the middle of the contract negotiations with the police officers guild and the mayor is offering the police extra money without accountability.

We have to address the situation.

We also have to remember that the amount of police funding does not have any statistical impact on the amount of crime in a community.

It is reducing inequality and providing affordable housing and living wage jobs and affordable services, including childcare, that has the greatest statistical impact.

I absolutely share the concerns that ordinary people have about the rise in gun violence There is no question that we need to address this.

But if you look at the data, you would see that this is happening even though the police budget has been bloated for many years, while the social services and affordable housing that are working people in oppressed community and the poor need continue to be gravely underfunded.

And we know that rents are being skyrocketed by corporate landlords.

that we need an elected community oversight committee with full powers over the police.

The legislation from my office that is on today's introduction and referral calendar would modify the mayor's executive order to not implement police hiring bonuses that this council voted on in September against implementing twice.

My legislation leaves in place the hiring bonuses for 911 operators.

It is my hope that this legislation will be acted upon by this council as soon as possible.

As a resolution, it could even be voted on the same day that it is introduced, and under Seattle law, the council shall endeavor to review emergency orders within 48 hours, and it has now been over a week.

Council President Gonzalez has informed my office that they intend to place it on the November 22nd agenda to be voted on alongside Seattle's 2022 budget.

I do not see a value in that two-week delay, but it's also only two weeks, so I'm willing to accept it.

In my view, this emergency order is a terrible misuse of city resources that should be used for affordable housing, social services, and investing in our communities.

I'm done with my report, but I will also note Council President Pro Tem Strauss that I find it really unfortunate that you chose to interrupt my comments when I was reporting to the elected legislative body of our city how senior tenants, senior tenants of color, faith leaders of color, and community members who are struggling for their very basic rights have been intimidated and facing physical harassment by their landlords.

Thank you, Council Member Swan.

I did take an opportunity when you made a pause because we are now five minutes away from the end of this agenda item and have only gotten through three council members.

So with that, Council Member Herbold, you are up next and colleagues, there will be a opportunity to sign on to a proclamation at the end of Council Member Herbold's comments.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

My speaking points will be brief today.

There are no items from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on today's full council agenda and there are no Public Safety and Human Services Committee meetings scheduled this week.

Well, quick update from the Human Services Department.

First, want to let folks know, as it relates to the Seattle Relief Fund, as of November 2nd, the Seattle Relief Fund has received nearly 26,000 applications.

As a reminder, the Seattle Relief Fund is direct assistance to individuals who have been impacted by the pandemic created by the council and the mayor in the Seattle Rescue Plan.

The last day to apply is a week from today.

That's Monday, November 15th at 1159 p.m.

You can learn more and apply at seattlerelief.com.

I wanna let folks know about the upcoming African-American Caregivers Forum on Saturday, September 13th, happening from noon to 2 p.m.

It's an online free event, open to all, provided for African-Americans who are providing caregiving services for people in their lives.

This is coordinated by the Human Services Department's Aging and Disability Services, and co-sponsored by the Mayor's Council on African-American Elders and Community Partners.

You can find out more at agingkingcounty.org.

Last update from HSD, the Human Services Department, is about the Food Equity Fund.

You know a group focused on increasing access to healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food.

can let folks know that uh fit into that sort of that category that applications are open for the food equity fund this fund supports community-led projects working to advance food equity including projects that increase access to culturally relevant food create a more equitable and sustainable local food system, promote healthy eating and positive lifestyle changes, and partner with small businesses in the food sector that are right now or want to, in the future, address food equity.

The grants are available for up to $75,000 for projects that last a year, and applications must be received by November 30th.

You can find out more at seattle.gov and search for Food Equity Fund.

As far as events coming up this week, I just want folks to know events on my calendar are heavy on Wednesday.

We've got the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting.

We also have the King County Regional Gun Violence Prevention Leadership Group.

meeting that overlaps with another couple regional meetings, including the Regional Policy Committee and the Watershed Resource Inventory Area 9 meeting.

And I will do my best to represent the City Council at these three regional meetings.

that, as I mentioned, are overlapping, and I'll do my best to pop into each of them at the time where my participation hopefully will be most useful.

I also just want folks to know that on Friday, I'll be joining the Seattle King County Advisory Council on Aging and Disability Services to present the proclamation that council members and the mayor signed last week, declaring November the National Caregiver Support Month.

And on the topic of proclamations, as Council President Pro Tem mentioned, A, we do have a proclamation day honoring Richard Kelly, otherwise known as Dick Kelly, for his extraordinary public service.

And we'll be proclaiming today, November 8th, they honor his life.

Richard Kelly.

Dick Kelly was a respected leader in the community as well as an outstanding policy leader in Washington for nearly 50 years.

