Seattle City Council Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities 3/21/22

Good morning, the March 21st, 2023 meeting of the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will come to order.

Time is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold.

Good morning, here.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Peterson.

Present.

Five present.

Thank you.

And colleagues, if there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning and welcome to the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee and happy spring season.

I want to thank Linda Barron and the rest of the clerk's team for helping out with today's meeting.

Our agenda today has three important items for briefing and discussion.

First on the agenda, we have a joint presentation from our city auditor's office and the Seattle Department of Transportation to hear about the progress made from the 2020 audit of Seattle's aging bridges.

Second on the agenda, we have a presentation from SDOT about the results of an audit conducted for the Federal Department of Transportation and any impacts that that could have for a few local projects.

And lastly, we have a presentation on potential projects that could be funded If transportation PAC fees are finally implemented here in Seattle.

This is a, although just three items it's they are meaty items so it's going to be a packed morning.

So we'll do our best to wrap up at a reasonable time.

At this time I'll go ahead and open the general public comment period for the transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

It looks like we've got about nine people signed up online and one person at least here in the chambers.

Good morning.

So for our hybrid meeting, we have people signed up to give public comment both online and in person.

and I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

I'll start with the speakers who have registered online and then I'll call on speakers who have signed up here in the council chambers.

Public comment period will be up to 20 minutes as usual and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on the speakers two at a time in the order in which registered on the council's website and on the sign-in sheet here in council chambers.

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment period by going to the council's website at seattle.gov forward slash council or by using the sign-in sheet near the public comment microphone toward the front of this council chamber.

A remote speakers once I call a speaker's name staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue.

That is their turn to speak and the speaker must press star 6 to begin speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda or to our committee's oversight responsibilities.

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

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

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

If you're providing public comment remotely, once you have completed your comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open, and we'll begin with the first speaker on the online list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

First, we have Holly Golden, followed by Deb Barker.

Go ahead, Holly.

Good morning.

I'm Holly Golden, and I'm commenting on transportation impact fees on behalf of the NAEP Government Affairs Committee.

It's an issue I've heard a lot about over the last several weeks, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

In short, impact fees are a bad idea right now for at least five reasons.

First, the city of Seattle is in the midst of an undisputed housing crisis.

Adding transportation impact fees at up to $16,000 per unit, according to the draft fee schedule, will make it more expensive to build housing.

These are costs that could make pipeline projects infeasible, and they're costs that will be passed along in higher rents.

The region needs to get its housing crisis under control by lowering the cost to deliver housing before trying to squeeze more out of new projects.

Second, we're also in a climate of economic uncertainty.

This is not the right moment to impose new fees on development.

High costs, including the cost of debt, is already a problem for new projects.

I'm having conversations daily about how to keep permits alive.

This is a step in the wrong direction at a critical moment.

Specifically in third, there's a lot of momentum around downtown activation and revitalization.

Data from the U.S.

Postal Service showed that downtown Seattle lost 2,000 businesses since 2020. The city needs to keep projects moving forward, getting built, and staying open.

Changes in use of existing spaces can also trigger impact fee requirements.

This will hurt small businesses.

Fourth, COVID is still a consideration.

Seattle's office occupancy is at around 50% of pre-pandemic levels.

It's difficult to evaluate transportation impacts and set associated fees when the region is still adjusting to a post-pandemic normal fee.

Fifth, and finally, this isn't the right moment from a policymaking perspective.

As part of the long-range comp plan effort, the city's also overhauling its transportation plan.

If the city wants to adopt transportation impact fees, it needs to first complete its long-range planning so projects eligible for funding match the city's future transportation needs.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Deb Barker followed by Tyler Blackwell.

Go ahead, Deb.

Hi, this is Deb Barker.

I'm a West Seattle resident.

I want to clarify that the West Seattle Bridge was closed for 910 days.

That is two and one half years, not two years, two and a half years.

When your bridges, and you should know that when your bridges close for any period of time, accurate details about how long something takes or doesn't take is important.

So I not only want to clarify the bridge was closed for 910 days or two and a half years, but I support bridge stabilization measures in any way, shape or form, they are urgent.

Council and mayor get it done and get ESSA on the right track to repair these bridges.

I also support traffic impact fees.

I have supported traffic impact fees for the last 15 years, just do it.

The fact that Seattle has left this funding off its plate is an absolute joke among other municipalities because they are already collecting traffic impact fees.

Developers expect it in every municipality except for Seattle where you can really make the big bucks.

So I encourage approval of traffic impact fees and quit leaving money off the table and get those bridges stabilized.

Again, 910 days, the West Seattle High Bridge was closed.

Thanks to SDOT for getting it back open.

And thank you, council members, for supporting bridge repairs.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next, we've got Tyler Blackwell, followed by Jesse Simpson.

Go ahead, Tyler.

Good morning.

My name is Tyler Blackwell, and I am commenting on the 2020 bridge audit on behalf of the Soto Business Improvement Area, or the Soto BIA.

We strongly urge the Seattle City Council to take immediate action to improve our aging bridge infrastructure.

The Soto BIA represents hundreds of businesses just south of downtown, and our mission is to advocate for a clean, safe, connected, and engaged Soto neighborhood.

Bridges are an important part in how people and goods move through Soto, as well as connect with other parts of the city.

According to the 2020 bridge audit, the Soto BIA is home to several major vehicle bridges, and in proximity to several others, all rated as fair.

We experienced the impacts of the West Seattle Bridge and the Spokane Street swing bridge failures, and we have long advocated for the necessary improvements be made on the 4th Avenue South Argo Bridge.

In short, we are very familiar with how vital bridge maintenance is to protecting human lives and helping the economy recover.

The OBIA encourages the City of Seattle to allocate available funds to and significantly increase funding for proper bridge maintenance.

Thank you for your time and your consideration on these matters.

Thank you.

Next, we have Jesse Simpson, followed by Colleen McAleer.

Go ahead, Jesse.

Morning, Chair Peterson, members of the committee.

I'm Jesse Simpson, Government Relations and Policy Manager for the Housing Development or a member-based organization representing all of the nonprofit affordable housing developers in the region, as well as associated architects, contractors, and funders.

Here today to talk about the concerns that HCC has about the proposed transportation impact fees in terms of the impact to overall housing production and funding for affordable housing through mandatory housing affordability.

HCC signed on to a letter by Seattle for Everyone asking you to delay implementation of these proposed transportation impact fees, to engage an additional stakeholder process, and to align any proposed impact fees with the adoption of the, with the renewal of the Move Seattle levy.

We know that the housing affordability crisis is worse than ever, and we need an all-hands-on-deck approach to enact policy that will accelerate housing production, increase funding for affordable housing, and reduce the cost and time it takes to build new homes.

Impact fees directly increase the cost to build homes and have the potential therefore to reduce overall housing production.

We'll also further reduce mandatory housing affordability fees, which are generating over $75 million per year right now for affordable homes.

We ask you to delay any implementation of transportation impact fees.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Thank you.

Next, we have Colleen McAleer, followed by Sandy Shuttler.

Go ahead, Colleen.

Good morning, City Council and Chair Peterson.

My name is Colleen McAleer, representing Northeast Seattle Community Clubs.

A group of us community leaders toured the Five Corners Development intersection at Northeast 45th and the U Village perimeter with Director Greg Spatz and his staff on February 13th.

We thought it would last 30 minutes, but we took two hours.

And why the city needed impact fees became clear for transportation.

Over 1,200 new residential units were added in the last 18 months by various piecemeal builders on already congested streets.

Then there's another addition of another 2,000 units that will be added to the Safeway lot, ages across the street and student housing at Mary Gates Memorial Drive.

So the impacts of all of these developments have created unsafe conditions on sidewalks and for pedestrians that are non-existing, too short, were missing, or cracked.

And there was no corridor, mid-corridor crosswalks at all along Union Bay Place.

So Director Spatz photographed and said, he's not in the budget.

Then we went across the street to cross from a daycare.

We're trying to get an illuminated crosswalk.

No money for that.

No money for bikers to cross.

There was no money for Metro to put a bus stop.

That's Metro's problem, to light rail on North East 45th.

The list goes on and on.

And so the UTAPI perimeter roads are an example of the shortfalls that are created by city rezones and creating wealth for developers, but sticking the taxpayers for the bill for improvements or not doing them at all, let alone paying for the potholes and the wear and tear from construction.

It's time that the city adds those impact fees to developers who already get a boatload of dispensations from SDCI for departures.

And they build up in a piecemeal way to avoid making improvements and leave town with their profits sticking us to pay the bills.

The tax burden is getting outrageous and seniors in my street, three of them have left this year because their social security income does not meet the tax that they have to pay on their homes.

They can't afford it.

So it's only fair that city residents and landowners and developers such as Safeway, they pay a small fee for them to extract profits on their land sales.

And impact fees are the most equitable way to achieve that, to accommodate the impacts.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

And all callers, feel free to send an email of your comments as well.

Next, we have Sandy Shettler, followed by Alicia Ruiz.

Go ahead, Sandy.

Oh, good morning.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes, but speak up.

Oh, hi.

Yeah, sorry.

Hi, good morning.

This is Sandy Shetler.

I support the transportation impact fee.

As we welcome new housing, we need to ensure our infrastructure keeps up and is paid for by diverse sources rather than increasing housing costs through property taxes.

I lived in Rome, Italy for many years, where the city's 3 million people still rely on aqueducts and even roads like the Alpian Way that were built over 2,000 years ago.

Seattle's infrastructure is much less robust and needs to be upgraded to meet the demands and strains of new density.

Please join more than 70 other Washington cities in implementing this common sense fee, which ensures that development helps pay for the infrastructure required to add new homes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we have Alicia Ruiz followed by a Tejal Pastakia.

Go ahead, Alicia.

Good morning, Chair Peterson and members of the committee.

My name is Alicia Ruiz.

I'm here today representing the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish County and our over 2,600 members.

Today, you will hear about some really cool things that these funds from a new transportation impact fee will pay for.

But I need to ask you to stop and ask yourself, at what cost?

What are you willing to risk to make this happen?

Well, I'll tell you, it's housing.

You are going to risk housing, and are you truly prepared for that?

In the past few years, I've been screaming from the rooftops that townhomes are in trouble.

I often hear in response, well, Alicia, that's not possible.

I see five townhome projects, and I drive home from work.

Yes, well, those projects were permitted one to two years ago, and we are currently building through that pipeline, but the pipeline is running dry.

According to STCI's own data, there were four townhome permit applications in January.

Yes, four.

