Seattle City Council Land Use & Neighborhoods Committee 4/28/21

Good morning.

The April 28, 2021 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31.

I am Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Eric Strauss?

Present.

Brie, present.

Thank you.

The Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee of the City of Seattle begins our committee by acknowledging that we are on the traditional and ancestral lands of the first people of this region, past and present, represented in a number of tribes and as urban natives.

We honor with gratitude the land itself and the people of this land.

And we start with this acknowledgment to recognize the fact that we are guests on this land.

We must be stewarding our land as such, as guests.

This is not a checklist or a rote behavior.

This does not give us a passport to do Whatever we want or however we desire, this is a reminder and a tone setting grounding for our time together to steward our work as guests, as we are here for only a short period of time.

Thank you.

We have four items on our agenda today, a public hearing on the bringing business home legislation, which we adopted in March, a presentation on the Department of Neighborhoods annual report, presentation on Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection and Office of Planning and Community Development's Race and Social Justice Initiative Report, and a presentation on the Seattle Design Commission's Annual Report.

The next meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee will be on Wednesday, May 12, starting at 9.30 AM.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will open the remote public comment period for the items on today's agenda.

Before we begin, I ask that everyone please be patient as we will learn to operate this new system in real time.

While it remains our strong intent to have public comment regularly included on public, on meeting agendas, the city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem the system as being abused or is unsuitable for allowing your meetings to be conducted in an efficient and efficiently and in a manner which we are able to conduct our necessary business.

I will moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Public comment period for this meeting is up to 10 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak and would like to, you can sign up before the end of public comment by going to the council's website.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call on the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone, and an automatic prompt if you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak.

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

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

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their public comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted after 10 seconds, to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we will ask that you please disconnect and align.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle award-winning Seattle channel or the listening options provided on the agenda.

If there is a separate public, there is a separate public comment on bringing business home immediately following public comment.

If you have comments about bringing business home, please reserve them for the public hearing.

And I know that Andrew, I see that you are signed up for both.

So please keep your public comments to the items on our agenda and bringing business home to the public hearing.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Morning, Andrew.

I see you there.

You are free to begin at your convenience.

Andrew.

Our first and only speaker today is Andrew Kitty.

Andrew, please take it away at your discretion.

I see you are unmuted, Andrew.

If you're having problems, press star six, not pound six.

Now you're back on mute.

There you are.

I see you are unmuted, Andrew.

You want to try?

I'm not hearing you though.

I can hear you pressing.

Now you're back on mute.

Now you're off mute.

I'm sorry, Andrew.

I see that you are there.

I can hear you pressing buttons, but I cannot hear your voice.

You're back on mute.

You're off mute.

IT, what is your suggestion at this time?

I see that Andrew is off of mute, and I cannot hear him still.

Just make sure the phone itself is not muted.

Andrew, you're off of mute on our end.

Is your phone muted?

And colleagues, if we had more than one public commenter for this morning, I would have already had to move on since Andrew is Speaking at both this and the public hearing, I'm using my discretion to provide a little extra time.

Andrew, is your phone on?

Here we go.

Here we are.

Good morning, Andrew.

Yes.

Thank you for your patience.

I am so sorry.

I am technologically challenged.

So am I.

So don't worry about it.

Okay, I will jump right in.

Take and please reserve your comments about bringing business home for the public hearing.

When is that going to occur?

Oh, that is up next.

Is that the only topic I just want to discuss?

Yes.

Okay, then I'm going to close this and then I'm going to open the public hearing.

So hang tight, Andrew.

I'll be here.

Okay, thank you.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

Our first item of business today is a public hearing on the ordinance 126293, which is the Bringing Business Home Small Business Flexibility Bill, which we adopted in March.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item 1, Council Bill 120001 slash ordinance 126293, bringing business home, public hearing.

Thank you.

And we are joined by Keto Freeman of Council Central staff.

Keto, will you get us started with a very brief overview of the legislation we adopted before I open the public hearing?

Sure.

And I'll just share my screen here.

I've got a very quick presentation that is attached to the agenda.

I'll remind council members about the procedural posture, sort of answer the question that some folks might have about why is the council holding a hearing after passing the ordinance, talk a little bit about the legislative history, and then briefly remind the committee about what the bill, what the ordinance does and does not do.

So with respect to procedural posture, as the council members know, land use legislation comes with a somewhat with more requirements than other pieces of legislation that the council considers.

Specifically, there are two things that need to happen before council acts on most pieces of land use legislation.

There has to be a review pursuant to the State Environmental Policy Act, and there also has to be a public hearing.

Ordinance 126293 is authorized pursuant to RCAW 3678-390, which is portion of the Growth Management Act that gives local governments the opportunity to enact regulations more quickly if they are temporary regulations.

And so that is the authority that the Council acted under when approving Ordinance 126293. The Council passed the Ordinance back in March, March 15th.

The purpose of the Ordinance is to provide Temporary regulatory flexibility for home-based businesses.

so that they can operate with fewer restrictions during the COVID-19 civil emergency.

This may allow some businesses to remain operating during the pandemic and could speed the economic recovery, so it remains to be seen.

The provisions in the bill, so the relaxed regulatory requirements, expire in April of 2022, so about a year from now.

The bill also contains a work program for SDCI to propose permanent changes to home occupation regulations but doesn't prescribe what those permanent changes might be.

So the council could be considering permanent changes about nine months or so from now.

Let's see, page down here.

So I'll remind the committee about what Ordinance 126293 does and does not do.

It relaxes certain performance standards.

The city regulates home occupations almost exclusively through performance standards.

It's not a permit requirement for a home occupation.

Is that a land-use permit requirement for a home occupation?

So it relaxes some of those performance standards for up to one year, and those standards include the number of employees that can work at a home business, the type of customer visits.

Customer visits don't have to be by appointment.

They can be walk-up visits, the size of signs, the use of required parking for a home occupation.

So if you have a garage that is a required parking space, you can use your garage for the home occupation while the ordinance is in effect.

Limitations on increased traffic and parking demand, those are removed for most home occupations, and a limitation on the non-commercial appearance of home occupations.

That limitation is also removed for the duration of the ordinance.

When the regulations in the ordinance expire, if they do expire, home occupations that have been modified pursuant to the relaxed regulations would have to be returned to their prior state.

The ordinance does not modify performance standards related to noise, odor, light glare, other kinds of nuisance factors that might be associated with a home occupation.

And it also maintains limitations on increased traffic and parking for certain types of home occupations, specifically auto-oriented home occupations.

So if you are a mechanic and you are repairing cars out of a garage in your home, you are still subject to the limitations on increased traffic and parking demand.

So in a nutshell, that's what the bill does, and that's the legislative history.

I'm happy to answer any questions before the public hearing.

Thank you, Kito.

I do not have questions at this time.

Colleagues, any questions before we move into the public hearing?

Mr. Chair?

Yes, please.

So are we gonna, we're gonna, you're gonna do the public, are you gonna do the next comment to this, and then are we gonna vote?

There is no vote today.

This is a post-adoption public hearing based on the interim use of this law.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I must have read the agenda wrong.

No problem.

If this was a permanent law, then we would have had to have this public hearing 30 days ahead of passage.

Or we posted 30 days ahead, had the public hearing, and then proceeded.

This is lovingly referred to as the fry bread.

Yes.

There you have it.

Thank you.

Well, joking aside, no further questions.

Let's move into the public hearing.

Before we open the remote public hearing, I would again ask everyone please be patient as we continue to learn to operate this new system in real time and navigate through the inevitable growing pains We are currently continuously looking for ways to fine-tune this process, adding new features that allow for additional means of public participation in our council meetings.

I'll moderate the public hearing in the following manner.

Each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I will call on one speaker at a time.

and in the order in which you registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak and would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public hearing by going to the council's website at seattle.gov forward slash council.

The link is also listed in today's agenda.

Once I call on the speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt if you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it is their turn to speak and they will then need to press star six, not pound six, star six.

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

As a reminder, the public comment should relate to Ordinance 126293. If you have comments about something that is not for this agenda, you can always provide written comments by emailing my office.

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

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

If speakers do not end their public 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.

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public hearing on Ordinance 126293 is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

I have present today Andrew Kitty and Christy Beckley.

If you would like to provide public comment for this public hearing, please register now, as we have two speakers allotted for about a total of four minutes.

Andrew, good morning.

I see you are off mute.

Yes.

Hello, good morning.

Good morning, take it away.

Great.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Andrew Kidder, and I am with 350 Seattle, a climate justice group.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to comment and for bringing forward the Bringing Business Home Bill.

I'm speaking today because I urge you to follow up by making the changes in the bill permanent.

We live in challenging times, the COVID-19 pandemic, job losses, housing crisis, and the looming threats of climate change.

To adapt and thrive, we should empower our neighborhoods and give them the strength and resilience to meet these challenges.

Whether the task is to build sufficient housing, care for the sick, revitalize local economies, or build a new clean energy system, there is tremendous work to do.

To succeed, Seattle should take note of those cities that have accomplished extraordinary transformations in the face of major challenges.

Post-war Tokyo was a field of rubble after World War II, only to become an economic powerhouse 25 years later.

Shanty towns in Mumbai and Lagos have transformed from chaotic agglomerations of urban refugees to thriving hubs of high-tech industry.

These places have common characteristics.

The communities are self-organizing, adaptable, and dynamic.

Informal economies thrive alongside formal global economies.

Residential spaces are close to and integrated with workspaces and community spaces.

These characteristics make for dynamic societies.

For decades, Seattle has maintained the purity of its single family residential districts, but these bedroom communities will not help us meet the huge challenges ahead.

Instead, we need to unshackle our neighborhoods from restrictive laws that dictate a monoculture of single family homes and allow them to become dynamic, adaptive, and creative neighborhoods where legal barriers no longer prevent communities from meeting their own needs and growing resourceful and resilient.

Making the bringing business home bill permanent is an important step towards accomplishing that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Andrew.

Up next, we have Christy Beckley.

Christy, good morning.

I see you're present, and I see you're off mute.

Hello, can everyone hear me okay?

Yes, good morning.

Great to hear you.

Hi, good morning.

Hi, I'm Christy Beckley, and I, too, am speaking in favor of the bringing business home ordinance.

