Seattle City Council Council Briefing 9/20/21

We are recording.

Thank you, son.

Appreciate it.

Good morning, everyone.

The September 20th, 2021 council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 9 31 AM.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council member Sawant.

Present.

Council member Strauss.

Present.

Council member Herbold.

Here.

Council member Juarez.

Here.

Council member Morales.

Here.

Council member Mosqueda.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council President Gonzalez.

Present.

Gate present.

Thank you so much.

I am expecting that Council Member Mosqueda is going to join us, and when she arrives, I will make sure to note that for the record.

We will move on to approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of September 13th, 2021 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

I'll move on to the president's report.

Really, really quickly, as a reminder for members of the public, this week is the last week that regular committee meetings for the council will occur before all standing and select committee meetings are canceled during the deliberation of our 2022 budget, which will occur in the Select Budget Committee, which is a committee of the whole.

I will also note for the record that we've now been joined by Council Member Esqueda.

Welcome.

Of course, the mayor is due to transmit her proposed budget to the council a week from today, which is Monday, September 27th, marking the beginning of the roughly two-month council budget process that will commence shortly thereafter.

The weekly council briefing, which is this meeting, and city council meetings, which occur on Mondays at 2 o'clock, will continue to occur every Monday throughout the budget process, and regular committee meetings will restart after final passage of the budget, which we anticipate to occur on Monday, November 22nd.

Hey colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move on to the meat of our agenda.

We do have some honored guests with us this morning.

We have partners from the Port of Seattle and including Commissioner Fred Felleman, who are with us this morning to give us a really important presentation on Terminal 5 modernization.

So This is an opportunity for us to be joined by our partners over at the Port of Seattle to receive updates on the construction at Terminal 5. And I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you all to introduce yourself to council members and to the viewing public.

And then we can go ahead and start with your presentation.

And Commissioner, would you like to start first with introductions and then we can sort of popcorn amongst folks from the port until we are ready to make the presentation?

Well, thank you, President Gonzalez.

We were intending to start with our CEO, John Wolfe, but he's joining us with my colleague and president of the Port of Tacoma Commissioner, Dick Marzano, who's the co-chair of the Seaport Alliance.

But I'll kick it off to John Wolfe to get us going.

Thank you so much.

Please go ahead, CEO Wolfe.

Thank you.

Good morning, and thank you, Council President Gonzalez and council members, for inviting us to join your meeting today.

My name is John Wolfe.

I'm the CEO of the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

Joining me again are the co-chairs of the Northwest Seaport Alliance, Port of Seattle Commission President Fred Felleman and Port of Tacoma Commission President Dick Marzano.

And at this point, I'll pass it on to Commissioner Marzano to get us started.

Good morning.

It's a pleasure to be here today.

Just a little bit of a history you probably all know and are aware of that both the ports of Seattle and Tacoma are over 100 years old, but the Northwest Seaport Alliance is six years old.

The five commissioners from both the ports of Seattle and Tacoma make up the 10 managing members of our alliance.

We handle about over 300, excuse me, 3 million TEUs or containers each year.

that move from our vessels to the docks and end up going to local stores and businesses across Washington State.

About half of our imports are transported to the Midwest, Chicago and beyond.

Our gateway moves also exports from Idaho and North Dakota.

Our top export commodities include hay, refrigerated potatoes, which are mostly French fries.

We're one of the largest, if not the largest French fry exporter in the world.

apples, cherries, and beyond.

Our gateway is proud to be a creator of over 58,000 family wage jobs in our state.

The goods that move across our docks require jobs at the port and beyond, including warehousing, the transportation sector, and retail.

Each job that the port directly hires creates 2.9 additional needed jobs through our economy.

Altogether, our gateway brings about $12.4 billion in economic impact to our state, and adds another $136 million in tax revenue.

And now I'd like to pass it over to my co-chair, Frank Thelman.

Thank you, Dick, and thank you, Council President Gonzalez and council members.

This is a great opportunity to share some major maritime infrastructure investments that we're making in Seattle and Tacoma, and realize that these efforts enable us to preserve and build on the cultural fabric and the economic fabric that really put these cities on the map along the deep and protected waterways of the Sailor Sea, which are natural harbors.

And one of the great strengths of the forming of the alliance is that we're able to share the cost as well as the benefits of making these strategic investments, which are huge and generational in nature, that serve the entire region and the state.

Over the past six years, Alliance has invested more than a billion dollars in infrastructure projects that really make our gateway more competitive and bringing more jobs into the region.

And one of our great competitors is to the north, another country called Canada.

You likely read in the Times editorial just yesterday that underscores the importance of improving the efficiency of our marine cargo operations to meet the surge in demand along the entire West Coast when spending habits have changed from brought on by COVID from services like dining out and travel to home repair and online shopping.

And we're really the only port on the West Coast that actually is positioned to build on this new container capacity to meet this demand.

And we've invested in modernization both in Tacoma with eight new cranes at Husky Terminal in Tacoma, as well as we're underway with this half billion dollar investment in Terminal 5, which we'll hear more about shortly.

But in addition to these infrastructure developments, we need to recognize the importance of investing in sustainability efforts.

And this includes the Alliance and the Port of Seattle, Port of Tacoma, and Port of Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.

in British Columbia, which we're really committed now to updating the Northwest Port's Clean Air Strategy, which puts us on this collective path for zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.

And we plan to make these ambitious efforts with several initiatives that are already underway, including shore power capabilities, where vessels can plug into the city's power while at our international container terminals.

as well as a critical partnership with the City Light to make sure that there's enough electricity to go around to meet our needs from other users like the ferries and the Coast Guard.

This alongside with reducing truck emissions and other efforts to reduce environmental impacts on our neighbors, these near port communities, we're keenly aware, are directly impacted by these broadly beneficial activities.

So we're particularly excited to update you on Terminal 5 and when complete will be the West Coast Premier International Container Terminal.

And I know you have some familiarity with this, but your recent vote to support development of T5 rail quiet zone and special nod to Transportation Chair Peterson and Council Member Herbold for your leadership in this effort, which again will enable us to be better neighbors.

The managing members made decisions several years ago alongside with our private partners to invest in modernizing T5, to serve the largest container ships in the transpacific trade.

This is a unique advantage for our gateway, and we continue to grow in volume.

The economic impact of these vessels can move more cargo per ship call.

So I'll turn it now over to John Wolfe to share more details on Terminal 5 project.

Thanks again for this opportunity.

Thank you, Commissioner Felleman.

And again, thank you, Council members, for your time today.

I'm going to share with you a little bit more about Terminal 5 in our Seattle Harbor.

Yeah, before I do that, you're probably aware of the significant congestion problems that the global supply chain is facing today.

And I just want to touch on that first.

It is certainly unprecedented times as we wrestle with the global pandemic.

And we're seeing unprecedented volume of import cargo coming through our West Coast ports.

And it has caused heavy stress on the supply chain.

And that shows up in ways where you might see large container vessels at anchor out in Elliott Bay or Commencement Bay or in other harbors in and around Puget Sound.

Our terminal congestion is at an all-time high.

The railroads, the Class 1 railroads, are at capacity over capacity.

The trucking system is taxed to the limit.

And our warehouse distribution centers are essentially full.

And we're also in a time of year, what we call peak season, where the retailers are trying to move inventory into the marketplace in advance of the holiday season.

And so that just exacerbates the problem.

know though that we are on top of it.

We're doing everything we can as a Northwest Sea Port Alliance team, our commission, and we formed a task force with many of our supply chain stakeholders that are working beside us to resolve these issues day in and day out.

We have established some near dock storage facilities you might look out over the Seattle Harbor and think that Terminal 5 is operating today.

In a sense, it is in terms of we're shuttling boxes from Terminal 18 and Terminal 30 over to Terminal 5 to decongest those other terminals that are taking vessels, where T5 is yet to take a vessel into that terminal, yet there's about 8,000 boxes sitting at Terminal 5. In addition to that, Terminal 46 over on the downtown Seattle side is also now holding storage of containers to take the edge off these busy terminals.

So that's just one example of many where we're working with our logistics partners, our importers, to try to increase the velocity and the movement of cargo.

And it's a real challenge.

Next slide, please.

That really highlights the need for additional terminal space.

And as commissioners highlighted, we invested heavily in a major terminal in the Tacoma Harbor a couple of years ago.

And now we're wrapping up the first phase of investment in Terminal 5 here in Seattle.

And this is gonna be critical new capacity both to our gateway and the whole West Coast.

We are one of the few ports really in all of North America that is able to add significant new terminal capacity.

So that's a unique advantage that we have as respects to this very busy marketplace.

Our cargo volumes are up over 18% as compared to last year, and really mirroring volumes that we've seen at the height of the gateway back in 2018, 2019. We have seven new container services calling our gateway.

Some of those are calling in Seattle, some in Tacoma.

And quite frankly, if we had more cargo terminal space, we'd likely see even more services calling our gateway.

The good news in that is, of course, it fulfills the mission of the Seaport Alliance in creating family wage job opportunities for those that live in our community, whether they're longshore jobs, jobs in the trucking and warehouse business, the retail business, and railroad business.

And then, of course, we're also a major gateway for exports.

And we have one of the largest, exports of volume moving through our gateway, and that's as a result of the agricultural products that are grown over in eastern Washington and adjoining states.

So we also serve the upper Midwest, and as you're probably aware, a significant portion of our cargo moves inland via rail.

And the good news for that is that it reduces the number of trucks on our local streets and highways, which we all know are highly congested.

In fact, for every train, full train that leaves our port with those loaded containers moving to the upper Midwest, it reduces the truck traffic by 250 trucks.

And it's also a more environmentally friendly way to move cargo.

Next slide, please.

So real quick, touch on some of the high points of Terminal 5. What's driving our terminal redevelopment is that the industry has moved to much larger vessels than in the past.