Before MHA, we averaged between 45 and 50 townhome applications per month.

The MHA fee is slowly killing townhomes because projects aren't penciling.

Therefore, builders stop building them.

The same will happen with an impact fee.

How can a city call for more affordable housing when they're making housing more expensive?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our last online speaker is Tejal Pastakia.

Go ahead, Tejal.

Oh, actually, they're not present.

We're going to switch to our in-person speakers.

Welcome, Patrick Foley.

Either microphone should work, and go ahead and pull it very close to yourself so we can hear you.

Good morning, Councilmember Peterson.

Thanks for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Patrick Foley.

I'm a co-founder and managing partner of Lake Union Partners.

We're a Seattle-based development company.

I'm one of the few independents that are left in the city doing work.

We're mostly known, started our company in 2009. We're mostly known for doing mixed income development, mostly in Seattle, and we do a lot of historic preservation as well.

And we are known more recently for doing a lot of the work at 23rd and Union at Midtown Square and the three other projects at that intersection.

And I highlight those, and again, I'm speaking about transportation impact fees.

I highlight those because that is the heart of the black community in Seattle.

Really important development.

We brought a lot of members of the community in to work with us, participate in the project, and we transacted 20% of the block to Africatown Community Land Trust so that they could build 100% affordable project owned by the black community.

And that project's being built right now, or our project is finished.

Combined, the two projects together are about almost 600, or close to 578 units total.

And across the block, we have half that housing is affordable because of our ability to go in and transact and do that work.

My concern and why I'm speaking against transportation impact fees is if the fees that are being proposed today were in place then, we wouldn't have been able to do the project.

It would have added another eight to $10 million in cost and we would not have transacted.

We've also given opportunities for people to own the retail spaces from that community.

That would not have happened.

So I'm speaking out that these kinds of things can't move forward if we keep adding costs.

So affordable housing, you hear everyone talk about that.

If you're sincere in your desire to bring more affordable housing to the city, then you'll vote against moving these fees forward.

So we want to invest in more preservation downtown and converting office to residential, but we won't be able to.

So thanks for hearing me out.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for coming down here.

Okay, colleagues, that concludes our public speakers.

So we will go ahead and close the public comment period.

I want to thank all the public commenters who signed up to speak and those who came in person, appreciate it.

We'll move on to the first item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the full title of the first agenda item into the record.

Agenda item one, progress update on 2020 bridge audit recommendations for briefing and discussion

Thank you, colleagues.

We're going to get updated on progress made with the recommendations of the bridge audit.

As you know, the audit of our city's aging bridges was called for in response to the unexpected closure of the West Seattle Bridge back in 2020. The purpose of the audit was to confirm the condition of Seattle's bridges and to assess how the city manages our bridge assets.

As we know, bridges serve multiple modes of transportation, connect our communities, keep our economy moving.

The audit found several of our city's bridges are in poor condition, meaning that they're considered structurally deficient.

And the audit provided 10 recommendations to improve overall management of Seattle's bridge safety.

So today we have with us our city auditor's office and the City Department of Transportation, SDOT.

We'll join them.

and we'll get an update on the progress during the past two and a half years.

We also want to hear from SDOT what they're doing for bridge safety over the next year beyond just this audit report.

This includes not only bridge maintenance but also seismic upgrades and preparation to replace bridges if necessary.

So we'll go ahead and turn it over to our presenters.

We'll welcome David G. Jones and Melissa Alderson from the City Auditor's Office and Again, we also have with us the folks from SDOT who are focused on bridges.

So, David G. Jones, welcome.

Thanks for inviting us here today to provide an update on the status of recommendations from our 2020 report on bridge maintenance.

If you could move to the next slide, please.

And for members of the public who are interested in reading that reports that's available on our website, and I'll give you a long address but it's www.seattle.gov slash city auditor slash reports and navigate to the section on 2020 reports.

Councilmember Peterson asked us to complete an audit about the bridges owned and maintained by the Seattle Department of Transportation, which I'm going to refer to, will refer to as SDOT throughout the remainder of this presentation.

He made this request after the unexpected closure of the West Seattle High Bridge in March of 2020. This closure raised questions about the adequacy of the city's oversight of its bridge portfolio.

Could you move to the next slide, please?

And during our audit, what we did is we looked at the condition of and spending on 77 vehicle bridges that are owned and maintained by SDOT.

And this slide that you see right here now really summarizes some of the key findings from our report.

Essentially, we found that the City of Seattle wasn't spending enough money annually on the upkeep and preservation of its bridges, and that the condition of the city's bridges had worsened over the 10-year period we examined.

Now these issues of deteriorating infrastructure and funding challenges were and are so faced by many other cities in the United States.

In our report, we concluded and made recommendations to encourage SDOT to strengthen its bridge asset management practices.

And what I'm going to do now is turn it over to Melissa Alderson of our office, who will run you through the recommendations we made in our report.

And as Council Member Peterson wanted us to focus on today, their current implementation status.

So take it away, Melissa.

Thank you.

Good morning.

And so, as was mentioned, we made 10 audit recommendations which SDOT is in the process of implementing.

And the status updates that we share with you today will be reflected on our online recommendation follow-up dashboard sometime next month when we finish our annual recommendation follow-up process, which is for all of our audits.

So in this presentation today, our office will share a summary of the recommendations, a little bit of the background, and then SDOT will explain their work so far and their progress in implementing them.

Just to give you a high-level summary of where SDOT is at with the 10 recommendations, of the 10, one of them is implemented, and then the remaining nine are pending.

And SDOT will provide an estimate of when they expect to finish those.

So now we are going to switch presentations and then together with SDOT go over each recommendation in detail.

Thank you.

I think we could cut to the next slide from here.

Oh, and the SDOT team would introduce himself.

That would be great.

I know we've got some additional talent here with us today.

Yeah, my name is Angel Garcia.

I was hired to implement the audit recommendations.

I'll pass it over to Kit.

Hello, my name is Kit Liu with SDOT.

I'm a manager of bridge operations and bridge engineering.

Hi, I'm Greg Spatz, SDOT Director.

Welcome.

Thank you, everybody, for being here, and thanks for working with the City Auditor on this.

Great.

So our first recommendation was for SDOT to resolve all of the issues that the Federal Highway Administration identified in a 2019 review.

This recommendation is pending, but we understand that there's only 1 item remaining on the list, which I believe angel from will tell us more about.

Yes, so go to the next slide please.

A complete overhaul of bridge file management system has been nearly completed for compliance of qualification of personnel inspection, frequency, inspection procedures and inventory data.

We shared the new system with FHWA and WSDOT at the end of 2022 ahead of an, excuse me, ahead of an informal audit review.

FHWA completed their review and stated the system to be outstanding and that we would have been found in full compliance if it was a formal audit.

WSDOT also completed their review and we are still waiting to hear back their results in the coming weeks.

The last remaining item will be completed in April, which is to migrate historical correspondence into the new system.

Go to the next slide please.

The 10 recommendations are heavily dependent on 1 another, but getting recommendation 1 substantially complete was foundational was a foundational step to ensure we had accurate bridge component level data.

We cannot have started the life cycle cost analysis without it.

And the life cycle cost cost analysis will inform the staffing analysis and the staffing analysis relies on reducing reimbursable work.

changing private bridge inspection policy, and identifying technology upgrades, and all of those will feed into the development of the bridge strategic asset management plan.

Next slide, please.

For recommendation two, when we did our audit, SDOT had a practice of doing what they called reimbursable work for other entities.

And so, given SDOT's critical bridge needs, we recommended that SDOT reduce the amount of reimbursable work that they were doing and instead prioritize work on their own bridges.

SDOT implemented this recommendation and I'll turn it over to Angel to talk about how they did that.

So, a new policy went into effect in 2023 that highlights reimbursable work and will allow road restructures crews to focus on complex multi day repair.

Repairs are underway right now on Queen Anne, Magnolia and Ballard bridges and will include things like ball repair, epoxy crack injection and resealing of expansion work.

On Queen Anne Bridge alone, they're going to spend an estimated 20 days addressing seven work orders that will total roughly $123,000.

And this work will likely not be able to be scheduled without that change in policy.

Next slide, please.

The rest of our audit recommendations we're going to talk about in groups because they relate to each other.

So for recommendation three, Seattle has an old ordinance that says that SDOT is responsible for annually inspecting private bridges.

And we recommended that SDOT revise that ordinance to be better aligned with current needs and their available resources.

And then recommendation four is to create new policies and procedures that would put that change into practice.

So recommendations three and four are pending and Angel will share the status.

So, has determined that revising an ordinance isn't needed and that we can shift the responsibility of private bridge inspection to owners through a director's role.

Seattle municipal code 3.2 refers to ordinance 102228, which grants the director of transportation authority to adopt rules as necessary for interpretation of the Seattle municipal code.

This will allow our inspectors to focus on rotary structures assets.

We expect to have these recommendations implemented by the end of the year.

We can turn that back over to Melissa.

Thank you.

The recommendations 5, 6, and 7 are for SDOT to perform a staffing analysis to determine what positions they need in order to implement a bridge preservation program, or as SDOT refers to as a bridge strategic asset management plan.

We recommended that the staffing analysis incorporate the goals from the city's race and social justice initiative and include an evaluation of the technology tools that bridge crews use.

Recommendations 567 are pending.

This work is underway and Angel will tell us more.

So we are delivering these recommendations in 4 parts.

We are identifying immediate resource needs by early quarter 2 of this year.

We're conducting a cost benefit analysis to identify technology solutions to increase resource efficiency by the end of quarter 2 of this year.

We're completing a racial equity toolkit on staff diversity to incorporate race and social justice values into the staffing analysis by quarter 3. And we're going to finalize the staffing analysis with resource needs identified in the life cycle cost analysis by quarter four of these years.

And presently, all these efforts are underway right now happening concurrently.

Back to you, Melissa.

Thank you.

So our last recommendations here are the biggest in terms of effort, but also impact.

So recommendation eight and nine.

We recommended that SDOT recalculate the useful life of their bridges in a more granular way and then use that information to inform and prioritize their bridge work.

So these recommendations eight and nine are also pending and in progress.

I'll turn it over to Angel.

Thank you.

So we have grouped our bridges by route classification and material type and are presently working on the unconstrained life cycle plan to identify treatments and cycles for routine and preservation maintenance, capital rehabilitation and replacement, as well as identify what treatments are needed now to improve a bridges condition.

We will then develop different life cycle plan scenarios driven by performance measure, excuse me, performance measures, risk and funding constraints.

