Seattle City Council Briefing 12/16/24

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is December 16th, 2024, and the council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.02.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Rink?

Here.

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you very much.

And council members Moore and Rivera are excused from this meeting.

Okay.

If there's no objection, the minutes of December 2nd and December 9th, 2024 will be adopted.

Seeing none, the minutes are adopted.

All right.

So folks, this is the last council briefing meeting before council goes into recess for the holiday season.

and tomorrow is the final City Council meeting of the year before recess.

We don't have any proclamations or presentations or executive session today.

At tomorrow's City Council meeting, we will begin following public comment with a public hearing on the Human Services Department's 2025 Draft Annual Action Plan, which outlines the spending plan for the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development block grants.

HUD regulations require that the community have an opportunity to provide feedback on proposed funding priorities and activities.

And this hearing had been scheduled to occur in Council Member Moore's Housing and Human Services meeting, but that was canceled due to illness last week.

So we're gonna have it tomorrow.

So just note that.

And because we have to hold that public, we're doing it tomorrow because we have to hold that public hearing before the end of the year.

All right.

Also on tomorrow's City Council meeting agenda, there are six items on the introduction and referral calendar.

The weekly payment ordinance, Council Bill 120927, which further extends interim regulations on floodplains to allow people who need to obtain insurance through FEMA's flood insurance program to be able to do so.

Does that sound familiar?

All right, well, that is the eighth extension, I'm told.

So anyway, let's see what else here.

Three appointments and one reappointment to the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council.

And the consent calendar includes the weekly bill payment ordinance and four appointments and reappointments to the Domestic Workers Standards Board, which my Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee passed unanimously last week.

And then there are five pieces of legislation from committees.

From land use, we have a resolution 32156, which declares our intention to establish a new sales and use tax deferral to convert underutilized economic property to housing or commercial to housing.

The state legislature changed Washington law to allow the city to do this.

And the resolution currently sets a public hearing date.

Let's see, on January 30th, which would have been a special land use committee meeting, but I understand Council Member Morales will be sponsoring an amendment instead and hold that hearing during Council on the 4th.

And I understand that I just said Council Member Morales, but we will make adjustments.

Okay.

We have four items from the Parks Public Utilities and Technology Committee, including Council Bill 120917, authorizing the extension of a wireless network infrastructure provider license agreement with Verizon Wireless to design, install, operate, maintain, and upgrade a wireless communication system at Seattle Center.

Heard that in Parks last week.

And Council Bill 120918 authorizing Seattle Center to extend the Chihuly Glass and Gardens Exhibition Lease.

And then Council Bill 120921 and 120922 which authorize Parks and Recreation to acquire parkland respectively in the Westwood Highland Park Residential Urban Village and at the junction of North Beach Hill Residential Urban Village and North Rainier Hub Urban Village.

Then a couple items of, so that's tomorrow's agenda for the city council meeting.

And here are a couple items of note.

My office distributed a memo shortly before this meeting, reestablishing and modifying the select committee on the comprehensive plan for 2025, given the upcoming departure of Council Member Morales.

And so two things of note, our new comp plan chair will be Council Member Hollingsworth, who I would like to thank very much for stepping up to that challenge.

Thank you very much.

And stepping into this critical role.

Well, the chair of the comp plan is typically the council member who chairs land use.

We find ourselves in a unique situation with someone who won't be beginning until early February and also the fact that we have somebody who really wanted to step up and do that.

So thank you.

That is our situation, and I welcome you to do that.

The memo has the first few dates of the meetings, but we will The chair will be conferring with the new land use chair subsequently to confirm the other dates, but please keep them on your calendar for right now just so we don't lose that, all right?

Let's see, the land use committee itself will also have several pieces of legislation coming through, so we have to make sure that there is time for that legislation for the committee to meet as a committee as well.

All right, the other note I wanted to make is that, as promised, the website for the vacancy filling process was launched last week, I believe on Friday.

And so council members and the public can find that information on the City Council website.

But the question that is asked most frequently, which I'll answer, is that the applications will be open on January 2nd, and that application period will close on January 9th.

So please visit the website for more information, but it's basically the same process as earlier this year.

All right, moving on.

There are no letters or proclamations today, so let's open it up to round robin and updates from council members, and the roll call order begins with Council Member Moore.