He championed several laws that worked to help disenfranchise and expand civil rights.

This included protections for the LGBTQ community and increasing access to affordable housing.

He also fought to take special interest money out of politics and help reshape how a new generation of leaders view politics.

This proclamation will be presented today to his wife, Judge Teresa Boyle, who, as we know, Judge Doyle served as a King County Superior Court judge.

And with that, Council President Pro Tem Straus, I'll hand it over to you to walk us through the next step of securing signatures.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Signatures will need to be affixed to the proclamation before it is presented.

I will ask the clerk to call the roll to confirm which Council Member signatures may be affixed to the proclamation.

Before I do that, I want to check to see if there are any questions from colleagues.

Council Member Juarez.

I just want to thank Councilmember Herboldt for recognizing Richard Kelly, wonderful man, dear friend, Judge Teresa Doyle.

We, you know, public defenders together in the day and tragic loss.

So thank you so much, Councilmember Herboldt, for doing what you're doing.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

colleagues, seeing no further questions, I will ask the clerk, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation, quote, honoring the life and extraordinary service of Richard Kelley.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Sawant?

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

And Council President Pro Tem Strauss?

Yes.

Seven signatures.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, do you have additional comments for your...

Wait for me, just a second.

Thank you kindly.

Moving on, Council Member Juarez, then Lewis and Morales, and I will wrap us up.

Council Member Juarez, good morning.

Thank you, sir.

Good sir.

Let's see, I have three issues to speak to and I will be brief.

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

The next committee meeting is on December 7th at two o'clock.

The committee will consider legislation to renew the Woodland Park Zoo Operations and Management Agreement.

Again, get your amendments in by the 30th, November 30th.

Colleagues, if you have any amendments, again, please submit them to my office or Brian Goodnight of central staff by or before November 30th for consideration.

Draft amendments will need to be reviewed by Parks, Zoo, and Law in advance of the December 7th committee.

This is a firm deadline, and we will move on from that.

I know I keep saying that, but I want to make sure we get it all done.

Parks, from October 27th to November 2nd, the Parks Department served 104 people in the shower program.

You must show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test to access this service.

Concrete floats installed during the summer and the South Leschi Morge will have new concrete floats installed over the next few days I know that doesn't sound like big news, but we've been working on that for quite a while So it's done the week of October 25th.

The clean cities crew picked up about a hundred and one hundred and two Pound 102 thousand pounds of trash and two hundred and 2,698 needles from 77 encampments.

Crews deep-cleaned Kobe Terrace Park in District 2. And cumulatively, the Parks Department has picked up 3.7 million pounds of trash and over 98,000 needles this year alone.

Seattle Public Library, the Green Lake Branch received its, I can never say this word, seismic upgrade permit.

And the library will work with the Landmark Commission Board for approval and design and construction plans.

Again, probably not a big deal for you guys, but we've been working on that one for a while.

Good news, the large windows at the Central Library Branch on Spring Street have been replaced.

The library is still waiting on the specialized panes for the diamond-shaped windows.

If you're familiar with our library, you know what those windows look like.

The fencing will remain in place along Spring Street until those panes are installed.

And the historic restoration of the Soul Pole at the Douglas Truth Branch will begin shortly.

The library anticipates finishing the restoration work in December.

And that is all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Lewis.

uh...

thank you so much mister president pro tem uh...

good to be here this morning uh...

i do uh...

similarly want to just take a moment to comment on the proclamation that we just signed uh...

i uh...

had the great pleasure of getting to know richard kelly during his campaign for the state legislature in two thousand six uh...

when i actually uh...

intern for his campaign uh...

due to a connection through mutual friend and really, really appreciated Richard Kelly's leadership, especially on housing, which shaped an early interest in local policy and housing policy for me personally.

I really appreciate Council Member Herbold bringing forward a proclamation to really center his leadership, especially given that Dick Kelly served with distinction as a deputy mayor for a large segment of his career for the city of Seattle, and he will be sorely missed as a community leader, policy leader, and a friend.

So I do appreciate the opportunity to affix my name to that proclamation and look forward to further recognizing Richard Kelly and his legacy in this afternoon's meeting.

I do not have any items from the Select Committee on Homelessness for this afternoon's agenda, nor is my office putting any legislation on the introduction of a roll calendar.

This week, I am mostly in the same boat as my colleagues waiting for the balancing package from Chair Mosqueda to come forward to continue our deliberations on the budget, and very much looking forward to that next chapter in our budget deliberations.

I will be attending on Thursday evening a mass to mourn the passing of our neighbors experiencing homelessness during the past year at St. James Cathedral.

It is more important than ever as we continue through our work as a council in meeting the homelessness crisis, that we take a moment to mourn the passing of people who we have not been able to adequately create policies to center their dignity and center their ability to live in our community.