I'm here representing the Finney Neighborhood Association.

So in Finneywood we actually call this bill the yonder cider bill.

So as part of our work at the Finney Neighborhood Association we work to support businesses in our district primarily small businesses.

And of course we all know this past year has been a struggle and we've all worked to adjust and be creative during COVID and Also, because of that, we saw the negative impacts that the previous land use code brought to our home-based businesses.

So we were very pleased about this bill being passed last month and are also in favor of making it a permanent change.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to share.

Thank you, Christy, and thank you for your work in the Phinney Neighborhood Association.

Of course.

Staff, can you confirm that there are no further speakers for our remote public hearing?

Confirmed.

Thank you.

That was our last speaker remotely present to speak at this public hearing.

The public hearing on ordinance 126293 is now closed.

Thank you to everyone who provided comment today.

The next item of business on today's agenda is a presentation from the Department of Neighborhoods on their annual report.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Item 2, Department of Neighborhoods annual report.

Thank you.

We are now joined by Director Andres Montilla and staff from the Department of Neighborhoods.

Would you all like to introduce yourselves and then kick us off?

Sure, thank you.

Andres Mantilla, Director of the Department of Neighborhoods.

And I'm joined today by my colleague Elsa, which I think needs to be promoted up into the presenter panel.

Folks can help me with that.

I am not seeing Elsa in the attendee list.

Elsa Batres Boni.

I know we've been having computer difficulties this week, so.

Okay, we'll just take a minute to see if she can log on or be promoted.

Well, I can get going.

And then as she logs on, Elsa, several of you know Elsa about this money from the Department of Neighborhoods, who was our census advisor, strategic advisor over the last couple years, and in 2021, is acting as our also PACE coordinator, of which we will hear a little bit more about today in the presentation.

So I will go on.

Thank you for the opportunity to address this committee and tell you a little bit about the Department of Neighborhoods and our 2021 or 2020 year and accomplishments.

As a reminder, the vision of the Department of Neighborhoods is to strengthen Seattle by actively engaging all communities.

And we do that by centering two North Star goals.

The first one is to put race and equity at the center of all of our decisions and actions, and to invest in the power of communities to forge their own solutions.

And we're committed to these North Star goals through four core strategies.

We're going to highlight some examples of those today.

One is by engaging trusted advocates.

The second is by looking at people-centered storytelling, investing in civic education programs, and investing in equitable engagement and other programmatic investments.

So today, as I mentioned, we are going to talk a little bit about the 2020 accomplishments.

We're going to be focusing a little on the PACE program.

Several of you are very familiar with the PACE program and have been guests at that program as well.

PACE stands for the People's Academy for Community Engagement.

It is a cornerstone of our civic engagement.

approach at the Department of Neighborhoods.

And the reason why we're highlighting that today is because from 2020 and into 2021, there was some reorientation that we needed to do given some staffing changes and budget cuts in 2020. And in that, we will also hear from some of our partners.

We're going to be joined by Maya from the Urban League to talk a little bit about the partnership that we developed with them around PACE.

So next slide.

In 2020, as many departments needed to do, and as the city did, we needed to really pause a lot of our work to shift, dramatically shift to helping the most vulnerable residents recover and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

That was all from the work that we did with through our community liaison program to literally stopping our granting cycles and really focusing and refocusing resources towards things like food access and community capacity supports through our Neighborhood Matching Fund.

Next slide.

Through all of 2020, we worked in partnership with FAS and our other colleagues around COVID-19, first starting with Getting information out there in the early days, as you remember, there was a lot of misinformation and hesitancy around there still is, but lack of information and education about what the virus was what it meant for communities.

And so the department of neighborhoods.

mobilized to organize COVID-19 community outreach webinars and where we were the clearinghouse for information for a lot of city agencies about what needed to happen in terms of things like utility shutoffs, what was happening with utility shutoffs for businesses and for residents, to things like how to access food programs or mental health resources.

We provided in-language digital outreach through our community liaisons.

as information was shifting very quickly.

Often what we needed to do was just shoot in-language videos that we would post on our Facebook and social media pages, opting to do that instead of the long kind of form translation, because information was coming so quickly.

Through 2020, we then transitioned that effort into the distribution of face covering, working with the mayor's office, our community partners, King County Public Health, to distribute face masks and other face coverings to organizations that were need, we're needing them in community.

And even now as we transition into vaccinations.

We are still doing this and distributing face coverings throughout Seattle.

And then lastly, really working with Seattle Fire Department, Seattle Parks Department around COVID-19 testing sites, including two testing sites, one in Rainier Beach and one in West Seattle, really to target those communities and to lift up COVID testing.

Other activities that we did or other efforts that we did in 2020 was working with an interdepartmental team to site more than 15 hygiene stations Several of you participated in some of those conversations.

And the goal here was to provide hygiene services across our communities for our unhoused neighbors.

We also continued our partnership with the Human Services Department in King County around community engagement to direct folks to shelter, to make resources available to those that have questions around what those shelters could provide, and then in specific, working with King County around the standing up of a soda shelter for COVID-19.

And then lastly, one of the highlights is we partnered with City Fruit to host eight pop-up events at Seattle Housing Authority pea patches.

As you know, a lot of our pea patches that are attached to Seattle Housing Authority, a lot of those pea patch users rely on the pea patch as a primary source of food.

And so we served over 750 families with over 2,000 pounds of vegetables from Peabatch Gardens.

Next slide.

Director Mentea, I just want to take a moment there to recognize the amount of important work that you did last year that is really the connecting fabric between the services that the city provides and people who may not speak English as a primary language.

It is just so critical for people to feel safe and comfortable and know what services they're accessing.

For that to happen, they have to understand what's going on.

while the city was moving forward quickly and rapidly on so many different issues to address the COVID-19 emergency, your department was maybe not in the spotlight and doing the critical work for our community.

So I just wanted to highlight and thank you for that.

Thank you, council member.

We feel that engaging in language is more than just translation.

It's a conversation with communities so that they understand the full context of the work that's happening and what's required of them.

And one thing I forgot to mention is right now, if you go to Lumen Field, and if you haven't, I would encourage you to take a look at and visit the great work that's happening there.

We are working with Rota News amongst other partners to do in-language videos.

And we've so far have done in Spanish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Amharic.

Cantonese, Korean, Somali.

And the purpose of those videos is essentially what to expect when you're getting vaccinated.

So that we're trying to dispel the myths or any sort of hesitancy that might exist.

So that really encourage folks to go down the loom and other sites to get vaccinated.

So thank you for pointing that out.

I wanted to move forward to Seattle Together.

And Seattle Together is a partnership with Arts and the Department of Neighborhoods, but also with our other colleagues in SDOT and the libraries and SPU, really across the majority of the city, that's really focused on, it's a citywide initiative to support and uplift and celebrate the enormous goodwill that is happening in community.

And it sprung up during the early days of the pandemic when we were really asking, how can we foster relationships and a feeling of belonging and connection and joy in Seattle?

It really became, a space where we were elevating stories of goodwill and mutual aid that were happening in community and bringing them to the masses and really working in partnership.

And some of the examples you see here, we did, we started with our first event with Make a Joyful Noise, where thousands of Seattleites would gather at 8 p.m.

nightly for a couple of weeks and cheer on essential workers to art in your front, public art in your front yard, as you can see in this example here.

And we were really working to develop new ways for the city to meet the needs of local communities during the pandemic.

I encourage you to, we don't have a lot of time to go into this, but I encourage you to visit the website, which is Seattle together dot org to understand.

a little bit more about the work and be happy to come back with our partners in arts and the library to talk more in the committee.

Some of the highlights is that we, through Seattle Together, is that we contracted with over 118 local artists and community groups to really invest in our local creative economy and provide programming.

As you know, some of our creatives were some of the first workers that were affected by the pandemic, so it was really important for us to center some of our solutions in giving them relief, economic relief.

And to that end, we distributed with Office of Planning and Community Development over 150,000 mini grants to honor the work that mutual aid organizations were doing in providing food access and health services and supports to creatives along to the communities that were most impacted by COVID-19.

That's really great work.

I do want to highlight that Elsa has joined us.

And we know that she has done amazing work.

I just wanted to plug that for you.

Yeah, great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The last thing I want to talk about before we go over to Elsa is actually.

our conversation around interdepartmental support, which is a core issue for us.

As you know, one of the things that the Department of Neighborhoods over the last two, three years has been focusing on is how do we work with our other organizations to really reduce the siloing of city services.

And so the outreach and engagement can really be seamless in terms of how we communicate with community and residents.

And so some of the examples around inter-departmental support was, and again, somewhat related to COVID, was the work that we did with our Office of Economic Development around business support and small business outreach around the Paycheck Protection Program.

and the work that OED was doing around the Small Business Stabilization Fund.

Of interest to you all is also the Stay Healthy Streets.

We worked with SDOT to pilot some examples and work with communities of color, marginalized communities to prioritize outreaching.

strategies in centering community voices, specifically in the central district and central area.

And then lastly, in 2020, we focused on BIPOC outreach to TNC drivers as part of the fair share wage legislation.

And I'll just note that we worked with over 200 BIPOC drivers in 2019 and 2020, and overall engaged with about 6,000 drivers to that effort.

Next slide.

Uh, we continue to do our work and started the work on the West Seattle bridge in doing the outreach and community engagement process for the West Seattle bridge closure.

Some other highlights working with sound transit through their sound transit implementation program around the extension, really working with our partners at the office for civil rights around the racial equity toolkits.

And then finally, working with Estad again in our historic districts and landmark districts around things like sidewalk cafes, street closures, street eating, which I know Council Member Strauss is of particular importance to you.

So we continue these efforts in 2021 and can come back at a later time to do a deeper dive into each of those.

Thank you, Director.

I would just say that you are correct that I am very interested in making many of our cafe streets and sidewalk cafes permanent even after COVID ends.

And I just want to thank you and everyone in your department for allowing the flexibility within the historic districts over the last year as such a long Ballard Avenue.

We're excited for Department of Neighborhoods to participate in our design charrette around Ballard Avenue and looking at how we can allow our rules and code to catch up to some of the changes that we've seen and how we live our lives here in Seattle.

Seattle has not necessarily been a cafe culture and it seems like we may have become a cafe culture this last year.