And so to be able to handle this cargo and create the jobs and economic activity that we enjoy here in the region, we must update our facilities.

And so we're spending about $390 million of capital combined with private sector capital north of half a billion dollars into Terminal 5. You've probably seen on the skyline the four new super post Panamax cranes.

Those are the largest cranes on the West Coast, and they will be able to handle larger vessels that call our gateway.

And that those larger vessels can handle much more cargo with fewer vessel calls.

So there's some environmental advantages there.

And so it's an interesting time in the industry and all of the major ports are making these types of investments so that they can respond to the changes in the marketplace.

Next slide, please.

More specifically, as we look at Terminal 5 and the investments we're making in Terminal 5, we're making improvements to the dock, really redeveloping the dock because the strength of the dock in its previous existence wasn't able to withstand the weight of those larger cranes.

So we had to rebuild the dock and the crane rails.

We had to work on the slope stabilization beneath the water and also look at some modest berth deepening for these larger vessels.

We had to significantly improve the power supply and distribution to the terminal.

And I want to highlight that the good news there is that that will allow us to move towards electrification of this terminal over time.

And we'll work closely and are working closely with our terminal operator to move in that direction.

Had to upgrade our stormwater system.

We certainly want to be responsive to the stormwater that flows into Elliott Bay, and so that's a 30 plus million dollar investment just in the stormwater system.

It's state of the art system, best in class.

We've updated our marine buildings.

We handle a lot of refrigerated cargo, so we need to upgrade the refrigerator plugs.

and the gate complex.

Next slide.

So when we're finished here, we'll have about 185 acres of redeveloped capacity.

And the other aspect of this terminal that's critically important to our customers is to have an on-dock rail system.

And Terminal 5 has one of the better on-dock rail systems within our gateway.

And the importance again of that is that over 50% of our inbound cargo moves inland via rail.

And so having that infrastructure in place is critically important.

Right now, at Terminal 18, as an example, there's an on-dock rail infrastructure there, yet it's not able to hold all of the volume that is moving through T-18, so we have to dray boxes moving to rail from Terminal 18 over to the SIG yard on the east side.

And of course, that puts more trucks on the road.

With Terminal 5 opening, we'll be able to handle that rail volume without those containers leaving the terminal by truck.

I mentioned the other refrigerated plugs, the shore power and the electrification of the cranes.

Also wanted to highlight, we worked in partnership with the railroad and created a rail quiet zone.

So when the trains are leaving and coming and going from the terminal, it's a protected zone where they don't have to blow their horn.

responding to the sensitivity of our neighbors up on the West Seattle side.

And I mentioned that T5 will be developing two phases.

Phase one will open here just around the end of the year, and then phase two is targeted for the beginning of 2023. So we're really excited about this opening and our customers are very excited.

Next slide.

Talked a little bit about shore power.

The advantage there is that with that investment in shore power, the vessels that call this terminal that have the capability to plug into shore power will do so.

And the advantage there is that they won't be burning their diesel engines while they're stay at Terminal 5. And this is an investment that our commissioners committed to not just at Terminal 5, but also all of our international container terminals in both harbors.

I touched on the on dock rail, so I won't touch on that again.

And then the stormwater system.

We did receive some state grant money, and we want to thank the state of Washington for their commitment to supporting our investments in an environmentally sustainable terminal.

Next slide, please.

And then finally, you all are very familiar with the West Seattle Bridge, and certainly we are as well.

That's part of the infrastructure that makes Terminal 5 and Terminal 18 work.

And so we really appreciate the partnership with SDOT and the city, and we are doing our part.

I know the Port of Seattle is looking at making a commitment to help offset the cost of that repair And certainly we want to support you all and have with looking for grant dollars, both at the state and federal level.

That lower bridge is going to be critical for us, for that truck traffic that does access Terminal 5. And we've been coordinating closely with your staff at SDOT, and it's a great partnership.

So I want to thank you as a council for your leadership there.

So with that, we are happy to answer questions.

And again, thank you for allowing us to highlight a major project here in the Seattle Harbor and share a little bit about the Northwest Seaport Alliance.

Well, thank you so much, CEO Wolf and Commissioners Felleman and Marzano for being with us this morning.

Really appreciate an opportunity to just get a better understanding of such a critical infrastructure project that is also an economy driver in our region.

It's really good to receive so many of these important updates and also to just, I really personally appreciated the emphasis that you all have placed on creating sort of sustainability opportunities that really create a greener economy down at the port and really appreciate the highlighting of those efforts and that priority in many of the slides as I hear them.

And CO Wolf also wanted to just sort of acknowledge the realities around the supply chain that you highlighted.

That's something that I hear from small business owners and others a lot about.

And I suppose I hadn't necessarily appreciated the importance, the sort of significance of the role that you all were playing in helping to address some of those concerns.

So I appreciated an update on those efforts as well.

I'm going to go ahead and open it up for any questions or comments from my colleagues.

Please feel free to either physically raise your hand or use the raise hand feature in Zoom.

And I would be happy to I'm going to call on you.

Councilmember Esqueda, please.

Thank you very much.

It is great to see you, Commissioner, and it is wonderful to see you as well.

Director Wolf, I wanted to thank you for your work, especially wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your leadership, as you mentioned, with creating good living wage jobs, but also the work that you have done to make sure that we have additional places for those who are experiencing homelessness to be able to go.

The port has been an important partner.

We've stepped up in ways that our region is looking for, and I hope that the city of Seattle will do more to deploy the resources that have been allocated and also given to us by our state partners.

and with assistance from the federal ARPA dollars to deploy the dollars that we pass into the law to be a better partner with you all.

But I wanted to say thank you for that holistic way that you are taking care of our community.

And as a neighbor to T5, appreciate the work that you're doing to activate that port and also the work that you're doing around additional sound barriers.

That'll be agreed.

asset I know to many of our neighbors but it's exciting every time we hear those horns we know that it means economic activity in our region and that this is helping our country as well recover.

So looking forward to continuing to be a partner in any way and my favorite park is Jack Block Park.

So thanks again for all the work that you've done to activate the terminal while preserving public places for folks to go like Jack Block.

So looking forward to more partnerships with you all like that and thanks for helping to make our area even greener.

Thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda.

Okay, I see that Council Member Herbold has her hand up.

Our District 1 representative, take it away.

Good morning, and again, as has been said by my colleagues, really appreciate your taking the time to be here with us this morning, as well as all the work that you are doing, both driving an important component of Seattle's economic engine, as well as the work that you've been doing in collaborating with the city of Seattle on addressing the impacts of the West Seattle Bridge Closure.

You've been a fantastic partner in ameliorating that very, very large impact to so many different parts of our region, not just in District 1. So really, really appreciate that.

As it relates specifically to the question around expected rail operations beginning, increased rail operations, I should say, beginning in January 2022. Can you let us know whether or not there is likely also to be an increase of truck traffic associated with that particular timeframe?

And then under the Climate Action and Sustainability Initiative, I'm wondering, When can you give us a little bit more information about the timeline around shore power?

When will it become available?

And then finally, really very interested in the expanded use of electric trucks.

We've done a lot here in Seattle contracting with large trucks with waste management.

And that our electric vehicles, and this is, I think, a really important area to expand into as a technology improves.

So just wondering whether or not the port will be investing in electric vehicles for the on and off work.

Thank you, Councilman Herbold.

You know, some of those questions were directly operational, which I'll defer to CEO Wolf on.

Maybe he can start and I'll take it from there.

We do have a project, though, right now going on in Tacoma with electric trucks.

Commissioner Bowman and I are in direct conversations with PACCAR, who have battery operated trucks.

There's 6,000 pounds more per truck because of those battery packs.

So they're also interested in hydrogen, which is also maybe interesting as the demands for electricity along the waterfront might exactly exceed our capacity in the near term.

So that's something else we're looking at.

And part of the EIS was that electricity would be Available upon a opening of the dock and I know there was.

an obligation – a sense of concern about will the ships use the electrical capacity if it comes.

And the fact is that when we were estimating originally it was something like 40 percent of vessels were shore power capable, that number has exceeded it significantly, mostly driven by China calling on L.A.

where they have to use it.

And you realize all of our clean air work is really to keep in front of the requirement because we are still in attainment according to the EPA.

And so we want to stay proactive, which makes it not required, but just the right thing to do.

CEO Wolf, do you want to fill in some of the blanks?

Yeah, I'll be brief.

First on the trucks, the question about will the opening of T5 create more truck traffic?

Short answer is yes.

although we are putting a strong emphasis on bringing vessels that have a heavy use of rail, and that's been a priority for both the Seaport Alliance and our terminal operator.

Some of the cargo will shift, though, from Terminal 18 and Terminal 30 over to five, so when you see more truck traffic coming in and out of five, assume that there's probably less truck traffic at Terminal 18 and 30. The other thing that we are working with our terminal operator and our labor partners on is working on an extended gate program.

And the advantage of that would be, as you're probably familiar, the terminals typically open for operation around 7 a.m.

and then they close at 5. We're looking at how we can fund a more permanent extended gate program where we can work after hours.

And the advantage of that is that, of course, then you're working outside of the heavy POV traffic during the day.

and the trucks are more efficient, can move more swiftly in and out of the terminals, which helps operationally, but also helps the environment.

So that's been a project we've been working with our terminal operators on, not just at T5, but really the whole gateway.

So more to come on that, but we're excited to get that going.

On the shore power, the shore power will be available day one when we open.

So we have yet to determine which vessels will shift over to Terminal 5, and part of it is looking at those vessels that have that shore power capability, because we'd like to be able to utilize that investment as soon as we open.

And the carriers have said that they want to use the shore power when they can, and we may incentivize that.

So we're talking with our commission about what that incentive program would look like so that we ensure that those vessels that do have shore power capability are using that investment.