When we finalize the life cycle plans, we will have established remaining useful remaining service life of our bridges and identify timing for bridge treatments.

And we plan to have this done by quarter 4 of this year.

Our last recommendation, recommendation 10 takes all the information from the previous recommendations and ask SDOT to develop a bridge asset management plan.

We also recommend in this recommendation, a citywide effort to develop and implement strategies to fill the bridge maintenance funding gap.

So this recommendation is pending and we understand that SDOT plans to complete their bridge strategic asset management plan this year.

But we recognize that the citywide effort to address the funding gap will likely take more time.

Pass over to Angel.

So, together, the audit recommendations create the bridge strategic asset management plan, a holistic proactive approach to bridge preservation that plan for the plans for the right treatment at the right time.

The bridge strategic asset management plan will highlight life cycle plans as well as inventory and condition bridge performance, risk management and implementation strategies.

And we plan to have this completed by the end of this year as well.

So just speaking for our office, the Office of City Auditor, I think we're done with this portion of the presentation.

But I do want to note that SDOT officials were very cooperative during our audit.

And this is particularly we appreciate it because it was in the middle of their having to deal with the unexpected problems with the West Seattle High Bridge.

So we really appreciate how open and transparent SDOT was during that time with us.

I just want to quickly thank the people who worked on this audit for our office, Sean Dublik, Jane Dunkel, Louisa Montessanti, and Melissa Alderson.

As you can see from the slide, anytime the committee would like a further update on the status of the recommendations or audit report, we're more than willing to come back to you.

We're, from our office, happy to answer any questions that you might have for us at this point.

Thank you auditor Jones and just for the, my colleagues in the viewing public, there are a few more slides.

We're going to talk about some bridge bridge investment and activity.

They're doing more immediately.

We wanted to have a comprehensive view of this today, but the, so the auditor will drop off.

I'll hear more from stop, but we can pause here for questions about the.

the 10 recommendations and audit.

I see Council Member Herbold has her hand up.

If I might, Council Member Herbold, do you mind if I make some remarks just to overview here?

So really, first of all, we will have the auditor come back with SDOT in December of this year to take another look at where SDOT is on these recommendations from the 2020 Bridge Audit.

You'll be reminded by A lot of public callers and people emailing us that, you know, with the West Seattle bridge shut down.

Three years ago and the audit recommendations published two and a half years ago.

There's been a lot of time to accelerate.

The improvements to our bridge assets in Seattle, and so I'm a little bit concerned with what this the top level view of this update is really that, you know, 9 out of 10. Of the recommendations are incomplete and so we so I appreciate you all coming here to sort of explain the context behind.

that.

There's a lot of planning that's going into this.

I appreciate you bringing on additional talent to help with this, Director Spatz.

But what do we say to those who will look at this and see, well, nine out of 10 haven't been implemented.

Is this really a priority for SDOT?

And what can we tell our constituents who are writing to us about bridges?

Thank you.

And Director Spatz, if you wanna respond to that, or we can get questions from Councilor Herbold and see if any other comments or questions come in.

Yes, I was going to give the introduction to the next section, so I think I can address your questions when I do that.

So let me pass it to Council Member Herbold.

But just in case I missed the opportunity, I wanted to thank Mr. Jones and Ms. Alderson for all of your efforts.

I have found your work to be extremely helpful in onboarding at SDOT.

And I believe you've set a strong foundation for us to build a modernized approach, bringing contemporary asset management techniques to the bridge portfolio of assets.

So kudos to you and thank you so much.

Thank you, Director Spatz.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes, and this is a question for the city auditor.

So thank you for letting me get in here before we move to the next part of the presentation.

So given that, as you have shared and Council Member Peterson has lifted up, so many of the recommendations are marked as pending.

I'm curious as to sort of what the auditor's role is in I understand you don't have a prodding role, but maybe a role that confirms that the department is on the right track as they develop.

policy that conforms with the recommendations.

In particular, I'm interested in examples where the city auditor may have recommended a legislative action and instead the department is taking the action of doing a director's rule.

Is that something that you would review once that director's rule was proposed to make sure that it captures and addresses the issue that you've identified as needing to be captured and that it does so sufficiently?

Or would you not opine on that until the end of the process?

Let me give you an answer, Council Member Herzl.

Tell me if I'm not answering your question, but we follow up on the status of all our recommendations that have not been resolved, recommendations that we made in our reports.

Just like any other recommendation, we follow that recommendation until it's clear it's either been implemented, or there's a reason to close it, you know, like the department's not going to do it.

And in a specific example you raised about the director's rule, we will wait and see what SDOT does and gets back to us and says, hey, we've done this in order to meet your recommendation.

Sometimes we'll say it's implemented, even if they don't do the precise thing.

It's the spirit of the recommendation, the problem we're trying to get to.

They end up dealing with.

And so we will be following up on this to answer your question on this specific thing on the director's rule involving inspection of private bridges.

We will be following up that.

We will look at what has done.

has done, says it has done, to implement that recommendation and make some sort of judgment on does this meet our intent.

So I hope I've answered your question.

If not, please prod me.

That's sort of the prodding question.

I think you have answered, but let me just put a little bit of a finer point on it.

You would not review the draft director's rule when it's being developed and considered internally by SDOT.

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

That's their process to go through.

We would just look at whatever the end product is and look at it in relation to the specific recommendation we made in our report.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Council Member Bold.

Colleagues, any other questions while our auditor team is here?

Although they will be remaining for the second item on the agenda.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair, Auditor Jones, Melissa, great to see you, Director Spatz, Francesca, great to see you as well.

My question is very similar to Councilmember Herbold's and maybe I'll just say it in a different way, which is, The recommendation to have a director's rule change to the ordinance instead of changing the ordinance.

Can you.

Just in really plain language tell me why we wouldn't change the ordinance if it is in statute.

I'll, I'm going to make, take a shot at this, but Melissa Alderson, if Melissa, you're here, she knows about this.

We consulted with the city attorney's office and apparently there is existing code that gives the department of transportation, the ability to determine how often it should inspect private bridges.

It's Seattle Municipal Code 15.76.010.

So I guess the short answer to your question is, the authority may already be there for the department to do this.

And it seems like, at least so far, the indications are they're perhaps amenable to doing something along those lines, to exercising that authority to give them more flexibility about They inspect private bridges you know and the reason why we brought up in a report is because, again, it was, you know, it's not necessarily a huge thing but it's, you know, about point five FTE effort.

That's sort of taken away from s dot they have to look at these private bridges versus looking at their own bridges.

and we just, our recommendation said, hey, is there some way you can give yourself more flexibility so you could spend more of your time of your staff inspecting our bridges, the Seattle, the city of Seattle's bridges.

Melissa, do you want to add anything to what I said or did I cover council members Strauss's question appropriately?

You covered it great, Dave.

I'll just add that, yeah, we did talk to the city attorney's office, just to clarify our understanding of the language.

And they advise that the current ordinance language does allow for SDOT to create a director's rule that kind of specifies in more detail what their inspection schedule of private bridges should be.

So there wouldn't be any conflict there if they decided to go that route.

Wonderful.

This is very helpful.

Just to clarify what I've heard is that the code that is currently on our books is not prescriptive of the schedule.

Rather, it is broad in stating that the inspections need to occur and is up to us to determine that schedule.

Is that a correct understanding?

Yes, and Council Member Strauss, the specific language, I'll just read it to you quickly.

You know, the Director of Transportation may annually, here's the key part, or as often as deemed necessary for the protection of the public safety, inspect or cause to be inspect, you know, private regions.

So the Director does have that flexibility, the Director of SDOT.

to do that.

And I think, you know, this is something that they could do now.

They don't have to wait for an ordinance to be passed, you know, which is a more lengthy process.

So, which is not to say, not maybe getting on shaky ground here, not to say that you could go that route, the council could decide to go that route on city, but there is the, they could do this now.

They have the flexibility to determine the schedule of their inspection on private bridges.

Sorry.

And maybe this is my misunderstanding for not digging not I didn't have the pre briefing of this agenda item as I.

prefer to have before these meetings and so you're seeing a little bit more of me learning and in the real time is this ordinance not also on publicly owned bridges, it is simply for privately owned bridges.

the particular section of the Seattle Municipal Code that I quoted is just for private bridges.

The recommendation that we had was just about private bridges.

I don't know if I'm clarifying that for you.

Perfect, Auditor Jones.

Then my follow-up question to that is, do we have a system or ordinance or requirement for inspections of our publicly owned bridges?

I'm going to defer to S.

on that because I don't know that answer to that question with absolute certainty.

So I will defer to S.

to answer that particular question, if you don't mind.

Seems like a great question for Kit Liu.

Go ahead, if you could answer that, but the shortage is yes, federal and state requirements impose those inspections on us, but go ahead kit.

Can you respond?

Are you are you there?

Are you frozen?

It's connection just went down.

Hi, everyone.

I am Megan shepherd in the Seattle Department of transportation, and I've been working closely with the roadway structures team for the past few months to support the implementation of the audit recommendations.

And while we wait for Kit to get back up and connected, he really is the expert bridge engineer.

But our requirements to inspect our bridges are set by the federal government.

They're very well governed.

It's very prescribed at what frequency we must inspect our bridges.

And we always meet that schedule.

Inspecting our own bridges is our top priority.

By implementing this recommendation related to private bridges, what this puts us in a better position to do is just improve the efficiency of our inspectors related to our entire body of assets.

Roadway structures, as Greg and Kit will talk about, in addition to bridges, is also responsible for a variety of infrastructure in the right-of-way, including retaining walls, area ways.

um, stairwells.

So, um, we, we meet the federal requirements on bridge inspections, which is typically a two year cycle for all of our structures.

And the implementation of this change as a director's role will allow our inspection team a little bit more capacity as it relates to our entire body of assets.

Thank you, uh, chair.

I've got another question, but I do see we've got a hand up.

Well, I just wanted to, this is Calvin Schauer, Council Central staff.

I just wanted to add in that it's that capacity issue that really was the gist of the auditor's recommendation, that it was taking public resources and directing it to fulfill this private responsibility.

And so the idea is to Uh, you know, still have that requirement, but, um, you know, have have private entities go to other sources to provide those services and not have a draw on the same resources that we need for.

Right.

Very helpful.

Chair, I do have questions on slide 6 of this presentation.

I know that you were just about to transfer.

Were you about to transfer to.

What is listed as presentation 1 on ledger star.

Yeah, go ahead and ask your question on slide six.

Looks like the updated version that we are using today is different than what is posted to legislature.

No, you are correct.

Here we are.

So question here is regarding repairs underway now and next.