And I share this because it is important that we keep the historic nature of our historic districts And there's been, for instance, on Ballard Avenue, there are now coverings in the streets that might not meet the historic guidance in the long term.

And we need to provide just a little bit of flexibility and a couple years for predictability and permanent code changes to be made and then allow those businesses to catch up.

So that in the long run, we're protecting our historic districts.

as the board's desire and that we're providing businesses that little bit of flexibility to catch up.

So again, not a question, just another round of thanks for your department for doing great work.

Thank you, Council Member.

And now since we're joined by Elsa, I will turn it over to her to talk a little bit about Census 2020 and then transition into the PACE presentation.

Elsa, take away.

Thank you, Andres and everyone.

And sorry, that picture had to be there forever.

So thank you to my team who put that census picture of me.

So as you know, we had a tremendous success last year.

Our outreach was based and focused on making sure that historically undercounted communities were a part of this.

And the way in which we engaged them was the long-term commitment to, and then to understanding the long-term implications of the census.

And that has a repercussion of the work that we are doing this year as well.

So as you know, we led a campaign That resulted in 76.3% participation rate.

This was one of the largest and highest in the nation of cities our size.

We coordinated a community census task force for a whole two years.

We met almost every month to see what else can we do, engaging folks everywhere we could in Seattle.

The other piece that was key was to find funding, not only the funding that the city had administered, we also found some funding from the state to do some ethnic and minority media outlets.

And in general, we engaged with many, more than 59 community-based organizations to do outreach work with us in the most, probably one of the most challenging census ever, not only because of COVID, but because of the past federal administration who made it really hard to get folks to participate.

So I'll get back to you about what are we doing next with all those folks that we engage, but it was definitely a success.

We worked with our community liaisons program, with many departments, King County, the state, it was a great effort.

And we, as you know, got the results the day before and the state grew about 7% and that's about all we know.

And we will get the details about the census with age block by block by August and September.

We'll be sharing that information.

So I'll bring it to you on this.

With that last slide, I do have one question.

And I just also want to highlight what you just said, which is that with the previous federal administration, there was a lot of hesitancy among many in our community about engaging with the census.

And your work, Elsa, allowed us to warm that chill to allow people to feel comfortable.

And I just want to highlight and thank you for your good work there.

During last year's budget process for this year's budget, council maintained funding for the census outreach position, even though the census itself had concluded.

Can you speak to the ongoing work the position will be engaged in?

Yes, and I will speak a little bit more because it's connected to the next part that it's about, our People's Academy for Community Engagement.

But one of the reasons why it was successful was because the organizations that we connected with, we committed to them to a long-term civic engagement plan.

The only reason why community participated was because they understood that even though we had a horrible administration attacking us constantly for four years with this, This meant that this was, I like to use the term, it was a fight against disability.

And we wanted to be here and we wanted to be engaged with all levels of government.

And so the work that we're doing, we are doing a, we're engaging them through our program called the People's Academy for Community Engagement, as well as some other activity where we are creating a, well, we actually just had our second session called the I Love Census Data.

community conversation where we're trying to make census data available to people.

We're working with the Office of Civil Rights and OPCD, our demographer.

We're trying to make data and show folks that we engage with throughout this process how data is used in the city and ways in which people can access it easily.

So I hope that answers your question.

Yes, it does.

Thank you.

And I'll just add before we move on, but you can go to the next slide, Sam.

One of the key feedback that we heard from community that were part of the 2010 census was that cutoff, that engagement that was happening leading up to the 20th census and then silence.

And so what we really wanted to do was really make sure that we built in that pipeline or that ongoing way of engaging with communities as also I was talking about.

Just quickly, some of the things that we learned in 2020 and some of the kind of innovations and adaptations that we built into our programs.

First, you heard last time we were here about the P-Patch community garden, but one of the things we worked on in 2020 is to really shift some of the programmatic goals, strategies, and resources really intentionally to expanding relationships in BIPOC communities.

for the first half of the year as we were gaining new gardeners, about 45 percent of those gardeners were placed from among BIPOC groups.

And so we anticipate that continuing in 2021 and working with our community organizations with that North Star in mind.

Similarly, working with you, Council Member Strauss, and thank you for your work and other council, we worked on Uh, changes to our historic preservation program, we launched a online certificate of approval process and successfully transitioned the meetings of the landmarks preservation board in our several historic district boards from in person events to virtual gatherings.

And through that, we worked on putting forward a administrative.

Review process that allowed us to really streamline some of these more minor shifts that are happening in historic districts and allow.

The either the historic district boards, or the landmark preservation board to focus on the bigger, more impactful, maybe more impactful projects that are happening in their communities.

We, as I mentioned, worked with community liaisons to make sure that we were well versed in connecting with their communities via digital social media videos and voiceovers.

And despite some cuts that we needed to take through our Neighborhood Matching Fund, we were still able to award 23 community projects for a total of just over $700,000, as well as under the leadership of Daniel Sims, our Community Grants Advisor and Manager, stand up and expand our healthy food programs and several food opportunity funds as well.

And finally, our Peapatch Garden, under the leadership of Kenya Friede, donated over 40,000 pounds of fresh produce to local food banks.

So just some highlights there and some momentum that we gained in 2020 and into 2021. Next slide.

So now I want to turn it back over to Elsa and for the rest of our presentation, just talk about PACE, the People's Academy for Community Engagement.

Thank you, Andres.

And I want to acknowledge that we are joined by our community members here, our partners from the Urban League, Maya Manos and Susan Valgas from the Na'alehi Fund, who will be sharing their thoughts a little bit in just a second.

So this is the presentation I have for you about our People's Academy for Community Engagement.

It's a DUNs program that's been going on and has had many different versions.

In this year, due to everything that's going on, we decided that all this engagement, all the folks in BIPOC communities that we engage in the 2020 Census stakeholder base, as I call it, how can we continue from what Andres said, which was our commitment to not just call them when we need them, but to continue this engagement.

What we learned was the community want to be engaged and learn best ways to engage with government.

And as you know, when we, people from the city go out in community, it doesn't matter if you're from council, from one department or the other, you're one and only.

And so the goal was how can we continue this engagement to understand the different roles, the different ways in which they can influence our decision makers.

So what we did is we recreated our program, our basic People's Academy for Community Engagement program, teaches basic city government engagement to community members, offers meaningful networking to participants, introduces participants to decision makers, creates a pipeline for leadership and influence, and offers participatory learning and centering current city initiatives.

That's what it has been in many different forms.

What is new this year is that, of course, we had to do it online, had to be shorter, but the most important part is that we partner with BIPOC CDOs.

In this case, We partner with the Nahlehi Fund.

We partner with the Urban League.

We are partnering with the coalition of the Duwamish in South Park, different coalition in the Duwamish area at Georgetown in South Park.

And then we are having one that we're finalizing with the API community.

Our cohorts are based on an issue specifically that this organization and this community is wanting to learn about the city and how do we engage them.

We also included participant stipends.

So in other years, people would come, we would offer food, childcare, maybe some interpretation.

So in this time, we provided stipends, and we co-created the curriculum and recruitment plan for this program.

So the next slide, please.

Basically, education on city government, meaningful networking, and connect with leaders.

How do we do that?

How do we effectively engage folks and continue that relationship?

Next slide, please.

So these are the organizations that we engage with.

We're working with all of them.

We just finished our Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.

It was mostly with African American folks, but we invited everyone to join.

And we had a fantastic group who was recruited by the organization And we together went through this trip of doing it online, and very surprised when people were super engaged and wanting more.

They asked us to do a 201 session.

And our next cohort, which is happening actually tonight, our second session is our Native Pace, which is new.

And we are tackling the different ways in which we want to, from the city's perspective, share how does it work, but also the organization and I have Susan here is going to hear and talk to us about what are they looking for when engaging to the city.

And so the next slide, we're going to have four cohorts throughout the year, about 100 people that will be engaging.

Our goal is not only to provide this knowledge to individuals for the organization so they can also replicate this in the following years.

We're hoping to do this now ongoing.

in the future.

So some of the topics that we cover, you know, we go very basic.

And what I've learned too, is that not only the participants, but also the leaders of the organization who are co-facilitating this cohorts are very thankful of learning this skills that, you know, you only learn them by doing them.

And as we are having different speakers from different departments and different council members, everyone said you are learning as we do it and the best way to engage is to actually participate in it.

So these are the different topics that we cover, land use development and housing, city budget, we brought up the participatory budget, conversations, we talk about data and this is in general what we talk about when we do this sessions.

And the next, we have, because they're short.

They're like one and a half hour sessions.

We do it short and they almost feel like this council meetings that you have to be on point and quick.

We have had great participants in our sessions.

And if you haven't been there, I will be calling you because we love to have real people talking for folks.

Our folks really appreciate the human side of who's making decisions.

So we've had folks from all sorts talking to our members.

And so next.

And then I would love to bring our community members here to tell us a little bit about why they wanted to join and partner with this program and what so far has been their experience.

So I believe Susan is on the line.

So if you can unmute yourself and tell us why we wanted to do this and how's it going.

Welcome, Susan.

Welcome, Maya.

Or is Maya?

Yes, there you are.

There's Maya and then Susan.

Welcome.

Thank you for all your great work.

Please take it away.

Good morning.

Thank you, council member.

Susan, we're having trouble hearing you.

You are?

Is that better?

Better.

Better?

Sorry.

Sorry about that.

No problem.

Platforms, different platforms work differently.

We just don't want to miss anything that you say because you've done such great work.

Let me try the headphones.

Is that better?

Much better.

OK.

All right.

OK.

Good morning, I'm Susan Balbus, Cherokee and Yaqui Nations, Executive Director of Nāʻāʻilohi Fund, based right here in Seattle.

I'm here at our office on Capitol Hill Central District right now.

Yeah, so thank you for having me.

I'm very honored to be speaking with you today.

So a little bit about Naa Ilihi Fund is our mission is to support and promote the leadership of indigenous women in the ongoing restoration of indigenous communities.

And so, yes, that's kind of a broad mission statement, but one of the cornerstones of that is civic engagement.

And so last year, this is when I met Elsa, or maybe it was two years ago, Elsa, I think it was too, that census project kind of like took over our lives for a while.

It was a very large endeavor.