So more to come on that.

And then your question about electrification of trucks.

So there's the yard hostlers within the terminal.

And we're working on trying to get a pilot project with a terminal operator to put some electric trucks, yard hostlers, into the terminal.

And then on a broader sense, what Commissioner Felleman mentioned, we also are working with the trucking industry as that technology advances to move in a direction of piloting dredge trucks as well, because we all see a strong movement to electrification of the trucking industry.

It's expensive right now, so we're gonna need to lean on state and federal dollars, and we're hoping that this federal infrastructure bill will help us support that effort.

Can I add a couple things real quick?

The Port of Seattle is putting up $2 million as part of the West Seattle bridge mitigation efforts to actually pay for that extended gate operation while the bridge is under construction.

So this is part of our commitment to be neighborly.

And also, we're looking for additional parking areas for trucks, so when they're not operating, that they have a place to go.

And you realize these drivers are mostly independent immigrant operators, that they're only being paid when they're moving containers.

It's per container movement.

So the increasing of the efficiency is good for the neighborhood, it's good for the gateway, and it's good for the drivers.

So we're highly motivated to help facilitate that effort.

Councilmember Herbold, any follow-up questions?

Yes, thank you so much, Council President Gonzalez.

The follow-up I have relates specifically to the gap on the establishment of the quiet zone and the reopening of T5.

I am anticipating, first I just want to say I really appreciate your working with the city on the establishment of the quiet zone.

That's been challenging work and has not gone as smoothly as I know we all would have hoped.

This was the outcome of kind of two parallel efforts.

I was pursuing the establishment of the quiet zone using a statement of legislative intent as the vehicle to kind of push SDCI to work with the port in the development of the EIS, and that's where it ultimately is required.

And you are 100 percent fulfilling the obligations of the EIS as it relates to the quiet zone.

Again, I appreciate that.

But the way it's written is it doesn't have to be operational at the same time.

as the opening, and there's going to be, I'm estimating, about a one-year gap between the reopening of T5 and the, not the establishment of the Quiet Zone, but the operationalization of the Quiet Zone.

And I'm just, is there anything that we can do to mitigate the impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods for that one-year period of time?

John, I'll give you that one too.

It's a fair question, Council Member Herbold, and you're correct that per schedule, the quiet zone will be fully functional at the opening of phase two.

Let me do this because I need to circle back to see if there are specific ways either we can expedite that project more quickly and or work with the railroad to see if there's other ways to mitigate the noise.

So if it's okay with you, let me circle back with our team and then we'll get back to you with the specifics.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

You know, on the on-dock equipment, there was, instead of the beeping backup noise, there is this low-frequency system that works to alert the dock workers of the backing up vehicle that does not require that same annoying sound.

So that was one of the things that we were able to do on the terminals.

And I don't know whether such things are possible on rail, or if just having conductors at the crosswalks may be something that could help.

But we'll definitely look into it.

Great, thank you so much.

Are there any other comments or questions colleagues?

I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

Anything else you all want to say in closing to us or members of the viewing public as we continue to work together on this really important overall regional asset?

I'd like to just point out one of the things that are near and dear to me where my professional worlds collide is in an effort to reduce some of the impacts of deep craft ships on our marine life in particular our endangered killer whales.

We have a program called quiet sound that's about to go into operation.

where we're working with the maritime operators and the whale sighting networks to have the vessels reduce their speed about three nautical miles an hour in the presence of our endangered whales.

And this will significantly reduce the noise emanating from the vessels and will enable the whales who use sonar to find the fewer fish that are around right now.

And it's also just something that recently came to my attention and The city is very much part of the fact that in our efforts to restore the Duwamish, and it is one of the most significant Chinook runs in the entire Puget Sound area.

And so you will see the resident killer whales are coming into Puget Sound as we speak in time.

They're the best fishermen in the world.

They're coming here and hanging around Elliott Bay, I'm sure in a large part of all the work that we've been doing.

So I hope we all take satisfaction in the fact that we are making some progress there and we're doing our best to have killer whales communities and commerce coexist.

Thank you for that.

I really appreciate that.

Emphasis again on making sure we can figure out how to coexist on these really important shared issues.

Anything else you all want to share with us before we close out?

On behalf of the Seaport Alliance, I just want to thank the city for the partnership.

The ports, as I see around the world, those ports are strongest when they have those strong partnerships with their key stakeholders.

And the city of Seattle is certainly a critically important partner for the Port of Seattle and the Seaport Alliance.

So I want to just thank you all for your leadership and also for your support of the business and the jobs and the economic activity of our working waterfront.

Thank you so much.

Perfect note to end on there.

Really appreciate you all being with us again this morning.

Appreciate you all proactively Reaching out and looking for an opportunity to create this connectivity and really learned a lot and was reminded about other things that I recall hearing about in the past and really look forward to the ongoing partnership with you all.

Hopefully, we'll have an opportunity to have you all back in council briefing sometime soon to give us more important information about this collective work.

So thank you so much for being with us this morning.

Appreciate your time and all of your hard work.

Happy to do so.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Commissioner.

OK, folks, colleagues, we're going to go ahead and move to our fourth agenda item, which is a preview of today's City Council Actions Council and Regional committees.

As a reminder, the order for today's report out will be as follows.

Council Member Slavok will be first, followed by Council Member Strauss, then Herbold, Juarez, Morales, Mosqueda, Peterson, and Council Member Lewis asked for a special dispensation to be able to go last since he had to pop out of council briefing for a few minutes.

So we're going to go ahead and put him at the end of the queue if there's no objection to that.

No objection to that.

So we'll go ahead and allow Council Member Lewis to give his report right before I give my report in this section.

So without any further delay, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Council Member Stilwant to kick off this section of our agenda.

Good morning.

Thank you and good morning.

There are no items on today's city council agenda from the sustainability and renters rights committee.

However, there is one item on today's city council agenda from my office, a bill that requested by the Palestinian and the end of the deadly exchange movement, which bans the Seattle Police Department from sending officers for training in countries with a track record of human rights abuses.

This bill originally banned the SPD from training, specifically in Israel, because they have done so in the past, learning the tactics brutally used to repress Palestinians.

My office originally drafted this bill to support the end of the exchange movement several months ago when thousands of Seattleites marched to protest the bombing of the Gaza Strip by Israel's right wing political establishment.

Since then, we have expanded the bill to ban the Seattle Police Department from training in any country that has a track record of human rights abuses as documented by established and mainstream international human rights bodies.

On behalf of the activists, leading the struggle.

I'm bringing two amendments this afternoon to the bill that was passed out of committee, the Public Safety Committee, last week with three votes for the bill.

And The two amendments I'm bringing forward are to amend how the bill defines what countries have committed human rights abuses, to close loopholes that might have been created by an amendment to that definition that was passed in the committee that I abstained on.

These amendments preserve a country-neutral, even-handed approach to limiting police training.

If these amendments are adopted, Seattle Police would still have viable training partners with nearly 100 countries around the world, including Canada, the UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and Italy, among others, while honoring the commitments to human rights that this council has gone on record as supporting.

One amendment attached to today's agenda makes it clear to include in the definition human rights abuses occurring not just within the nation's borders but also within territories the nation-state occupies.

There are numerous instances of the military or police forces of a nation abusing the human rights of others outside of that nation's borders, and this amendment simply reflects that reality.

Later this morning, we will circulate a small variation to that published amendment, a technical correction that removes a single word to align the ordinance language with the legal terminology adopted by the International Criminal Code.

The second amendment adds a reference to the International Criminal Code statute, which was left out of the amendment that the Public Safety Committee approved last Tuesday.

The current draft of the legislation that was passed out of the committee cites two multilateral human rights treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights as indicators of a government's intentions to abide by human rights and international law.

However, the amendment left out the International Criminal Court statute, also called the Rome Statute, as another indicator of a government's intentions to abide by human rights and international law.

Since the bill's exclusion provision in subsection B immediately below relies on the International Criminal Court as the body determining violations of humanitarian law, it's only logical to cite the International Criminal Court statute along with the other treaties.

So that's simply what the amendment does.

For those who are interested in this level of granular detail, as of 2019, 123 nations are party to the International Criminal Court statute and therefore would remain viable training partners unless they fail other criteria in the ordinance.

I appreciate the work of Seattle's NWA Exchange, Palestiniat, and the experts in international human rights law whom they have consulted as they work closely with our office to draft these amendments.

I particularly want to appreciate Catherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights for her work on analyzing and helping us tweak this legislation with these final amendments to achieve a bill that establishes a consistent, even-handed policy for the city that is aligned with the council's stated human rights values.

The next two meetings of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee are scheduled for this week.

The first will be tomorrow, Tuesday, September 21st at 9.30 a.m., and the second will be Thursday, September 23rd at 5.30 p.m.

Tuesday's committee will be an opportunity for committee members to vote on two renters' rights bills my office has drafted in response to the crisis of skyrocketing rent.

According to apartmentlist.com, and I've reported this before in briefings, a corporate landlord website, rents in Seattle have risen more than 25% this year alone, which means thousands more will become very likely homeless, and tens of thousands of other working-class Seattleites will experience tremendous housing instability and will remain housed only at the cost of falling deeper and deeper in debt to the for profit rental housing market.

So of the two bills, one is the bill recommended by the Seattle City of Seattle Renters Commission to require six months notice for rent increases to allow tenants the time they will need to rearrange their lives to find other housing if a rent increases more than they can afford.

And then we also have the bill requiring landlords to pay relocation assistance if an outrageously large rent increase forces renters to move.

Both of these bills, as I reported before in briefing sessions, both of these bills have been discussed at length in committee for the past several months in repeated committee meetings.

And I intend to bring them for a vote in Tuesday's committee, that is tomorrow's committee.

I've not seen any amendments.