Queen Anne Bridge, Magnolia Bridge, Ballard Bridge.

What I'm seeing is Can you explain to me what a spalls repair is?

I understand that we also have epoxy crack injections resealing expansion joints.

I know that there's a repaving project for 15th Avenue, including the Ballard Bridge.

What is more of interest to me is what Future looking work is being done to these bridges and just for a more.

In depth explanation of what repairs are underway now and next, how this keeps our bridge working, how it extends the lifetime of the bridge.

But then I'm going to transfer into what's next.

So, I could take that 1. And, you know, excuse me, I'm not an engineer, so I might not do this as eloquently as kit would be if he was here, but a small repair is when you have.

The surface level deck or railing concrete, basically, there's bits of it that will break away from the reinforcement and it creates essentially, like, it could be like a pothole on the bridge is what it might look like if it's on the deck.

So it's fixing those essentially.

Fixing the concrete.

That's their epoxy crack ejection is plugging up the cracks, the finer cracks you might see on bridges and resealing expansion joints is keeping moisture out of them.

I believe and hopefully kick gets back on soon to confirm all that.

But what they what this slide is highlighting is the spot repair that our crews do.

This allows them to do it quicker and get to it more timely and plan for.

Like, addressing all of the spot repairs needed on a bridge after what's been identified during an inspection, it doesn't necessarily improve the condition of the bridge, but it could potentially slow the deterioration of existing defects that are on there by repairing them at that time.

The core message of this slide is that by reducing the amount of hours that our in-house crews spend maintaining third-party assets, through the policy that I initiated shortly after I got to SDOT in September and got finalized in time to be effective for the beginning of 2023, is that the routine type maintenance that our crews perform, we would have substantially more capacity to do that.

and the ability to schedule longer stretches of that on a particular bridge because they're not getting pulled away to do other third-party work.

This is really in parallel with what we were just talking about regarding the inspectors.

Both with our city forces capacity on routine maintenance and our city forces capacity on inspectors, we want that capacity to be focused on city assets.

and let owners of private assets find other sources of expertise for those activities.

Smart.

I think that's great.

I mean, job well done, right?

We need to extend our capacity to have our city workers focus on our public assets.

As you all know, I am a interested and avid champion of the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation Corridor, known as the BERT.

on 15th Avenue Northwest and then West traveling through Interbay.

This is the third most used North-South corridor only behind I-5 and State Route 99. There has been interest from the federal delegation of providing the city funding to make either repairs or replacement to the Ballard Bridge and other bridges in the area.

What I was told at the time is that our bridges do not have the studies completed to allow us to receive federal funds.

Now, I want to just give you the opportunity to double check that that's correct.

And if that is correct, that we are not in a position where we can receive federal funding, what needs to be done to accept the federal funding?

And we can have Estad answer that.

And also, I think the next slides from Estad may help to address that as well.

But Estad, did you want to answer that right now?

Well, I mean, that's a question about the longer term large major maintenance plans, which really are in the second, that more pertains to the second half of the presentation.

Great, well then I will prep you with the follow up question that I will have to that which is that I provided a statement of legislative intent, Latin during last year's budget about spending the $25 million that we've received for the state in the Bert Bauer interbay regional transportation corridor.

I think you can clearly see where I'm leading you now, which is that we have interest from our federal delegation to provide federal funding to assist us with our bridge replacement and maintenance.

It is my understanding at this time that we as the city do not have the studies completed to be able to receive those funds.

We have state funding and this is the second round of state funding, at least in this corridor, To assist us in these matters.

I have not at this date and time received a plan or action item for how we will spend these federal or the state dollars.

My slide has a due date of July 1. I know that there is oftentimes with slides the request to.

turn those slides in later.

So I'm going to double check with you here and now on the record that you are indeed on track to be able to provide this slide report by July 1st.

But really I think you're seeing where I'm going with this.

We have state funding available to us now.

We have a desire for federal funding And to my knowledge at this point and I'm here to be proven wrong today so please prove me wrong that we is my understanding that we do not currently have a plan to spend the city or the state dollars, and that we are not currently in a place to be able to accept the federal funding for these bridges.

So, those are my questions if you'd like to jump to the next PowerPoint and I can come back to these questions when, when you find it's an appropriate time.

Very good, staff was expecting that question and has a response prepared that they'll share very shortly later on in this presentation here.

So transitioning from the audit to the broader bridge program overview, the team asked me to kind of make this transition to also help just update the committee on my own leadership and engagement on the bridge issue in the six months that I've been in the job.

You know, last summer, on the day that Mayor Harrell announced the nominee for SDOT director I ended up meeting Council Member Peterson out on the University Bridge, later that day, and we toured the inside of the bridge and we learned about these systems that were built many years ago for this movable bridge.

And I committed to Council Member Peterson at that time that maintaining our bridge assets and strengthening the approach that we bring to maintaining those assets would be a core priority of mine.

And that mirrored the interests of Mayor Harrell as well.

You know, as I was getting through the confirmation process last summer and into the early fall, you know, generally I wanted to conduct a listening tour in the fall with Seattleites to learn about their needs and aspirations for their streets and their transportation.

But it was clear to me last summer that there was consensus, broad consensus, that two related focus areas, everybody agreed, should be an early focus area for me in the job.

And that was, number one, strengthening Vision Zero.

And that's why I commenced a top-to-bottom review of that program on my first day of work on September 7th.

And number two was strengthening our approach to the bridge assets.

As I was preparing to engage on the topic and preparing for my confirmation hearings, I spent a lot of time with the bridge audit and I shared it with some of my colleagues from Los Angeles who were leaders in maintaining a very large portfolio of bridge assets, street related bridge assets in LA.

And the people I consulted felt that the audit was a very strong guiding document in how we could build a strong foundation to modernize our approach to the bridge network.

You know, when I arrived, I wanted to kind of accelerate delivery of the bridge audit recommendations.

I thought there was a window of opportunity to do that because the West Seattle High Bridge reopened within a couple of days of my arrival.

The only thing I contributed to that is emcee at the press conference.

But I remember thinking Maybe there's some talent that worked on the West Seattle Bridge that could be redeployed to really driving a comprehensive follow through on the bridge audit recommendations.

And as the executive team huddled up on that question, everyone felt strongly that Megan Shepard was the right leader among our wonderful team of leaders who worked on the West Seattle Bridge project to shift her attention for a period of time.

to provide sort of high-level guidance, support, and communications around the implementation of the audit recommendations, which have been in such great hands all along with Angel.

And thank you, Angel, so much for your leadership on this very important issue.

And I think Angel has felt very well supported with Megan coming in.

And it's also freed up Matt Donohue, who's been running the Roadway Structures Group, to focus on other issues like the issues that we've been having with the Spokane Street Bridge.

So it felt like the right thing to do to bring Megan over to Roadway Structures.

And I think a lot of what you're seeing today in our progress and the confidence that the audit team has that we're really moving with great seriousness and urgency on their recommendations has really been shored up by the work that Megan's been doing.

Also, I felt like it was very, very important to find a resolution of.

is sort of something that had been, you know, a longtime sort of confounding thing of the fact that, in a way, our roadway structures, work crews were sort of victims of their own success.

They had a lot of specialized training, a lot of specialized equipment that made them sort of the provider of choice for other, for non city owners of these type of bridge assets and also other city departments who own these type of assets.

So in a way it was a high-class problem that our teams were so good that lots of other entities were willing to pay them to do this work and came to rely on them.

But you know I worked very closely with staff.

I had a strong incoming idea that we really do have to take care of SDOT's assets first.

And that there are other resources or can the private sector can bring other resources or other public entities can bring those resources to support other important assets that are not part of SDOT's portfolio.

And so we work through those issues very carefully throughout the fall.

And we came up with new policy around how those crews can be assigned, which I think is very much fulfills the spirit of that audit recommendation and it felt good to take one, that's number two I guess, and check it off as complete and be able to enjoy that extra capacity for nice projects like the ones that we saw on the prior slide that was up here.

So that's been something I've been very excited about having a chance to bring home in my early time in the job.

And then, you know, we're gonna bring home all of the other audit recommendations so that, you know, we can build an excellent investment program, a strategic investment program across the bridge asset portfolio that's based on these lifecycle expectations for each asset and what interventions are needed at what time to get the performance that we desire out of each of these assets.

And that's a much more sophisticated approach than just logging the condition of each bridge.

And there's a lot of these assets and that's why it's taking a while, but we will have the fact base needed to make strategic informed metrics oriented decisions going forward and seeking all kinds of state and federal funding to help us.

And there's never been a better funding environment than currently, so it's great that we're going to be ready to do that.

So, with that, um, I'm hoping that kit Lou is back.

Online, uh, who's our bridge engineering and operations manager and and it's just taking on the acting roadway structures division director role kids.

Are you now back or are you I am I am back on.

Thank you.

Greg.

I appreciate that introduction.

And thank you for your leadership, Kit.

We really appreciate you and stepping into the division, acting division director role this month.

And you have all of our support.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

So this slide, just kind of give you a little more context in terms of what roadway structure division does.

We're a department consisting of 60 staff members, ranging from maintenance crews to engineers and support staff.

responsible for the operation and maintenance of 126 bridges and nearly 15 other structures located within the public right away.

That number of structural assets that we maintain will continue to grow as the City grows as well too.

These structural assets require ongoing inspection, maintenance, and investment to continue to be resilient, reliable, and safe for public use.

We are investing approximately 13 million operations and maintenance of these structures and responsible for overseeing $34.6 million in capital investments that our capital project division is projected to deliver this year.

As a designated division responsible for the bridge maintenance, we are also tasked to respond to and implement the bridge maintenance audit recommendations.

Next slide, please.

Planning for the future.

We are investing for the future.

As a product of the audit recommendation is the development of the bridge strategic asset management plan.

This plan in partnership with the planning and seismic studies will provide us data to answer these questions.

Can the life of the bridge be extended by performing what type of major maintenance at what time?

When does it become cost effective to replace which bridge?

The bridge strategic asset management plan will serve as a basis for future work plans and inform future funding strategies.

And Councilman Strauss had asked a specific question related to the BRD and I'm going to hand it off to Megan to answer that question.

Megan.

Thanks, Kit.

Council Member Strauss, we will have a response to the slide by July 1st.

That's the first thing I want to say.

Oh, I don't see him on his screen.

There he is.

Okay.

So that is the thing I wanted to let you know.

And with the opportunity, the things that we are weighing and evaluating going forward.

is that the types of studies that we would do to replace the Ballard and Magnolia bridges are a very specific and official thing called a type, size, and location study.