And then with COVID, it just like amplified all of the kind of challenging aspects of doing really good community-based education and outreach to try to get native folks to fill out the census.

And I think we did a good job.

Yes, Elsa.

So far, preliminary results are that Washington tribes are up at least 15% in their reporting for this census.

And we don't know about urban natives yet.

We will get the results of that a little bit later.

We're all waiting for that.

But it also was a lot of fun.

And what it really, I think, told our community members was that we can be a part of something bigger.

We can be a part of like our voices matter.

We matter, our voices matter.

And so the PACE program is really following up on the heels of that census kind of civic engagement piece that's been quite exciting for us.

And so what PACE is bringing is Yes, we're learning about the mechanics of government, right, how things work, where are kind of entry points for citizens to be involved in particular issues.

And, you know, but also doing a little bit deeper dive and really kind of examining how The special place of native people can be involved in government.

So we have worked to make the curriculum more culturally sensitive and talking about issues that we know our native people care about.

We're very excited to be participating in PACE.

And get to meet the people.

I forgot to say that.

It's so special for community members to be able to interface directly with some of the decision makers, you all, and some of the folks that help make the city work.

And so we're very thankful to Elsa.

We're thankful to her team.

We're so thankful to the Department of Neighborhoods for making this opportunity available to us.

And we are just really excited to be a part.

So we want to thank you for your support of PACE and really excited to be a part.

So thank you for listening.

Thank you.

And I think Maya is here with us.

Thank you, Susan.

We appreciate you so much.

And then Maya, please.

Hi, everyone.

I'm Maya.

I'm the advocacy coordinator organizer at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle.

And we just finished our last session on Saturday.

And so I can kind of give you the sense of what I would like throughout the whole process.

One thing that I really appreciated is we really wanted to empower our community to be able to get the information and be able to make steps moving forward within their community to make any changes that they've seen.

to know and want to do.

And every topic that we provided to them, regardless of how in the weeks we were getting with data or with land or with money, they wanted it all.

And they wanted all of that information, and they were absorbing it like a sponge.

At the very end, you know, we were hearing how many of them wanted to apply for a grant to talk about recycling or do a community event for the community, specifically in their primary language.

Or, you know, talking about health care, there was so many things that.

You know, they were willing to take what we learned them back to community and be able to make moves and also feel more comfortable.

Engaging in the process, it can be fairly.

Scary, I guess you could say in terms of, you know.

Going through a process that systemically and historically wasn't really for our communities and being able to be very intentional to provide all of the speakers to look very similar to them.

and being able to share not only their knowledge and expertise, but how they got there, I think was very empowering to see like, there are people who look like me in this process and I am welcome to be in this space as well.

So you might be getting a little bit more meetings or emails or phone calls in the future, hopefully more people at public meetings and just more overall engaged with this process now Now that we are educated and we're really looking forward to doing this in the future, hopefully, because we find it.

I think it was really beneficial.

Even I, who, you know, work on following, you know, city of Seattle.

very closely learn something new too.

So I think everybody would be very interested in joining this.

We had people who had their PhDs all the way to people who are currently in undergrad.

So it was very overall, very empowering and exciting and we're looking forward to doing this again in the future.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Maya.

I just want to highlight the fact that having that cohort of people from undergrads to PhDs creates that peer education that is sometimes, it creates a deeper learning than if there's a power dynamic from professor to student.

And then also, Susan, I just want to highlight what you said.

You said 14% increase in the census track of our Native American populations.

That is incredible.

So, Maya, Susan, I can't thank you enough.

This committee would go on all day, and I know that some of my colleagues get tired of hearing me thank people, but I mean, I really, truly cannot thank you enough.

Thank you, council member, I think that concludes our presentation, but thank you again for the opportunity to come and speak as always.

please, we would welcome coming back and talking more about the ON's work and many programs and also interested in partnering with you in PACE or other programs during these COVID times.

And I will just remind folks that Neighbor Day is May 8th.

And so this year, we are asking folks to nominate neighbors who exemplify acts of, different acts of kindness.

And so you can go on our website and nominate somebody to be recognized during, May 8th and Neighbor Day.

But I don't know if any folks have questions or if not, that concludes our presentation.

Director Mentia, I did have one question that came into the back of my mind, which I've talked to SDCI quite a bit about their design review process in that we have transferred to a virtual nature.

And I know that the historic boards have also done this.

Similar to what I was talking about with the cafe streets is we're going to need a little bit of time to transition back to being in person.

And we want to make sure to keep all of the benefits of the changes that we experienced last year.

And if you need to follow up with me later about this, I'm happy to meet with you at any time.

check to see if there are changes that you or your the members of your team have seen in the virtual landmarks board process and the certificate of approval process that you believe we should consider making permanent.

Yeah, thank you for that question.

As you referenced, we put in temporary protocols during the pandemic at the beginning of the pandemic where historic preservation staff could.

Administratively review certain smaller applications, and we very much have appreciated.

That's for example, reviewing things like awnings or signage and outdoor seating in historic districts to or to just main thoughts come to mind council member 1 is.

By allowing the staff to review this administratively, we enable our volunteer boards to really focus their time and attention on the larger projects and applications.

For example, proposals that involve more significant alterations on historic structures or new construction or proposed demolition.

And the second piece is that we've reduced the burden of the process or the process burden on applicants for smaller business owners.

And so, you know, looking forward into 2021, we'd be more than happy to work with you and this committee on extending this temporary process beyond the duration of the pandemic.

That would be great and happy to work with you to keep the benefits of the last year and let the tribulations of the last year pass by.

So thank you for all of your work.

Thank you, Susan, Maya, Elsa.

You have done incredible work during a challenging last year.

And our next agenda item is the annual race and social justice initiative report from the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections and Office of Planning and Community Development.

Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated item into the record?

Agenda item three, Office of Planning and Community Development and Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections Race and Social Justice Initiative Report.

Thank you, Mr. Ahn.

Joining us for this item is Director Nathan Torgelson of Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, and Interim Director Rico Quirindongo.

Did I get it right this time, Director?

Awesome.

Great.

Thank you.

Office of Planning and Community Development, as well as staff from each department, I want to highlight that this is the last Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee we had both Director Assefa and Interim Director Kirandongo.

Today, we have passed through that threshold and we have Director Kirandongo leading the charge.

Welcome, Director.

Would you all take a moment to introduce yourselves and then take it away with your presentation?

Hey, good morning, Council Members and members of the public.

Nathan Torgelson, Director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Good morning, Councilmembers.

Thank you for that introduction.

Councilmember Strauss, welcome to everyone that's here today.

I, again, Rico Kiniginongo, Interim Director for Office of Planning and Community Development, really excited to be here today.

Good morning, Councilmember Strauss, and good morning, everyone present here today.

My name is Christopher Ndifon.

I am the chairing team co-lead.

for SDCI and also a zoning planner.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Magda Hoknes.

I'm also the change team co-lead, and I'm with the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you, both Christopher and Magda.

We've also been joined for this item as a guest, Council Member Tammy Morales.

Welcome, Council Member Morales.

STCI, OPCD, feel free to take it away.

Right.

I just wanted to add that SCCI and OPCD became new departments in January of 2016. And we used to be one department, the Department of Planning and Development.

And when the administration at that time created two new departments, we decided to keep one change team, one joint change team, as we work closely together as two departments on so many issues.

And I will just add to that, it is a great partnership, super important to the fabric of the work that we do in built environment and for the community.

So very happy to be doing this work together.

So we should have a quick conversation about why we are having this conversation and how we do this work.

As you all know, the important work of the change team, of all of our change teams, but of the change team between SCCI and OPCD is around racial equity and how we embody a change internal to our own departments and offices, and then also how that work extends into the work that we do for and with the community.

And that's what we will talk with you about as we go through the slide presentation today.

Nathan.

So I just wanted to stress that our two departments have continued a great collaboration.

We've done a lot of equity, many audits and reviews of our different divisions and how we work together, and we have a shared training program.

Next slide.

As a part of our Indigenous land acknowledgment, I want to acknowledge that on behalf of SDCI and OPCD, we actively recognize that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional and current territories of the Coast Salish people.

Next slide.

Director, I just want to take a moment on that last slide for the viewing public.

It might, I think, without historical context, could you go back to the last slide, slide three?

There we are.

This might seem to someone who doesn't I'm a land use nerd, right?

So I've been spending too much time looking at Paul Dorpat's now and then of Seattle and watching Seattle Channel's videos about the archives and where we come from to get a better sense of how we can move forward.

I want to highlight that this slide is not a random collaboration of two photos.

This slide is a picture of a place that exists now and then.

Where the Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Garden is was formerly the shorefront, I guess I'm lacking better words, and was where indigenous members of our community lived.

And so this is an accurate representation of what the land was previously and what it is now.

So I just wanted to take that moment to highlight for the viewing public that this was not a random collaboration of photos.

This is actually a place.

So if you go to the sculpture garden today, You are standing on fill and you are standing on a place that as the city grew and we pushed Native Americans farther and farther north, this was one place that they lived for many years.

Thank you for that additional acknowledgment, Councilmember Strauss.

Much appreciated.

Thank you.

So in this slide, with these bullet points, I wanted to actually highlight the first few of them.

So in the partnership between us, we've been participating in the RSJI summit, panel discussions.

We have established the change team charter and charter committees, writing RSJ citywide, co-leads letter to the mayor and in both of our offices growing participation in other groups which includes we have a BIPOC caucus, a white caucus, and at OPCD we also have a leading with equity team which is centered around the work that we deliver out into the community and how we do it in a way that is in honor of the BIPOC communities with whom we work.

Nathan?

We've created Sharing Seattle Stories, and that's a website that compiles written and oral BIPOC stories of leaders in Seattle with illustrations.

We have completed two racial equity toolkits that I'll talk about later in the presentation.

We're developing ongoing community agreements.

And then we went through a really important process at STCI and with OPCD's help.

When you enter our offices in the Seattle Municipal Tower on the 19th floor, we had installed a historical mural Of downtown, but an important exercise there was that we needed to include the indigenous history and communities as part of this presentation.

So, as you can see in this picture from the 19th floor lobby that we acknowledged that issue and we are working on that.

So I think that all of you are very familiar with our equitable development initiative, which allows us the opportunity to build trust and partnerships with the community, led by community, where we're just helping to make investments and empower the change that we want to see.