So if any council member or committee member does intend to propose an amendment, I really urge you to share that during this briefing so that members of the public can consider your proposals and speak to how it will impact their lives.

We know that 25% increases are absolutely unconscionable and clearly Seattle needs rent control with no corporate loopholes.

which is why my office alongside renters rights advocates has prepared rent control legislation that if passed, will go into effect the moment state legislators and the 40 year ban on any regulation of rent.

And if this council does pass rent control, then the Democrats in Olympia who are in a majority in both houses and occupy the governor's mansion will no longer be able to ignore the rent control ban that they have maintained in place for over four decades.

And I would also like to share that on Saturday afternoon, we had a really energized rally at calendars and park in favor of rent control, where over 200 community members showed up despite the rain and the inclement weather, and we had.

community members, renters, union members, renters rights advocates and labor movement leaders speak in favor of Seattle acting on rent control.

While rent control is what we ultimately need, my office has also prepared these two other bills that I mentioned earlier that are coming up for about tomorrow to mitigate the damage done to renters by skyrocketing rents until rent control goes into effect.

At Thursday's committee, we will have a briefing on the rent control legislation that my office has drafted.

I intend to bring rent control to a vote at the December meeting of the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

And this Thursday, we will also have for an intended vote, a bill that is on today's introduction and referral calendar from the Department of Construction and Inspection to clarify that the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance applies to buildings that exit the Multifamily Tax Exemption, or MFTE, program.

This morning, Gene Bock of the Seattle Times reported data from the U.S.

Census Bureau, which gives us some sense of the scale of the problems being faced by renters in the Seattle area, which includes Seattle, of course, and the surrounding region.

An estimated 60,000 Seattle area renters aged 18 and older said their household was behind on the rent in the most recent release of the Census Bureau's ongoing Household Pulse Survey program.

The survey was conducted from August 18th to the 30th.

Even more troubling, as the article mentions, of those 60,000 renters, most owe multiple months' worth of payments to their landlord.

Only about 13,000 of those 60,000 were just one month behind, according to the data.

It's also worth noting, as the article notes, that this survey likely undercounts the number of renters whose households are behind on rent, because not everyone who filled out the survey answered the question regarding their renter or homeowner status so their responses were not included.

Three months ago, the council unanimously passed a resolution from my office urging the mayor and the governor to extend the eviction moratorium through the end of this year.

We explained that not only is the public health emergency not over, but also even after the public health emergency ends, the economic impact on workers will likely last for years afterwards.

In fact, the latest numbers nationwide are extremely, extremely concerning and dramatic with nearly 20% of U.S. renters in debt with the total accumulation of debt, debt, sorry, not debt, debt at close to $20 billion.

That is just humongous.

And ultimately, this problem will not be solved without Renters and working people in the labor movement fighting to cancel COVID debt, demanding that big businesses, Wall Street and the big banks pay for the crisis, not working people.

Locally, ultimately in response to the resolution, the governor and also other petitions and community efforts that were widespread statewide by renters and renter advocates.

Ultimately, the mayor of Seattle and the state governor extended the moratorium, but only for two months at the time, rather than through the end of this year, which was a demand of all renters rights advocates.

And today, of course, we see in the Seattle Times report, it's underlining how terribly insufficient that was.

My office is currently preparing a city council letter to the governor and the mayor We will circulate it for consideration to the Council offices this week as soon as we have the draft ready.

I mean, scale of the crisis, as I said, that the moratorium is not enough.

The moratoriums citywide and statewide, extending those moratoriums the least that elected representatives can do.

But as I said, we really need to cancel COVID debt and we need to pass rent control.

Otherwise, Seattle's housing and homelessness crisis will become orders of magnitude worse when the eviction moratoriums do end.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawant, for that report.

I see at least one hand raised at the moment, so I'm going to go ahead and call on Council Member Morales, and then after Council Member Morales will be Council Member Mosqueda.

Go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

I'll have more comments to make this afternoon, but I did want to just give a heads up that this afternoon I will be asking Council Member Sawant if she would accept me as a co-sponsor of the bill.

I've been pretty clear that I'm supportive of this measure.

And so we'll be doing that in full council as we are supposed to do.

Thank you so much for that.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

I also would like to echo my support for the bill itself.

And Councilmember Sawant, I would also love to know if you'd be open to having a co-sponsor on the amendments that you suggested for this afternoon.

I think they're good complements to the amendments that were considered in committee.

I wasn't able to be in committee with you all.

I appreciate the thinking and the language that Councilmember Herbold brought forward, and I believe in the same vein.

I would like to add my name to the list of amendments.

Thank you.

And yes, thank you, Council Member Morales.

I certainly welcome you as a co-sponsor to the bill.

And just to clarify for the members of the public, we are all talking about the End the Deadly Exchange legislation that is coming up for a vote at the city council this afternoon.

And I really appreciate Council Member Morales adding her name as co-sponsor and Council Member Mosqueda, likewise, I really appreciate you adding yourself as a co-sponsor on the amendments.

And I agree the amendments will improve the strength of the legislation.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Just want to add that given that Council Member Sawant's amendments, as I understand it, amend language that I had offered as a mandatory language in committee.

Just want to clarify that these are, from my perspective, definitely a friendly amendment.

So that's all I wanted to add.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Sawant, I see that you have your hand raised again.

Go ahead.

Yeah, it's just to, first of all, yeah, thank you, Council Member Herbold, for a thing that I appreciate you considering this as a friendly amendment to the amendment, as you had also stated in the committee last week.

I just wanted to make sure I didn't inadvertently miss Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales, if you also wanted to add your name to the amendments, that would be great.

I just wanted to make sure that I heard you right, you were talking about the base legislation.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I did intend to indicate Council Bill 120142. So yes, that's the bill.

And I am fine also sponsoring, co-sponsoring the amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

OK, colleagues, sorry, once again, I put this in the chat, but my apologies for not having my camera on this morning, I am having ongoing internet stability issues.

So my apologies for that.

But I am here I'm watching the screen and and shepherding this conversation accordingly.

Are there any other comments or questions on that report?

Councilmember Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, I am currently reviewing this legislation right now to ensure that all the points that I've asked for are taken into consideration.

It does seem that that is the case.

The only thing that I have not ascertained at this time is whether or not there is an exemption for diplomatic trips.

And so once I ascertain that information, if there is an exemption for diplomatic trips, I will not be bringing an amendment.

If that has not been put within the bill, I will be bringing that amendment.

So that is all, Council President.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Can you say a little bit more about sort of the contours of what a diplomatic amendment would be?

Would it be if diplomats from these identified countries come here, or is it if folks from here go there?

Can you just add a little bit more texture so we have a clearer, since this wasn't discussed during our committee meeting, this is kind of our only informal process to have sort of a back and forth conversation.

So I certainly would appreciate having a better understanding of what you're defining to be included potentially within this amendment that you might want to offer this afternoon.

Yes, simply just the executive protection officers traveling with a mayor if a mayor was to travel abroad.

Okay, thank you so much for that.

If that doesn't, if the bill has already been amended where that that is not in conflict, I won't have an issue.

I'm just coming up to speed as we're in council briefing.

Sure.

No, not not a problem.

Really appreciate it.

Councilmember Herbold, do you have your hand raised?

Thank you so much.

Yeah, so the definitional issue of what is a training exchange, a training slash exchange, I think the third term is, the topic came up in committee.

We did not actually bring any definitional language forward in committee to address some concerns that I know some committee members had.

I do know, though, that central staff has drafted some language that I think that might be useful for you to consider, Councilmember Strauss.

I do not believe that anybody has taken up the drafted language that Council Central Staff has drafted.

I'd be happy to send that on.

I'm sure Council Central Staff is listening in now.

They can maybe send it to you as well.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

I appreciate that.

Councilmember Solano, your hand is raised as well, please.

Thank you.

In response to the specific point that Council Member Strauss raised, yeah, I would be fine with clarifying the language to to clarify that diplomatic trips with elected officials would be exempt.

And I've already informed my staff.

My staff are listening on the listen line, and they will reach out to your office, Council Member Strauss, if you're okay with it.

We're happy to work with you on it.

And we will also check what central staff have worked up to make sure there's no sort of repetitiveness or anything like that.

I also wanted to clarify that, I mean, yes, Council Member Lewis had raised that he had questions about training and that it needs to be better defined.

But as I said in the committee, and I'll just sort of paraphrase what I had said in the committee is that We did not create a narrow definition of training.

And when I say we, I mean in consultation with the activists and the legal experts who are leading this effort in the community.

We did not create a narrow definition of training intentionally because the policy intention is to have the broadest possible interpretation of that word.

We don't because the The point is to not create loopholes.

And unfortunately, the council members who have, I mean, in specific, they raised this concern, but they have not given my office any hypothetical scenario where that would be accidentally prohibited by this language.

I mean, there was this discussion.

Also, my staff member has been talking, Jonathan Rosenblum has been talking to So we haven't not been able to map out any hypothetical scenario even.

And certainly we've not had any specific amendment language forthcoming to define it.

I mean, I would be open to looking at the language, but there isn't any such language.

And we defined We did not define training, just like we define hundreds of words, don't define hundreds of words in other words in the resolution because the actual meaning is the common definition of the word I mean there is a common definition of the word training and our concern would be that the only reason to create a special definition of training would be to then allow certain types of training by human rights violators.

I mean, if that's not the intent, then yeah, as I said, I would like to see the hypothetical scenarios.

And more importantly, as the bill is coming up for a vote, any amendment language, but we have seen neither.

The example given in committee was the SPD getting training in less lethal weapon.

And I made it, I've been making it very clear, of course, that I do not want the Seattle police to be training in the use of crowd control weapons by human rights abusers because we've seen the impact of that.

We saw that in, you know, loud and clear during the Black Lives Matter protest last year.

