Parks, Public Utilities and Technology Committee 5/14/25

Oh, we have started.

My apologies.

Good afternoon, everyone.

The May 14th, 2025 Parks Utilities Technology Committee will come to order, also known as PUT.

It is 2.02 p.m.

I'm Joy Hollingsworth, your favorite chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Here.

Present.

Present.

Present.

Present.

Awesome.

Before we move on to public comment, I want to acknowledge Council Member Kettle who will have a special recognition.

Well, thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

It's a point of privilege.

People on this dais wear many hats, or as we say in the Navy, covers.

And with that segue, I just wanted to extend a special welcome to our own Ballard Eagleson VFW Post 3063 commander, Colonel Ali Teeter.

So welcome, and I just wanted to...

I'm also a member, lifetime member of the VFW and that's my post too.

So as I said, we all wear mini hats or as I say in the Navy cover.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Council member Strauss, I see your hand raised.

Thank you, Chair.

Just again, welcome Allie.

Always great to see you.

Want the record to reflect.

This is another example of council member Kettle trying to annex district six.

Point taken for the record.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Before we jump into public comment, we're gonna go over the agenda.

So we're gonna have our Seattle IT department.

We'll talk about our city's formal cable franchises, renewal proceedings, and then also SPU is back to discuss.

There are three ordinance packages of legislation to increase system development charges, also known as utility connection fees and the intent to use the additional revenue to cost share in the utility projects.

Don't worry colleagues, there's no vote today.

We're just gonna have another discussion so we can get more informed.

And lastly, we will have a briefing and discussion on the new Memorial Stadium at the Seattle Center.

So we have a packed agenda and we're going to now consider that agenda.

If there are no objections, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing none, the agenda is adopted.

My record is perfect on the agenda, never being any objections.

So thank you all.

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

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

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up today?

Oh, well, I have the list.

So we have eight people in person signed up.

And then how many online?

Five are present online.

Awesome.

So we're going to go in person first, and then we're going to go online.

Everyone's going to get two minutes.

And we will start with our in-person speakers.

Clerk, will you please read the rules for the public comment period?

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

The chair will call on speakers by name in the order they have registered both on the council's website or from the sign-up sheet available here in council chambers.

We'll start with in-person speakers first.

If you have not registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period on the council's website or by signing up on the sign-up sheet near the public comment microphone.

The online link is listed on today's agenda.

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

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next person.

Awesome.

Thank you.

A phenomenal clerk.

I'm going to call everybody up in threes and we'll start with Joshua Morris, Tim Berthenthal.

And if I say your last name wrong, I apologize.

And then it says, uh, Ann Paul, Paul.

Good afternoon, council members.

I'm back again this week to follow up on some concerns we raised about the Magnuson Park Pickleball Project.

In 2023, Seattle Parks and Recreation announced that they would be adding eight pickleball courts next to a designated priority habitat area at Lincoln Park.

Widespread community concern about potential noise impacts to wildlife and nature access led parks to drop that project.

That was good news.

Unfortunately, Parks is repeating the same mistake on a much larger scale.

They are planning to build Seattle's largest outdoor pickleball facility, 25 courts covering more than 80,000 square feet directly adjacent to sensitive wetlands at Magnuson Park.

Noise from this facility would be as loud as freeway traffic.

Parks is studying mitigation options, but nothing they have presented is convincing.

It is frustrating that the conversation is starting with mitigating the harm.

How about not inflicting it in the first place?

This summer we expect that parks will ask this council to approve an amendment to the Magnuson Park master plan that will allow this project to move forward.

Nearly 2000 Seattle residents and 20 local nonprofits, businesses and community groups have already signed a petition urging you not to approve it.

I will follow up with the latest draft of that petition and an invitation for you all to join me on a walk at the site.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joshua.

Next we have Tim.

Thank you for joining us, Tim.

My name is Tim Bernthal.

I'm also addressing the Magnuson Park Pickleball Complex development issue.

Thanks for the chance to provide public comment on the Park Department's proposed development of a 25-court pickleball complex adjacent to the protected wetlands in the southernmost parking lot of Magnuson Park.

I'm here to speak as a pickleball enthusiast and an environmentally concerned resident.

You've heard already multiple comments on why this project location is not optimal for protecting the existing enhanced wetland habitat that the city and county funded 20 years ago.

I support these comments and would like to add a few thoughts about how the seemingly opposed interests of pickleball recreation and environmental protection can be approached to provide a win for both interests.

I believe that the city council members of this committee have a responsibility to uphold the commitment the city and its citizens established when they funded the creation and enhancement of those wetland features for the benefit of wildlife and the public.

As our representatives providing oversight of the Parks Department, we expect you to bring that commitment to the decision that we made this spring and summer by the whole City Council on the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement and any proposals to amend the Magnuson Park Master Plan.

Part of making a thoughtful decision on this project is involving interested parties in hearing the thinking of the decision makers and the data on which they base it and the perspectives of the public.

That seems to not have been adequately done in the early stages of the public process and the rest of the process needs to be more transparent and inviting to stakeholder participation beyond just the pickleball community.

Thank you, Tim.

Next we have Annie, followed by Donna.

And just a reminder, please speak into the mic as much as you can.

Last time it cut me off.

I mean, the first half wasn't recorded.

So anyway, I submitted my thing as well.

Thank you.

My name is Ann Paul.

I'm a resident of Seattle and use our city parks.

The wetlands at Magnuson Park cost Seattle taxpayers, like myself, more than $3 million to build and are a major investment in habitat enhancement and nature access.

The majority of respondents to the park's most recent survey overwhelmingly cite enjoyment of nature, green space, and forested areas as the main reason to visit the park.

For stakeholders like myself who seek park spaces that allow quiet and the possibility to both hear and observe wildlife, the wetlands are a visible dedication to our priorities and enable us to actively enjoy Magnuson Park.

The fact that the Parks Department has knowledge of their own survey numbers yet did not include the complete community of stakeholders when they first began discussions for siting new pickleball courts is indeed unfortunate.

The fate of this site was discussed and advanced for two years using only a base of ideas and preferences of paddle ball and tennis player, tennis enthusiasts rather than the broader community of park users.

This has resulted in polarization that could have been avoided.

Even the most limited footprint of pickleball courts at this particular location within the park will impact this wetland, both the wildlife that live there and those of us who seek to hear and see wildlife.

We need city council members to understand the situation and help parks to redirect their efforts in order to properly place pickleball courts elsewhere.

The site need not be a parking lot, though that has recently been a good source of revenue for the parks department, but it should not be a pickleball facility as the unique sound levels of pickleball distinguish it from the other sports currently adjacent to the wetland.

I hope the council recognizes the original investment in the wetland and its success, and that you will vote no on any amendment to the master plan with regard to this site.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ann.

Next, we have Donna, followed by Alex Zimmerman, and followed by Jackie Kern.

Just a side note before I start.

We're talking about water today.

The two water hydrants out here, they're awful.

You can't get any water out of either one of those.

Maybe get the maintenance to work on that.

My name's Donna Breski.

I'm a civil engineer.

I own Donna Breskian Associates, a small company.

I have three employees, land use consultants and civil engineering.

Most of our clients are small developers that have been hit by capital improvement requirements and their projects crash and burn.

They don't have the capacity, the economy of scale to put in a $150,000 valve to do a million-dollar water main extension or to replace substandard pipes that are two-inch, four-inch, or six-inch.

I'm here to talk about the system development charge proposal.

Councilmember Rivera, you asked on April 23rd about stakeholders.

And the answer from Kerry Bouchard-Juarez was that Seattle Public Utilities had gone into their database, which is a huge database, of existing people that have connected to the system.

That's incredibly biased.

They did not go to the database of those that didn't connect to the system that crashed and burned.

I've got a partial list of water availability or certificates.

not approved, perhaps you could ask Seattle Public Utilities to include numerous ones of these in their database.

Why?

What would these system development charges help these?

Also, there's 300 per year permit seekers that get a requirement for an upgraded capital requirement?

Of the 300, how many would this system development charge help?

Maybe 30?

Thank you, Donna.

I appreciate it.

Yeah, I was going to say you can put your public comments in there as well.

Thank you so much, Mr. Zimmerman.

And this is just a quick warning.

We're not doing Nazi salutes or any anti-Semitic remarks today.

No problem.

Thank you so much.

No, that is considered...

No, I'm doing this with left hand.

You told me Nazi salute.

Nazi salute, you told me right hand.

Mr. Zimmerman, that's considered hate speech.

I'm not having the racist remarks today.

I have been a target of racist remarks from public commenters.

I can only imagine what other people feel, especially our Jewish council members, when you do this every time.

I'm not going to allow that.

I'm not gonna tolerate that in my committee.

Thank you.

You are a Nazi.

Okay, no problem.

No Nazi, no Nazi, no left Nazi, no right Nazi, no Nazi, no Nazi.

Keep running the time.

No problem.

Okay, we will start here.

Keep running the time.

Hello.

Hello, my best friend.

A crook, bandita, and ricketeering.

My name, Alex Zimmerman.

I'm president of Stand Up America, a Trump and MAGA supporter.

I have 6,000 days of trespass, and five times you prosecute me.

I want to speak about agenda number one, about Cable, what is we have.

I spoke about cable for last 20 years in every different city, why?

Because every city have contract with Comcast.

So I try and understand, 100 times I spoke about this, why Comcast charge too much?

In all civilized countries even right now, in Seattle right now, in all America, many companies charge only $10 for everybody.

Comcast can charge $10 for everybody, For corporations, they can charge more.

No big deal.

For Amazon, for example, another billion dollars is nothing.

Yeah, like for me, five bucks, or maybe two dollars.

Situation bad as we have because you are a bandita, a mafia, a ricketeering.

Yeah, you're doing this because you have right for stopping this and give $10 for everybody.