We typically do these, they look at, they assess alternatives, They, out of those alternatives, they advanced a preferred alternative.

We, gets us through early design, engineering, and environmental analysis.

So they're really critical.

We generally only do them about five to seven years out before the full replacement.

The that requires us to put together a fully comprehensive funding package and the amount of money that's available from the state right now is represents only a fraction what would be needed towards a full replacement of either facility.

So, these are some of the factors and we look forward to in the slide response, being able to advance the conversation with you.

Thank you, Megan.

It's very sorry.

Chairman.

Oh, yeah, please go ahead customer stress.

Thank you, Megan.

That's very helpful.

So what I am hearing here today is that for us to receive federal dollars for these projects, have the type size location studies completed and submitted.

And it's because I'm not new to this.

It's also my understanding that we have to have that submitted to the state.

Is that also correct?

That's correct.

You're not even on mute.

You're ready to go.

I'm not on mute.

I had to double check.

That's correct.

I mean, I think part of it is that the type size and location really focuses on the environmental risks and all the other constraints related to what the potential alternative, a selected recommended alternative is to move forward with it.

Typically, a lot of that information has a term limit to it.

So, as Megan noted, we need to have a full package, including construction, in order to understand when we need to walk back to start that TSNL development.

Okay, so I'm just going to kind of jump into the point of in the last three years we've seen the federal government really focus on infrastructure.

We've had interest from the federal delegation at providing our city funding to replace these bridges.

We have not been able to receive that funding because we don't have the type size location complete.

We are now saying that we are not in that we are not going to create the type size location studies and file them with the state to be able to accept federal dollars because we don't currently know if we are going to fund these projects.

Is that the loop that we are in right now?

I'd like to add a little bit, which is, I think what folks are trying to communicate is that we need a general funding concept to make sense to start the type size and location.

So it doesn't mean we have to have everything nailed down, but these are hundreds of millions of dollar projects.

So it does require a certain amount of pre planning on the city's part to figure out where our local match is going to be coming from.

Would it be.

fund, would it be other funding sources, so that we are ready, once we start that pathway, so that we are then ready to also meet the expectation of what we have to provide as a local match.

So I would say once we have the strategic asset management plan done, we'll be in a really good state to say, okay, we forecast that with maintenance, we can get the X-bridge another 20 years of useful life, which means In year 13, we should be starting to look at putting together the broad package of how we might fund our local match and looking for federal partners.

I think that's what the team is trying to say.

It's not that we're in a loop or stuck, it's that we are cognizant of not doing work too early before we have the full package outlined.

Thank you.

That was very helpful.

Where we started with the Ballard Interbay Regional Transportation Corridor was five years ago.

If we had created the TSL.

For these bridges 5 years ago, we could have been in the running for federal funding.

In the last 3 years, remember that we are correct.

I guess, let me give you that.

Does that not correct?

Yeah, I, um, I think that it could be that we would then have a T and S already, um, TSNL, but the problem would still be that we may not have identified the source of however many tens of millions of dollars we need to, uh, provide from the local match.

Fair point.

And with additional levies coming up with.

Councilmember Peterson's proposals that will be aired later today.

We understand that there are city dollars.

And I think that this is why, I don't think, I know this is why this conversation was started five years ago with the Burt, to give SDOT the time that they needed to identify in concept, not hard numbers about where the match would be.

In the intervening time, we had the opportunity from the federal government to receive funds from them.

We have missed that opportunity.

This is the problem that I am, that I'm confronted with right now on how do we, how does SDOT prepare our city to be ready to receive federal funding when we've been able to already receive state funding?

I believe it was 25 million and then 75 million.

Do you want to correct me on those numbers?

I think the bridge strategic asset management plan will allow us to do a multi-decade look ahead to say with X amount of annual funding, we'll be able to extend our, let's say, let's just use a subset of a dozen bridges.

For these dozen core bridges, we'll be able to extend their useful life with X million dollars of year and major maintenance every year.

And then we will expect bridge seven will need to be replaced in 2040. Bridge eight will need to be replaced in 2045. And we can start to schedule that out.

and then start to tee up the different TSNLs that we need in order to be ready to get the federal money necessary to make them happen.

We also don't want to be replacing bridges earlier than we can extend.

These are hugely disruptive projects to surface transportation and everything.

So we want to also make sure that we're cognizant of not disrupting day-to-day operations until we are at a point where we need that major investment.

So I think that's I'm looking forward to the bridge strategic asset management plan to be able to share, to have a more proactive strategy with you.

Okay.

Um, I mean, I just venture for the record.

I mean, we've been having the conversation about 15th Avenue repaving on the ballot bridge, and we understand already today that the pedestrian corridors on either side of the bridge are not adequate for our community.

Just coming into work today, I watched a runner and a bicyclist have to veer around each other.

just trying to get across that bridge.

So understanding that the physical operational ability of that bridge may still be here present and able to service in the future.

But when we're having conversations about just the Southeast corner, that's not even in my district that I asked about four years ago about how we're going to address that intersection for people trying to just get off the bridge deck to the bus stop has not been addressed.

We've had five years of me requesting information about the TSML to be able to receive federal funds.

In that intervening time, we saw the largest transportation package from the federal government in decades, and we missed the opportunity to receive funds there.

So I think that you're hearing the concerns from me loud and clear today because it is, in my opinion, that we are behind schedule.

I've asked for these reports in the nicest way possible year after year.

and I look forward to that report being transmitted no later than July 1st, 2023.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Go ahead and continue with this PowerPoint about investments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Francisca and Megan for that update.

Next slide, please.

We are investing today.

While playing for the future with the bridge asset management plan, we are investing our bridge assets now.

As part of the levy to move Seattle, we are on track to limit our maintenance backlog by the end of next year for all the maintenance work orders prior to 2015, which was the start of the move Seattle levy.

We will also have eight capital projects in construction by the end of this year and seven other capital projects in design this year.

We are also actively pursuing other grant opportunities to leverage our local funds to invest in more major maintenance.

Next slide, please.

In terms of capital project investments, in 2023 and next year, we are looking at an aggregate capital project investment of approximately $71 million in total project costs split between Bridge Painting Maintenance Program and the Levee to Move Seattle Seismic Brush Program.

Eight projects between these two programs are expected to break ground and start construction in 2023, and we are working towards fulfilling our levee to move Seattle commitment for the seismic retrofit program with five projects that are in early design this year and are expected to start construction in 2024. Next slide, please.

Since 2021, Council has approved funding to allow us to tackle major maintenance associated with our bridge structures.

With additional funds approved by Council as part of the 2023 Structures Major Maintenance Capital Program budget, it has allowed us to expand and to advance replacement hydraulics for the center lock and tail lock spans for the Spokane Street Bridge.

Move beyond the preliminary mechanical and electrical components assessment that was completed in 2022 for the ship canal bridges and focus on the design and replacement of the University Bridge motor control cabinet and fund the repair work to restore full operation of the 4th Avenue South over Argo Railroad Bridge.

These funds have also allowed us to capitalize on grant opportunities such as the USDOT Bridge Investment Program grant that we received for the 4th Avenue over Argo Railroad Bridge planning study.

Next slide, please.

We have invested in and have aligned planning, maintenance work, and other bodies of work on single structures when it's appropriate and efficient to do so.

For example, we are investing over $2 million in ongoing preventive maintenance work, planning study for the north approach segment of the bridge, and preliminary design to achieve state of good repair for the remaining segments of the university bridge.

Next slide, please.

As a quick update in terms of where we are with the West Seattle Bridge Safety Program investment, we are continuing to work on completing and closing out the remaining bridge and safety investments that are part of the program.

The following is a highlight of key projects that are anticipated to be completed by early 2024. Strengthening contract, finalizing the installation of the hoist system inside the Spokane Street swing bridge.

Replacement of the swing bridge control system and communications line.

And the completion of remaining 15 ReConnect West Seattle projects.

Some of these ReConnect West Seattle projects were anticipated to be completed in Q1 2023, but were delayed due to inclement weather.

In total, to date, we have invested about 128 million dollars in the safety program.

Next slide.

So the key takeaways for this presentation is our continued investment in the planning and maintenance of our bridges in a strategic and thoughtful way.

In 2023, we are investing approximately $47.6 million in ongoing operation and maintenance, capital investments to make our bridges more sizably resilient and planning for the future.

The capsule and the audit recommendations will be a development of the bridge strategic asset management plan, which will serve as a basis for future work plans that will move us towards a proactive approach in preventive maintenance.

And next slide.

And that is the end of the presentation.

Any questions from anyone from the council?

Thank you very much to everybody from SDOT for being here today and really appreciate the overview from Director Spatz in terms of how he's trying to prioritize bridges and reallocate resources within the department to make that a reality and appreciate our City Auditor continuing to track their 10 recommendations from the 2020 audit and we'll have SDOT back here in December, no later than December.

Obviously we'd love to have you here earlier, but in October, November we will be obviously reviewing and amending the executive's budget proposal, but want to So internally, we will be following up with you on on several of the bridge projects and hoping that the budget that comes down from Mayor Harold appropriately prioritizes bridges this year.

And we hope you can make some progress on some of these projects, especially those ship canal bridges that have those components required to open and close them.

And we don't want them to get stuck like they have in the past.

So colleagues, any final comments or questions from SDOT before we move on to the next two projects?

Okay, Council Member Herbold, please.

Thank you so much.

Just a question on slide 23 about the West Seattle Bridge.

The slide notes that budget used as of quarter 1, 2023. I'm wondering what will the estimate be on the total from the $175 million budget, if that is knowable, and if not, we'd love SDOT to be able to follow up and get back to us on that.

We would be happy to follow up with you on that.

Some costs are still unknown as we close out a number of the ReConnect West Seattle commitments that we made to community.

Several of those projects we deliberately held so that we could implement them after the bridge was closed.

Not all of those costs are fully realized yet.

We do expect to come in under $175 million, but I don't think we'll fully know the extent of that until we get through the remaining closeout activities.

I know I've been overly eager for many months about that question, and you all telling me to hold my horses, so I'll hold them a little bit longer.

Thank you, Council Member.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold for asking that.

We will have SDOT provide to us a closeout report as well.

And if there is, if there are funds left over, the city council would want to opine on how those resources are allocated.

And I'm presuming that would require a budget action on our part, but we obviously would wanna, I would wanna reinvest those funds into bridges or related investments.

Well, colleagues, thank you, SDOT, and we will now transition to item two on our agenda, and we'll go ahead and read that into the record.