I don't think, no, she's not joining from home.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

As Council President mentioned, there is one item from the Land Use Committee on tomorrow's full council agenda, Resolution 32156, declaring the intention to establish new sales and use tax deferral for the conversion of underutilized commercial property to housing.

This is a resolution that's a required step in the process to adopt legislation later that would enact the authority the city has been granted by the state of Washington, which became effective via Senate Bill 6175 this past June.

And as Council President mentioned, I'll be bringing an amendment that will update the public hearing date on the proposed sales tax deferral program from January 30th, 2025 to February 4th.

Let's see, this past weekend, I attended the South End Education Town Hall.

It was at Cleveland High School.

It was hosted by the Kabatan Alliance, Anak Bayan, South Seattle.

and Rainier Beach High School.

This was a student-led and student-organized discussion to discuss the budget deficit at Seattle Public Schools.

These students in particular are concerned that we have a new Ethnic studies is part of the curriculum in the city's public school system.

And because of the budget deficit, that's one of the first things being cut.

So students at Cleveland, for example, my son takes Filipino history as part of his 12th grade history class.

But one teacher's already been laid off, and the program is...

due to shut down.

So students are really frustrated by the budget deficit and the impact that that's having on the curriculum that they thought they were going to be getting.

And let's see, sorry, lost my place.

Oh, and then that was one part of the purpose for students organizing this event.

The other was related to a call for organizing to protect Filipino migrant families.

We have a lot of migrant families here in the city of Seattle.

They are leaving their country because of poor economic conditions, and as you may have read in the news lately, a lot of political upheaval happening.

But when they get here, they are afraid, very often undocumented, and are afraid of...

the potential impacts that that has, especially given the new presidential administration that's coming in.

So there's a lot of organizing among Filipino young people in the city and they're looking for allies.

Next weekend, I'll be attending the ribbon cutting for the Rainier Beach Action Coalition Food Innovation Center.

I am really excited about this.

It's something that folks in Rainier Beach have been working on for 10, 12 years.

Um, uh, it will be, so there's been a lot of food security work happening.

I worked, when I worked there, um, we were starting the farm stand that is run by young people and it was really an opportunity to bring, uh, South King County growers to create a market for them, um, which is what happens at the farm stand.

Uh, they now have a CSA program.

They do, uh, nutrition education classes, cooking classes, so that young people in the Rainier Beach neighborhood understand what to do with the produce that's available to them, and they learn the importance of cooking and nutrition.

And what they also learned in the last 10 years was that Rainier Beach would be a good location for basically for a food facility that allows for dry and cold storage of local produce and food processing facilities, as well as a commercial kitchen.

So the idea is it's not all complete, but it's in the works.

And this is just an opportunity for them to celebrate again, having reached a really important milestone in the industry.

Development of this facility at the Rainier Beach literally across the street from the Rainier Beach light rail station That is all I have Yeah, I read the I think it was a Senate report on the legislation in Olympia that enabled the municipalities to Institute these sales and use deferral program and I had a question about I But it focused on MFTE buildings there, so does that mean that that deferral will only apply to buildings that are commercial and then transformed into residential that participate in the MFTE program?

Oh, so yeah, it is intended to support affordable housing, to support job creation, and the idea is to allow for the tax exemption of commercial properties that are converting.

I will say I will need to follow up if your question is specifically about MFTE, but I can let you know.

Yeah, because there are a lot of other affordable housing buildings or perspectives that don't that don't fit into the MFTE program.

So that's one thing that I had.

And then has our Office of Forecasting, because it mentions the Washington Office of Forecasting, does our office have an idea or a ballpark about how much of a revenue hit that would be?

I know that when, I think it's a lot of, I fully support the effort.

I'm just wondering if that analysis is in there.

I haven't read the memo though, so perhaps it is and I don't know.

Well, I think the part of the issue is that it is not completely clear how many conversions will happen.

And so there's sort of limited potential impact because there is limited potential conversion.

Right.

But I'm happy to follow up for you.

Okay, because I have no idea how much the regular sales and tax bill would be on a conversion.

So that's all my questions.

Thank you.

Council Member Rink, I'll pass it to you.

Thank you so much.

Well, excited to share and actually want to just start with a thank you to central staff.