This happened with red light camera.

For 20 years, I'm talking about red camera everywhere.

50% go to Amazon, Arizona corporation, it's half cents.

It's the same situation as we have with Comcast.

You guys are banditas, you understand what it means?

You killed the 700,000 idiot, you know what it means, who paid 30, 40, 100 dollars for service, for internet, when every civilized country in America, in Seattle, have right now, stand up America, stand up for Donald Trump, for new American revolution, clean this dirty chamber from this bandita, you are bandita.

Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman.

You're welcome.

We will always protect the right for people to have public comment.

Is my microphone on?

Yes.

Thank you.

Just a reminder, we will always protect people's right for public comment, but we will not tolerate any hate speech nor racist remarks here at City Council.

Thank you so much.

Hi, Ms. Jackie.

Welcome.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jackie Kern, and until recently, I was a longtime city employee and project manager on the Seattle Center Memorial Stadium project team.

I'm here to give my enthusiastic support for the unprecedented partnership between Seattle Public Schools, the Oak View Stadium Partnership, and the City of Seattle that will give rise to a magnificent new Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center.

It's being said that the new Memorial Stadium will be a legacy for students, youth, and the community, and will transform the heart of Seattle Center.

It will continue to be owned by Seattle Public Schools and built on land given by the city in 1946. The new stadium will provide unparalleled opportunities for students and youth, not only as it has traditionally for sports, but also providing opportunities through arts, culture, and entertainment.

It'll be integral to Seattle Center both as a dynamic venue for the community and a vibrant reincarnation of the campus landscape.

Today marks a momentous achievement after decades of various major efforts to achieve a successful plan to replace the existing 78-year-old stadium.

I would mark the beginning of today's successful partnership in September of 2016 with the gathering of over 100 diverse community representatives in a charrette called Seattle Center What's Next that inspired creativity and collaboration.

It is uniquely challenging to develop a new stadium venue to serve students and youth that serves a dual duty as an iconic public space for Seattle Center.

These inherent challenges have only been overcome through the financial partnership between these three parties.

Honor goes to the project design team that was led by Generator Studios and Swift and Company.

But I also want to acknowledge NBBJ in Seattle and Populous in Kansas City.

Thank you, Jackie.

Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.

Thank you, Jackie.

Appreciate it.

And you can put your public comments in there too, as well.

Thank you so much.

Post Commander Allison Teeter followed by Matt.

Hello Chairman Hollingsworth and thank you for the introduction, the special introduction to Councilmember and VFW member Bob Kettle.

Thank you also Councilmember Strauss.

My name again is Allison Teeter and I serve as the commander of Ballard Eagleson VFW post 3063 and I'm here today on behalf of our post and the broader veteran community.

to express strong support for Council Bill 120982, the redevelopment of Memorial Stadium and especially the restoration of the Memorial Wall.

The Memorial Wall is sacred ground and it honors hundreds of Seattle Public Schools students who gave their lives in World War II.

But today, the site is still neglected.

You can park a car right next to it.

There's no space for reflection.

There's no shelter from the noise, just asphalt, cars, and some litter.

For those of us who have served, and for the families of the fallen, it's a painful sight to see, as Councilmember Kettle knows.

And it's not worthy of their sacrifice.

The bill offers a real and long-overdue opportunity to do better.

By authorizing the city to move forward with Seattle Public Schools and the Memorial Stadium redevelopment, the project will not only deliver a new stadium, but will also restore dignity to the memorial wall.

It preserves the wall's historic significance while creating space where students, veterans, and families can reflect and remember.

And this is more than just a capital project.

It's a chance to honor the past while building the future.

And so on behalf of VFW Post 3063 and Seattle's veterans, I urge your support of this bill.

And thank you for your time and your commitment to the city's history and its people.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate you being here.

Next, we have Matt.

It's our last in-person speaker, and we'll jump online.

Thank you, council member, and thank you for the public comment period today.

My name's Matt Hanna.

I'm the chair of the Seattle Foundation Board.

Our executive director, Jane Zaletsky, and I met with a number of you to talk about the strategic action plan that's underway at Seattle Center, which is well underway.

I'm here today also to speak in support of a new Memorial Stadium.

The foundation had an important role in putting together the partnership among the city and One Roof Foundation and the school district.

and we're so excited to see the possibility of this 30-year dream coming to fruition, and we strongly support it.

As Jackie mentioned, new Memorial Stadium, it's community access, support of student athletes, local sports, performing arts, a new green space, and really the kickoff of the revitalization of the Seattle Center as a key aspect of the revitalization of downtown.

So we appreciate your willingness to consider this matter, strongly support it, and respectfully ask for your votes in favor of the resolution when you consider it later today in your agenda.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Matt.

We're going to switch to online.

We have five registered speakers.

First, we have Tanya Anderson, followed by Adrian Dorff.

So Tanya, press star six and go ahead with your public comment.

Hello, council members.

My name is Tanya Anderson.

I'm a resident of District 4 and a constituent of Council Member Rivera and a member of Birds Connect Seattle.

I'm here also to discuss my concern for the Seattle Parks proposal to develop a pickleball court adjacent to the Magnuson restored wetlands.

As Magnuson Park is one of the city's premier birding destinations, this proposal should have been dead in the water.

In its book, Birding in Seattle in King County, Eugene Hung explains our freshwater wetlands are a resource of special value, a transitional zone where biological diversity is maximal.

He goes on to explain, regrettably, wetlands are also highly attractive to developers.

Please don't repeat the same mistake all over King County.

With these wetlands, the taxpayers have paid to restore.

What makes Magnuson so special is that it leaves space for wildlife habitat and it leaves space to listen.

Note about birdsong, bird calls, very complex communication method used by birds to feed.

parent, avoid predators, defend territories, and migrate.

And it is happening around us every day.

And if we are to hear that, we must be quiet.

To immerse in nature, we must listen.

Noise and increased activity from the proposed pickleball development would degrade the wetland habitat for sensitive species and for the people who pilgrimage there to experience nature in a green space that was set aside specifically for that purpose.

I urge you to reject any Magnuson Park Master Plan amendment that would approve this project.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next person, Adrian Dorff, followed by Lucas.

Press star six.

Good afternoon, Seattle City Council members.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to provide public comment.

My name is Adrian Dorff, and I live in the Haller Lake neighborhood of Seattle.

Before I start, I want to commend you for not tolerating any hate speech in your meetings.

I really appreciate that.

So I also am commenting on urging you to halt the planning and development of the outdoor pickleball courts adjacent to the restored wetlands at Magnuson Park.

There are more suitable locations within the park that exist for this project.

The noise and artificial light at night from the courts will degrade the public investment in a wildlife habitat and an accessible nature experience.

I regularly visit the wetlands to enjoy the wildlife that inhabit the area.

The wetland is one of the few quiet, peaceful areas in an ever-crowded and noisy Seattle.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Adrienne.

Next, we have Lucas.

Lucas, can you hear us?

You're gonna press star six.

If not, we'll come back.

Okay, we'll come back.

Patricia, please press star six and you can go ahead and speak.

Hi, Patricia, just go ahead and press star six.

We see that you're present online.

Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself.

All right, if not, we'll come back to you.

David Haynes, I know you know how to press star six.

The negative impacts of multi-use commercial dumpster pickups in residential neighborhoods leads to be reimagined with a robust buildout with higher levels to give people a 21st century first world quality buildout and a reprieve with a better location for the dumpster pickups at a normal time.

That said, Even if you're the LBGQT leader, you still have to outlaw the naked beach at Denny Park, especially if you're shutting down other parks and Alki Beach at the 10, because too many people ruin it for everybody else.

And we don't have proper leadership at the police department, the mayor's office, the park rangers, and council still meeting policies and laws to make it safe.

It doesn't make any sense for a leader to purposely run interference or repeat offenders and or voyeuristic perverts who want to get naked and display themselves and dump their sexuality in front of innocent children and uninterested adults attempting to enjoy mother nature, not man's evil, perverted, lustful nature, getting their cheap thrills like pedophile grooming, passive aggressive predators, displaying their privates in public in Denny Park because they're listed as a certain voting block that progressive Democrats don't want to upset.

fearful of causing an overdramatic drama queen temper tantrum in chambers.

So council seems to still bow down to devil's advocates exempted from their bad behavior and policies to the point they have ruined it for everyone else, permeating bad ideas in the city government, justifying enforcement of a no more nakedness purposely displayed at Denny Park.

If the Democrat Party wants to make the right decision for the whole of community, great.

Instead, if you want to run interference for it, a special interest favor doing the bidding of perverts, then maybe we need the Department of Justice to invest in City Hall or have resignations or a revolt against council leadership for allowing this to continue.

Because it seems to me that if you're a noble leader with the best interest of community, you would suggest a law that you're not allowed to ruin, to be naked in the park, voyeuristically spewing your modern lifestyle onto innocent children, on innocent children, or selling drugs, getting in gunfights, robbing other drug dealers.

And if you keep supporting this, there should be a restriction and a type of protection law

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

Okay.

We'll go back to the two people to see if we can still press star six.

We have Lucas press star six.

There you go.

And go.

Hey, I only got it.

Okay.

Hi, how you doing?

Thanks council for letting me provide this public comment today.

It's about the STC charges proposed by Seattle public utilities.

My name is Lucas de Herrera.

I work at blueprint capital services.

We're a leading and field developer in Seattle.

And I was a part of the stakeholder group on STT charges by SPU.

And we disagreed with them then and we disagree with them now.

Contrary to what SPU put in the presentations, fees would be upwards of $30,000 to $40,000 for a four-unit development with individual meters under Housing Bill 1110. And shared meters, SPU assumes in the presentation are not a market desire and will force homeowners associations on small projects in both low-rise NR zones.

This makes these projects super less desirable and less feasible.