And I will be attending that mass to stand in recognition of the need for us to do better as a community to meet this glaring need that we see every day.

And I do hope that it will underline our commitment as we continue to shape the budget, to shape the budget that centers meeting this crisis head on, which I know is an ambition that all of us on this council share.

Otherwise, given that this is a holiday week, there are no regional committees that I serve on that are meeting on that Thursday.

and I will report back on any other community gatherings that I have the opportunity to participate in over the course of this week at next Monday's council briefing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Morales?

Good morning, everyone.

I have nothing on the agenda for this afternoon, full council agenda.

The next meeting of the Community Economic Development Committee will be on Friday, February 10th at 9.30.

That is a special meeting.

We have scheduled for some appointments.

Let's see, I spoke, met last week with the Office of Arts and Culture and want to let folks know that the Arts Commission is recruiting four commissioners.

So there is an open application right now and I want to encourage folks to apply if you're interested in supporting this work.

Within the first week, they did receive 50 applications.

So it's exciting that folks are interested in working with us and participating in that way.

It will be open for a full month and current commissioners, just so folks understand, will weigh in on what the selection panel looks like.

So you can go to, shoot, I don't have the website here, but I will get it and post about that later.

Also want to let you know that the arts department is working with FAS on city owned land to create a public benefit with the tiny cultural space project.

Applications will be reviewed by ARTS and once they select an organization that works best, they'll allow the community organization to select the plot of land and work with Sawhorse Revolution to create a building.

So you may have been, you may be familiar with the first project that is getting started.

Estelita's library is a small plot of land in the Central District.

It will have, it's a community space, it's a small library, there will be a real gathering space for folks.

And I do want to let you all know that the grand opening of that space will be this Saturday from 10 to 4 in the Central District, so please come by.

There will be food and music, a chance to play chess, and really, really appreciate the department for supporting these kinds of small projects that can really activate spaces for community.

Last week, I attended a town hall regarding the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

We did hear from the directors of the different safety hubs in West Seattle, in Southeast Seattle, and Central District.

We also heard from the young people who have benefited from some of these programs.

And I think it was really important to hear directly from them about the kind of impact the programs have had.

And then they were asked what they would like to see change in the way that the city operates.

And some of the things we heard from the young people include replacing the police with people who come from their own community, investing more in this community safety initiative and this alternative.

And what we hear over and over again, particularly from young people who are trying to figure out how to reenter their communities after being in a safe harbor for a while, is the need for much greater investment in mental health and therapy and counseling for young people.

So I want to thank everybody who participated in that town hall and really thank the young people especially for being willing to talk about things that are pretty challenging to talk about, especially on a Zoom call where you don't have any idea who's listening.

But it was important for them to be really candid about what they need.

And it is our job now to listen and to make sure that we're supporting them as they continue on their journey to moving in the right direction for themselves and for their families.

Last week, my office also engaged with City Light to repair several streetlights that had gone out near the intersection of 12th and Jackson in Little Saigon.

I want to thank the utility for their rapid response.

Within just a couple of days, the streetlights were all repaired and working.

And as I've mentioned before, there've been a lot of concerns at that intersection in particular about community safety, especially following several shootings that have happened at that corner.

So I will be meeting with neighbors, business owners, and members of LEAD tomorrow in Little Saigon to talk about some further measures that we might take to address safety in the area.

This week I will also be meeting with IATSE, Local 488, to talk about their ongoing needs and issues with the city as they've been experiencing the pandemic.

I'm sure we've all heard about some of the other issues that IATSE folks nationally have been dealing with on film shoots, and so we're interested in making sure that we're hearing from our local folks as well.

And lastly, this week I'll be meeting with a professor from Seattle University Institute of Public Service, who's particularly interested in helping us think through how we build out a true city owned and operated social housing program.

here in the city.

For me, that work doesn't stop with the budget.

So I'll be continuing to explore how we can start following in the footsteps of cities like Vienna and Paris and others who are offering high quality publicly owned homes for folks who need them.

If you're interested in this pursuit of social housing in Seattle, please reach out to my office.

And as we are learning more, to fill folks in on what we are doing.

That is all that I have for this morning.

Thank you Councilmember Morales.

Moving on, my report is the last report of the morning.

So good morning, colleagues here in District 6. I was able to speak last week in office hours.

I met with people, two folks from Fremont, five people from Finney, one person from Ballard, and one person from Greenwood.

We were able to discuss homelessness, safe lots for cars and RVs, police accountability, experiences with SDCI's permitting process, and gender-based violence services.

My staff attended the Longford Community Council, and my team also attended the North Precinct Advisory Council, where we heard from our new captain, Captain Grossman.