We are officially done with all of our trainings as a team.

We made it.

And in terms of another team update this week, we will officially be fully staffed.

I'm really excited to welcome two new members to our team, Kenny Tran, uh, who will be our external affairs manager and Rachel Alger, who will be joining as our new policy director.

Now, as it relates to our committee sustainability, city light arts and culture, I want to apologize.

Last week I mentioned that our first meeting of the year would be on January 3rd, but we'll be on recess during that time, but maybe you won't do that.

But rather, our first meeting of the year will actually now be January 17th instead.

And it will be there where we will hear the after action on the windstorm and the large outages that happened.

I understand there were also some outages that happened this weekend as well, and I've been in conversation with City Light about them.

So excited to hear about that in January.

My team also met last week with Arts and Culture for our first intro meeting, as well as the Office of Labor Standards.

And as it relates to being out in community, we had the opportunity to join the 37th Legislative District in their holiday festivities, but also visited with the Lake City Collective and D5.

Got the pleasure of joining...

Council Member Kettle for the D7 open house on the comp plan, which was great.

Thank you for your partnership there.

Attended the Meet the Elected Officials event and then joined alongside King County Council Member Jorge Barron for the opening of the Pacific Science Center's new exhibit, Brainy Bodies.

We were also joined by Jayapal's office there and had some good discussion around activation for FIFA as well and bringing that into Seattle Center, and tonight I'll be joining partners with Casa Latina and the Fair Work Center for the domestic worker statewide Bill of Rights launch.

And to close my comments before I take any questions, something caught my eye this past week that I thought I'd mention here today.

In the past eight days, we've had four pedestrian collisions with vehicles.

The first one on December 8th within Ballard, driver hitting a pedestrian.

The next one on December 9th within South Park, driver hitting a pedestrian.

Then on December 13th within Soto, driver hitting a pedestrian.

And then on December 14th in off Lake City Way.

And that kind of just caught my eye for in about a week is a lot and has me particularly thinking about street safety for pedestrians across our entire city and really excited to be joining, of course, a transportation committee meeting tomorrow.

And again, want to make sure that we are creating safer streets for everybody.

So thank you and happy to take questions.

Great.

Great update.

Thank you.

Okay.

Let me do the alphabet in my head.

I'm next.

Yes.

So fun facts.

When you're done, just pass it to the next person.

Yeah, thanks.

That way we don't have to be so formal.

I'm trying to, again, bring the less formalness to this conversation because we always set them in such formal situations that it's nice to just be able to have a conversation with you all as publicly noticed because of the quorum.

folks for my committee on wednesday december 18th we have a packed agenda we'll probably be here for two Sorry, it's canceled.

Bad jokes already today.

Yes, I will tighten up a little bit.

So Wednesday, December 18th, we don't have committee this week.

And in response to the conversation about sales tax, my best guess is that because conversions have not been occurring, they would not have been part of a previous forecast.

And so they wouldn't be impacting a future forecast.

In addition, we know that the sales tax related to construction is what dipped this last forecast.

So my best guess is that they're making for those corrections either way about it.

So all that said is I don't think that there's...

Yeah, we know that...

Go ahead.

Great.

I'll take questions at the end.

Colleagues, this last week I submitted a letter to Council President to have signed here on Thursday.

Deadline's Wednesday, so it's not here before us today.

I will be bringing it back the first week when we get back regarding Thunderbird Treatment Services, and we'll be asking for your edits ahead of you, asking you to sign, because I want this...

I want to make sure that your voice is reflected, should you desire to have that.

Within my external committees on AWC, we had our board meeting last week.

Council Member Morales, you were recognized, as well as Mayor Ron Onslow of Ridgefield, Washington, who is also leaving his position this next month.

And so you will be missed, and we'll be appointing some new board members next month.

At Sound Transit, we were able to reopen the survey regarding the naming of the station at 130th Street Station.

I'm trying to name it Deborah Juarez Station.

It's against the policies regarding naming stations, so it's not going to happen.

There are four pretty good options.

And so I know, I believe I sent it to you, Council Member Rink and Council President Nelson, and I know that I sent it to Council Member Moore as the two city-wide and district-elected.

So that's going to be open until December 23rd.

And as well at Sound Transit, we are going to be voting on some transit-oriented development for both the U District and Federal Way in two different positions.