And from a high level, this takes money from desired small infill projects that would be built under housing bill 1110 and provides that money as subsidies for larger projects, likely apartment projects that have higher budgets and building types that no one's building right now.

It takes money from the small to give to the big.

It's a game of chicken that we don't believe will play out as SBU presents.

This may have an outcome in NR zones that MHA did to town homes and LR zones, but the difference here is that there's no benefit for the projects that are paying the fee.

The fact that seems to be lost in the analysis by SBU is that single-family projects with two ADUs do not require upgrades to water meters, so that money will not be there to support these bigger projects.

and from a feasibility standpoint it won't be able to fulfill housing bill 1110 this becomes even clearer when we look at city lights mandate for underground power for all four unit projects now along these system development charges may actually doom four and six unit projects in nr zones this will put townhouses closer to extinction than they already are we'll be forced to keep building single-family adu projects and seattle doesn't get intensity The bottom line is, is this really a risk worth taking at this point in time and a risk of success of HB 1110 and 1337?

Thank you, Lucas.

And then last we have Patricia.

Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself, star six.

Good afternoon.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay, great, thanks.

Patricia Novotny, I am here to speak again about the Magnuson wetline.

I was here last meeting and I just want to follow up on comments I made then about due process.

Over the past several weeks, I have walked a two to three square mile area around my home in Bryant and I've distributed the BirdConnect informational cards that they made probably to 75 people.

And not one of them knew about the project, including birders and other users of the wetlands.

This is an informal survey, but I think it supports what others have said about the failure of due process in this particular case.

It seems to me the parks has developed its plans in an echo chamber, or perhaps a star chamber is a better metaphor.

I'd also like to point out that the federal government is withdrawing protection for wetlands, meaning it falls entirely to local governments to protect these valuable resources.

You cannot move the wetlands, but you can build pickle ports elsewhere.

Finally, a thought about environmental justice.

I admit I don't know how the council allocates funds in situations like this.

Perhaps we are talking about funding for parks only.

Whether the money is restricted to parks or not, from the start, I have wondered about funding this project rather than increasing tree canopy in areas of Seattle where residents desperately need the relief from severe weather that tree canopy provides.

To me, this seems to raise questions of environmental equity and the city's obligation to protect all of its residents.

Again, I don't know how the budget works, but even if we are talking just parks, more trees could be planted in parks which have been shown to be a refuge during severe heat events.

So I hope you will consider this issue as well.

Awesome.

Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you so much.

And with that, that's gonna close our public comment period.

We wanna thank everyone who came for public comment, obviously from our Magnuson folks, for the wetlands, to the Memorial Stadium, to the people who also commented about SPU as well.

So thank you all for coming today.

We really appreciate your time.

Can the clerk please read agenda item number one through three into the record or read all the agenda items for number one into the record, and then we'll invite those people to the table.

Thank you.

Agenda item one, commence astound cable franchise renewal for briefing and discussion, presenting as John Morrison winners from Seattle IT.

Awesome, and please make your way to the table.

Thank you all so much for your patience.

Also, we also have a former council member Rob Johnson in the house as well.

I always like to, and my, one of my favorite Tim Burgess as well, deputy mayor, council member Rob Johnson pointed at you.

So I had to recognize my favorite deputy mayor.

Okay.

Rob Johnson.

I saw both of y'all.

Yes.

Point of personal privilege.

I do want to recognize Jackie Kern, who is a former, um, well, one of my former neighbors, but also a long time, uh, employee at the city for her years of service, particularly on this project.

So really want to thank her for the many years that she put in.

And there were many, um, on, uh, this Memorial stadium project and thanks for being here in support of the project, Jackie.

Thank you, Jackie.

Awesome.

Please state your name for the record, and you can jump in with your presentation.

Very good.

Hi, I'm John Morrison Winters, Digital Equity Program and Broadband Manager at Seattle IT, and I also manage the Office of Cable Communications.

Committee Chair Hollingsworth and members of the committee, thank you so much for having me today.

My presentation today is a background and context for a council resolution to commence a sound cable franchise renewal.

See if I can advance the slides.

You might have to do it manually with a little arrow on the bottom under the number seven.

Got it, there you go.

Thank you.

So first, just the purpose of the resolution itself.

So this does commence the formal cable franchise renewal proceedings with astound and also authorizes the implementation of processes to enable the city to comply with all of its obligations under federal law and the Cable Act of 1984, other federal telecommunications law, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and other federal laws.

Our franchise with Astound is expiring on November 11th, 2027, and the renewal process typically takes about three years.

So we are on schedule, and here's a...

schedule as well for the resolution itself today, just a briefing and then vote scheduled for the next committee meeting.

On to background in cable franchises.

So cable franchises, again, are governed by federal law.

So it is a fairly prescribed process in terms of what we can do.

But we, as the local franchise authority for cable television, we do have some flexibility and we have enshrined our approach to the city's approach to cable franchising in the Seattle Cable Code.

And so what we're allowed to do is to establish our standards for technical specifications, customer service standards, and privacy standards.

And the City of Seattle does have our Cable Customer Bill of Rights as well under our cable code.

Currently, we have two cable television franchises in the city.

We have a franchise with Comcast and a franchise with Astound, formerly known as Wave, currently Astound Broadband.

And so they still have a cable franchise and provide cable television services in the city.

The City of Seattle cable franchises typically last for 10 years, and the renewal period, as I mentioned, begins three years prior to expiration.

The next slide talks a little bit more about process, but the thing to know is that there is a formal process that is established in federal law in the Cable Act, and there's also the opportunity to proceed with an informal process.

And these processes run concurrently.

We retain the right to engage in the formal renewal process.

and Astound retains that right as well to trigger a formal process.

But the large majority of cable franchises across the country are renewed via an informal process, and so it's a negotiation process with the cable providers.

Of course, as we're moving forward with both of these processes concurrently, we have to remain mindful making sure we're complying with our requirements and we expect us down to as well.

One of our requirements is to commence with proceedings within six months after receiving a renewal notice from the cable provider.

And so that's what we're doing today.

This slide shows the process flow for cable franchise renewals.

And if you'll notice, really after the process begins, step one is commencing the proceeding and commencing with an ascertainment process.

And so that is both reviewing the performance of the cable operator as well as doing community engagement to engage the CAPA-related needs and interests of Seattle residents.

And then from there, if you notice on the slide, there's a bifurcation.

We can work in an informal way with the cable operator.

as part of the informal process, or if the formal process is triggered, then there's several steps in the process there in terms of going through an RFP and decision, and if the decision is denied, then an administrative hearing.

Again, this is highly unusual across the country.

Typically, we're able to reach agreement via the informal process.

So again, the purpose of the resolution is to commence with proceedings.

Federal law does not actually provide specifics on what is required and what constitutes an action to commence a proceeding.

So in the past, when we've gone through these cable franchise renewals, most recently, 10 years ago with Astound, we have come to council for a resolution to make sure that we're meeting our requirements to commence the proceeding and also to clarify our intent, and also it does provide notice to the public and an opportunity for public comment on the cable franchise renewal.

So this is my last slide, and it's just a bit of a timeline on the process.

I also am displaying here the timeline for Astound as well as for Comcast.

So I did come before council committee back in 2023, and we moved forward with commencing the proceedings with Comcast.

And so they are at the stage to where we are proceeding with negotiation and will be coming back to council with a franchise renewal proposal sometime later this year.

So I hope to be able to join you all later this year for that process, but the Resolution for today is for Astound.

And then if all goes as planned, that will proceed.

And then sometime in 2027, I would be back with the proposal for a renewed Astound franchise.

So that's all I have today in terms of a presentation.

And again, look forward to moving forward with this process and working with all of you on this.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you, John, for that presentation and all the work that you and your department has done.

And I also know, and she probably doesn't want me to put her on blast, but I know you have Ms. Brenda Tate here as well, longtime IT employee.

How many years, Ms. Brenda?

30 years.

It's amazing.

Thank you for being here.

Appreciate you so much.

Colleagues, now we'll pause for any questions.

Mr. Dan Strauss?

I mean, you're a council member.

And operationally, who's our central staffer on this?

Can you give me an understanding?

I see Mr. Goodnight in the audience.

I'd love to connect with you as to, you know, sometimes with state law, we don't have any opportunities.

It's just approve or deny.

Trying to understand here, what is council's role?

Yeah, so you want me to speak to counsel's role in the process?

Yeah, so with the commencing proceedings, that really kicks off the ascertainment and community engagement process and review process, which will lead within the Office of Cable Communications in partnership with consultants We'll also be working with the city auditor on reviewing compliance with the Cable Customer Bill of Rights.

And then sort of the outcome of that is a draft proposal, and we'll be in discussion of that with the cable operator.

But council does have the opportunity for input and is, you know, asked to, well, part of the process is a council approval of the franchise when that comes up.

In the case of Astound, it'll be in about three years.

Okay.

And Chair, it looks like we have action that we have to take by the end of this year.

Can you help me dig into that?

What do we need to do?

Do we have agency to make changes or is this an up or down?

there is the opportunity to make changes.

And yeah, I'd be happy to follow up too with more detailed description of that process.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

And looking forward to working with you on this and our team and obviously central staff and Brian Goodnight to make sure we have the best outcomes and what's working well and what's not and all that good stuff.

Are there other comments that we have or questions from Councilmembers?

Seeing none, okay, awesome, great first step, and then looking forward to working with my colleagues on this.

So thank you, John, appreciate you.

Very good, thank you.

And IT, I think this is the first meeting IT has, we have had on our committee, so I apologize about that.

We'll have you back more.

Thank you.

Will the next, we read the next agenda items two through four into the record, and we will bring up SPU.