We have a new permanent advisory board.

We have eight members which were approved recently.

I think that was three weeks ago.

I have a terrible memory.

We are responding to community need.

We have over 30 projects that we are working on that have contracts with community partners, but currently We are supporting other departments with their grants and funding and planning, including OED, OIRA, OSC, and OEM.

We are developing the OPCD equitable recovery principles document.

In 2020, Blackbrain's project requested OPCD to collaborate on participatory budgeting.

because of the success of the EDI process that we have in place.

We are creating equity indicators reports.

We have staff participating on our RSJ key leaders training.

And of course, we responded to the SDHR survey.

Next slide.

Um, so one of the, one of the really important programs that we have, um, is, uh, we have a young indigenous planner that we, uh, or more than one that we bring into the department, uh, every year to work with us and help grow our vision and our skill sets.

Um, uh, and that, that is ongoing.

I would suggest that it is also growing.

Um, Our current intern, Sancha Romi, has been a great addition to our staff.

Currently, with her, we are working to, and with Michael Hubner in our office, we are working to prepare for our next investment related to the comp plan major update.

And in looking at that work, how do we place a more indigenous framework on the work itself.

And this will be a very central piece to our work, both a racial justice lens and indigenizing the plan.

Next slide.

Hi.

Director Kim-Dongo, can we sit on that last slide for just a moment?

I want to Of course.

This is very troubling history of how Seattleites have treated our indigenous population is, while it has not.

The worst of it may not have occurred in our lifetimes.

It is still very fresh history.

In my land acknowledgment at the beginning of my committees, I discuss how short our time is here, whether it is as electeds or in positions of decision-making power or just being alive on this planet.

So I take this moment to recognize an article written by Brendan Kiley.

In the Seattle Times regarding the history of Cal Anderson Park, and it discusses the pathways.

I think that is oftentimes overlooked that.

People, white folk who came to the Northwest said, this is very lush and prosperous land, yet no one is using it.

What they failed to recognize was the land was lush with food because of millennia of permaculture, of using the land.

They didn't have to have fences around their farms because they worked together.

in so many ways.

And so I come back to this to say the article references pathways.

I could call them roads if we were to use our current dialogue, our current words for these ways of traveling around our area.

And then to also highlight, as I was in City Hall Park the other day, I again recognized The fact that we still have many statues and things within our community.

In City Hall Park, there are still the cannonballs from the USS Decatur that were used to kill the indigenous population here in Seattle.

And the article that I referenced about the history of Cal Anderson Park speaks about that engagement or writes about that engagement between the USS Decatur and our indigenous populations here.

So I just take that moment to recognize that we have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

Because while it might not have been in our own experience, in our life, it is still very fresh and recent history.

So thank you for your work on this.

Good Council Member Strauss.

I think that as we look at the work moving forward, one of the largest challenges that I see is that it is established in a white majority framework by design.

And while there are some very specific regulatory and legal requirements that we have, we will be pushing up against them as we look at how do we do this work differently and in a way that is respectful of past harms and current.

Next slide.

So in addition to the work of each of our offices, of course, we have the great work of the Planning Commission and Design Commission as well.

The picture that you see here, which was developed by the Planning Commission, a racially equitable and resilient recovery.

I wish I had thought of it.

I would put a link to the book in the chat, so maybe I can do that at the end.

I definitely encourage people to read it.

Design Commission prepared a letter requesting city departments adopt specific policies to name city facilities for BIPOC people, places, and events.

And that went out to the mayor's office, city departments, and to council.

I think that there's a small change that this last bullet Drafted a letter to Sound Transit requesting more equitable outcomes on disposition of vacant or underutilized properties not suitable for redevelopment.

I apologize.

I want to look for a quick note.

That letter actually did go out.

And so that's something that we're also, I mean, that OPCD actually will be engaging Sound Transit on that issue.

But thank you to the Design Commission for that.

Next slide.

So, I wanted to acknowledge that the renters in our community have been particularly vulnerable during coveted and that are by populations are disproportionately represented among.

Renters and also want to thank counsel for the resources they have provided.

to our department over the past years to help support our renter community.

In 2020, we finally finished the Renting in Seattle Renters Handbook, and this is provided to all renters at move-in and periodically thereafter.

It replaces our former dense and legalistic information for tenants, and what we have now is much more accessible, easy to read, plain language, and it covers renter's rights, plus tips and resources.

For example, it includes information about the utility discounts that are available through the city.

We translated this booklet into 13 languages, and it's available in a hard copy and also online, and you can see the link right there.

We're really proud of this handbook.

It was done in-house by our staff, and we consulted with renters, the immigrant refugee communities, and the BIPOC community in putting this together.

Next slide.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Carrying out the RSGI program, we underwent internal training, reducing bias in hiring process.

28 of 37 SDCI executives, strategic advisors and managers completed part one of this training.

Office of Seattle Office of Civil Rights is on board on carrying out the training for racial equity toolkit.

Implicit bias awareness is one area that can build inclusiveness or inclusive culture in the city.

And addressing the implicit bias is the first step a critical step in developing this training, and this can transform SGCI and OPCD organizational culture when this training is completed.

These trainings are ongoing right now, and they are being expanded to involve all staff in the department.

Yeah.

In addition to the items that Christopher listed out, another one of the OCR trainings is the internalized racial inferiority one.

And another thing, both of our departments set up BIPOC and white caucuses this past year.

We also viewed the film Cracking the Codes and facilitated a conversation for all staff.

Next slide.

Next slide.

So this slide goes into the external trainings that our departments have supported this year.

And Land Use 101, we held three trainings so far on that particular one.

And both were internal and external, including sharing at the UW.

I'm going to pass it now to Christopher for the last few bullets.

Yeah.

There was also an external training and this was the RSJS Summit hosted by Seattle Office of Civil Rights.

Staff from OPCD, Department of Neighborhoods, and OED all participated in a panel discussion at the Seattle Center regarding projects in the Chinatown International District.

They talked about their experience working with the community and how they developed the engagement with the community.

They talked about experiences learned in that engagement and also looked at the history of Chinatown and what has been missed over the years.

And most importantly, they were able to go to the community to meet with the community stakeholders and citizens.

And that was a big boost, because instead of the community coming to the city, they went to meet them where they are.

And the discussion was very amicable.

Also, in 2021, Office of Civil Rights held another summit.

And in this summit, we celebrated MLK Jr.

Unity Day.

The highlight of this summit was Black Leadership Conference, or Leadership Forum, where I think five of the black directors were involved in discussion panel.

And one of the topic they talked about was, what does black leadership in government look like during the time of Black Lives Matter?

Next slide.

In terms of workforce equity, LGCI hosts Seattle Youth Employment Program.

Due to COVID-19, None of these, we were not able to host any of these youth programs, but we're on track to host two young employees in 2021. Also, Seattle Job Shadow Program, mentorship program was suspended due to COVID-19.

But the city of SGCI has a job sharing program where employees are given the chance to mentor with subject matter experts in different fields to learn the jobs and also find areas that they can very well-fitting if they want to improve their careers.

And they were given a chance to ask questions and also interact with the mentors that they are assigned to.

This mentorship program, employees are allowed to sign up for two of these each year, with a total of eight hours.

So we understand that employees' development mobility are enhanced with mentorship, especially for women of color.

Also, there is a review and updated hiring process training to include anti-racism and debasing strategies successfully piloted anonymize application material for interview panels.

Because interview panels are exempt from looking at some documents before the interview, so that every applicant has a fair share of being interviewed on the basis of anonymity, not based on what documents are provided, so that those who don't have the same experience and given the same opportunity to apply for those jobs or feed in for those jobs, answer questions for those jobs they are applying based on their experience, not necessarily on other information that they have submitted to the department.

Okay.

Magda?

Thanks, Christopher.

I'm now going to go into some of the challenges and obstacles that we were unable to navigate around.

This first bullet is not just limited to our institutions, but, you know, the distance between people during this time and how to build trust in a remote environment was a challenge.

Another challenge that we wanted to highlight here was that we often depend on individuals to do the work.

These are often the same individuals and how to move that from that reliance from individuals to departments taking on RSGI work.

Related to that bullet, there's often emotional labor that's not accounted for, and there's an imbalance of speaking from experience versus offering support.

I'm going to pass it to Christopher for the last three thoughts.

Yeah.

Continuing with those challenges, there are some obstacles.

Having time to organize against white supremacy is a problem.

Not having the open forum or all staff meeting responding to dominant culture rather than centering on the most impacted people or impacted in this culture.

Continuous sense of urgency makes it difficult to have time for inclusive and encourage democratic and thoughtful decision-making to think on a long-term basis and consider the consequences.

It's also a problem.

So this slide goes into removing the barriers for some of the challenges that we listed, too, and one of the One of the things, I'm going to pass it to Christopher and then handle the last part of the slide.

Removing the barriers of these challenges reflects on building relational culture, weaving our shared humanity and belonging, and co-liberation and creating a culture of belonging, and inclusion.

Centering the most impacted people, like the backpack community, we look at what the impacts are, not the content.

And also, we create an environment to center the voices of the Black population in this culture.

Magda?

Thanks, Christopher.

So a few more bullets related to some of the ways to eliminate the barriers.

One that is listed here is flexibility in scope, schedule, and budget to prioritize building relationships with community rather than just completing projects and deadlines.

Another bullet, and this is related to scope as well, is recognizing that equity work is the work.

and finding ways to have it be a foundational part of the work rather than an additive one.

And then this last bullet, creating a culture of feeling forward as an antidote of perfectionism and doing it in a way that recognizes the power dynamics and biases that exist, knowing that white and male often just have to show the potential of leadership and women or BIPOC just have to reprove themselves over and over again.

Next slide.

OK, next slide.

OK, that's me.

Yeah, following the events that happened last year with all the demonstration and the George Floyd incident, the staff of OPCD and SGCR and even the whole city were very much unhappy with the situations that were going on.

There was their reflections and their anger and fear and joy came into focus.

So in the SGCI, the department created two groups, the backpack group and the white caucus group.

These groups were created to give staff a chance to have an area where they can discuss these issues among themselves.

The backpack group were meeting at certain times of the week, and the all-allied group meeting at another time of the week.