The one that's happening in U District we're all very familiar with, Rosie's Village, because we had to have a street vacation that came through your committee, Council Member Saka.

As well, we will be updating the property tax levy resolution to be in line with the county assessor's office procedures.

We are not changing any levy rates.

So no one's getting taxed anymore.

No one's getting taxed any less.

There's no changes there.

It's just apparently the resolution was not ordered correctly by...

All that to say, that's what's coming.

So if you hear about that, you can know that there's no changes to the property tax levy.

In District 6, I had office hours from 10.30 a.m.

to 5 p.m.

yesterday.

We're hosting office hours throughout this week to get through the backlog because I put office hours on pause during the budget, and I hope to be all caught up this week.

And that is it, colleagues.

That's my report.

Questions?

With that, I'll pass it to Councilmember Hollingsworth.

I'm next.

You are.

Oh, sorry.

I thought.

Oh, yeah.

No, you went before.

You're supposed to go before me.

Yeah.

Sorry about that.

All good.

Back to Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

I meant to say point of order, Council Member Strauss, but you had already started.

You just would have interrupted me saying that we were going to have a meeting on Wednesday.

Well, so I am up.

Happy to kick things off from D1 and Transportation Committee perspective.

Colleagues, good afternoon.

Exciting updates on the Transportation Committee.

We have a meeting tomorrow morning.

No.

We're not canceling it.

We are having it tomorrow morning, and I'm excited for that.

On the agenda will be a number of things.

And welcome in advance, Councilmember Rank, to that committee.

On that agenda will be a number of things.

We're gonna be doing a refresher on the exciting permitting requests and rights-of-way that happen and regularly go through our committee.

So I think it'll be good for the folks, well, everyone, myself included, by the way, and then, you know, especially our newest colleague.

Welcome again.

We'll also be hearing, without voting, we're going to be hearing a number of permitting requests, so a mixture of both net new requests and then also some renewals as well.

And then after that...

More and more exciting stuff in the Transportation Committee.

The final agenda topic we'll be doing and we'll be discussing winter storm preparedness.

Be getting a briefing from SDOT on just generally how our city shows up and responds and prepares to before the winter weather event even happens.

how we prepare for it.

So really excited to hear that.

And so that is our transportation committee.

And that, again, is our final one of the calendar year.

With respect to a regional committee, Councilmember Kettle and I joined our final Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board meeting on Thursday.

Among other things, we got to hear a year-end kind of recap summary of some of the things that happened.

we worked on collectively as a board and were able to achieve through community support.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to quickly share out of a few of those learnings.

First off, the Puget Sound Regional Council, as a region, we were able to deliver 77 projects in 2024, totaling $123 million in FHWA funds.

And in terms of, so as we know, that's, disseminated across the broader region, four-county region.

In terms of some of those Seattle-specific investments, a couple things, projects I'd just like to share.

That included the Rapid Ride G line ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Rapid Ride J line, there was a groundbreaking there.

And then in my own district, there was a Georgetown to South Park safety project groundbreaking project.

that happened a few weeks ago.

So a lot of exciting things happened on that committee and some of the subordinate committees there, but it was good to, amongst other things, just kind of reflect upon all the...

We go to these regular external regional committees and we do a lot of impactful things, but sometimes I find it important to take a moment to pause, reflect, and then collectively celebrate some of that work and what it looks like.

So that was my essence of my community briefing updates just in the community was honored to attend the before the badge last week for our newest recruits and SPD.

and had a chance to meet with them, have a conversation with them about a number of things, but reinforce our city's values and thank them for answering our city's call to serve in that way.

And so great, great conversation.

I got a little FOMO from a few of you all colleagues, as I heard you all had such exciting engagements with our Before the Badge recruits.

And so, I got a chance to do that myself personally, which was awesome.

And also, got a chance to do the Walk the Square tour with some of my constituents in Pioneer Square.

It's a regular thing that they have with communities.

Got a chance to join the residents, members of the Residents Council, small businesses in the area, join with various city partners, nonprofit partners to just walk the neighborhood.

identify hyper-local community neighborhood-specific needs.

And so, that was a really awesome experience that I had with some of my constituents in Pioneer Square.