Agenda items two through four, Council Bill 120966 through 120968, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, revising, consolidating, and enacting provisions related to system development charges for water, sewer, and drainage infrastructure, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities, authorizing the general manager CEO of Seattle Public Utilities to develop municipal assessment reimbursement area authority, In ordinance amending ordinance 127156, which adopted the 2025 budget, including the 2025 to 2030 capital improvement program for briefing and discussion presenting as Andrew Lee, general manager and CEO, Carrie Burchard-Juarez and Leslie Brinson, Seattle Public Utilities, as well as members of the council central staff.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Big group.

Welcome.

Please introduce yourself for the record and we'll go ahead and jump in.

Thank you.

Andrew Lee, General Manager and CEO for Seattle Public Utilities.

Alex Chen, Deputy Director, SPU, Drinking Water.

Ellen Stewart, Deputy Director, Drainage and Wastewater, SPU.

Carrie Burchard-Juarez, Deputy Director, Project Delivery and Engineering, SPU.

Brian Goodnight with Council Central Staff.

Jennifer Lebrecht, Council Central Staff.

Liz Schwitzen, Council Central Staff.

Awesome.

Thank you all for being here and looking forward to the presentation, number two.

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth and members of the committee.

We're here to follow up on our previous presentation on our proposal regarding system development charges, or SDCs for short, to collect revenue from developers that would then be applied to cost-sharing on water, sewer, and stormwater mainline extensions that would support growth and redevelopment in our city.

At the last meeting, there were questions asked about where we have missing water, sewer, and stormwater pipes in our city.

And more specifically, we were asked to bring examples of projects that this new proposal would impact.

So today, we have Alex Chen, our Deputy Director for Drinking Water, Ellen Stewart, Deputy for Drainage and Wastewater, to respond to those questions.

I'm also going to ask Kerry Burchard-Juarez to respond to a couple of the comments that came up earlier during the comment period.

However, before handing it off to Ellen, Alex, and Kerry, I wanted to briefly center us again on the problem that we are trying to address with this legislation.

Next slide.

Throughout our city, we have many blocks without or with existing water sewer stormwater pipes, and there are property owners and developers who want to redevelop those parcels on those blocks that have pipes, and they pay relatively small connection charges to hook up to utilities.

However, there are also blocks that don't have one or more of those utility pipes, and when those property owners or developers want to redevelop those properties, the cost can be significant, and often on the order of magnitude of hundreds of thousands of dollars, even up to a million dollars in some cases, to install a new pipe in the street to connect to.

At its heart, this legislation is designed to reduce the inequity that is created by this system discrepancy.

Last week, Chief Operating Officer Marco Lowe from the Mayor's Office summarized the legislation very well.

He said the proposed legislation addresses this inequity by charging everyone who redevelops and makes a connection to our water system, or wastewater or stormwater, charges them a little, so that those properties that currently need to do those mainline extensions will end up paying much less.

The end result is that costs are more predictable for all developments in the city, and properties that currently really cannot redevelop are made more financially viable for redevelopment.

Go to the next slide.

This slide that you see here is an attempt to show the problem that we have graphically.

As you can see on this map, there are water mains on the two streets that are running, you know, if you're assuming north is up and south is down, that are running east-west on the top and the bottom of the map.

The existing water mains are shown there in those dark blue lines, again, on the North Street and the South Street that are running east-west.

However, there is no water main running on that north-south street, and there is also no water main in the shorter block that's east-west in the middle of the map.

In the past, we unfortunately allowed the interior properties to develop with long spaghetti water services.

which are shown in those orange or kind of reddish lines.

That policy, unfortunately, was not a good one, primarily for homeowners, because as you may already be aware, when those service lines need to be replaced because of failure, the homeowner would all of a sudden find out that they would need to pay maybe $60,000, $80,000, even $100,000 or more to replace a long service line, as opposed to only having to pay around $5,000.

And I can recount personally a number of horror stories where homeowners were in this tremendously difficult situation because they simply couldn't afford to pay for expensive repairs to the spaghetti sewer lines or water lines.

Since the early 2000s, we stopped allowing spaghetti lines to protect existing homeowners and have been requiring water main extensions when necessary for redevelopment.

Which means, though, that to redevelop any of those parcels that are shown in the middle of this map would require a water main.

And in some cases, those water mains can be upwards of several hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.

As a result, many of those interior properties never end up getting redeveloped.

And in addition, the water mains never end up getting built.

And so no one benefits in that situation.

Which brings us to the next slide, which is the purpose of this proposal.

As I noted before, under this proposal before you, I showed you kind of that blue circle, all development that would connect to a new, have a new service connection would have an increased system development charge.

So that's that everyone pays a little.

And the benefit of that is those developments that would require mainland extension, instead of having to pay the full freight on those main extensions, would now pay a lot less.

And so that's this cost-sharing program for mainland extensions funded by SDC revenue.

The benefits of this legislation are shown in those five bottom bullets.

More housing becomes feasible.

New connections pay a little more.

Mainline extensions pay significantly less.

The project costs are way more predictable up front.

And then the benefits to the system are also there.

The utility systems become more resilient as a result of having those mainlines now in those areas where they currently don't exist.

And the future homeowners, like I just mentioned, would benefit by reducing those long service lines that are really expensive to maintain or to repair.

Going to the next slide.

So from the April 23rd PPUD committee, we had a few questions.

And I'm going to pass it off in just a few minutes to Alex and Ellen, who are going to dive into a sampling of those blocks that are missing those mains.

But before I do that, I did want to ask Kerry to go ahead and respond to some of the comments that came up earlier.

Yes, thank you.

I just wanted to add a little bit of information about some of the issues that came up during the public comment.

So one of them was related to the stakeholder outreach.

So the stakeholders in our DSO database are anyone who has ever done any business with the DSO for any reason, including any applicants for water availability certificates.

So for projects that contacted the DSO for a potential additional service but then were given a requirement for a water main extension that potentially prevented that project from going forward, they are still in our customer database because they made that application.

And so they were still part of our outreach.

with our stakeholders.

So I just wanted to clarify that.

We have about 1,500 customers and active customers in that database.

So that is who that outreach went to.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about what Lucas de Herrera was mentioning with regard to town homes.

So Lucas and I have talked about this quite a bit, and so I definitely don't want to speak for him, but I want to acknowledge that what he was referring to is that when a developer builds town homes, there's two different ways to serve them with water service.

they can each have an individual water service or they can be served off of a master meter.

And the example that we provided in the presentation at the previous committee meeting showed an additional service and then serving a 12-pack of townhomes with a master meter.

And so the SDC for that, I think, was around maybe $35,000.

And I think the point that Lucas de Herrera was making is that most developers prefer to serve townhomes with individual service lines.

And if they do that, they are going to pay an SDC for each one of those.

And so it would actually be the new SDC or the proposed SDC, which is about 13,000 times the number of services.

And so that is the difference there that he was referring to.

And so I just wanted to acknowledge that that's correct, that that is a different way of serving townhomes than what we showed in our presentation.

There were some questions last time about the feedback we got from stakeholders.

You know, there are some legitimate policy disagreements about SDCs and cost sharing and how to pay for water infrastructure that serves development.

And that is, we honor and respect that and have listened to that.

And so we definitely appreciate those, you know, them bringing their views to this discussion.

And we just want to acknowledge that we understand them.

So with that, I will hand it off to Alex.

All right, thank you.

At the last council session, there were some questions in addition to the question about feedback.

There was a question about the extent to which mains were not in streets.

That would be expected.

So we tried to provide some illustrative examples, and we've also tried to get down to the parcel level to show some examples of what the status quo is on policy versus what individual developers of very different types might experience with this proposal here.

So I'll start on the water system here, and just we picked a couple of areas throughout the city here.

Just to orient you, same color scheme.

It shows streets, and the water mains buried in the streets are shown in blue, and the privately owned service lines are shown in red.

So in this example in Ballard, for example, we started with the observation that best practice for a drinking water system is to have mains on every street, north, south, east, west.

The reason for that is both technical and customer oriented.

Technical because the more gridding you have in water mains, the better the water quality is because the water takes less time to get to its desired endpoint.

Better for resiliency and flexibility because if one main breaks, there are multiple ways to serve each block.

So that is a best practice and very typical for most cities, although for older cities like Seattle, it is not always the case.

And here in Ballard, you can see clearly north-south water mains, east-west mains on 80th and 77th are missing.

And you can see some of the impacts of that, most notably, again, in these long red service lines, like on the intersection of 80th Street, northwest 80th and Mary Avenue.

There are several homeowners that have long service lines that they'll need to maintain on busy streets.

So that's just an illustrative example in Ballard, and then I'll show you on the next slide two other areas of the city.

View Ridge and Bryant, same color scheme, same kind of idea that in both these areas there are mains every block north-south and there's gaps in the main coverage on east and west here.

So you can see again the presence of some of these long red service lines that private property owners are having to maintain as the balancing of our predecessors not requiring mains going east and west.

So that's an illustration on the drinking water side and Ellen will tell you more about the drainage and wastewater side.

So here we have an example in the Central District, and this really highlights development pattern over time and over our city's growth.

So the city and developers invested in wastewater mains going north-south and drainage main lines going east-west, but not both at the same time, to Alex's point, that gridded system.

So generally we see them going either north-south or east-west, but not both.

And it highlights, so this particular graphic highlights how many north-south streets do not have a drainage mainline fronting their property.

And this could result in mainline extensions depending upon where the project is located, either mid-block and the amount of new or replaced hard surface that they have going on in their project.

This pattern is really common in many areas of the city and I'll show you another example of this on the next slide.

This is in Ballard and this also shows how development invested in wastewater mains going in the east-west direction and drainage main lines going in the north-south direction.

So this type of pattern leaves gaps for projects on east-west streets who need to discharge stormwater and don't have access to an SPU mainline there.

These historical development patterns, these are what we're talking about when we talk about financial inequities among neighbors.