I continue to hold operational coordination meetings with community leaders, government entities, and non-governmental entities to make meaningful interventions and impacts to address homelessness in specific places in District 6. These meetings will continue multiple times a week until the transfer to the Regional Homelessness Authority is complete.

This coming week in District 6, I'm hosting a District 6 Town Hall tomorrow, Tuesday, November 9th from 530 to 730 p.m.

During the Town Hall, I'll provide updates about my work this year and host three presentations.

We'll hear from City Budget Director Ben Noble for an overview of the 2022 budget with special focuses on homelessness, behavioral health, and public spaces.

We'll hear from King County Department of Community and Human Services Director Leo Flohr and Behavioral Health and Recovery Division Director Kelly Nomura to discuss how Seattle fits into the behavioral health space with King County and Washington State.

Our role is providing behavioral health services and their vision.

for the pathway forward.

We'll also have downtown emergency service executive director Daniel Malone for discussion about the mental health crisis response team, the mobile crisis team.

And we will end the town hall with questions and answers from district six residents.

If you'd like to submit a question, please RSVP on my website and submit a question through there.

Unfortunately, SDOT didn't schedule their Green Lake Way North outer loop outreach meeting at the same time as my town hall.

SDOT did not give me advance notice of this outreach meeting and I've made it abundantly clear that this lack of coordination cannot happen again.

My apologies and sincere apologies to residents who will now have to choose between which event to attend to engage with their municipal government.

The town hall will be recorded and kept on my website so that you are able to view it at a later date and you can submit your questions ahead of time so you don't have to be present.

to have your questions asked.

Again, I can't be any more clear to SDOT.

When engaging in outreach and projects of this scope in my district, you need to communicate and coordinate with my office so that this does not happen again.

This is unfortunate where we are asking District 6 residents to choose between two opportunities to engage with their municipal government.

That's all I have to say to that.

This week, my staff will be meeting with the Finney Neighborhood Association, attending the Green Lake Community Council and Ballard District Council meetings.

I'll be meeting with community members about the Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool.

And district six office hours this week have been shortened due to the town hall occurring tomorrow and the budget public hearing that is happening on Wednesday.

We will be having office hours tomorrow, Tuesday, midday.

And we'll have more times next week.

This week, as I just mentioned, we'll have a public hearing for the budget on Wednesday, November 10th, which is why I will unfortunately not be able to attend the Ballard and Green Lake Community Council meetings that are happening at the same time.

Thursday, I will be observing Veterans Day and will attend an annual Veterans Day dinner to honor all veterans for their service to our nation.

I'm looking forward to reviewing the chair's budget package and which of my priorities have been funded.

I'll be working with central staff on some amendments that I have identified outside of the chair's balancing package, and I look forward to working with central staff.

I do want to highlight the budget chair addressed the fact that we had a lower uh, revenue forecast than we had anticipated.

And I want to make it abundantly clear here as well.

The economy is still rebounding and is still performing well.

The reason that we had a lower budget revenue forecast is because we used baseline forecasting rather than pessimistic forecasting.

And so again, the news is good that the economy is rebounding and recovering.

And just because we had a lower than anticipated forecast, it is because it was the algorithm and the process in which we use, not the underlying fact of how the economy is doing.

Here at the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, there are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full agenda.

There are three items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's introduction or referral calendar.

Council Bill 120216, which effectuates a contract rezone that the committee recommended approval last week.

Council Bill 120214, which follows up on our Neighborhood Residential Comprehensive Plan Amendment to change the name of single-family zones to neighborhood residential zones in the Seattle Municipal Code.

Like the Comprehensive Plan Amendment, this change is in name only and aligns our code with the Comprehensive Plan.

And finally, Council Bill 120215, which grants SDCI the authority to waive certain standards for the West Point Treatment Facility.

There will be a special meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on Friday, December 3, starting at 9.30 AM, followed by our regular meeting on Wednesday, December 8, also at 9.30 AM.

Thank you, colleagues.

That is my report.

I want to check with colleagues to see if there are any items for the good of the order before we move into our executive session, noting we are 20 minutes over the allotted time for this section, which is the discussion on the preview of today's City Council Actions Council on Regional Committees.

We're 20 minutes over, and I'd like to move into executive session if there are no further comments.

Seeing no further comments, as presiding officer, I am announcing that the City Council will now convene into executive session.

The purpose of executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation The council's executive session is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open session.

I expect the time of executive session to be about 60 minutes, but I would like this to be extended for 90 minutes so that we don't have to come back if that is the case.

And if the executive session is to be extended beyond 90 minutes, I will announce the extension and expected duration.

We are right now at 11.06 a.m.

So I am going to say this will be extended to 12.37 p.m.

Hearing no objections, we'll move into executive session.