And finally, on Saturday, I attended the Delridge Winter Market.

which was amazing at the Youngstown Cultural Center in North Delridge.

It was sort of an offshoot, a winter market-specific event.

that the organizers of the Delridge Farmer's Market put on, which the Delridge Farmer's Market generally runs from spring, summer.

So this is a very specific event.

It was amazing.

Vendors, small business owners of all kinds everywhere.

I took my two youngest boys, and they particularly enjoyed all the wonderful cookies and treats, but also purchased some fresh produce and soap.

handmade soap and amongst other things so really really exciting times and honored to be able to share that event inaugural event with Community members that I'm that I represent so that is all from my perspective Now are we going back in the order councilmember?

I welcome any questions or comments and if not councilmember Hollingsworth Thank You councilmember Saka.

I'm glad you got the handmade soap Keep your hands clean And everything else.

Okay, parks, utilities, technology meeting will be on Wednesday, January 22nd.

I think I'd said the eighth last time.

We will be canceling that meeting as we are preparing information and agenda.

So it will be on January 22nd.

Upcoming legislation, council president has already stated some of those.

Chihuly Garden lease renewal, also Verizon wireless lease agreement, and land acquisition in San Diego.

Beacon Hill, South End, S-O-U-F-H, South End, for the amendment to Conservation Futures ILA with King County to fund this land acquisition and reimbursement in recent acquisition.

That was a hefty sentence there.

So those will be coming to council tomorrow, that's tomorrow, tomorrow the 17th.

No, yes, the 17th.

Sorry, my dates are bad.

As council president announced, we'll be heading on the select committee for the comprehensive plan.

I wanna take this time to thank council member Morales and all her work and her staff's work.

I know it's going to be a heavy lift and she's been gracious enough to offer notes and information.

So I just really, really appreciate that.

Know that I'll be working with you all very collaboratively and, you know, every single day for this process.

We are receiving a briefing from OPCD in our mayor's office this week.

Just kind of start to get the timeline and information and doing a deep dive in that piece.

So really appreciate everyone's support.

If you want to give me some support.

I'm willing to take it, so thank you.

But looking forward to working with you all on this process.

Obviously, we've heard how important housing is in our community, how affordability, working class people, just every day from renters nonstop, how important housing is.

And so we need to do more.

Looking forward to building that vision with you all and also listening to you all, hearing what constituents are saying.

So thank you.

Next, a little update.

This is kind of a fun update.

Angel, the dog that we helped save about a month ago, I want to thank all of her foster moms that have been helping her.

Thank you, because I'm going to tell you, it was a lot.

But it's been an honor to be a part of this dog's healing.

I know that sounds really weird.

Seattle's a dog city.

I can't begin to tell you the amount of emails that we received, more than any, about a dog.

which has been great, but she is going to be to her long-term home.

We found a long-term home for her.

So I'm really very excited about this.

And I definitely want to take this time to thank my mother because she has been phenomenal in helping with this.

So anyways, just wanted to throw that out there.

Also last week, I had a really great opportunity to attend Urban League's community.

It was their meeting about a community reinvestment.

plan.

This money came out about a year ago.

It was worked on with a lot of the cannabis growers and retail stores for $200 million for community reinvestment fund that we got from cannabis tax dollars.

It went directly to Department of Commerce, and it was spun down and directly infused into communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs throughout the state of Washington.

Seattle had a lot of organizations that applied from youth, grants from home ownership opportunities debt relief business support and healing grants the the grant buckets were very intentional and a lot of that money has been released to the community and we're gonna start seeing the impacts of it so that was a meeting to talk about you know more of the funding that's going to be released and couldn't be more happy about just the the work that people did at the state it's not only a city level or a county level the state level so that was huge Last but not least, happy holidays to everyone.

I think one of the things that I'm really cognizant about, not to put a downer note, but sometimes this is the most saddest time of the year for some people.

Unfortunately, the highest suicide rate is between Thanksgiving and MLK that we experience over the time.

And so I just wanted...

to throw that out there that, you know, just, um, I hope everyone has a great holiday season with family and, and know that, uh, people are here.

So everyone protect their mental peace and their mental health.

And, um, that there's a lot of, we'll be sending out a, we will be sending out a newsletter of all of the resources that are available to people, um, during the holiday season to be with family and friends and connectivity.