So when you have neighbors that are just a few blocks apart, who are paying substantially different prices for very similar developments just because of where and how we've historically grown the network.

And I think I'm tossing it back to Alex.

And just as a reminder, we mentioned to the committee last time that, for example, how many, what percent of the water system is missing these mains?

It's about 25% if you look at the just north, south, east, west gridding.

So in round numbers, there's about 1,600 miles of water mains across inside the city limits.

So about 400 miles of streets are missing these water mains.

And that's an artifact of the long history of the Seattle water.

and we're in this current condition looking forward on how to address this situation most equitably.

So speaking of equity, we thought maybe it would be good to pick a few examples, pick an area of town, and just show what that really meant for individual homeowners on individual blocks, homeowners, developers.

And given the complexity with our developer community, our individuals who want to add on to their houses with ADUs, DADUs, we picked a few examples in the hope that they'd be representative, but hopefully the idea is to give you a sense of the impact.

So we'll start with water.

And here we picked an area in Beacon Hill.

And as you can see again, water mains here, there's water mains that go north-south and missing some areas going east and west.

So encircled in green are some of those missing areas.

And if you were a homeowner who lives in this area marked A, you would be pretty fortunate in that there's water mains right in front of your house.

If you wanted to add on to your property, subdivide per HB 1110, build four units on your property, there's a water main right in front to connect to.

So that's pretty straightforward.

but you move a block or two down south to the area shown in B, and there's not a water main in front of those properties.

So even though you're close to the parcel A, there is no water main to connect to.

And so the current situation is you have these long service lines that have to be privately maintained.

And then as a utility, we have to figure out how to deliver that water service via future mains.

How should that be paid for?

So we'll go through three quick examples of what that means to homeowners in A versus B.

The first is the simplest.

We thought we'd start kind of, you know, work our way up.

And let's say if in these both parcels we had retirees living on a fixed income and they want to remodel on the interior to make room for someone to live there, a family member.

It's pretty straightforward.

And in both cases, what we see is for property A and property B, in the status quo, what would they pay for water service connection capacity charge?

And what would they pay with this proposal?

For this one, it's straightforward.

In the status quo, there's no payment required because there's no infrastructure requirement because we would allow them to continue using their existing water service drainage sewer.

With our proposal, again, no impacts.

So again, this is the easy example.

As we start to look at people who want to build out in their properties, that's where things become more complicated.

And in this same example, we're changing the terms to have owners who are looking to build a backyard cottage who would be adding to the impervious surface, but otherwise not making that many changes.

And so in this case, In property A and property B, under the status quo, there would be no system development charge.

And then with the proposal, the only change here is because the backyard cottage would add impervious surface, there would be a drainage charge, which then goes to looking at how we deal with impervious surface across the city.

That would be the purpose of that charge.

So it's fairly straightforward.

And then the third example is where we get into some of the major differences and speak to the equity issues that can be raised.

So with these identical properties, if we start to do something where owners are excited about this House Bill 1110, and they want to start subdividing their property so that they can build individual houses and sell those properties and houses, then we get into this discussion here.

For property A, under the status quo, they have a water main right in front of their property, so there's no mainline extension required.

For property B, that is where we get much of the discussion with the development community here, is because there's no water main, there would be a water main extension required, and it could be very costly relative to the cost of the buildings.

In this case, let's say if it was almost $400,000 cost to extend that water main, That's a pretty significant cost on top of all the other building to do to subdivide the property.

Now, this approach is very typical of utilities across the state.

Most utilities take this approach.

However, because we are dealing with about 25% of the system missing these mains, we in Seattle are faced with these issues more frequently than some of the other utilities, but other utilities take the similar approach here.

And with this, you can see that there is a very big difference in what a property owner would have to pay to upgrade the water infrastructure just based on which block they happen to live on in Beacon Hill.

So this is something we have been dealing with for quite some time now.

And with this proposal then, the equity in this becomes more predictability and more similarities between what properties are required to do not just randomly based on where in the neighborhood they happen to live.

So with the proposal for property A, there's no mainline extension required, again, because there's a main in front of that property.

With the proposal then, the system development charge would go up some per each property.

with the overall change going from 4,800 to 21,450.

So that is an incremental change in what that property owner would have to pay in order to hook up water.

With property B, with this proposal then, instead of paying a full water mainline extension of nearly $400,000, that property would pay about $45,000 here.

So that is really our attempt to try to put people on the equal footing, no matter where in the city they happen to live relative to their water mains.

All right, and now for our final example, we'll look at Capitol Hill and focus on wastewater.

So here we have property A and property B, and you'll see on the left-hand side for property B, we've got sanitary sewer mains that are missing from the north-south orientation.

So this property B is looking to develop mid-block.

And on the next slide, I'm gonna be walking through two scenarios with the proposed SDCs looking at those two locations and just looking at how the development in those two locations look against our SDCs, of course.

All right, next slide.

Okay, so here under this proposal, we have Acme Development, and they're looking to build a low-rise apartment building by assembling parcels in Capitol Hill.

They're going to be adding a two-inch water meter and 2,000 square feet of hard surface, and they're gonna be retiring three three-quarter-inch water services.

So for property A, no main line is going to be required for either drainage or wastewater.

They can connect to the existing mains on the front of their property, both Thomas and 18th, and they don't need an upgraded water service for this development.

Under our current policy, they would be required to pay $5,520 based on the two-inch water meter, and nothing would be paid for either drainage or wastewater.

Under the new proposal, they would be required to pay all three SDCs for water drainage and wastewater, and that would total $24,300.

And then for property B, just a few blocks away, there's no sanitary sewer to connect to on 12th Avenue.

It would require 100 lineal feet of mainline extension to get to either Republican or Harrison, depending on which direction.

It looks like it's probably directional flow to the south.

Under the current policy, they would be required to pay water SDC and install a wastewater mainline extension, which would cost roughly $155,520.

Under the new proposal, the wastewater mainline extension would be $30,000.

and the water and the drainage SDCs would be about 18,320 for a total of 48,320.

And then we would fund $120,000 of that mainline extension.

So those are our examples.

Thank you.

Very technical.

Sorry.

Very technical and a lot for us to absorb, but I really appreciate you all breaking it down.

I know we have central staff here.

I would love to give them opportunity to comment about it as well.

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, Council Members.

Again, Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

As you can see, even though this is an SPU package of legislation, I've brought along two of my friends here who know more about affordable housing and about land use issues.

So if any questions come up, the three of us can try to respond to those.

So attached to today's agenda and emailed out to the committee members earlier this week as a staff memo that was primarily descriptive, but also attempted to summarize the proposal and highlight the intersection with affordable housing and the council's ongoing review of the comprehensive plan.

So we're here to answer questions, but just briefly, I thought it'd be helpful for us to describe quickly how the proposal fits into the three pieces of legislation, and then I'll describe one potential amendment that's attached to the agenda.

So the first bill, Council Bill 120966, is the bill that would actually do the SDC work.

So it would revise and increase the water SDC, and it would establish the new SDCs for both drainage and for wastewater.

And then it would consolidate all of those relevant provisions of code into a new Subtitle 6 of Title 21 of our Seattle Municipal Code.

The second bill, 120967, relates to the latecomer agreements and authorizes SPU to create municipal assessment reimbursement areas.

And this new authority would allow SPU to undertake mainline extension projects independently and to collect latecomer payments from benefiting parcels generally in the same manner that's been described for the developer projects in which SPU would cost share.

And then the third bill, Council Bill 120968, would amend the 2025 adopted budget to add six new positions and a total of $950,000 in appropriation authority to SPU's budget for two of their funds, the water fund and then the drainage and wastewater fund.

And according to the information that SPU provided, those additional staff are needed to manage the engineering, contractual, and the administrative aspects of the cost sharing program and the latecomer agreements.

And then those position costs will ultimately be funded by the anticipated SDC revenues.

And then lastly, there's one technical amendment that's been attached to the agenda, and it's related to the first bill, 120966. After the bill was introduced by council, we identified one drafting error that was contained in the bill that needs to be corrected.

It's in section five, and it would relate to modifying Seattle Municipal Code 21.04.465.

And essentially, the proposal was attempting to remove a reference to a connection charge.

And it also inadvertently added a phrase, system development.

And that's not necessary.

So the amendment would simply strike out those two words.

And I think that's it.

We're happy to answer any questions.

Awesome, and I will pause here, and I know it was a lot.

Thank you for that, Mr. Goodnight.

And I know that that was a lot for us to take in, but really appreciate you breaking down the examples, just making it easier for us to...

Understand, I'll be honest, if I'm in property A group, I'm, you know, that's, I'm a little angry.

No, I'm just fine.

Just the increase, because the example you give on Capitol Hill, it's about a 69% decrease, 155,000 down to 48,000.

But if I'm property A, that's almost a 500% increase.

You know, and just thinking about those folks, but yeah, Anywho, I don't know if my colleagues have any questions.

I know we'll work on this on the backend and you all have been great working with all of our offices doing the briefings and council member Rivera and a bunch of folks.

So just wanna make sure that I know that a lot of work went behind the scenes in this.

So thank you.

And I know that affordability is on all of our minds as council members.

when we're thinking anything about utilities or just costs and growing and stuff.

So I know that that is the true intent of this is just making it affordable and equitable for folks.

Council President Nelson.

So I am getting more information and I'm getting closer to understanding the rationale and also accepting it.

I do, on this slide right here on the new apartment building, one of the things that keeps coming back to me is we are adding, this legislation adds drainage and wastewater.

So who is paying for that already or right now under the current system?

Is that what you were referring to at the beginning of the meeting when you said that the inequities of what one homeowner would pay versus another one right now because one has drainage or at least a surface water runoff and the other one doesn't?

So the one that is paying for the pipe pays more on their monthly bill.

Is that what you were referring to?

I can respond to this if that's all right.