Agenda item two, U.S.

DOT audit report implications for SDOT for briefing and discussion.

Thank you and for the benefit of the viewing public this briefing and discussion concerns the United States office of the inspector general audit of the U.S.

Department of Transportation.

Specifically, it's oversight of a few grants provided to our own Seattle Department of Transportation.

So I've asked our city auditor David Jones to join us at this.

for this item in case they can lend expertise regarding the federal audit report about the federal agency.

I spoke directly to the U.S.

Inspector General's office after their report was published, and they confirmed that the U.S.

DOT must resolve the concerns itemized in the audit by December 31st of this year.

This 46 page federal audit makes 14 recommendations.

I'm particularly interested today in hearing about plans to retain federal funding that we have not yet spent audit audit recommendations.

11 and 13. It could potentially impact up to 14Million dollars for a few projects recommendation.

11 seeks more supporting documentation.

from FTA regarding 9.9 million among six FTA grants for three projects.

One is an FTA grant for streetcar maintenance, an FTA grant for the Bus Rapid Ride G-Line project, currently reconfiguring Madison Street, and four FTA awards for the Seattle monorail.

So recommendation 13 concerns the so-called Center City Connector streetcar project, currently in a redesign or restudy phase.

And this federal audit asks whether the U.S.

DOT should reinvest the 3.8 million elsewhere.

So SDOT hopefully can work in answers to those questions about recommendations 11 and 13, which are the ones that impact dollar amounts not yet spent.

So we'll go ahead and turn it over.

We've got Kristen Simpson here with us.

Welcome.

Thank you, Council Member.

I will do a brief introduction, introduce our team members, and then turn it over for the bulk of the presentation.

But good morning.

As Councilmember said, I'm Kristen Simpson.

I'm SDOT's Senior Deputy Director.

With me today are Francisca Stephan, staying over from the previous presentation, and we're joined by Chris Castleman, who's our Director of Finance and Administration, and Julius Ramachandran, who's our Capital Projects Director.

We really appreciate you inviting us here today.

We share your interest in transparency and accountability and welcome this opportunity to provide information about the USDOT audit of federal oversight of our projects between 2014 and 2019. Based on changes to our business practices during that time and sense, we are confident in our ability to robustly manage all of our grant funds, and we believe USDOT shares this confidence based partly on multiple large grant awards that we've received, including a total of more than $180 million for projects such as the West Seattle Bridge, Madison BRT, Rapid Ride J, and Safe Streets for All.

You specifically asked about the unspent funding for the Center City Connector streetcar project, so I will address that before turning it over to Chris.

That, for folks who've been following along closely, was originally awarded in 2017 for vehicles for the Center City project.

We are working with FTA, Puget Sound Regional Council, and WSDOT to both retain that funding and to make a shift in the use so that we can spend that on design.

We're in the process of working with those agencies and don't have a final outcome yet.

But as you know, there's new interest and enthusiasm for the project.

And we are looking forward to resolving that in a way that lets us move forward with design.

Thank you.

So at this point, I'll turn it over to Chris, and then we'd be happy to answer any questions.

Great.

Thank you, Kristen.

And good morning, council members.

It's a pleasure to be here today and to have the opportunity to demonstrate how SDOT's core values and goals come into play with grant-funded projects, particularly in the context of this audit, with respect to excellence in project delivery and stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

Cal?

Today's presentation is about the purpose and key findings of the recent USDOT OIG audit, which focused on how well federal transportation agencies did in overseeing the use of federal dollars they distributed through funding awards to the city.

Almost all of the funding in the audit scope focused on projects managed by SDOT, which is why we're here today.

I'm going to start by sharing a summary of the most important takeaways we think will be of greatest interest to you and members of the public.

Then I'll provide a basic overview of the audit scope and conclusions.

I'll share the highlights of SDOT's thoughts on the audit and go over the best practices we have in place to successfully manage grant funded projects.

Then I'll wrap up with a quick look at what we're doing next before stopping for discussion and Q&A.

As we already know, and which was reinforced by the prior presentation, audits are one way of ensuring that government is accountable to the people, and audits often serve to verify that government has been acting responsibly.

The review, key findings, and recommendations of this audit were directed at the three granting agencies within the US Department of Transportation, and it is incumbent on those agencies to take the next steps to respond to the audit findings.

The review period for this audit, as Kristin noted, was from 2014 to 2019, and so it represents a snapshot in time for how well those USDOT agencies were doing in executing their responsibilities, and so, too, for SDOT and the city, in terms of our fiduciary duty with respect to federal funding awards.

I'm pleased to say that SDOT had already self-identified the need for certain business practice improvements in how we manage grant funds and that SDOT had implemented those improvements prior to the audit commencing so that by the time we were notified that the audit was going to happen, we had already addressed the concerns that would later be identified in the audit findings.

As a result, We feel confident in our ability to responsibly and appropriately use federal funding in support of our transportation projects, and we can satisfy any questions about actual or planned use of federal funding awards.

And perhaps most telling, throughout the audit period and after, as Kristen noted, SDOT has continued to receive significant federal transportation dollars for our projects.

Now turning to a basic overview, the intent of this audit was to assess the adequacy and effectiveness of grant oversight and management controls the local offices of the USDOT agencies have in place, as demonstrated by their management of funding awards provided to the City of Seattle.

The OIG contacted us in early 2019 to request records related to a significant number of grants and funding awards we had received from the USDOT.

We provided thorough documentation on the projects they reviewed, including all information requested, as well as proactively offering additional information relevant to the audit scope.

We were responsive to all subsequent inquiries and worked with OIG staff to answer all follow-up questions.

It was quite an effort, spanning 46 projects, 86 different grants and agreements, and looking at our compliance and response to the management practices of the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the Federal Transit Administration, as well as those of WSDOT as the local pass-through agency for most federal transportation grants.

The focus was really on the USDOT agencies.

And so the final report, which I believe all of you have received and which is available online, put a spotlight on four areas of weakness in the federal agency's oversight practices and included 14 specific recommendations for how they could improve.

The USDOT agencies had a chance to respond to the audit findings and agreed with most of them.

DOIG considers the recommendations resolved but some are officially still open pending completion of all follow-up actions by the federal agencies.

The OIG also noted some findings and or areas of improvement for both WSDOT and SDOT.

As I noted earlier, though, SDOT had already implemented our grant tracking practices and compliance control improvements before the audit was announced.

And so the recommendations relating to our business practices during 2014 through 2019 have already been fulfilled.

There were also a few notable comments on specific circumstances related to a few key projects.

One example is the Lander Street overpass, where we were able to significantly reduce the actual cost of the project from our initial conservative cost estimates, thanks to important changes to project design, and advancements in engineering and construction.

And so we spent far less than the actual grant award.

We stand by the way we managed that project along with our management of all federal transportation dollars we receive as we strive to build a transportation system that meets the needs of the community.

As I've noted, we had already improved our grant management practices before being notified of the audit.

The audit is really a look back and we are set up for success now and moving forward.

We know that the OIG identified some follow-up actions for the federal transportation agencies, and we are ready to assist them and provide any further documentation they might need to demonstrate how their dollars have been spent properly and for the public's benefit.

What I want to say overall is that we at SDOT appreciate the rigorous review that went into the completion of this audit.

We believe in full transparency on how we manage our capital projects, and we're committed to being responsible and accountable in how we spend all funds.

It's important to note that while this audit was underway, the Federal Transit Administration was also conducting its own regular every three-year review of the city's compliance in 21 areas of FTA requirements.

This is known as the FTA Triennial.

The review encompassed federal fiscal year 2020 and mostly focused on SDOT.

And as you may recall, we were found to be fully in compliance with no deficiencies.

Additionally, as we've mentioned, SDOT has remained competitive in federal grant awards during the audit review period and following.

Recently, including earlier this year, we've received over $183 million in federal transportation funding awards.

including confirmation of the $60 million award to the RapidRide J-Line project a month after the audit findings were published.

There are several reasons why SDOT is so successful in securing federal funding awards and managing grant-funded projects.

One key element to our success is our regular communication channels with our funding and oversight partners, whether that's the federal agencies directly, WSDOT, or the Puget Sound Regional Council, which also distributes some of our federal funding awards.

We also coordinate closely with FAS's Public Works Contracting and Procurement Group on all requirements related to capital construction.

We have regular monthly and quarterly meetings, as well as frequent ad hoc communications with all of our oversight partners to review project stages and progress discuss monitoring steps and grant lifecycle management stages, and to walk through regular reporting.

We exchange information, support each other in sound management practices, identify issues, and problem-solve together.

Another area of strength is our internal organization and grant management and tracking tools.

As you may be aware, SDOT received very positive reviews by the project oversight management consultants the FDA has engaged for both the RapidRide G and RapidRide J projects when they reviewed our organizational setup and project management systems, controls, and best practices.

Something I want to highlight for you is our project portfolio management system, which we implemented in January 2021 and have been continuously improving since.

The system, which we affectionately call PPM, not too creative, but it's a start.

It allows us to track all stages of a capital project, including if grant funded, grant stage, spending status, and reporting milestones.

Since PPM allows us to track all aspects of a project in one place, risks, schedule, scope, budget, we are better able to identify any deviations in a project early on to help inform corrective action from management.

Finally, I want to assure you that our business practices ensure that we at SDOT stay informed of all federal and state compliance standards, we employ best practices to ensure we follow compliance requirements and controls, and that we remain accountable to the public's trust.

Now on to next steps.

As we were working with the OIG audit team, we were confident we were following all required best practices for grant management and control.

Even so, after the audit was released, we combed through all findings, regardless of which agency they pertained to, to confirm that one, SDOT was and will remain in good standing, and two, we are prepared to assist the USDOT agencies and WSDOT in their next steps in implementing the audit recommendations.

I want to thank the SDOT staff, particularly within my own division, finance and administration, and in Julius's Capital Projects Division, as well as folks in our department-wide grant management team for the hard work and countless hours they put into responding to the auditor's request for information, meeting with the audit team to answer all follow-up questions, and for the due diligence they did prior to, during, and following the completion of the audit.

to ensure we are managing these federally funded projects appropriately, successfully, and in accordance with our value of excellence.

So now it's time for me to stop talking and for us to take your questions.

Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation and thank you, Christian Simpson for answering the question at the beginning of the presentation about 1 of the items I wanted to offer to our city auditor, David Jones, if if he or his team had any comments or questions about this, just using your own auditing expertise, whether you feel that.

This presentation is adequate is taking the appropriate measures.