I think it's incredibly important.

So, um, Happy holidays.

I want to leave it at that.

And then I will pass it off to Council Member Kettle.

Oh, if there's any questions, I'll take them.

My apologies.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth, because I only got the memo a couple minutes before walking into this, so I didn't make my official notes.

You can see support for Council Member Hollingsworth.

written on my notes now.

It does say that.

I had to confirm.

And exciting to step up into the position of chairing the Select Comprehensive Planning Committee.

As your vice chair, I'm standing here to support you.

Any point along the way?

We thought that the comprehensive plan was going to come to the land use committee when I was the chair.

It hasn't.

We've got a very tight timeline, colleagues, and Council Member Morales is sharing a knowing face here that if one thing goes sideways, we're going to be late.

And so I'm here to support you and get the job done.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

I really appreciate that.

And then also, too, just like your historical knowledge and support.

So thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

Quickly, I too, right before this, sort of learned about this, but I just want to, first off, congratulate you for stepping into this exciting role, huge opportunity for the city, for constituents across the city, and I think for you as well.

And I couldn't be more, so congratulations, and then also thank you.

I just want to express my gratitude and appreciation for you, Council Member Hollingsworth, for stepping up.

And agreeing to serve in this way and taking on something, I don't even think you sit on the land use committee, but you understand the importance of affordability throughout our city and the opportunity, the generational opportunity that we have.

to do more and thoughtfully grow and plan.

And so I just want to just thank you.

And you mentioned support, potential support from, you can count on my support as your colleague in this effort.

And I don't have the vice chair expertise.

I don't even sit on the committee, but you can count on my support in any way it can be helpful.

Thank you again.

We're lucky to have you.

We are so lucky to have you.

And thank you again for agreeing to serve in this way.

Thank you.

If there's no more questions, I'll pass it off.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I too want to thank you for your engagement and stepping up related to the comprehensive plan.

That in combination with your great work in terms of finding a forever home for that dog is truly, as Council Member Strauss said, worthy of some jazz hands.

So congratulations.

Quite seriously, jazz hands.

I also want to thank I, too, like Councilmember Strauss, has added some extra notes, and I wanted to thank Councilmember Saka for participating in the Before the Badge program.

That's something that I've been participating in for years, both as a Queen Anne person, but also as a Councilmember, and I think it's a fantastic opportunity to meet those people individuals who are about to start the Academy and to to engage and talk about it's it's it's always something that if Seattleites knew what the program does and these these people who want to serve and how they represent the diversity you know every time I've been they would be proud of the program and proud of the direction that we're going in terms of you know rebuilding and bringing people into service with the Seattle Police Department.

So thank you, Council Member Saka.

And if anybody else would like to do it, we can work that.

And since I mentioned that, I also wanted to thank those who've been visiting the precincts, because that's equally important now that we're at this end of the year.

I want to thank You know, going to the East Precinct with Council Member Hollingsworth, going to the South Precinct with Council Member Morales, and West Precinct with Council Member Saka.

And so an open invitation to Council Member Rink after the start of the new year, because at some point I'll have to go again to all five precincts, and you're more than welcome to join me when I do that, along with Council President and anybody else who'd like to join.

SHIFTING NOW TO MY REGULAR NOTES, THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE, OUR NEXT MEETING WILL BE 14 JANUARY.

IT WILL BE OUR NEXT MEETING ON LESS LETHAL WEAPONS.

I JUST WANTED TO NOTE THAT I WILL HAVE A CHAIR'S AMENDMENT PACKAGE THAT I WILL COME AROUND TO EACH OF YOU, FIRST THE COMMITTEE AND THEN OTHERS AS WELL ON THE FULL COUNCIL REGARDING when I'm looking to do that, starting off with my vice chair, with the amendment and walk through the various pieces of the less lethal weapons legislation.

So we'll do that.

I'll follow it up with an email probably tomorrow as well, stating the same.

And thank you for all the engagement you've done on this already.

Again, concepts to central staff, to Mr. Doss by the 20th of December.

It sounds like that's already occurred.

And then look to go final by the 9th of January.

In terms of the committee, looking forward, 25 is going to be focused on ordinances, starting with less lethal weapons, but also the criminal justice system.

It's so important to have a strong, functioning criminal justice system.