My office also did a quick scan of the Seattle Municipal Code, which shows that there are dozens of citations of quote unquote training and quote unquote training programs.

that are not accompanied by any legal definition of the word training.

Maybe there is somewhere, but we did not spot it.

For example, SMC 328040, the chief of police is authorized to establish a community service officer program using personnel with a distinctive uniform and insignia to aid regular police officers by performing community services associated with law enforcement.

And so on and so forth, you know, I won't read the full language between the community and the police department and through such community activity through such community services activities and trainings.

Developing potential police officers.

So, you know, again, there's the word training is used, but it's not explained.

There's no legal definition of training.

for the same reason that we did not include a legal definition, because it's a common word that is commonly understood.

So that's what I would say about that.

But if there are any specific thoughts, please let my staff members know.

Okay, thank you so much for that discussion.

Are there any other questions or comments on this legislation?

Council Member Herbold, your hand is up.

I'm not sure if that's a holdover or a new one.

Okay, hold over, got it.

Okay, colleagues, any other comments or questions on this before we go ahead and move on to the next report?

Not seeing any hands raised.

I did get a note from Council Member Mosqueda who's asking for an opportunity to go first.

She has a personal commitment at 1115 that she's gonna travel for, so if there's no objection, Would it be okay if Council Member Esqueda gets a report next?

I'm not hearing any objection.

I also have an 1130. Okay.

Councilmember Strauss, you are next in line.

So why don't I go ahead and hand it over to you to go ahead and give your report, and then Councilmember Esqueda will be able to give her report after yours.

Thank you.

I greatly appreciate that, and I will be brief.

Council President, colleagues, there are no items from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's introduction and referral calendar.

Council Bill 120181, which adopts regional transferable development rights program, There are a few items on the land use and neighborhoods on the IRC today.

Eight appointments to the Pioneer Square Preservation Board and four appointments to the Seattle Planning Commission.

There's one item from the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee on today's full agenda, which is a public hearing on Council Bill 120157, which amends legislation we adopted earlier this year to allow larger buildings for affordable housing to be placed on sites controlled by religious organizations.

This legislation would amend that ordinance to increase the affordability requirement from 60 to 80 percent.

AMI in response to concerns raised by churches and community groups.

The legislation is scheduled to be voted on next week, the September 27th full council meeting.

Since there is a public hearing on this item today, I would ask colleagues hold your questions and comments until we hear from the public regarding this.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is this Wednesday, September 22nd, starting at 9.30 a.m.

There are five items on the agenda, a briefing and public hearing on Council Bill 120154 and Council Bill 120155, which both make annual amendments to the comprehensive plan, including Council Member Mosqueda and my proposal to change the name of single-family zones to neighborhood residential zones.

There will also be a briefing and public hearing on Council Bill 120149 which expands the maximum limit of certain uses in industrial general two zones.

We will also have a briefing and public hearing on Council Bill 120181 which adopts regional transferable development rights program to include Pierce and Snohomish counties.

Lastly, we'll have a public hearing and vote on Council Bill 120153, which adopts provisions for small lots in Belltown to allow for modular construction.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee is also having a special meeting This Friday, September 24th, starting at 2 p.m., there will be six items on the agenda, which we will cover on Wednesday's meeting and come back for a final vote on Friday.

Votes will be on Council Bill 120154, 120155, both amending the comprehensive plan, including the neighborhood residential name change.

We will also have a vote on Council Bill 120149, the Industrial General 2 changes, a vote on Council Bill 120181 relating to regional transferable development rights, and a quarterly tree report from SDCI and OSC.

We will also have a briefing on the public engagement plan for the comprehensive plan major update.

Last week, I was able to receive an in-depth briefing from Seattle City Light about the Skagit relicensing project.

I had a good meeting with Budget Director Ben Noble on Tuesday.

My staff was able to meet with the Finney Neighborhood Association and my team attended the Sustainable Seattle's Leadership Awards.

On Wednesday, I hosted my regularly occurring homelessness coordination meeting for service providers who work in District 6, and I also attended the Regional Transportation Committee meeting, a joint committee between King County and the City of Seattle.

Thursday, I was able to observe Yom Kippur, and on Friday, I met with some of the service providers to continue discussing solutions that are needed in certain places in our district.

This week I will be meeting with Seattle's Central Colleges and local businesses in Ballard.

On Tuesday I'll be meeting with the Chief Seattle Club and then separately with the Chief of Police Adrian Diaz.

Later I'll be discussing maritime and industrial lands process that has been occurring.

I'll also be meeting with the Green Lake Boathouse team to chart the course to get that project to completion at Green Lake.

And I'll be having an update from SDCI on the status of our permitting backlog and what changes need to be made to adjust the goals and hasten the turnaround time on our permits for everyday people.

On Thursday, I'll be attending the Puget Sound Regional Council board meeting, and that afternoon I'll be hosting district office hours.

Friday, I have the Association of Washington Cities board meeting.

I'm looking forward to ratifying our legislative priorities.

Unfortunately, the legislative priorities committee was held on Rosh Hashanah, and I was unable to attend.

Friday, we'll also be having our second land use committee of the week.

Here in District 6, I did not have formal office hours last week due to Yom Kippur, and we're extending this week's district office hours to meet that need.

I was able to meet with a business owner in Fremont where we discussed homelessness, public safety, and the Leary Triangle, and I spent quite a lot of time last week and this coming week continuing to coordinate with service providers and city departments in District 6 to ensure we make the transition to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority as smoothly as possible and to ensure District 6 receives the attention it needs and that District 6 has not received in the last four years.

Thank you, Council President, colleagues.

That is my report and happy to report more next week.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

Any comments or questions on that report?

All right, hearing none.

Thanks again, Council Member Strauss.

Really, really appreciate it and look forward to hearing more about all that exciting work you're doing in your committee.

Council Member Herbold, you are next in line.

Would it be okay if we let Council Member Mosqueda go?

Okay, I'm getting a thumbs up.

So Council Member Mosqueda, go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning colleagues.

Sorry to ask to go out of order.

I do have a doctor's appointment at 1120, so I appreciate your flexibility here and I too will be brief.

I'm looking forward to supporting Councilmember Strauss and all of those items that are in their committee later this week and thank you again Councilmember Strauss for your leadership.

look forward to getting that over the finish line.

Colleagues, we do have two items from the Finance and Housing Committee on today's full council agenda.

These items go together, Council Bill 120156 and Resolution 32017. These relate to the multifamily housing property tax exemption program, MFTE.

This legislation includes the monitoring requirements that we are setting up to weigh policy priorities and trade-offs as we consider the comprehensive program review in 2023. I want to thank colleagues for their amendments and their discussion in committee that I think strengthened the review components of this.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

As a reminder, this is narrow legislation that follows up on the state legislature's actions earlier this year that addressed a number of MFTE requirements that were expiring, expiring units.

And this legislation grants program extensions for projects that are expiring over the next two years.

This legislation addresses only those units that are expiring in the next two years, which applies only to nine different projects in our city.

In the two years to come, between now and 2023, we will have more comprehensive updates to the program informed by deep engagement with community stakeholders including members of the building construction trades and other housing advocates and other labor organizations as we consider various changes to MFTE programs in the upcoming years.

But I did want to make sure to explain that the resolution and council bill in front of us is very narrow, only affects nine projects, and has been considered in committee with various amendments.

Appreciate your consideration here today to make sure that we're able to expedite and continue these projects in front of us as we work towards broader changes in 2023. I want to do note that last Friday was our last Finance and Housing Committee meeting before going into the budget session.

Our Finance and Housing Committee meeting next will be on December 7th, and we're expecting, as the Council President noted, to transition to the Select Budget Committee.

I want to thank the members of central staff who have continued to send around memos updating us about the process, along with the Council President and my office.

You will continue to get information about how to engage in our Select Budget Committee meetings.

Again, starting on September 27th, that's a Monday, next Monday, when we expect to receive the mayor's proposed budget, and we will begin budget deliberations by going through each of the departments that have been called out for review, starting on Wednesday, September 29th, starting at 9.30 a.m.

I'll just end by noting a few items that we did last week.

Last week, I did have a chance to visit the Nordic Museum.

So if Councilmember Strauss is still on the line, I wanted to say how wonderful that was.

And for all the folks who've had the chance to visit, it's truly a national treasure right here in our city to remember not just the history of the Nordic countries, but also the current way in which Nordic relations and communities are represented in Seattle.

and our strong cultural connections as well as global connections that make our region connected to the entire community that is well represented in the Nordic Museum.

And I'm going to be going back with my mom to reflect back on her and our Nordic roots as well.

Council Member Lewis and I did have a chance to meet with members from the Third Door Coalition, as well as I had a chance to participate in the press conference that Council Member Lewis was hosting with members of the South Lake Union Chamber and Lehigh to talk about the importance of setting up the tiny house villages that we have authorized on city-owned land to make sure that we're in compliance with the Department of Commerce's requirements that we have site ownership or site control.

really appreciated that, and I will defer to Councilmember Lewis to summarize as well, but just wanted to say thank you to Councilmember Lewis and members who coordinated that press conference.

To see 75 elders from Mirabella standing out and literally come to the mic and say, yes, we want these tiny house villages in my backyard was very moving.

So I am hopeful that we can see some action on that.

And really, just we'll end there by saying thanks for letting me go early.

I appreciate your generosity, colleagues.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Muscadet, any comments or questions on that report?

All right.

Hearing none.

Thanks again for your flexibility, colleagues.

We're going to go ahead and go back in order here.

And Council Member Herbold is next.

Good morning.

Thank you and good morning.

There are no, actually that's not true.

There is an item from the public safety and human services committee agenda on the full council today.

Council members want to cover that item.

And that, I think I don't have anything further to say.