Yeah, currently there are no system development charges or connection fees for either wastewater or drainage.

And so no one, no new development is paying any fees.

When it comes to mainline extensions, however, the property owner that requires a mainline extension saddles the full cost of the mainline extension.

And so there's no cost sharing for them.

Generally speaking, what that has meant, primarily for drainage, is that those properties don't get redeveloped.

Okay, so the main line, I was under the impression that it does carry drinking water, or is it just...

Three different pipelines, yeah.

Three different pipelines in one main line.

There's water main lines, there's sewer main lines, and then there's drainage main lines, so there's three different pipes.

Right, okay, so there's three different pipes, and right now, if you have excluding drinking water, SPU just pays for the maintenance and the installation of new drainage and wastewater lines as they're needed, right?

We pay for a replacement of existing assets when they reach their end of life.

um, or in some cases for capacity improvements.

Um, but again, when a new development is triggering a new drainage or a new wastewater mainline, we don't pay for that.

That's entirely borne by the property owner who is triggering the need, the need for the extension.

Okay.

Yeah.

So they're always, uh, the current situation is they pay for a hundred percent of those costs.

And, and so, In this case, for example, they would pay the $155,000 for the wastewater mainline extension.

And then in this new format, this new proposal, we would cost share on that.

So that property that triggers the mainline extension, their cost would go down significantly.

Okay, I'm understanding the cost share part is new.

I was just misunderstanding because I thought that a new development in the current system the developer would have to pay for the extension of the main line, which I thought was water, but I wasn't understanding that inside that main line is also drainage and wastewater.

So it's not necessarily a new charge, it's just that it's combined with...

Yeah, it's three separate pipes and then also three separate charges.

Got it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Awesome, are there any other, thank you for that, Council President.

Are there any other questions we have?

I know we're gonna take this in and absorb it, and I'm sure there'll be questions during more briefings and stuff.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here.

I just, I continue to have questions and concerns, but I will say that I actually met with General Manager Lee, who I really appreciated his time and taking me through some of this.

And I continue to work with the team to get my questions answered and to see if there was a way to mitigate for folks that, you know, for who I am most concerned about is the retirees who might be, and you did a scenario, so thank you, who might be building a back.

cottage to live in so they can stay in the neighborhood with their friends whom they know and or family members.

And then they are gonna be, you know, renting their main house, et cetera, and just making sure that we are not displacing that type of person who might not be able to afford the new increases.

So anyway, continuing the conversation on what we can do there, but acknowledging that I am having the conversations with SPU.

They've been responsive to my questions and to the scenario I posed and I'll continue to work with them.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you, Councilman Rivera.

SPU is pretty phenomenal.

And just thank you all.

And I say that with all love, just because of the amount of detail and attention that you all have to our city and building and the commitment to House Bill 1110 and the housing.

So just thank you all.

And then the protection you do for our resources for the best tasting water in the country.

I will say that I have been around the world.

I've have tasted the same comparable, but I'm just playing.

Okay.

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you to the SPU team for coming and meeting with me, walking me through the maps.

I was astonished to find out how many streets are not, do not have this infrastructure.

I really appreciate these maps that you have provided us regarding all quadrants of our city, showing us the parcels that this problem, where the problem is that we're trying to correct.

Chair, I would be comfortable voting on it today.

I know that you said we're not, but I'm feeling comfortable after the extensive conversation that we had.

So just indicating that this is a good program and I'm ready to go.

Thank you.

Awesome, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Is there any other comments?

Awesome.

Well, thank you all for being here.

We'll continue to engage in the conversation.

Look forward to the next council meeting so we can get to a vote.

Awesome, thank you all.

Will the clerk please read the final item into the agenda?

Agenda item number five, an ordinance relating to the redevelopment and operation of Seattle Public Schools Memorial Stadium at Seattle Center, authorizing the mayor to execute an interlocal agreement with Seattle School District number one for the joint redevelopment of Memorial Stadium and associated improvements benefiting the Seattle Center campus.

For briefing and discussion, presenters from Seattle Center, One Roof Stadium Partnership, and council central staff.

Awesome.

Thank you all for being here.

Really appreciate you all making the time to come down to council.

I know that we have a couple of hard stops.

So before people have to leave, I wanna recognize council member Strauss to make some opening comments.

Oh, thank you, chair.

I was expecting to see a little bit of the presentation first.

Oh, my apology.

I got it ready to go.

Okay, I apologize.

I was looking in the audience for Jackie Kern.

She came and gave two-minute public comment about over a decade's worth of her work.

I wanted to thank her for everything that she's done.

I see former Councilmember Tim Burgess, Council President Tim Burgess out here, and former Councilmember Rob Johnson.

Where's the rest of your caucus?

Where's Councilmember Deborah Juarez and Councilmember Sally Bagshaw?

It really is...

given me great joy to see everyone here around the table again.

In those days, Marshall, you were working on the waterfront and now you're doing both.

How about that?

I'm just so excited to get this project across the finish line.

Thank you all for the over decade worth of work that you put into getting us here today.

Thank you.

Awesome, and I will still call on you first, too, after the president.

I apologize.

Thank you all for being here.

Go ahead, please introduce yourself for the record, and you can go ahead and jump in.

All right.

Good afternoon, Chair Hollingsworth, council members.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Marshall Foster, Seattle Center director.

Good afternoon, David Kunselman.

I'm the project director at Seattle Center.

Rob Johnson with the Memorial Stadium redevelopment team.

Brian Goodnight, council central staff.

Well, we'll just jump right in.

And thank you for those kind words, Council Member Strauss.

I was also going to say something about Jackie Kern later, so thank you for sharing that.

Council Members, I can't overstate how excited we are to be with you today to talk about a project that has been literally at least a decade in the making.

Many of you have personal connections with Memorial Stadium.

So many people in our city have had incredible moments in this building.

We are fortunate to have it.

as part of the Seattle Center campus and part of our culture at Seattle Center is a deep partnership with the Seattle public school system with that building.

As many of you know, Seattle actually deeded Memorial Stadium to the school district for an athletic stadium in 1946. It was specifically for that purpose and that really set off an incredible partnership and literally decades of great moments that have taken place in that building.

A lot of that really culminated in the incredible programs and exhibitions that took place at Memorial Stadium during the 1962 World's Fair.

In some ways, what's most remarkable about that building is that it is still serving our community today.

It has had an incredible life, but I think we can all probably agree it is ready for reinvestment.

It is ready for a reinvestment that will help to frankly kind of turn a page and start a new chapter in its life in terms of how it supports our community.

When we look forward and with the presentation we're gonna share with you today, what I think you're gonna see is a new state of the art, world-class facility designed around students and designed around serving our community.

And what's really unique about how we're getting to that vision of a community stadium is that it is a three, between the City of Seattle, the Seattle School District, and the One Roof Stadium Partnership, which you will learn a little bit more about here in just a moment.

Just to provide you a little bit of background and sort of policy context, this is not your first time discussing Memorial Stadium.

As you know, we've been here many a time over many years as we've kind of marched down this path together.

The Seattle Public Schools and the city established a partnership in 2017 with a lot of leadership from this group, from then Mayor Burgess, who was part of that as well in 2017. a letter of intent in October of 2021, and a memorandum of agreement, all of which set the stage for partnering on the redevelopment of the stadium.

In addition to significant funds through the school district's Beck's Levy system, Beck's Levy program, we are also providing direct support from the city.

City Council has supported that in the form of a capital improvement plan on multiple occasions.

We have a total of $400 million, which is established as of the 2025 budget.

You can see there the kind of major elements of that commitment And so everything you're gonna see today is really building on that foundation as we go forward.

I mentioned public-private partnership.

In June of 2023, the city and the school district selected the One Roof Stadium Partnership to be our development partner and our operating partner.

A key element here is that was done through a public RFP process.

So we considered alternatives, we laid out public objectives for the redevelopment of Memorial Stadium, And we sought a partner who could achieve those objectives.

And One Roof Stadium partnership was selected because they brought a great proposal to the table in terms of how they would help both the city and the district achieve its goals.

And so on that note, I am going to hand it over to Rob Johnson to talk more about that partnership.

Thank you.

Marshall, it's a commonly asked question of us, why would we do this in partnership with the city and the school district?

And our CEO, my boss, Todd Lewicki, likes to rejoin her with, how could we not?

This is an opportunity to help kickstart a project that's been 40 years in the making.

The opportunity to serve more than 47,000 Seattle Public School students, those student athletes, those all city band players, all those graduations.

It's a place where so many burgeoning professionals would get a chance to call this place home to take back 11 acres of the 74-acre campus and create these incredibly dynamic and interstitial views through campus to honor those students whose lives and sacrifices are inscribed on the wall, all within one of the greatest city parks in the United States.

How could we not be a part of that solution?

So we come to this humbly with, I think, a pretty great vision, with a pretty great team led by Generator Studios, our architect in cell and construction who's got decades worth of experience on the Seattle Center campus.

Our objective is to raise and contribute in addition to the public financing $30 million in private philanthropic funding, and then to operate the building for the first five years as a not-for-profit entity, which we'll get into a little bit later.

So we stand ready to really kick this project into gear.

And I think David Kunselman's gonna talk you through a little bit about the logistics of what that looks like before we wrap it up.

Thank you, Rob.

My apologies, my slides have no pictures, but they are very important.

So there have been a large cast of characters working on these implementing agreements and many beloved attorneys who are not in the room right now, but it's important that I share just some of the points that are laid out in these slides.

So we have two agreements that we are bringing forward.

The implementing agreements include an interlocal agreement that's really between the city and the school district.

The school district, again, is the property owner.

This agreement allows the city then to act on their behalf as their agent, if you will, in the development process and lays out those roles and responsibilities.

Something to highlight for districts' ability to continue in the process with us as developer, but allowing them all the rights to reviews and approvals as detailed.