I have no reason to believe Council Member Peterson that SDOT is not you know, doing whatever it can to meet the intent of the audit recommendations, you know, and, um, I think, I think you've shared, you know, the, the thing for the city of Seattle is, are any of these audit recommendations made by the U S department of transportation inspector general, um, going to cause the city to lose funds that had been awarded?

I mean, I think that's the real, um, one of the things that major interest.

So, and I, I don't know the answer to that question.

I know that Chris had talked about, um, I, someone had mentioned, you know, that, um, uh, working to secure the 3.6 million for the center street car, trying to get that changed to be used for design, you know, those are open questions.

So I think for the city of Seattle, I know we don't want to lose that money if we can.

Um, and, um, But to answer your question, no, there's nothing I see that Estos is doing that causes me concern.

The big concern is like, what's gonna happen with those funds that were awarded Seattle?

Are we at risk of losing them?

Thank you.

For SDOT, could you respond to that?

I feel like you responded to that on the Center City Connector funds that you've got a request in to repurpose those for the project.

But in terms of the other recommendations from the U.S. audit, of the U.S.

Department of Transportation, is there anything, are you concerned about that, like the $9.9 million for the six FTA grants?

I'll speak to that, Council Member, thank you.

We are not concerned.

The supporting documentation that is referenced with respect to that remaining balance has to do with demonstration that we have appropriately billed the grants with eligible activities and costs.

And we did provide the audit team a sample of the various records of transactions, labor records and so on to show them how we track and report out and then bill eligible project costs.

And it was a sample.

It was not every possible scrap of digital paper, if you will, but we remain ready to provide that at their request.

And I am more than confident that we can demonstrate that we have appropriately used all of the funding that was awarded to us.

and that that funding that we have awarded but have not yet spent, for example, that related to the streetcars we've already discussed, can still be put to a very good purpose that meets the overall intent and spirit of the award and that benefits our community by building a better transportation system.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold.

So my, Referring to a recent Mike Lindblom article about this FTA audit, he spoke to a former FTA program manager who said that if he was overseeing the Seattle region, he compelled the city to produce, quote, a specific recovery schedule and cash flow plan.

And given that the project has faced a significant funding gap, $93 million, even after the federal funds projects, $286 million last estimate and has a significant ridership reduction post pandemic.

Does FOSTA intend to do this to actually produce a recovery schedule and cash flow plan as part of the new request to the FTA?

We are in the process right now of looking at all of the documents that were prepared when the project was at 100% design and looking at what we need to do to refresh those, to update cost estimates, to look at anything that's changed in terms of the environmental or the vehicle pieces, all of that will help us know what we need to do to continue to seek FTA funding, to put other funding sources in place.

So we don't have a lot of answers right now, but we are actively working to refresh the information we have, collect any new information, and then be able to present a full package.

Thank you.

All right, well, thank you everybody for this report on item two on our agenda.

I think we're ready to move to the last item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the third item into the record.

Agenda item 3, project list for transportation impact fees for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we have in front of us this afternoon a presentation about transportation impact fees.

As many of us know, impact fees have been for a long time authorized by the state law to help local governments generate revenue to pay for new transportation infrastructure needs.

Impact fees are used by approximately 70 other Washington State cities and throughout the nation.

Under our state's Growth Management Act, impact fees may be used to pay for that portion of new infrastructure needed to address increases in demand created by new development.

Before a local government may adopt impact fees, a review must be completed according to the State Environmental Policy Act.

We're going to hear a little bit about that process today.

I did appropriately confirm that we may discuss impact fees and transportation projects, but we cannot and will not take action on impact fee legislation until the SEPA appeal is resolved.

In the meantime, however, we may have briefings and discussions about this important funding source for important transportation projects.

And so I've asked for today's presentation so the committee members can re-familiarize themselves with impact fees, how they work in other cities.

We have with us a representative of the consultant who did the study which is published online.

That's the updated technical work required by that long-standing state law to establish how projects eligible for impact fees are determined and how the fees can be calculated.

So thank you for being here today.

Ketel Freeman on central staff is working on this as well as Calvin child because these would be for transportation projects.

So we'll go ahead and turn it over to Ketel for even Oh Councilmember herbal please.

Thanks.

I just want to take this opportunity, if I may, at the top of the presentation before Keto goes into the details.

And I know Keto's going to cover it, but just because of the public comment that we heard at the top of the meeting, I really wanted to address some of those comments head on before we get on to the presentation.

We are not at this time deliberating on an impact fee program.

We are instead taking a step that is preliminary to the deliberations on an impact fee program.

This step that we are seeking to take is a foundational step that is necessary in order for us to have the policy discussion around impact fees.

And so I just think it's because so many people are opining already on the impact of impact fees before we even have the requirements that are, again, necessary before even deliberating on a program.

I just think it's really important for public education.

And you went on mute accidentally.

To explain exactly where we're at right now.

We are only talking about what are the projects that would theoretically be eligible to receive funding from an impact fee if the city of Seattle were to enact one.

And hand it over to Ketel, but again, just people are opining and commenting on a step that we're not taking yet.

And I just really wanted to address that at the front.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Ketel Ketel Freeman council central staff.

So I have a brief presentation here to set some context before I turn it over to Kendra.

But just to reiterate your points here, council member her bold sort of.

There are sort of 3 steps to implementing an impact fee program.

The 1st is a rate study.

The next has been in the comprehensive plan and a 3rd step would be setting rates.

And we're here to talk about the rate study today.

The rate study does set out a ceiling above which the city could not charge rates, but it does not recommend or prescribe that ceiling as the rate.

That'll be the subject for future council decision making.

Shall I start out here, set some context for Kendra?

Okay.

Let me share my screen.

Whoops, I think you all, are you all seeing, are you all seeing?

We see the PDF.

Okay, and it says transportation impact fees.

I have two PDFs here and for some reason.

Yes, the background one.

Went to a different one, okay.

All right.

We're seeing the correct one.

Okay.

Control L. All right, so a little bit of background and legislative history here.

The city has been considering impact fees off and on for almost 10 years now.

In 2014, the council appropriated semester fund balance to finance general reserve to study impact fees.

Actually, that appropriation is still what we're using today to pay Kendra.

In 2015, the mayor's office, budget office, DPD, and SDOT made preliminary recommendations about pursuing a transportation impact fee program and also a parks impact fee program, recommended holding on other types of impact fees that could be implemented under the GMA.

Those are schools and fire facilities, but recommended that the city keep in close touch with the school district about potential school impact fees.

That work was essentially put on hold almost indefinitely in 2016 with implementation of the mandatory housing affordability program.

The council continued to have an interest though, and from 2017 until last year, the council has docketed comprehensive plan changes, which I'll be talking about here in a minute to implement an impact fee program.

In 2018, the council did issue a CIPA threshold determination on comp plan amendments to implement an impact fee program or to set the basis for a future impact fee program.

That was appealed by a group called the Seattle Mobility Coalition.

About a year later, the hearing examiner remanded the council's threshold determination of non-significance to the council for further work.

Back in 2020, when the council was considering a sales tax increase for transit, Proposition 1, which was Ordinance 126.115, the council, again, reiterated its intent to consider transportation impact fees and recited the value of transportation impact fees as a progressive revenue source.

And then this year, we've updated the right study for another comprehensive plan amendment, issued a SEPA threshold determination, and again, the Seattle Mobility Coalition has appealed that SEPA threshold determination.

What are transportation impact fees?

They're fees charged to new development to partially fund the cost of new transportation infrastructure.

They're authorized under both the Growth Management Act and RCW 8202050, which is the section of the RCWs that authorize excise taxes.

Again, three-step process.

Step one, a rate study to identify system deficiencies, improvements needed to serve new development, and establish a ceiling for any future rates.

Step two is amendments to the comprehensive plan.

As Councilmember Peterson indicated at the top of this agenda item, the Council can't move to step 2 until the SEPA appeal is resolved.

And then step 3 would be some future development of implementing legislation, which is where rate setting would occur.

Is all development subject to impact fees?

The answer is no.

There's statutory authority to provide some exemptions.

A statute is housing serving households with incomes up to 80% of AMI can be exempted.

Early learning facilities, also defined by the statute, can also be exempted.

And then development jurisdictions have some authority to exempt activities with broad public purposes.

And just by way of an example, some jurisdictions exempt ADUs.

So the Some million-dollar question, how much revenue could transportation impact fees generate?

The answer, of course, is that it depends.

It depends on future council decision-making about fee levels, which would have to be below the ceiling in the rate study, and also the rate of future employment and residential growth.

So with any impact mitigation charge, revenue that may come to the city would be lumpy, and it would go up and down depending on the development cycle.

But, you know, we could make some rough guesses about how much an impact view program could generate, sort of looking across jurisdictions in western Washington.

On the lower end, and Kendra will talk a little bit about this in her presentation as well, on the lower end there are jurisdictions like Bellingham, assuming the rate of growth and the rate study If we had a Bellingham-like transportation impact fee program, it might generate about $200 million over 10 years.

On the higher end, if we had something like Kent, an impact fee program might generate $764 million over 10 years.

The average base rate in Western Washington is about $4,744 per person trip that the city pursued a program With that base rate, it would generate about $400M over a 10-year period.

The comprehensive plan amendments, what would they do?

They would amend the transportation element of the comprehensive plan and a related appendix to identify deficiency in the transportation system associated with the new development.

It would update the list of transportation infrastructure projects that were identified back in 2018. So the project list and the rate study today is more or less the same project list from the rate study in 2018, just updated.

Some projects that are completed have come off and project costs have been updated.

It would establish policies for the decision makers for considering locational discounts for different parts of the city, as well as exemptions for low-income housing, early learning facilities, and other activities with a broad public purpose.

Next steps.

There's a CEPA appeal, so a lot of the next steps are to be determined based on that appeal schedule.

It's a pre-hearing conference this coming Thursday, and we'll know more about the schedule after this coming Thursday.

So unless council members have any questions for me about this background and legislative history, I'll turn it over to Kirsten.

I'm not Kirsten.

I'll turn it over to Kendra to walk through the rate study presentation.

Thank you, Akito.

That was an excellent summary.

And this is all online on our agenda.

I think we're ready for Kendra.

Good morning.

Good morning.

And I am just sharing my own screen here.

Get this going.

And there you go.

All right.

Well, and perfect.

All right, well, good afternoon, or good morning.

I guess we're still in the morning.

And my name is Kendra Brayland.

I am a principal with Ferron Piers.

And since some of my presentation does overlap with what Ketel shared, I'll go through this pretty quick, but happy to answer any questions you might have.

Once I can learn how to advance a slide.