I appreciate council member, So I want, giving the background on the amendment and letting us know, giving the background on the legislation and letting us know more about the amendment that she's bringing forward.

I do have a Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting this week.

It is a special Friday meeting, starts at 9.30 a.m., and we will have two items on the agenda.

One item is a carryover from previously scheduled presentation on the lead scale study report.

This report is in response to a statement of legislative intent passed by council last fall requesting that the human services department and lead report on the funding required to meet the city's commitment expressed in resolution 31916. to support pre-arrest diversion services for all priority qualifying referrals at scale by 2023. And so this report will help us define the necessary resources in order to fulfill that commitment.

Also on the committee's agenda for Friday, the Seattle Office for Civil Rights Community Task Force will present recommendations on the realignment of the criminal legal system from their report called Centering Impacted Voices.

You might recall that my public safety and human services committee meeting in July heard a presentation on the criminal legal system realignment strategic plan.

This strategic plan resulted from a 2019 budget investment where the council funded a term limited position in the legislative department to write a criminal legal system realignment strategic plan and a position at the office of civil rights to coordinate stakeholder engagement around realigning the criminal legal system.

The resulting strategic plan called realigning Seattle's criminal legal system through a public health approach, the intersection between community wisdom and evidence space practices was presented in July.

And that plan itself relied on previous rounds of stakeholder engagement to identify community guiding principles, which served as a foundation for research into theories on the causes of crime, as well as best practices and expert recommendations on creating efficiencies and alternatives, effective alternatives to the criminal legal system that were in line with the guiding principles.

And so one of the stakeholders to the development of the strategic plan was the community task force.

And as part of their input to the strategic plan, strategic plan, they have developed their own report called Centering Impacted Voices, and what was really important to give them an opportunity, just like we gave central staff the opportunity to present the strategic plan, it was really important to give them an opportunity to present their input to that strategic plan.

They have been meeting for the past year.

The task force is comprised of individuals who have been impacted by the criminal legal system, and their work was, again, to develop recommendations that will help guide policy changes in the criminal legal system within Seattle in order to reduce as much harm as possible, prevent people from ending up in the system to begin with.

And my hope is at some point we can return to review the draft strategic plan for the criminal legal system, as well as this input from the task force, and introduce a resolution that endorses a path forward considering both sets of recommendations.

Other items I'd like to just touch upon very quickly related to public health.

I want to uplift the fact that last week King County Health Officer Dr. Greg Duchin along with King County Executive Constantine and Mayor Durkin and industry leaders announced an additional layer of protection from COVID-19.

I was privileged to be able to join that announcement.

This announcement related to the fact that there will be a verification of vaccination health order.

that will require people attending recreational activities in most public places to show proof that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

This will begin on October 25th.

An analysis by the U-Dub's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that this policy, applied just to restaurants, bars, and gyms alone could stop 18,000 to 76,000 infections, prevent between 421 to 1,760 hospitalizations, and save 63 to 257 lives over six months.

The order will make it possible for small business owners, cultural and hourly workers to get back to work while keeping communities safe.

As chair with oversight of public health, I deeply appreciate the industry leaders and members of the workforce who have engaged so tirelessly with public health to help create this policy.

I'm more than ready to return safely to live music and meals out with family and friends.

I know everybody is.

Our city has led the nation in fighting the pandemic, and I really believe that this is another tool in our toolbox to keep our community safe and return to pre-pandemic activities.

I really feel for the workers and the owners of many of these small businesses that have to basically, every time a member of their workforce is infected, have to close down, send everybody home for a couple of weeks, reopen.

This sort of back and forth does not work for small businesses, and it does not work for workers, and I really want to stand in favor of healthy and safe workplaces.

A couple other updates from the Human Services Department.

I want to mention that the Child Care Nutrition Program is distributing over $50,000 in emergency operating funds to 95 participating family, home, child care providers throughout King County this month.

These funds are provided by the USDA to invest in child care programs that work hard to provide healthy and varied meals to children that they care for and have experienced economic losses during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also, from September 1st through September 23rd, aging and disability staff will be in the 2021 American Indian Alaska Native Health Summit, coordinated by Seattle Regional Office of the Healthcare Resources and Services Administration and Tribal and Urban Indian Organizations in Region 10. It will focus on promising practices and innovative approaches to improve American Indian and Alaska Native health and address disparities during COVID-19.

And then finally, on September 22nd and 23rd, aging disability staff will participate in an AARP Livable Communities workshop online.

This will facilitate discussion tentatively called Equitable Engagement for Equitable Outcomes.

Feel free to contact my office if you want any information about any of these opportunities.

offered by the Human Services Department.

Next week this week.

Oh, I just wanted to say this is something about last week.

I want to just highlight one of the things that we learned in last week's West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force.

A couple really key updates that I want to amplify.

The water taxi will maintain daytime operating hours during the winter instead of going to the regular winter schedule on October 15th.

And so this is great news and really appreciate that King County and SDOT worked together to make this happen.

And of course, it wouldn't have happened without the fact that city voters approved the Seattle Transit Measure last year to provide the funding, this extra amount of funding for additional service over the winter.

Of course, as we do in every West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting, we confirm that the project is still on time and the project is still on schedule for mid-2022 completion and opening.

And then just folks might be interested to know that some early construction activities are actually going to begin next month in October.

And some of those activities range from constructing the work platforms off-site, coring through parts of the bridge to allow installation of the work platforms, and relocating utilities inside the box girders in order to make room for post-tensioning.

So although we say the construction is going to begin in November, I like to say that some of the pre-construction work is beginning in October.

folks are really, really eager to see that work begin.

That's all I have.

Thank you.

Thanks so much, Council Member Herbold.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

All right.

Hearing none, colleagues, we're going to lose some council members here shortly, and I do have a proclamation for presentation this afternoon, and Doug and I missed out on the opportunity to get folks' signatures.

So I'm going to make this really, really quick in order to allow for those who have to leave early to add their signature.

So again, this afternoon, I'll be bringing forward a proclamation recognizing September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

It is the leading cause of death in young people under 15, and here in Seattle and the Puget Sound region, of course, we have national leaders in the field of childhood cancer treatment and recovery.

and a sort of re-energized focus to ensure equitable and culturally appropriate access to healthcare for our communities of color.

So I hope you'll join me in adding your signature to this proclamation, which is a joint proclamation that will also be signed by Mayor Durkan.

So are there any questions about the proclamation before I request the roll call?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the proclamation declaring September as Child Care Cancer Awareness Month.

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Lewis?

Aye.

President Gonzales.

Aye.

Nine in favor.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that special dispensation.

Okay, let's hand it over to Council Member Juarez and then after Council Member Juarez will be Council Member Morales.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I was going to try to skip out for an appointment and I really want to see Council Member Mosqueda's doctor note, but won't show it to me.

Okay, I got you.

I'm gonna bring it back.

I will be brief, as usual.

There are three items of the Public Assets and Native Communities Committee on this afternoon's council agenda.

Two items are reappointments to the Seattle Indian Service Commission.

That is Iris Friday and Colleen Echo Hawk.

The other is a piece of legislation that would designate portions of the waterfront as a park boulevard.

And I look forward to speaking more to these items this afternoon.

In regards to the Seattle Public Library.

Seattle Public Library will be taking action to protect students from exposure to COVID.

The library will not hold in-person activities that encourage the gathering of children unable to be vaccinated and and tutor.com will remain as the main support to address student needs.

These procedures will remain in place until the end of the year.

In regards to Native communities, after a decade-long fight to protect Alaska's Bristol Bay from the harmful impacts of a proposed mine to extract gold and copper, the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, announced that they will halt permitting of the proposed mine.

President Robert Hayano of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay applauded the EPA for protecting Bristol Bay in the long fight against the mining industry.

Seattle-based industries, including restaurants, seafood processing, outdoor recreation, and commercial fishing, and tribes have voiced their strong opposition to this project.

In October 2018, the Seattle Restaurant Association led advocacy efforts and worked with our office to sponsor Resolution 31851 to highlight the city's support for Bristol Bay and the tribes and the nations to request the EPA to halt the permitting of the Pebble Mine.

If you recall, this resolution passed unanimously.

Thank you.

In regards to Sound Transit, I will be attending the Sound Transit Board of Directors meeting this Thursday.

And last week on Friday, we did a D5 tour with Mr. Mike Lindblom of the Seattle Times of the Northgate neighborhood to discuss not only light rail and the Kraken Community Iceplex, but also the John Lewis Bridge.

Those three items, big infrastructures that will bring all of us together, all of our people in the community and open up well over 4000 units of housing.

And that's just what we have right now.

That's not even after we get up and going.

We're anticipating about 50000 people on light rail, 15000 boarding at light at Northgate alone.

And about 800,000 people will cycle through and rotate through the north end for the iceplex.

And right now at a conservative estimate, we're looking at about 2,200 jobs.

And that's including, I believe, two more hotels will come up on the footprint next to the iceplex, the Kraken iceplex with three sheets of ice.

and the market rate, mixed rate, affordable and low income housing are also online.

So we have a lot going on there and I could share more with you guys later and that's it.

So thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Juarez.

Are there any comments or questions on that report?

All right, I'm not seeing any hands raised.

Thanks again for being so quick and to the point.

Next up is Council Member Morales, and then after Council Member Morales will be Council Member Peterson.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Sorry, I forgot that Council Member Lewis was going afterward.

Okay, let's see.

There are no items from the Community Economic Development Committee on the Council agenda, but there are several things on the introduction and referral calendar.

The next committee meeting will be tomorrow, Tuesday at 2 p.m., and among the things that are being referred today, we will have presentations from EDI and from the Office of Arts and Culture.

We have several appointments on the agenda for tomorrow, as well as possible votes on two pieces of legislation.

One is Council Bill 120162, which is the creation of the 15th Avenue DIA.

We did hear that in my committee two weeks ago.