It does lay out then the city's benefit, the city's benefit in this agreement with the school district, and that of course is important as was our capital dollars.

The city will have the use of shops and warehouse space that we'll talk about later with the picture, but we're moving our shops and warehouse space into this new building, the current building, current stadium in the north end, does have our warehouse space, which includes all of the various elements that you see coming out for festivals and other large events on campus.

Those are stored there, and in the future, we will also be moving our shops facilities there, which are primarily off-site currently, so we'll be able to end those lease, bring them on-site, and bring them together with other shops.

to be able to create a much more efficient campus.

These agreements also lay out our ability to use the stadium.

In the past, I'm sure you're aware that we would use the stadium for events like Bumbershoot.

That's become problematic over the years, given the condition of the facility.

And so this reinstates our ability to use that facility for a certain number of days, including large events like Bumbershoot.

And then finally, we'll talk a little bit more in a bit about some of the operational spaces that are going to surround the stadium where Seattle Center has the right to operate those congruent with many of the events that we have on campus.

The development agreement is the second one.

It goes into great detail about how we the city will work with our development partner in this public-private partnership.

and it really gets down into the detail of the funding obligations, which we'll speak to, and that includes the project scope, both what the school district needs to get out of this facility, as well as what the city is looking for in the development.

A couple key elements that I want to share with you, this is a public-private partnership.

And we have bound into the terms of this the things that you would see typically in our PublixWorks projects.

So things like prevailing wages, And the community workforce agreement, which in this case we're using the school district, they have a student community workforce agreement.

All of those programs, important programs that you would otherwise see in a city project are in fact included in this one.

And they are all being administered by the city's Department of Finance Administrative Services.

That is all bound in, that is all tied into cell and construction's delivery methodology.

I also wanted to highlight something that Rob shared, which we can't underscore enough, that this has a five-year operating and maintenance agreement with it.

So as we know, maintenance has been an issue with the existing facility, so it was important that not only we're able to build something new, but we're able to maintain it in a proper manner and also provide some funding for maintenance in the future.

So I wanted to point that out.

We do have an operating agreement which will follow, and we've laid out some key terms of what will be included in that agreement.

both about roles and responsibilities, but as I mentioned importantly about revenue that we break, noting that we break even, but also have a waterfall that contributes to maintenance and ideally capital in the future.

And then we are gonna look at some pictures and talk about the integration of the stadium with Seattle Center.

So I just want to talk for a second about the history.

As Ali Teeter noted, this facility is named after this very important element on the east side of the site, the memorial wall.

um she described in great detail the condition of it today we are very excited to be coming forward with a project that um restores it if you will back to i think its original intent and the school district has uh offered a a slice of their parking lot, which is on the east side of the project.

The parking lot is not a part of this project, but we are doing a lot boundary adjustment to add some more square footage that gives a proper forecourt to the memorial wall.

And as you can see in this drawing, we're offering sort of a landscape buffer as well as an opportunity for reflection and ceremonies that might take place there.

As is noted, this is now a landmark, a Seattle landmark, and we will be returning to the landmarks board later this month, next week in fact, to pursue our certificate of approval for the development of the wall, the restoration and the redevelopment of the wall.

Seattle Design Commission.

This project also goes to the Design Commission.

As noted, we've been through the process here, including approval of our design development.

We will return to them at the beginning of July to check in with the subcommittee on a couple recent developments.

But I really wanted to use this slide to start talking about some of the city's other interests in redeveloping this.

And this is a great image to do that.

This is an area just north of Harrison Street.

So to orient you, that is the armory there on the left.

And Harrison is currently one of our major entrances into the campus.

That'll be even more important when Sun Transit brings...

a new station very close over on 7th.

But this really expands that pedestrian opportunity.

It creates some additional space outside the fence, if you will, which is what you're seeing rendered here in sort of a salmon-colored It also demonstrates the transparency that you're going to see into the new facility.

Of course, for those who know the current building, it is surrounded by a very large concrete wall.

That will go away.

We do need a secure zone, but that will be, in the future, this fence line that you're seeing just on the right of this image.

So with the site plan here, first I just want to orient you.

The circle to the left, of course, is the Memorial Fountain.

And to the bottom of the screen would be the armory MOPOP over in the lower right.

The field itself is located in virtually the same location at the same elevation, and that's primarily a financial decision.

We are creating a concourse that surrounds the whole field.

So unlike the current facility, in a much more modern way, you'll be able to move the whole way around.

Each of the four corners will be anchored with a restroom and concession building.

Our primary seeding locations are on the north, south, and east, and we do have what's titled here as berm seeding over on the west, which offers more of a terraced festival seeding.

We do gain some additional square footage on campus, and that's important to note.

We saw in that last image that Harrison Street gets a little wider, opens up some space to the north.

That is also true on the west side of the stadium, so adjacent to that fountain area.

What is currently the boundary of the site, those concrete walls on those two sides, that will move in, if you will, move to the north from Harrison and move to the east on the fountain side.

That gives us to shy of an acre of additional property, still SPS-owned property, but it will have the look and feel landscaping, hardscaping congruent with the current campus.

So that will allow users of Seattle Center to enjoy it in a passive way on days like today where there isn't an event, but it also allows us to use that significantly for events like the many that you know, such as Bight of Seattle.

This space will also be used to supplement the stadium when there might be a large event there.

So we have ways to be able to, for example, bring food trucks to the area on Harrison that you saw.

And then just an item of note, we did talk a little bit about the shops and warehouse space, and that's in the north concourse toward the top of this screen that is in the two floors that are below that element.

So this image, I think, is very instructive of the new facility.

The transparency you can see here, not only because that wall has come down, but also because the seating will change.

So unlike the current seating, which rises fairly high in some fairly steep grandstands, here we're going to be bringing the seating down to the bowl, into the bowl, which is a much more modern approach to a soccer pitch, or in this case, to a football field.

So a much more intimate setting for those who are attending sporting events.

And as is seen here, it gives very dramatic views that I think we, you know, it's going to be very exciting once those walls come down.

It'll start to become visible, not only what you can see into the facility, but what those dramatic views are going to be as you look outside of the facility.

and uh this final image that i'll share with you helps you to understand sort of the spatial relationship to the fountain uh and how it comes to the west side here i do want to point out that we are creating a new west gate so currently in the facility the two gates that are primarily used are on the east side uh on the school district parking lot side those will remain But for large events, we're creating this new connection to the International Fountain Mall over here on the west side.

So this is helpful, I think, to see the building in scale.

Certainly not going to be the tallest building on campus, but will certainly be dramatic in its character.

And certainly with that transparency offer, a real pedestrian experience for those who are coming through, whether you're attending an event there or not.

And with that, I will offer it to Mr. Johnson to pick up the baton.

Almost there, friends.

Almost there.

You're doing great.

Hang in there with us.

We are so grateful to the city for your previous commitments to help support this project.

It was inspirational to us to go out into community and ask community to help support this grand civic vision.

And in doing so, we were able to raise $30 million in private philanthropic funding to augment the existing public funding associated with the project.

Not just that, but the total project is going to be effectively de-risked for the public sector by having Memorial Stadium Redevelopment LLC take on 100% of the construction risk.

So those public sector dollars are protected.

They are capped.

We are the ones on the hook.

If any tariff issues or any cost overruns or any unsupported surprising last minute additions arise, it is on the responsibility of us to help figure out how to make that work.

We also expect that when we're given the opportunity to operate this facility, we're gonna operate it as a not-for-profit.

Those dollars that may rise above what it costs to operate the facility would go first into a near-term operating and maintenance fund, and then secondarily towards kinds of projects that we think would really benefit the community members who we hope this new stadium will serve.

We're talking about projects like eliminating athletic fees for Title I students.

or supporting the King County Play Equity Coalition to have sports sampling camps here, or subsidizing the all-city band events that are gonna happen inside the stadium.

Those are the kinds of things that we would really love to see the stadium used for more of in the future, and the idea that this becomes a really important community asset, not just for student athletes, but for students of all interests inside the new stadium.

So we're thrilled.

We are under a little bit of a time crunch, which I think Marshall's gonna talk about next.

So why don't I hand it over to you, Mr. Foster.

All right, thank you, Rob.

And I will bring us home here.

So next steps.

Critical, as Rob mentioned, that we kind of finish up our agreements and let this project really get ready to break ground.

You can see there we have our meeting today, as well as another meeting scheduled with the committee on May 28th, and then full council on June 3rd for a potential vote.

What's really interesting about this project is we're doing everything in tandem with the school board.

So you can see there, the school board is actually introducing the same agreements for legislation today and anticipates a final action on June 4th.

I will mention at our May 28th meeting, we'll be joined by Fred Podesta from the school district as well, who will offer some of their observations on the agreements.

If we can get through the process, we're excited to have a groundbreaking and open house events on June 26th.

That will be a really cool event because it'll not only be the groundbreaking, but a chance to frankly let the community come back and remember Memorial Stadium and kind of honor all the incredible moments that we've had in the building.

And then we'll move right into demolition and the start of construction in the middle of this year, this summer, with the goal of completing the new stadium by the end of 27. And really, our goal is to get it done for the fall sports season in 2027. So we'd like to see fall football take place in Memorial Stadium in 2027. So thank you for your patience.

A couple of things I just want to briefly emphasize, and then let's just have questions.

What are the benefits to the city?

Why does this project matter?

First and foremost, I hope you see in what David shared, a beautiful new stadium that is well integrated with Seattle Center.

This building has been a bit of a fortress on our campus for years, and having this opportunity not only to have passive green spaces, but also gorgeous new event spaces where we can expand our programming with things like Buy of Seattle, Bumbershoot, huge benefit to the city.

Second, the new operations space.