So that, uh, doing that would give everybody a chance to discuss freely without, uh, having any, any, uh, issues held back because of sitting, uh, sitting, uh, facing, uh, white ally employee.

So, uh, this gave, this gave us a chance to discuss this issue without, without thinking of any consequences.

And it was a good thing.

In OPCD and SGCI change team, we went a step further by creating a reading group where we bring in articles that are written about some of this discrimination white supremacist culture.

We read those articles and discussed them in this group and shared them with the entire change team when necessary.

Another issue that we looked into was RSJ summit panel discussion focused on central Chinatown international district.

because that discussion really talked about how the relational culture was displayed between the employees, the staff of the city and the community.

And that brought out some elements that was very important to think about how we relate to our community when we work with them.

Maida?

Thank you, Christopher.

Another space that was created, and this is something that Rico mentioned earlier in the presentation, was this RSJ Citywide's co-leads letter to the mayor that really helped center some of the main issues.

Another item is the list of recovery principles, which really brought a whole new level of commitment to equity work as a foundational part of the work.

We also, another space was the EDI convenings and funders round tables.

And one other place is the RSJ integrated budget prioritization and the work that we continue to do.

I'm now going to pass it to Nathan and Rico to go over our rents.

So, this is a summary of the racial equity toolkits that SDCI and OPCD completed in 2020. So, for SDCI, we did a racial equity toolkit on blue beam implementation.

I'll talk about that in an upcoming slide, and this is basically a technology project that ensures better and more expeditious review of plans going through our department.

And we also did a racial equity toolkit on tree protections.

Rico?

Sorry about that.

Thank you, Nathan.

So you see the bullet points on the right side of the slide.

It talks about our process.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about industrial maritime strategy here in a couple of slides.

But what we know is in a call and response format, like we want to be very intentional about our outcomes and involve stakeholders be present and listen in sincere ways.

And then in the calm response, you know, come back to say, this is what we've heard, and this is, and how can we move the ball downfield, if you will.

And that bullet around evaluate, raise racial awareness and be accountable, I think is really critical.

And we're doing that in partnership with Sound Transit as we look at our stationary playing, with the light rail expansion.

And then, like I mentioned before, I'll talk about it a little bit more with our industrial maritime strategy.

Next slide.

So first, talking about West Seattle and Ballard light rail extensions, what we know is that that program, if you will, will have great positive impacts to community in terms of mobility and transportation, but it also has negative impacts that need to be mitigated and that we need to organize ourselves around.

In looking at racial equity outcomes, and you can see the points here, We know that we are driving toward enhancing mobility and access for communities of color and low-income populations and creating opportunities, and that we want to avoid disproportionate impacts to our communities of color and low-population communities, and that the only way we're going to get there is through meaningful engagement and involvement and holding ourselves accountable to how we can implement on the input that we hear and receive.

The other part of the conversation, operationalizing the racial equity outcomes.

The planning work group that we lead, we hold quarterly RET convenings, share strategies and best practices around centering race and identifying emergent and reoccurring needs through that process.

Next slide.

With industrial and maritime strategy, what our goal there, one of our many goals, improving equitable access to jobs and opportunity and seeing and understanding that through our maritime and industrial job sectors that that is a vehicle by which to do that.

One of the things that we are very aware of is that we need to remove disparity of environmental health impacts that we know there's a disproportionate impact on communities of color and knowing that being on indigenous lands, that there has been a disproportionate impact that we need to solve for.

We are also looking to assist communities to prosper in place and also improve the safety and health for workers.

Next slide.

So we did a racial equity toolkit on tree protections, looking forward to proposed tree regulations that will be coming forward later this year.

And this is a really complex and important topic.

We know that our BIPOC communities Do not have the same tree canopy as some of our wealthier communities and that's a problem.

We also realize that looking at permitting actions.

They can have burdensome impacts from a cost standpoint for applicants going through our process.

So one of the things we're looking at is, can we provide a permit fee discount for low-income individuals?

Can treaty mitigation be provided with a payment in lieu rather than onsite?

can we provide tree maintenance subsidies?

So, sort of balancing the public health benefits of tree canopy and foliage and also looking at some of the challenges of regulations and trying to balance those two.

So Bluebeam implementation is a fantastic technology tool that we have started to pilot in SDCI and should go throughout the department by the end of the year.

So this is a tool that allows applicants and our staff to review plans together in real time.

and to actually make corrections to the plans in real time.

The racial equity issue here is that we may have one-time applicants or applicants that don't have a lot of resources that are not gonna have access to this tool or be able to afford this tool.

So we did a racial equity toolkit on this issue.

And we just need to make sure that our applicants who don't have access to this tool are not burdened and can have an alternate path to their permit processing, and that that path is just as expeditious as those who can use this tool.

Now we come to the goals, changing goals for 2021. The change team has always been flooded with questions that what do we, what is the change team stand for or what do they do?

So in that, in answering those questions, we decided to list a laundry list of goals to accomplish this year.

So I'll go down the list and mention some of them.

For the first goal is to lead with equity and putting into practice lead with equity and put into practice what we preach.

Working with our RSJ liaison to develop a work plan to sharpen our anti-racism work and address issues brought by BIPOC staff.

Supporting employees of color become anti-racist advocates, respond to and address all levels of COVID and COVID racism as they surface.

Growing participation, create shared messages with SGCI and OPCD staff, aligning the roles of the change team and ways to get involved.

Help support future collaboration with SOCR, BIPOC group, white ally accountability group, and executive team.

Qualify rules of each group and ways to create a culture of mutual support.

Develop community agreements.

So these are part one of the goals.

And I will let Magda talk about the part two of the goals.

That's right.

We have more goals.

So the top three here are related to our change team communications committee.

So looking at the way we communicate, potentially having a newsletter, another way of sharing updates, and also working with the communications team to collaborate citywide with other change team folks who prioritize communications.

And we also wanted to reach out to other departments to collaborate on the Sharing Seattle Stories project.

And then a few more goals to share.

We have the continuing the work on the mural that Nathan had mentioned.

We also would like to create and support a RSJ resource library that everyone would have access to.

And then the last bullet here is really creating, setting the expectation that racial equity work is required for all of our staff and enforced and reflected through the E3.

I'd also like to take a moment to talk about our lead with equity goals.

So I mentioned before that we also have a team internal to OPCD, which works in partnership with the change team to take the work that we're doing internally and have that inform the work that we are doing with community.

We do lead with equity in all of our work and as a requirement, all OVC staff are required to do racial equity work training in support of our culture shift within the office to put a focus on this very difficult and sometimes extremely painful work.

As we look forward to our 2022 budget, understanding that how we budget our work has a direct impact on what we can and can't do.

We are ensuring that a racial equity lens is put in place and the Lead with Equity team will help us do that to look at all of our proposals for what we are putting into our 2022 budget for consideration and making certain that we do continue to put our money where our mouth is, as it were, and ensure that the work we do is centered.

We are doing some work internally led by the Lead with Equity team related to how we approach community engagement or developing community engagement ethos around that.

to strengthen our inclusive public engagement through a racial equity lens, including raising up racial equity best practices so that BIPOC communities really, we are really in partnership with BIPOC communities as we do the work and we are being led by community.

Measuring those successes, we know the importance of data, some of it quantitative, some of it qualitative.

We are trying to develop a baseline and set goals and hold ourselves accountable in this work.

And I think that our next slide is our thank you slide for all that we have a huge team, Nathan and I, that help us to see this work forward.

It could not be done without the huge list of names of folks here.

I would love to read through all of them, but I know we're out of time.

Go for it, Director.

I would just add that on a professional and personal note, and I know Rico would agree with me, that leading a department during a pandemic and during a civil rights reckoning I think has just been the greatest professional challenge of our lives.

We are re-looking at everything we do, from how we interview employees, how we compensate employees, how we work with communities, how we work internally.

It's really hard work, it's exhausting, and it's also really inspiring.

And the stories that we're hearing from our BIPOC employees are heartbreaking.

But people feel much more freedom to tell those stories.

And for that, I'm really grateful.

Nathan, thank you for adding that.

I only came into this position in January.

I mean, came to the office in January.

But I've been doing this work formally simply as a black architect for the last 27 years.

And I guess what I would say is that I came into this work with a strong belief that we could really enact social change and social justice through our built environment work.

And that is the work of both SCCI and the Office of Planning and Community Development Um, we have more work to do than is really, than I can really get my head around.

But I believe that we all come to it fully every day and that we live through the work and through the pain of it.

And I think that the work of the change team and the leading with equity teams like embody that work.

And so I'm just, I'm very proud to be a part of this family.

Thank you, Director Kierendonko and Director Torkelson.

Director Torkelson, what I heard you say in your remarks was, I heard you use the word challenge and what I heard the words you used following that were opportunity, the opportunity to reinspect how we're hiring, to reinspect How the rules and and how we do daily business are impacting everyone's daily lives and so you are correct that it takes quite a bit of effort and emotional.

energy, and this is incredibly important work, and this is an incredibly important opportunity that we do not let pass us by.

I want to thank also Christopher and Magda for your great work here.

Christopher, something that I heard you say was that we have to focus on the impacts, not necessarily the content or intent.

That was really important, and Magda, I heard you talk about I'll let this fire truck roll by.

Thank you Seattle Fire Department for all the work you do.

And Magda, I heard you talk about the need for clear scope schedule budgets so that you're not running into deadlines that are not necessary.

In addition, I just want to highlight the fact that most change team members are, it is a role in addition to the job that they are hired for.

And so I want to take this moment to thank you for doing the extra work within your departments.

Yeah.

Colleagues, I'll open this up for questions.

I see Council Member Morales, welcome as a guest to the committee.

Please take it away.

And Council Member Peterson or Juarez, if you have any questions, we'll take your questions next.

Thank you.

Well, first, thank you, Chair, for allowing me to come and listen.

This is work that's really important to me as a former Human Rights Commissioner and somebody who's worked on one of these RETs before.

And candidly, somebody who has been the recipient of two recent letters from staff.

So I first want to say that it's clear there's some really important work that's happening in community.

A lot of, you know, sort of changes in the way we do community engagement and acknowledgement of the work, the need to continue to do that work.

So I don't want to diminish that in any way.

And I've also been sort of on the other end of that, working in community with the city in different capacities and just appreciate that there is an effort to do that.