The other is Council Bill 120180. This legislation would align the city's discrimination protections with recent changes to the state's Washington Law Against Discrimination so that it includes discrimination based on citizenship.

and immigration status as well as providing a definition of race that is inclusive of traits historically associated or perceived to be associated with race.

This includes but is not limited to hair texture, effective hairstyles such as afros, braids, locks, and twists.

So we will be discussing that in committee tomorrow.

Department updates.

My staff and I met with the Office of Economic Development last week.

Just a couple of different updates.

Applications and budgets are due September 29th for the neighborhood business organizations to apply for ARPA funds.

Awards will be made in October.

And for the latest round of small business stabilization grants, OEB is still finalizing the selection process.

So my hope is that applications will be made mid-October for folks to apply, and that is for funding connected to financial loss during COVID.

As you all may know, there's been a lot of staffing changes at OED, particularly within the workforce development team.

So they are still moving forward on the agreement with the port that this council asked or authorized last year to create the expansion of the Youth Opportunity Apprenticeship Program.

We funded that at a million dollars last year.

So that work is continuing.

But other work is sort of on hold for now.

And it's my understanding that OED plans to hire two individuals from the Equitable Communities Initiative Task Force, assist with contract management, some of the work they've got going on there.

This weekend, I was invited to be the keynote speaker at Puget Sound SAGE's kickoff of their Community Leadership Institute Fellowship Program.

This year's CLI is the sixth cohort of Black and Brown leaders from around the region who will spend the next year learning the nuts and bolts of local government processes, such as municipal budgeting, elementary procedure, lawmaking, as well as advocacy, storytelling, and communication skills.

I was honored to be asked to address the new class.

The scholarship program itself has been really successful.

I think about 80% of folks who have gone through the program are currently serving on boards and commissions, not just here in Seattle, throughout South King County, and I think they're also expanding into Pierce County.

So a really important program, and I was glad to be able to join them this weekend.

Last week I had office hours at the Columbia City Farmers Market, spoke with constituents about different development projects that are underway for workforce housing here in District 2. I continue to hear from community organizations, especially about the need for more support for acquisition of property.

We know that there continues to be a risk of service providers being displaced because of extremely high cost of land in the city.

This isn't just an issue for housing, although we know that renters and even homeowners are also getting displaced.

But the small community-based programs that support our most vulnerable neighbors are also at risk of displacement.

And so we are hearing from them pretty regularly that they need assistance as well.

We also heard about the need for after school programming and I did have several constituents who came to the farmers market to express their support for the ban on police training that we will be discussing this afternoon.

On that note, last week my staff spoke with Filipino Community Center on the housing note about 94 units of housing affordable to seniors with incomes at 40 to 50 percent AMI and with a ground floor that will have a learning innovation center geared toward paying youth into math and science.

Also, during this meeting, my office was updated on an opportunity for the Filipino Community Center to develop another 45 to 50 units with two to three bedrooms each to curb the displacement of families in District 2. We've got lots of multigenerational and larger families, and so there is definitely a need for larger units to be produced as well.

And this particular project would also include childcare on the ground floor.

So, excited to hear more about that.

I also spoke with El Centro de la Raza, who is developing about an 80 unit project with affordable homes in Columbia City.

And they plan to preserve a local community church that is on the same property.

So I'm glad to hear they're also thinking about how to mitigate displacement and folks in our community.

This week, I'll tour a site with the Somali Health Board and several other groups to learn about their vision.

They're very interested in owning their own building and preserving space for nonprofits, for their religious institutions, and other places that are trying to stay rooted in South Seattle.

This week, I'll be touring two pieces of vacant or unused land in District 2. One of these parcels, there is a group of neighbors who want to build a neighborhood hub.

At the other, the current owner would like to see the property turned into a place that offers services and safe non-congregate shelter for people who are living unhoused.

This property owner has been reaching out to us for several months now and is very interested in working with the city very specifically to provide non-congregate space for folks.

So I'm excited to go really take a look at that project and see what we can do there.

These projects are all examples of anti-displacement, anti-gentrification in action.

They preserve or create affordable community space and affordable commercial space.

And most of these projects include housing for working folks, low-income people, those who really have been displaced from the city and who haven't benefited from our very expensive market rate or luxury projects that are going on in the city.

So I think there's lots happening in South Seattle.

I'm sure in other parts all of your districts as well.

But I know that in order to build a truly equitable city to meet our climate goals.

and to create inclusive thriving neighborhoods.

We're going to really have to re-examine how we've built and planned our city, and I look forward to learning from our community members and working with them, folks who are really leading with community.

I think it is important to recognize the importance of community.

And trying to prioritize the needs of community members.

Particularly as it relates to how the city, how their neighborhoods change and grow.

That is all I have this morning colleagues.

I am happy to answer any questions.

Okay, seeing none, we're going to keep going down the line here.

Next up is Council Member Peterson, and then we will hear from Council Member Lewis.

Good morning, Council Member Peterson.

Good morning, colleagues.

Our City's Transportation Utilities Committee has seven items on this afternoon's full City Council agenda.

All seven items were recommended unanimously by our committee.

I've not heard of any proposed amendments.

A resolution 32019 from our Seattle Department of Transportation conveys an honorary designation of Lenny Wilkins Way onto Thomas Street between 1st Avenue North and 2nd Avenue North to celebrate the basketball legend.

Council Bill 120160 authorizes an innovative new program to encourage development of additional clean and renewable energy sources.

This program, called Renewable Plus, has been carefully crafted by Seattle City Light, and there is a central staff memo that you can review prior to today's meeting or ask central staff any questions that you might have.

To honor a commitment made earlier this year by Seattle City Light, Council 120170 authorizes City Light to administer a proactive Skagit Habitat Enhancement Program that will further improve habitats in the Skagit River watershed for endangered species and salmon recovery.

Council Bill 120174 renews a tunnel permit for the University of Washington downtown at 6th Avenue north of University Street.

Council Bill 120161 updates our water regulations specifically to clarify how and when Seattle Public Utilities will use estimates for reading water meters, all of which are owned by Seattle Public Utilities.

Council Bill 120175 authorizes additional stormwater management partnerships as allowed by state law.

By encouraging additional green stormwater infrastructure, this program would expand our tools for managing our city's stormwater runoff to help prevent pollution of our waterways.

Council Bill 120171 accepts surveillance impact reports on two technologies used by our fire department, hazardous material cameras and emergency scene cameras.

These are essentially handheld cameras.

This will complete batch 4A of the legacy technologies we've been reviewing and approving during the past year for a total of 16 technologies so far.

I'd like to thank the team at Seattle Information Technology for working so seamlessly with other city departments during these reviews, and our central staff analyst, Lisa Kay, for her consistently thorough analysis.

Our Transportation and Utilities Committee meets on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9.30 in the morning, but we are entering our two-month budget season next Monday, so our committee will meet again on Wednesday, December 1st.

Quickly in District 4, last week I joined a panel in my council district at Sandpoint Community Church to discuss public safety with State Rep Javier Valdez, State Senator Mark Dingra, Davida Briscoe of Not This Time, Paul Benz of the Faith Action Network, and Monica Alexander of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission.

I want to thank my legislative aide, Malik Davis, for his work in preparing for that panel.

We focused on the implementation of various new state laws on police reform and the hopes for more effective public safety and crime prevention in our district.

That concludes my report.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Peterson, for that report.

Are there any comments or questions?

All right.

I'm not hearing any or seeing any hands raised, so we'll go ahead and shift gears over to Councilmember Lewis.

Good morning.

Thank you so much, Madam President.

Good morning to you, and thank you for accommodating putting me at the end of the briefing given a conflict I had this morning.

There is nothing from my office or the Select Committee on Homelessness Strategies and Investments on this afternoon's agenda.

The committee meeting for the Select Committee on Strategies, Homelessness, and Investments for Wednesday the 22nd has been canceled.

The reason for this is to consolidate what would have been a very similar agenda with the budget hearing scheduled for next week on Thursday, September 30th, which has been expanded in scope to include a discussion about current investments, as well as our ongoing discussions about the budget for homelessness services and investments in 2022. A decision was made between the Mosqueda office and the Human Services Department and the Regional Homelessness Authority to consolidate those hearings, as seemed to make the most sense, given the considerable overlap in subject matter.

Council Member Mosqueda graciously agreed, and as a result, for the economy of the council, we are going to be merging those hearings into the Thursday 30th session.

So thank you so much, Council Member Mosqueda, for your willingness to accommodate that request.

Speaking of Council Member Mosqueda, I had the privilege of joining her on Wednesday afternoon along with neighbors from the Mirabella and the South Lake Union Chamber of Commerce, among other stakeholders in South Lake Union neighborhood, as part of a YIMBY movement urging the siting of a tiny house village at a location of 145 Yale Street, currently owned by Seattle City Light, in that neighborhood.

I mean, it was really great to see a really good turnout of people with lived experience, some living in the South Lake Union Village, a tiny house village already in the neighborhood located on a low cost.

as well as alumni of the tiny house villages in Interbay and South Lake Union now currently living in a permanent supportive housing placement.

It was also really good to see the South Lake Union Chamber of Commerce as a strong advocate for citing homelessness support assets in their neighborhood as part of our ongoing community effort to expand and scale housing and if necessary, shelter resources to meet head on the scale of the emergency of homelessness that we are facing.

It is my hope that that community and movement that organized will lead to ultimately citing something at that site.

And I look forward to continuing to follow up with executive officials and with those stakeholders to continue to push for a tiny house village to be at the 145 Yale site.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge a letter that my office received from Dan Malone at the Downtown Emergency Service Center, although the letter is on behalf of several service providers who do work in the behavioral mental health response and care area of work, including Asian counseling, referral services, Catholic community services, and Evergreen Treatment Services, among many others, a letter calling for a summit between city, county, and state leaders to discuss the exigent state of behavioral mental health response in the city of Seattle.

and things that can be done to immediately clarify certain obstacles and deliver essential services to the people who absolutely need them.