So we are investing, just like we would in all of our other city department space needs, in a state-of-the-art operations center that supports Seattle Center's work.

We are a 24-7, 365-day-a-year campus in terms of all the activity, and we rely on great facilities that support carpentry, painting, plumbing, managing trash and recycling, shipping and receiving.

All that stuff is spread around the campus.

large part in Memorial Stadium, we'll be able to integrate that all into one new facility.

Hugely valuable.

And then lastly is with the new stadium and this incredible new, you know, deepening our partnership with the school district is we will have a professional operator.

So by having the one roof stadium partnership, they're going to be able to focus on really leveling up the quality of the day to day experience, whether you're going there for a football game or an all city band event, or you're there to see an incredible night of music, you're gonna have a great team who knows how to operate a stadium like this and help make sure everybody gets the most out of it.

So thank you for your patience in letting us kind of walk through all that.

I think now we'd love to open it up and hear your thoughts and your questions.

Thank you, and before we jump to questions, I'd love, thank you for the presentation, and I'd like to give Mr. Goodnight an opportunity to give his observations.

Thank you, Chair.

I actually don't have any comments today that are substantive.

As you know, we got the materials relatively recently for our timelines, and so I'm still digging through them right now, but been asking questions and having conversations with all of these people here, and they've been very helpful in answering my questions, so more to come.

Awesome.

Thank you, Mr. Goodnight.

I want to recognize Councilmember Strauss if you had any follow-up remarks before, and then Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

All my questions have been answered.

Really, it was about timing because I know time is of the essence and that it is very important for us to stay in concert with the school district and for us all to get this done.

When Tim Burgess was mayor, you signed an executive order regarding this.

So when you said, what is the next timeline?

You know, we're almost there.

Council Member Johnson said we're almost there.

I said, oh, my gosh, another 10 years.

Please, no.

Let's go.

So I'm here.

I'm ready to, you know, with Mr. Goodnight's analysis, I'll be ready to vote on this as soon as possible.

Thank you, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Hollingsworth.

Thank you, everyone, for your presentation today.

Really appreciate it.

I also want to thank my colleague, Councilmember Strauss, District 6, home of Ballard-Eagleson VFW Post 3063. Get that out of the way.

But as also a transition to say thank you for basically all three, all organizations, and I've worked with Mr. McCarthy from the school district on this, for their engagement with the veteran service organization community, best represented by, or most represented by VFW Post 3063, because it's so important, and I'm thinking of slide eight, and the changes that are envisioned with this, and so thank you for your engagement, and to have Lieutenant Colonel Teeter here today, the post commander here today, reflects that, and the fact that you know her by her name, I know, of the engagement, it's not just here, and so I'm thankful for that.

Observations, and I've been engaged on this, but it's always interesting, like on slide nine, seeing the Harrison Street example, and trying to imagine that during our tour, Mr. Johnson, the difference is gonna be.

But at the same time, as someone who was at the Ignite luncheon with Director Foster yesterday at Pacific Science Center, I'm struck by, and I'm not sure if this is exactly how it's going to be, but it kind of evokes the Pacific Science Center on the other end of Seattle Center with the overhang here on Harrison Street.

So I don't know if that was purposely done, but in my mind it evokes these other elements of the broader community.

And so I really appreciate that.

That is it.

I just want to say thank you again to the various elements, and I've done this in other venues as well.

School district, in my case, Mr. McCarthy.

The mayor's office, best represented by Deputy Mayor Burgess behind you.

and Seattle Center, Director Needlem first, and now Director Foster, and of course, the One Roof Foundation, Mr. Johnson representing, but Mr. Lewicki and Ms. Holloway and others from that community as well, so thank you.

And I have no questions because I've been engaged on this quite a bit already, so thank you.

Awesome, thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council President Nelson.

So I've been, thank you for the presentation, we've already, I've been briefed about this project a couple times.

I've been inside Memorial Stadium twice, and once was for, the most recent time was for the graduation ceremony of my neighbor's son, Duncan Stull, and I don't remember how many years ago that was, and the first time was for the battle in Seattle, or the big huge rally.

when labor and the enviros came together and that place was packed with so many different unions and environmental organizations.

And then when that was over, then people started a little promenade downtown and well, that's actually where I met my husband.

But my point is that, yeah, I met him downtown in the tear gas anyway.

So that was November 30th or 29th, 1999. My point is what I love about this design is that people will know there is a stadium there because right now as it is, it is so walled off that one doesn't even, if you're a parent taking your kids to the children's museum and you park in that big parking lot, you could miss the fact that there is a stadium there, let alone a memorial wall.

So that's just one of the many components and characteristics that I like about this project to say nothing for the fact that it is really phenomenal that after all this time, two entities, jurisdictions, Seattle Schools and the city of Seattle with ever-changing boards of directors, right?

we're able to get to this point.

So I understand that now is not the time to bring up niggling things that need changes because this has all been ironed.

It's not all been ironed out.

We do have the discretion to request changes and put forward amendments, but it's no small feat to get here.

So my question has to do with the financing.

And I remember...

I was reading the fiscal note and it says that Seattle's contribution is 40 million.

And what I remember that there was like two or three budget cycles ago, because of the decline of REIT fund revenue, the city's contribution was cut in half.

So was it originally 80 million and then it was cut to 40 million and then we paid that in two chunks, 20 and 20?

Or did we never get back to what the original thinking was, which was 80 and we can only do 40?

That's a great question and a good memory of the process we went through.

So we actually are where we had hoped to be now.

At the time, we had reduced it and made a commitment to add back the additional half, which is the 19. So that 21 and then the 19 got us to the total city commitment that we needed to make.

So that landed in a very good place.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And then I want to give Council Member Rivera an opportunity if you had any questions.

I know you just jumped in, so I don't want to put you on the spot.

No, no.

I have no questions.

I'm really supportive.

So happy this is finally moving forward.

Awesome.

Yeah, and like I said earlier, Jackie left, but she'd been working on this for many, many years, so really it has been a long time coming.

So happy to finally be here and have a good partner and really make this happen.

We'll benefit our kids.

And so it's all really pot and community in general.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Awesome.

Thank you.

And just, and we, our office has been briefed about this and thank you all for your work.

And I know it's a lot to have to work with city council and then also the school board in tandem to make sure that everyone's on the same page.

And I appreciate central staff being so flexible as well to, and expediting this.

And obviously thank you to my favorite deputy.

Let me look in the camera.

My favorite deputy mayor.

Tim Burgess.

I just had to say that for today.

Okay.

On 514. I have a running joke.

Whoever I come into contact with, they're my favorite at that point in time.

At that time.

They're my favorite.

I see council member Kettle.

Is that an old hand?

No.

Yes and no.

Yes, it's an old hand, but new just to get the opportunity.

Who's your favorite council member?

Thank you.

No comment.

Thank you all for being here.

One question I had, and I asked this in the meeting and just wanted you all just to, for the record, what are the financial risks for the city in this project?

And I think former council member Rob Johnson is going to say my favorite answer.

Yeah, I'll just, I'll say a little and ask others to jump in as well.

I think fundamentally the point that Rob alluded to, that the way these agreements are structured is basically the development partner, One Roof Stadium Partnership, is taking on the development risk.

That is no small element for them.

We all know the environment.

in right now in the development context that we're in, that is significant.

So for us, when we look at the cost of building out the facilities that I described, the operating center for Seattle's center, this is a very, having a partner who can execute that and meet all the city's prevailing wage, community workforce agreement, all those commitments on our behalf, is very appealing at this moment.

Personally, I don't see significant financial risk for the city in having a partner develop that.

I'd say this is a very good outcome and welcome others to jump in as well.

The only other thing I would add is that we feel like not only do we bring project expertise, Councilmember Hollingsworth, but in addition, the programmatic elements that wouldn't have been possible if it not for the city joining forces with the school district only gets multiplied even greater with our philanthropic commitments.

So the sum here truly is greater than the individual parts would have been.

And we're proud to be your developer partner, and we are proud to take that risk.

We feel confident in the budgets that we have today.

We feel confident we're going to deliver a world-class stadium that's going to be a home for community.

And we'll be thrilled to be back here with you again in a couple of weeks to talk with you more.

Awesome, and last but not least, could you also remind us about the benefits of an operator like you all versus like the city doing it or the school district and why that's important?

Sure, in addition to the portfolio of venues that the organization I represent operates, not just here in Seattle, but all throughout North America, we believe we sit at a really interesting fulcrum point where if this were a facility that was primarily operated by the school district, you might have opportunities to reduce the amount of community events that could have been in the stadium or vice versa.

If this were primarily operated by the city, maybe you wouldn't have as many opportunities for students from the Seattle Public Schools to get access.

Having a third party operated gives us the ability to play that unique fulcrum role to try to work with a joint operating board because we will report up to a board that will include both representatives from the city and the school district.

and will allow us to say yes to many of those opportunities while also saying yes to many revenue-generating opportunities as well to provide that financial footing that won't require public subsidies either for additional capital resources or for additional operational things that may come down the line.

So we feel really fortunate to be asked to play both of these roles as the developer partner and to operate the facility because we really do have a vision that this is a place that is of, for, and by community.

Awesome.

Thank you for that and really appreciate you explaining that and walking us through that.

Well, thank you all for being here and waiting till the end to give this presentation.

And I could totally tell slide six and seven was totally made by a lawyer.

So it's just all words.

All words, no pictures, putting us to sleep.

No, I'm just playing.

Just kidding.

Then you got pictures in there.

Okay, well...

committee and folks, that's gonna conclude our May 14th meeting of the Parks Public Utilities Technology Committee.

Is there any other business to come before the committee today?

Seeing none and hearing none, our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 28th at 2 p.m.

Looking forward to having all the stuff on our agenda and getting this powered through.

Hearing none, it's 4 p.m.

on the dot.

Thank you.

This meeting's adjourned.