There we go.

So as Ketel shared, transportation impact fees are one-time charges paid by New Development.

They were authorized under the 1990 Growth Management Act.

They fund improvements that add capacity to the transportation network.

So they're not necessarily intended for filling potholes, but they're intended for funding projects that really provide person trip capacity for new growth in Seattle.

So the kinds of things that impact fees can be spent on are First of all, projects within the public right of way.

So sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic signals, those are the types of improvements that are providing that capacity.

And one of the rules is that impact fee dollars must be spent within 10 years of collection.

They also must be spent on projects that are listed in the capital facilities element of the city's comprehensive plan.

So this slide here just seeks to provide really a high level overview of how we arrive at that maximum eligible fee.

And we'll talk in more specifics in a few slides here.

But first, we start with just identifying those eligible projects.

So again, you know, projects that are providing capacity, projects that are in your capital facilities element, projects that are in the right of way.

And then state law prescribes that we do take some reductions to arrive at eligible costs.

So that's removing kind of the portion of those projects that are addressing these It also requires that we remove the component of trips that are related to land uses outside of Seattle.

So really just focusing in on those components of projects that are providing new capacity for growth in Seattle.

And we arrive at an eligible, you know, kind of portion of those projects.

And we spread that over the growth and trips that you anticipate over the life of your program.

Typically, programs can last anywhere from six years to 20 years, so that would be dependent on kind of the horizon anticipated for this program.

So in terms of eligible projects, This slide just really seeks to show you kind of what we looked at and what we included in the rate study.

So if you really squint at the screen, you can see kind of all the projects that we've included and you know really what we're seeking to show here is just a few things.

One, projects are spread all over the city so good distribution of benefit all over the city.

The other is that the projects are incredibly multimodal.

So the sources that we looked at were your bike master plan, your transit master plan, your freight master plan, your pedestrian master plan, your capital improvement plan.

So really a multimodal list of projects providing person trip capacity throughout the city.

So when we looked at those projects and we summed up what we felt was eligible to be included, we arrived at an eligible project list that had a total capital cost of just under $1.7 billion.

And then when we take those steps that I described in terms of those reductions that are required by the state, removing the portion of projects that are related to existing deficiencies, and also figuring out what portion of those projects are accommodating trips in Seattle, we arrive at just over a billion dollars in eligible costs.

And that, you know, maximum defensible fee that you can see on the left hand side of your screen.

As Ketel mentioned, that's really a ceiling that's not a recommended rate but that's as much as a city could possibly charge based on the list of projects we've looked at and the growth anticipated over the span of, you know, potentially a 20 year program.

Just wanted to, just to give this some specifics here, we just wanted to talk about a few of the projects that we featured in the REIT study.

One is Madison BRT.

It's $144 million capital cost project.

You know, even though a lot of this is anticipated to be completed soon, it's still providing capacity for a long time.

for growth in kind of downtown Seattle.

So lots of eligible components of this project, bus lanes, signal improvements, bike and ped infrastructure.

But we also recognize that there are some ineligible components of the project, such as pavement restoration.

Another project accessible, Mount Baker, almost a $4 million project.

And it also has a lot of eligible components, widening sidewalks, improving crossings.

But again, for each of these projects, we'd also be thinking about what are those components that aren't eligible?

It's a lot of aesthetic components, safety improvements that aren't providing capacity.

So those are things that would be not funded by impact fees.

And then last but not least, just to provide kind of the diversity of this program, we've got the East Marginal Way Heavy Haul project here.

It's a $64 million project.

And we found that almost half of the project could be eligible for impact fees.

So it's providing bike lanes.

In this case, it's improving the pavement really to provide capacity and the ability to accommodate the heavy haul network.

It's also providing transit stop amenities.

So it includes ineligible costs as well.

And something I do want to stress with everybody watching this presentation today, these projects are provided mostly for illustrative purposes.

The absolute percentage of costs that would be applied by impact fees, that's something that would be figured out at a later process part of design, not necessarily right here today.

So, you know, the rate study, one of the key pieces that it does is that it translates that cost per trip that we've, you know, kind of calculated for each of those projects into actual land uses.

And so that's in the form of fee schedule.

And the basis of that fee schedule is really the PM peak hour person generation of different types of land uses.

So that's something that you would use when developing proposals come in, you would look to the rate study, the fee schedule to kind of figure out how much impact fees might be owed.

Of course, state law always requires that the city allow for independent fee calculations as well.

The last piece I wanted to share here about the draft rate study is that we would recommend that fees would vary or that the rates charged would vary by area of the city.

So we recognize that your urban centers, your urban villages and areas nearby rail certainly will be generating fewer vehicle trips, shorter trips, more trips being made by more efficient modes.

So we would recommend that rates be lower in those areas in recognition of that less impactful trip-making behavior.

And then the last thing, just to leave it here, my final slide here is just to say that, as noted by other speakers, Seattle would be joining a lot of company around the state in charging impact fees.

This screen just simply shows some of what we looked at as potential peer communities for Seattle.

So these are other cities in the Puget Sound that are nearby and also large cities around the state And you can see that impact fees vary greatly, you know, Top End, North Bend and Sammamish pretty high with that, you know, kind of 14,000 costs per trip, but lots of other cities at a lower fee level.

So with that, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and happy to take any questions.

Thank you very much.

And for the public, both of these presentations are online.

and really appreciate the thoroughness of the process here.

Previous city councils have been talking about this for years and we saw the city budget constraints we had last year and the year before where we were unable to fund several multimodal transportation projects.

Yesterday we received a comprehensive presentation from our city council central staff on rising property taxes.

I know we've received some comments from the public encouraging us to align any sort of discussion about a new revenue source to align that with hopes to renew the Move Seattle transportation package, that $930 million nine-year package approved back in 2015. That's 100% property tax.

I totally agree that that's actually what we're that's actually the pace that we're on here.

It would be aligning with with that the need to perhaps have an additional funding source or diversify our funding sources for a new transportation package.

So it's not 100% property tax.

So we can move away from sales taxes from other for other transportation projects.

So.

Appreciate that.

And based on the comments today, we can exempt low-income housing projects, we can exempt childcare facilities, we can exempt other public purpose facilities.

So I think this is really promising to receive this information about what impact these can do.

I see Council Member Morales has her hand up.

Please, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

I really appreciate this presentation.

And this is probably a premature question, but I am interested in understanding, I think what I'm taking from the conversation you're having here is that if we did something like this, we would basically sort of design it from scratch in terms of the rates that would be charged, the criteria set for how the money is spent.

And I'm just trying to understand a little bit about If there are parameters basically for where the money is spent so if if a particular project is generating a fee.

Is it.

Is there an implication that that revenue that's generated would be spent in that project, maybe it's eight years later or five years later, or is it the case that we're basically building a fund and then we can decide later how that fund gets used and it doesn't necessarily have to be associated with a particular project?

I will turn here to the comp plan discussion.

What the comprehensive plan amendments do is set a list of projects that are impact fee eligible.

It'll be up to future councils, if an impact fee program is implemented, to decide how impact revenue should be spent among those projects so that the projects on the comprehensive plan become the universe of projects that the council will make decisions about spending impact fee revenue on.

There's a decision-making process that happens in part during the budget every year when the council adopts the CIP.

In developing a transportation impact fee program, the council could develop fund policies about how they may want to allocate that future pot of revenue amongst projects.

But that's not prescribed by the rate study nor the comprehensive plan amendments.

It would be part of some future policymaking decision by the council, maybe fund policies for a fund with impact fee revenue.

Okay.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks so much.

I'm just reflecting on the fact that, boy, I think it was in 2018, myself, Council Member Bagshaw, and Council Member O'Brien co-wrote an editorial and op-ed for the Seattle Times.

where we open up saying, Seattle has long had the authority to levy fees on new building development projects and dedicate funds towards improvement for transportation, schools and fire facilities.

It's long past time that the city used that authority and have growth paid for growth.

And we go on to say, we want to confirm that we're underway.

And this was an editorial about that was a step that the council took prior to the one that we're contemplating right now.

It was a step also related to the comp plan, a resolution that established the 2018 docket of proposed amendments to the comprehensive plan.

And that was the comp plan docketing that created language in the comp plan that predated the step that we're taking now, which is the step to actually add eligible projects to the comp plan to allow us in the future to take the next step.

which would be the consideration of a computation impact fee.

And as Ketel flagged, the discussion around this was laid intentionally because we were at that point considering, well, it was delayed for a couple of reasons.

One, there was an appeal.

And secondly, we were also considering discussions around the mandatory housing affordability program.

And it was really important that we consider the impact of layered fees, We wanted to know what the amount of the fee was for the MHA program before making future decisions around a transportation impact fee program.

And so we have that information right now, and we can make decisions on a transportation impact fee program and what the appropriate rates are.

with an understanding of what the rates are for affordable housing.

And the information that Kendra provided in the race study, those many cities.

as we have said repeatedly, many cities that have a transportation impact fee program, many of these cities also have other types of mitigation fee programs.

And so, you know, for the viewing public would love it if Kendra can confirm that the chart that you showed about the other cities, those rates that you're showing in that chart are exclusive to transportation impact fees only, even though some of those cities also have other types of mitigation fees to support parks, schools, or housing.

That's correct.

And then, you know, I think it would be helpful in, I don't know if it would be research that Kendra would do or Keto might help out with, but if we could get like more detailed information about a sampling of the other cities in Washington State so that we can understand a little bit more about how other cities have addressed this issue of layered mitigation fees that support a menu of infrastructure investment priorities for their cities.

I think that would be very, very helpful to this conversation moving forward.

Yeah, I think it probably would be on me to do that.

And I think the good news here is that I should probably acknowledge the good work that was done by our folks in what is now OPCD on impact-free stuff up until about 2016. And there's a base level of work that they did there looking at what other jurisdictions charge across all impact mitigation programs to get comparables.

So there is some information there that we can update that would be useful to the Council in any kind of future rate setting conversation.

Thank you very much, and really appreciate the work from from Kendra and I know when we were getting a briefing that you had mentioned I think you had worked on this for 30 other Washington state cities approximately so we're, we'll see if we can we can catch up to them and and have this as a possibility.

All right.

Well, thank you.

That was the last item on our agenda today.

And for the public, the materials are online for you to review.

And you can always email council at Seattle.gov with your feedback.

So that is our last item.

So the time is 1144 and this will conclude the March 21st 2022 meeting of the Transportation Seattle Public Utilities Committee.

The next meeting of this committee will be on Tuesday, April 4th.

Thank you and we are adjourned.