We need no reminder as we walk around the city of Seattle that so many of our neighbors with undiagnosed or untreated behavioral mental health conditions are living without the support and access to care that they need to be successful.

Many are experiencing long-term chronic homelessness as a result.

This letter makes three discrete asks to be accomplished at this summit.

One is a request for a sophisticated legal analysis of House Bill 1310, which as folks will recall, was legislation considerably changing the scope of interactions law enforcement can have.

very, very critical legislation, but there's concern among some providers that it has muddled the interconnectivity that is sometimes required between a law enforcement response and providers, and just a need to clarify how we as a region are interpreting that legislation and to have an honest conversation on whether there need to be tweaks to that legislation.

The second point, which is somewhat related, is a clarification on the current policy for the role of law enforcement that has been promulgated by law enforcement departments, be it the King County Sheriff or SPD, in the wake of some of this legislation coming down and in the wake of a move that is long overdue to transition a lot of this response to alternative services that are not based in law enforcement.

These providers have received a variety of conflicting interpretations and information from patrol officers that are interacting with these providers and indicating different policies at different times.

This inconsistency makes it difficult for our provider community to do this work and to do their job.

And they're requesting some clarification on the interpretation and instruction to law enforcement and how to engage with these providers.

And this needs to be rectified.

Third, the summit should ID and implement necessary law enforcement alternatives to respond to behavioral mental health calls, as has been envisioned by this council, as has been envisioned by leaders in the state legislature.

and by many of these service providers for years.

This has been something that the letter identifies that is an exigent priority.

They identify that there are several existing services that can take on a bigger load, as well as potentially some future services that are envisioned, and just urge more of a sense of standing this up quickly to respond to the exigent crisis that they experience on the streets every day.

You know, this letter is certainly in line with the urgency that Councilmember Herbold has expressed through the Public Safety Committee with her leadership on front-loading and standing up the resources in our supplemental budget for triage one early, as well as the resources to soup up the dispatch center in order to take on this new mission.

I think that this is certainly a very necessary summit and I applaud the initiative of these providers in convening this conversation.

I think that I don't think there's any doubt that this council will be a very strong and active participant in pursuing these kinds of solutions.

And I really look forward to the work that comes out of a summit like this and urge universal participation from other actors in local governments.

I do want to give a brief plug again for the STAR program, the Support Team Assisted Response in Denver, because I do think it illustrates, at least on the third point, a potential way forward.

Again, that program is deployed in a van with a dual team of a health care clinician, a mental health clinician, and a paramedic.

It can be deployed by 911 dispatch, but can also be deployed by a simple phone number, which is 720-913-7827.

In case you're wondering, 7827 is star as an abbreviation.

I only cite that because as I talk extensively with business owners across my district, particularly in the Pioneer Square neighborhood, there is a crying need for a simple number that can be called to get immediate exigent assistance with mental health calls of this nature that these providers are calling for clarification around.

I very much like the simplicity of a support team that can be accessed by a phone number that includes the four letter acronym, The STAR program in Denver has been lauded, supported, held up, lobbied for intensely by the Denver Police Department as an essential component of public safety outreach, even though STAR is independent of the police department and is a proudly pro-abolitionist service in terms of the movement that won its creation.

And I know this will be an ongoing conversation, and I know Council Member Herbold has done incredible work laying the groundwork for this transition, and that we just as recently as last week took another affirmative step forward on.

So did just want to flag that and lift up that great work from our provider community.

Finally, I do have the Puget Sound Regional Council this coming Thursday and will be representing us at both the operations committee as well as the executive committee.

And we'll report back on anything out of the Puget Sound Regional Council of note at next week's briefing.

And with that, I have no additional updates.

Thank you so much, Council Member Lewis.

I do see one hand raised and that's Council Member Herbold.

So I'm going to go ahead and call on her.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Just very quickly, I appreciate Thanks Member Lewis bringing to my attention this call.

I've obviously seen a lot of the I do want to thank you for your concern and discussion around both the city's response to 1310 as well as concern around the speed at which we are standing up alternatives.

I have not seen this particular call for a summit.

I would very much appreciate to lift up some of the information that we've received from SPD when we've asked.

I've engaged with Chief Diaz numerous times, as well as Dr. Fisher, around the issue of the impacts of 1310 on SPD response.

Just A small excerpt from the chief's statement on the matter.

The chief says, none of these laws in any way prohibit agencies from responding to calls from service.

The idea that the ability to use force is a prerequisite to engaging in investigative stops or responding to individuals in crisis is absurd.

We know from our data and experience that any use of force by Seattle police officers is statistically rare.

We will continue to engage in Terry stops where reasonable and appropriate under law and circumstances presented.

We will continue responding to calls for service involving behavioral health or crisis-related issues, as we do now to over 10,000 crisis-related calls annually.

In each case, as with any case, officers will assess the situation and act with reasonable care, evaluate available resources, employ de-escalation tactics with the goal of achieving voluntary compliance, and determine the appropriate resolution based upon law, policy, and training.

And then last week, because of some recently produced data by David Croman of Crosscut, that there was a one-month reduction in specifically Seattle Police Department involuntary commitments.

The reduction was about 45% over previous previous months.

The uh...

response that i received usd specifically this question was that in light of thirteen ten it's logical that officers are being more critical of when to engage a situation workforce might get used to affect involuntary commitment uh...

it does appear in these types of incidences they are indeed it doesn't say that they're not responding it says that they are engaging in dialogue offering services et cetera but there's no if there is no clear mental comment or imminent uh...

threat to life they're not proceeding to engage physically thirteen tens that specifically addresses the issue of uh...

using on the authority in state law this is me speaking out not quoting s p d thirteen ten specifically addresses the issue of uh...

using uh...

involuntary commitments and authorizes use of force but again that uh...

The legal standard is that somebody is, has a, there's an imminent threat to life, to oneself or to another.

And so what I understand what SPD is saying is that there are, And making an effort to really apply that imminent threat standard before engaging in any physical force that might be necessary to affect an involuntary transfer.

But all of this aside, I really appreciate hearing more about the on-the-street, on-the-ground experiences of our human services providers when they are seeking the assistance of SPD and having these engagements and totally agree and aligned with the desire to get clarity on what the intended impact is of the state law and what the outcomes are for mental health engagements that could result or are resulting today from that intended impact.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Any other comments or questions on this report?

Okay, I do just sort of want to add, I will forward this letter to everyone on the council for your information.

I was one of the recipients of the letter, received that letter as president of the city council and will include the full correspondence, including my response.

to the service providers and all of the other recipients that I sent out pretty immediately after receipt of the letter, just so you all have it for reference.

So you can expect that from my office here pretty shortly.

I just imagine most of us have, others have broad interest in it, so I want to make sure that we are sharing that information with all of those who might be interested.

Okay, I think Let's see, next up is my report.

So I will make this as quick as I possibly can.

There's nothing from the Governance and Education Committee on this week's Introduction and Referral Calendar.

On today's City Council Agenda, there are three items for a vote related to the Governance and Education Committee.

The first is an appointment of Marques Gittins to the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise Levy Oversight Committee.

The second is a reappointment of David Jones as City Auditor.

And lastly, we have Council Bill 120172, which is routine legislation regarding the Third Quarter Employment Ordinance.

The reappointment of David Jones and the council bill I just referenced were both discussed during my governance and education committee last week and are being referred to the full council with a unanimous recommendation that the council vote in favor of both.

The appointment of Marquez Gittins to the FFAP levy oversight committee was not heard in my committee, but the appointment packet related to this appointment was made available to the council members of the public for a couple of weeks at this point and is very straightforward and a well-supported appointment to the Levee Oversight Committee and would encourage you all to vote yes on that appointment as well.

Report of the Governance and Education Committee.

Last week, our committee met.

We had a short meeting with the two items I just mentioned.

We also had an opportunity to hear a report regarding the 2020 Annual Report and 2021 Work Program Update from City Auditor David Jones.

It was an important opportunity for him to report out to members of the public that his office has published 16 reports since January 2020, including reports that focused on critical issues facing our city, including homelessness, utilities, and transportation infrastructure, including our bridges.

The audits included recommendations such as ways to reduce the $27.4M annual funding gap for maintaining Seattle's bridges, improving services for customers with high electricity bills, improving services for unhoused neighbors, and improving oversight of SDOT surveillance technologies.

Lots of rich information in there, much of which has occurred as a result of city council direction and request to the city auditor.

So our thanks to him and his office for the tremendous work.

If you haven't had time to review their auditor's annual report or their work plan, I certainly would recommend that you do so.

It is available on his website and was also shipped with your offices directly by the city auditor.

This Thursday, September 23rd at 10 o'clock a.m., there is a Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board meeting.

I will be attending that meeting, and at this meeting, the Executive Board will consider and possibly approve distribution of millions of dollars that we have received via the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, designed to fund the region's transit agencies.

The Board will also receive an update on the Equity Advisory Committee and the Regional Transportation Plans.

I'm looking forward to that meeting.

And that is all I have to report this morning.

Are there any questions or comments on my report?

I see that Council Member Herbold has her hand raised, but I think that's a holdover.

So I'm going to make that assumption.

Yes, hand has been lowered.

All right.

Well, if there is nothing else for the good of the order, I am going to transition us into executive session.

We have one executive session today that I don't think will be too long.

I'm not seeing any other hands raised, so I'm going to go ahead and do that.

As presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.

The purpose of the executive session is to discuss a real estate transaction.

The council's executive session is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.

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

I expect the time of the executive session to end by 12.05 PM.

If the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I will return to open session and announce the extension and expected duration.

Thank you.