One thing I learned, too, is the community safety programs, the alternative response and ensuring that That is complementing and working towards our goals in terms of creating safer neighborhoods.

Now, that will be a focus in 25. I wanted to say, in terms of 2024, thank you to, first, the Public Safety Committee, but then also the broader council, central staff, which is very important, and my own team.

Overall, for the council, we passed 11 public safety bills.

Incredible.

Eight within the Public Safety Committee.

ranging across the board, starting off with vacant buildings abatement.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for co-sponsoring that.

Also, too, in Council President's Committee, which she chairs, Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development, which is focused more on SBD, and of course, from the labor side, the SPOG interim agreement.

So very important as we move forward into 2025. And speaking of Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development, working with the Council President, I bring this up because this has been in the news.

It got some attention last week regarding after-hour establishments.

And when I come around, I can also speak to this legislation as well, you know, in terms of timelines and what we're looking to do.

Okay, shifting from public safety, I just wanted to note last week did meet with the OPCD's D7 Comprehensive Plan meeting.

I want to thank the entire team, OPCD, that put that together.

And for all those that came out and engaged, because there was a lot of people there with a lot of different points and perspectives, which was really important.

So thank you, Council Member Rink, for joining in on that.

Wednesday, West Precinct Advisory Council meeting.

Great opportunity to hear from the community as it relates to public safety, but also the West Precinct, which was represented by Captain Brown.

Thursday, the PSRC Transportation Policy Board.

Executive Board.

Oh, is that executive?

And, you know, in terms of all the great stuff that they do, one of the things...

One of the things I have to say, the Puget Sound Regional Council is very well run, very well run and led, and they do a lot of work.

And it's great to be part of the board, both of the transportation board, but also the executive board.

And I really appreciate the efforts as it relates to regional transportation.

As Council Member Saka noted here in Seattle, And then on Friday, really want to encourage, I did a market to MOHAI walk, meeting with the groups that are participating in this.

And it's really something to behold in terms of, you know, coming out of the market and then, you know, going right on Bell, going all the way down and then, you know, making our way.

You know, there's so many parks.

There's like five parks along the way.

There's a lot of points of interest.

And it's really something that is, you know, something to highlight.

And I think oftentimes we kind of have a vertical sense of Seattle because of the numbered streets, the Northwest aspects of our city, but we really need to work on the East-West piece too.

And the Market of Mohi is, it's not really East-West, but it kind of highlights that more than you do otherwise.

And I think these cross city East-West is really so important to augment our kind of often vertical North-South kind of approach to the city.

And I really want to also thank, we have our new Pike Place Market PDA director, Lichtenberg, for her.

I met with her the day before, actually, and then met her at the market and with her team, then went on the walk with me.

So I want to thank her, plus the entire Market to Mohi team.

Separately on Friday, Domestic Violence Council, very important meeting, so important in terms of what we're trying to do in terms of breaking the cycles that we see as it relates to DV.

And I wanted to thank Director Kim and her team, the Human Services Department, for their work in that meeting, similar to what we had with the PSRC staff team as well.

And then in conclusion as well, I just wanted to highlight the Queen Anne Magnolia news.

We had a grand tree lighting.

So I've got a copy for our at-larges here on the council and also for my Magnolia brother there in D6.

One for you, Council Member Rink.

So I just wanted to give a shout out to the Queen Ag Magnolia News and the Queen Ag community represented by the chamber and a fantastic young man who's the youth ambassador.

Since he's a minor, I won't say his name, but he was the master of ceremonies.

And I want to thank him along with Deputy Mayor Wong.

who shows up next to me in this photo that you see on the cover.

And with that, I just wanted to echo Council Member Hollingsworth's wish for everyone to have a happy holidays.

And Council President, if there's no questions.

Thank you very much.

I just found out that my missing cat had returned, so I was finishing that text.

Anyway, so the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee does have a couple of items on the agenda, the appointments to the Domestic Worker Standards Boards.

As has already been stated, we suspended the rules so that those appointments could go on the agenda tomorrow instead of waiting a week because generally any legislation passed after 1 o'clock FROM THURSDAY ON, WELL, THURSDAY HAS TO WAIT FOR A WEEK AND A HALF TO GET ON TO THE ACTUAL CITY COUNCIL MEETING.