What are your concerns?

Council Member Morales, it seems that your internet might not be stable.

We have you frozen on our screen.

We will see if she is able to rejoin us or unfreeze.

Council Member Morales, maybe try turning off your camera if you are still able to hear us.

Directors, are there any, from what you heard from Council Member Morales, is there any follow-up that you would like to provide as she is likely re-logging into the meeting?

Not hearing any I'll give it just a moment longer.

To see if she is able to rejoin us.

I guess I'll also take this moment, again, Christopher and Magda, this is an incredibly detailed presentation, usually, and it's also difficult in many ways to coordinate the efforts of two separate departments, understanding Nathan, Director Torgalson's beginning statements that as of 2016, the departments were one, so that provides another added benefit I just want to call out that the level of detail that you have provided today is more so than many other RSJI presentations that I've received.

And so both Christopher and Magda, your presentation today has been very good.

I really can't thank you enough.

I might have to weigh in here and say there's some other agencies or we might have to have see who had the best one.

Can I just say something, Mr. Chair?

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Mr. Targleson or Nathan.

Thank you so much for this and all the Enrico and all you folks who do this race and social justice and bring us up to date on this stuff.

I can say this, which is really as far as I think the chairman was saying this earlier about the work that we have to do since being on council or running for council and being understanding the issues from 2016 to now, there has been a dramatic change in the discussion about indigenous names and places.

There's been a dramatic change in the discussion about the effects of colonization.

There's been a dramatic change of people adopting the language to describe that and not in a victimization way, but just as a reality and not in a finger pointing way, but in a, this is history that we have to deconstruct and tell the truth.

And Sam Asafa had, if you remember two summers ago, he did a series on that.

It was phenomenal.

And I think it was Department of Neighborhoods, or maybe it was you, I can't remember names.

Maybe I'll just give you credit.

But I had never read in any of the Seattle reports or documents from the city of Seattle, the government side, where they actually listed colonization as a, as a, as a reason for a lot of things.

That's always been something that I've dealt with, obviously, as a former legal counsel to tribes and other groups, but in a different context.

But to see it in a government document listing, whether you're talking about racism and all the other issues, but to actually see the effects of what colonization has done and how you have changed history and how we determine, even with some of the issues that we dealt with, with the, what's the board that handles art and culture and buildings.

And, you know, when you want to remember when everyone was screaming to save the show box, you know, my big issue was, you know, who gets to decide what's historical and who gets to decide what's important, who gets to decide what really means a lot.

You know, is it the Blue Moon Tavern?

Is it the show box or is it, you know, Some place on Thornton Creek is a place that we know where indigenous people Salish people have lived here for millennial.

And so the fact that we're having these conversations and it's an actual conversation.

And it's a difficult one sometimes.

We had the discussion in parks about the fake totem poles down at Pike Place Market.

And a lot of it was just trying to have the conversation to educate people what that meant.

And so to hear you, Director Tarkelson, speak the way you do, and the way Mr. Asafa does, and the way Mr. Zimbabwe does, and certainly Superintendent Agare, just really inspires me to know that the work that we've done, the work that I've done, now that I'm officially an elder, feels like there is progress and there is something to be celebrated here.

It isn't always gloom and doom.

So I want to thank you and your team.

And I'm looking at Rico and smiling because he's been around and done great work.

that sometimes we do have these culture clashes, and I don't like them to be clashes.

I'd more like them to be a conversation where we just want to share what our history is and what it means and why it needs to be honored.

And then there's some history that doesn't need to be honored, that shouldn't be a place.

And so I just want to thank you for that work, and I want to thank you for this presentation and all the work that you and your staff put into it.

And also, Mr. Chairman, for your leadership.

So thank you.

I see Council Member Morales is back.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Very well said.

History, we have to deconstruct for us to be able to tell the truth.

I think I might save that one for later to reuse.

That's copyrighted, buddy.

Oh, I'll put the copyright symbol.

OK, I'll wave it.

I'll wave.

I'll let you have it.

Wow, now you're going to steal from me.

You just took away from everything, man.

What's up with that?

I'll put your royalties.

That's called Indian humor.

We can joke, OK?

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Morales, I see you're back on the phone, noting that we are a bit over time and this is an important topic to discuss.

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

Anything you need to say.

I appreciate it.

I want to apologize again.

I get kicked out of just about every committee meeting because I have such bad internet.

So what I was saying, and I will be brief, I just want to make really clear that, you know, we have, as a council, received two letters now.

There is clearly a lot of work that needs to be done within the city on how we treat one another and how we treat our workers.

You know, the example of The Black Brilliance Project requesting the assistance of the EDI staff is telling, you know, because those staff who participated in that are now fearing retaliation for their participation.

We know that, you know, the citywide co-leads are still waiting, as I understand it, for the mayor's response to their letter.

I know that the change team staff are, as Council Member Strauss said, doing this work without additional compensation.

They're being asked to do extra work.

And these are city workers who are people of color being asked to do extra work without compensation.

They fear retaliation.

And so all that is to say that we have a lot of work to do.

We have city workers right now who are very worried about the security of their own jobs because they do this work, because they are willing to call out institutionalized racism in their work setting.

And so we need to acknowledge that and we need to make sure that workers are protected for doing this kind of work and for really leading by centering their lived experience.

I just wanted to say that, and I appreciate you, Chair, for inviting me to participate in the conversation.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Well said.

Director Curandongo, my apologies.

I see your hand is raised.

I just wanted to thank Council Member Morales for your comments and concur with you that we do need to hold our staff close and care for our people because this is incredibly difficult work that we're embarking on and people are putting themselves, you know, in the line of fire at risk and putting their reputations and their work and their hearts out there.

And so I appreciate the issue that you're raising.

And I think that, yes, not only do we as a city have a huge amount of work to do on our teams and with our staff, we also have a huge responsibility.

Thank you, Director Kirimdango.

Colleagues, directors, Magda, Christopher, any further conversation on this agenda item?

Seeing none, I'll just take this moment again to thank you for your important and difficult at times work, and thank you for continuing to do this.

I look forward to continuing this conversation.

Thank you, Council Member Strass.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Chair.

Thank you all today for the time.

Thank you.

Look forward to seeing you soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And our final agenda item is another annual report, this time from the Seattle Design Commission.

I can't have favorite commissions.

I will say I'm very excited to have you here.

And Mr. Ahn, will you please read the abbreviated item into the record?

Agenda item four, Seattle Design Commission annual report.

Thank you.

We are joined by Michael Jenkins, the Executive Director of the Design Commission, and Justin Clark, the Acting Chair.

Michael, I miss getting to see you at the coffee cart.

I hope John as well.

Justin, it's great to see you this morning.

I hope, and please feel free to introduce yourselves and take it away.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Council Member

Strauss and other council members.

Nice to see you again.

For the record, my name is Michael Jenkins.

I'm the executive director of the Seattle Design Commission, and we're joined by Justin Clark, our acting chair.

He also serves as the engineer for the commission.

He and two new commissioners up for appointment should be referred to full council, I hope, next week so we can get there 10 years finalized.

In terms of today's presentation, I'm going to kick us off with some background and stats, which I'd love to do.

Justin is going to highlight three projects that the commission saw in 2020 that we think highlight the important work of the commission.

And then I'll close with some additional highlights and what's coming for us in 2021. And if there's no questions before I start, if I could have the slideshow brought up.

And Mr. Ahn, are you running the presentation or is Michael or Justin?

Michael, if you're able to run the presentation, we typically have presenters run them.

Otherwise, I can pull it up.

If you don't, I'm sorry for the confusion.

I don't have it handy.

If you don't mind.

We'll just take a moment to get it up on our screen.

Justin, are there any introductory remarks that you'd like to make as we're pulling up the presentation?

Well, I'll just say that my position as chair does come to the larger council next week.

So hopefully I don't say anything that clouds that.

But I will say, yeah, this is my fourth year serving on the commission.

And I think I do just wanna highlight the work that Michael and his staff do.

I think they do an amazing job of just really setting us up as a commission with the specifics and the dynamics of each project and setting the stage for us to perform our work.

So I know I'm a beneficiary of the work that they do.

So starting with Michael and the executive director role and moving down through Juliet Acevedo and Valerie Keenest and Aaron and Hersey as well.

They just do a lot of tangible work for the city that I just want to express my appreciation for the work they do.

Very well said.

And seeing this first slide, and we're excited to have your, to finalize all the paperwork to keep you in the spot that you're in.

You're doing great work, Justin.

Thank you.

I do want to highlight this first slide.

The second picture down is a location in District 6, the Ship Canal Water Quality Project.

And it is incredible how much overlapping work the Seattle Design Commission does with so many different types of projects.

I don't I guess here I am going and stealing your thunder, Michael.

I'll let you take it away.

If I could get the next slide, please.

So the outline for today is broken up into four parts, an overview of the role of the commission and some of the stats.

Then, again, a more focused look at some of the projects that we've done in 2020 and then what we see coming in 2021. Next slide.

As many of you know, the commission was established 53 years ago now in 1968, and our role is to advise the mayor and the council on projects that affect the public realm.

Those are predominantly capital improvement projects that constitute a significant majority of our work, but we do other work as well.

We look at projects that propose street and alley vacations, sky bridges, major transportation projects, one of which we'll highlight, and plan and policy reviews, which are becoming increasingly important to the commission in their role.

And then finally, the Design Commission has and will continue to be the primary oversight for Sound Transit 3 light rail investments as a public review body working with City of Seattle staff.

Next slide.

There are 10 commissioners who comprise the commission.

We have commissioners that were required to, professions that were required to represent architecture, a fine artist, and a lay member, a member of the community, of the development community.

And then we're also required to have planners, designers, engineers, and architects.

landscape architect, as well as a member of the YMCA Get Engaged program.

We have two new commissioners that are up for appointment.

Jill Crary, who many of you may know from the Seattle Center, her work at Seattle Center.

She's going to be filling the at-large position.

And then Adam Amrine, who will be, who's a architect and urban designer who will be filling our urban planner position.

Next slide.

We always like to center our work in these six design principles that I think the commission holds important.

I know that when you come to the commission, the commission likes to use these values as a lens by which they look at projects and hopefully provide people who come before the commission with input and direction on how to accomplish these six design values relative to their individual projects.