SO JUST BY WAY OF EXPLANATION, SURE, THERE'S NO OPPOSITION TO THAT.

BUT IN ANY CASE, SO THE NEXT MEETING OF THE GOVERNANCE ACCOUNTABILITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE MEETING WILL BE ON THURSDAY, JANUARY 9TH.

I know it's so long for you to wait, but hold your horses.

Anyway, last week, some of the things that came up was I attended the Visit Seattle annual brunch.

And there was a panel discussion led by Tammy, who is the head of Visit Seattle.

And a number of people included April Putney, who is the boss of all the planning for the World Cup.

Um, and, uh, in staff internal to visit Seattle and a couple other folks who I'm blanking on right now, but the point is a presentation on the economic, uh, projected economic benefits of the, of the world cup and the, uh, the club games in 2025. was really inspiring.

And I believe that's on their website, but I just have to say that my push will be to ensure that our local small businesses and artists, musicians, and that our local businesses and artists, et cetera, really do benefit from the huge, amazing crowds that come to Seattle.

And there is a sort of, there is a work group, there's a, kit of resources that these that small businesses will be able to access to ensure that they're Planning well for the influx of people and that's in addition to all the work the city is doing transportation wise etc So that was really interesting visit their website for that information I guess among as many of you did I attended the chamber's public officials reception that's always a great time to meet electeds and also people who you might not expect to see there.

So thank you very much to the chamber for hosting that every year.

And lots of interesting conversations, some of them about upcoming things next year, not just at the city level, but the state level.

If you can go next year, I recommend it.

Coming up this week, tomorrow I will be attending the city's monthly supported employment division meeting, which is under the Seattle Human Services Department.

I hadn't heard of this, so here's what it is.

It's a city program that connects both developmental disabilities to customized city job opportunities.

And the supported employment program helps Departments include people with developmental disabilities in the workplace and also at the same time help departments create jobs that not only benefit the folks that are getting the jobs, of course, but also the department.

And each job is customized for both the employee and the work unit.

by bundling entry-level tasks that match the skills of employment candidates.

And so I will be attending that meeting and learning more about that.

Let's see, the Supported Employment Programs Hallmark is its capacity to design effective positions that adapt to individual human and organizational needs.

So I'm excited to learn more.

And on Thursday, I'll be joining the KCRHA governing committee meeting, and that'll be interesting to see how some of the changes of the recently adopted ILA will be implemented.

And I believe, I'm not quite sure if it's the new model for the governing board that will be in place.

So that will be on Thursday.

A couple other meetings to note.

I wanted to make sure to recognize that I am getting a lot of comp plan briefings as well.

Had one from the executive staff last time.

Gonna be meeting with central staff.

Those are available to anybody that's interested.

So definitely take advantage of any information one can gather before the actual meetings and briefings start.

So having one, and I believe that those are led by central staff, but then there are also partners that are interested in briefing us, such as the DSA, et cetera.

And then finally, I'll have my regular meetings with Chief Rahr and Seattle City Attorney Davison to find out what's coming in addition to a bunch of other meetings that are...

you know, regular stuff on my calendar.

And then I did ask my staff to bring down the committee report because when you mentioned, Council Member Strauss, that the dip in sales tax, you're right, there was a dip in sales tax.

That was, it was construction, because of the dip in construction activity.

And that's what, as you know, as budget chair, that's what really caused some problems with our revenue streams.

And so that was a dip.

And then a deferral of that tax would not be to compensate for that dip, but it was You know, it's probably minor, and the point is that we need to, to me, what matters is that we build housing and that we address the empty buildings in our city.

And so, again, fully in support of that, and I look forward to learning more about that.

So, to be continued on that.

That's all I've got.

Does anybody have any other business to mention before we adjourn?

Yes.

Just building off of what you're saying, thanks for bringing up the supported employment program that we have here in the city.

I know we've got a gentleman who works on the second and third floor through the supported employee program.

Great guy, really good at his job, and he's been working here longer than I have.

So I think he's been seven to ten years.

And so he's just really great to work with and really appreciate his service to our city.

Glad to know that we are participating.

Okay, if there is no other comment or question from council members about anything, I will adjourn this meeting.

It is 2.51.

Thank you, everyone.