Next slide.

We'd like to show these every year as a good reminder to people to have a good understanding about where does the design commission fit in the capital improvement program in projects that are subject to our review police stations, fire stations, parks, community centers are typical capital improvement projects for the commission to evaluate.

We also spend a significant amount of time on projects that are seeking street and alley vacations.

As many of you may remember in 2018, the city council really changed significantly the street and alley vacation process.

And in particular, really elevating the role of the commission as the initial touch point with the city to look for the commission to have the opportunity to provide early input on a request, not only in the implications of not only removing a street or alley from service, but what types of public benefits should be developed that offset the loss of the function of the right-of-way in an attempt to create a stronger public realm and right-of-way as a result of the loss of the street or alley.

The next slide, please.

We'd like to show the city in the context of all the projects that we've looked at in 2020, and you can see for the most part, the Design Commission has touched almost all neighborhoods in the past year.

Unfortunately, we have not been able to review any projects in West Seattle this year.

My apologies to West Seattle.

We're looking forward to seeing new projects with you soon.

You can also see that The bulk of the projects tend to be in the center city, but for the most part, they are distributed throughout the city, as well as you can see a marker here for citywide.

Those tend to be policy-driven projects that we participate in.

Next slide.

Next slide, please.

This gives, we'd like to also provide these stats to you on a regular basis, on a yearly basis that shows the number of projects, the number of meetings, and the number of meeting hours broken down by those four types of projects that come before us, capital projects, right-of-way projects, which include street and alley vacations, major projects, one of which we'll talk about in just a moment, and then plans or policies that are of interest to the commission.

The following slides will provide a focused look at each category.

Next slide, please.

From 2019 to 2020, we did see a slight reduction in the number of projects.

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has changed the way that we work, changed the ability for city departments to bring forward projects.

Fortunately, we haven't seen as great of a dip in the number of projects between 2019 and 2020. I have a feeling that subsequent years, because of the delay in funding that's occurred from the pandemic, we may see a little dip.

Next slide.

And you can see here again with the number of meetings, there's a proportional drop as well.

We've in 2019 had 47 meetings, 2020, 37 meetings.

Again, not surprisingly a function of the pandemic and just some scaling back on the projects that are coming before us by city departments and private development.

Next slide.

Again, similar statistics here.

If you want to follow up with me later on any of the statistics that you're seeing here, happy to spend some focused time with you.

We think it's valuable in particular to track this kind of work.

It certainly gives us an understanding of the focus that the commission has, the time that we spend, and how we can be either more efficient or look for additional time or energy on projects that the commission might be interested in.

Next slide.

Finally, this gives a number figure to the value of the projects that come before us.

The commission last year spent a combined 800 hours of their time, almost 90 percent of which is billable, about 10 percent which is not billable, I attribute it and Justin was very kind to call out staff.

The commission is very fortunate to have four staff people that provide the 10 commissioners with the ability to have the type of hours that they spend and really focusing in on meetings and that provide direct input to the projects that come before us.

We're very fortunate to be able to provide them with that kind of support.

And I genuinely appreciate the time that staff spends as well.

Next slide.

So I'm going to throw it to Justin right here, and he's going to walk you through three specific projects that the commission looked at last year.

Thanks, Michael.

Yeah, so just want to give give you a sense of the type of work that we've been doing over the past year and some of the representative projects from those different pots that Michael outlined earlier.

So I'll be sharing on one interagency project, which is the one you see here on the screen.

one capital project, and also one of our street and alley vacations that we dove into over this past year.

So starting with SR 520, we reviewed the Roanoke Lid and Portage Bay bridges this past year, which is really, it's a culmination of over 10 years of work, working with WSDOT to elevate the urban design goals and outcomes of this Seattle portion of the state-owned freeway.

We recently finished up our work with WSDOT on the Montlake Bridge and Land Bridge portion of the 520. So as that moved into construction, we shifted our focus over to the Portage Bay portion.

Back in 2014, the commission undertook a review requested by the council to develop recommendations on just potential bridge typologies for Portage Bay.

And at that time, we supported a box girder bridge designed with elements to reflect the unique context of Portage Bay and the surroundings in that area.

And then much of 2019, we evaluated the specific design concepts for this replacement of the Portage Bay Bridge, but also a lidded segment over the Roanoke portion on the left part of your screen.

And then the third part of our review was the creation of active and passive local and regional recreational facilities.

So all of this work culminated in April of last year with a report to WSDOT, which we also shared to the council and also to the mayor recommending urban design solutions for these different project elements.

And Michael gave some good insight about some of the basic principles and values that we take into any of our project reviews.

And some of those were modified slightly for this.

And I just want to give you a taste of some of those principles here.

We based our review on just ensuring that there was a strong belief in using engineering solutions as opportunities to create distinct spaces and places to elevate just beyond the function of that infrastructure.

And I think the second project that we'll dive into also reflects that type of focus.

We also wanted to promote solutions that enhance human activity and design detail materials and in their execution.

There was a strong focus to promote design of structures and facilities that reduce the visual and physical impacts of their immediate context, which is especially key here in this very sensitive waterway.

And then finally, we want to design solutions that allowed individuals with limited or special needs to have the same quality experience as those who are able-bodied.

So these core principles then fit into our letter of support, which highlighted some of the following outcomes.

Starting off with the Roanoke lid, the project team was able to really achieve an outstanding park-like experience for the local folks right next to the lid.

And they also provided right-of-way connections that reflected that local context in both the materials and the details of the design.

Another really important piece of this park was that it needed to create gateways that also incorporated human scale features, as this is a big connection point for a lot of regional connections.

And then the last piece on the lid was the team was really able to facilitate some amazing viewpoints for both local and territorial built geographies in the area.

With respect to the city and regional trail investments that I touched on a little bit, this project really allowed for direct and intuitive trail experiences.

For users, again, of all ages and abilities, there was a strong focus of those multimodal connections and wayfinding abilities through the site and on the site.

And the project really included outcomes that promoted and enhanced sustainability and environmental stewardship, which is a really, really big focus of the commission in our reviews.

And the final piece there is the street furniture, including the lighting, the signage and the seating.

It was designed and organized in a really legible and contextual manner.

And the final piece of our review here, again, was with the Portage Bay Bridge.

And with our letter here, we reiterated our support of the box girder approach that we supported back in 2014 and ensuring that that design reflected the unique context of Portage Bay, really serving as a good neighbor.

I think that was something we kept coming back to as having this massive structure be a good neighbor in the context of the space.

We were huge proponents of just a design that seamlessly integrated those vertical columns with the horizontal elements of the structure.

And another piece that was really important to us was having the vertical components of the bridge that were above the bridge deck, including the lighting, utilities, and signage, having those all integrated into the bridge structure.

So this again has been a long partnership with WSDOT and we do look forward to continuing working with the council and also with WSDOT to get the final outcomes of this project as it moves into the next phase.

And we really appreciate WSDOT's partnership and ongoing collaboration with this work to really elevate the urban design focus within such a large infrastructure project.

So next up, if you could go to the next slide here.

I do have a question there.

For sure.

Just thank you.

I mean, this is incredible work talking about the connection of pathways.

You know, we know that as we connect pathways, we're able to extend the amount of space.

I guess I look at it in this way when we have separate places that have good networks of connection, they are separated and bridge them literally in this situation when we bridge them, we're able to create so many more connections it's exponential.

One of the things that's really important to me.

As I review and look at our built environment is making sure that our built environment is accessible for all ages and abilities.

Is there anything that you can speak to about this project that you, I mean, I know that sometimes a bench.

If it's tilted with a place for people to push up.

It allows for folks that have mobility challenges to sit and get out of the bench more easily.

Also that they need benches to be able to navigate our open space so that they can rest and continue moving.

Can you speak to the all ages and abilities components of your work?

Yeah, I can definitely give a couple examples just on this project, Michael, and if you have others, please chime in.

But I think one of the major points of focus on this review was connecting to the regional path that runs along 520. It goes under on the right side of the screen here on the east side of the Portage Bay Bridge, goes under the Portage Bay Bridge and then will connect onto the Portage Bay Bridge and run up this pretty steep slope to get up to the Roanoke Lid.

And so that pathway has to do kind of the dual role of being that regional connection for all of these folks jumping on their bike and coming from the east side.

but it also has to be that local connector for folks of many abilities to be able to access this.

And so we spent a lot of time on that approach on the east side, ensuring that that was, you know, it was kind of a circuitous ramp from below grade under the bridge to get back up to the bridge.

And it was balancing all these different factors of we want it to be an effective regional route, but we also need to make sure it's accessible for everyone.

We don't want it to make it too circuitous, but we also have to make sure the grades allow for that access.

So that was such a huge focus to marry all those different constraints.

And then I think once folks get on the bridge, Is there a place for them to rest, to pause, to take in the sights?

So that was another piece where a lot of intention was made to make sure that it was an accessible infrastructure project.

Michael, do you have any other ones that are coming to mind on your side?

No, I think that's always a vision by city departments.

And I think what Justin indicated is one of many tools, rumble strips that help People that have less ability and less vision are important, who may be using a device to help guide them through the realm.

Signage, I mean, the list goes on and on.

And I think that we're fortunate to have city departments in our partnership here with WSDOT.

That's their baseline.

We're fortunate that the departments that we see embed all ages and abilities in their work.

So it makes our job easier.

Thank you both.

Well, I and the last point editorial point that I'll make here is that when we provide when we put lids on our roadways, we reopen that public space.

Mercer Island is lucky enough to have lids over their I-90 section.

We're lucky to have these new lids here.

Sam Smith Park, Jimi Hendrix Park, both on top of lids.

Looking forward to the rest of I-5.

And then once we come out of this pandemic, I'd love to join you, Michael and Justin at the Roanoke to look at all of this great work that you've done.

So thank you.

Yeah, appreciate that.

You spoke to one of our projects that we did review this past year, the Lit I-5 project, which I was recused from since I'm part of the project team delivering that.

But we're, I think as a commission, huge fans of basically reclaiming and creating space where there was not space before.

And then, not just stopping there but then, who do we create that space for, I think is a huge, a huge question and something that the city needs to wrestle with before creating that space.

So, I think you're, you're preaching to the choir here.

I will jump into our next project that I know is another one that speaks to you, Council Member Strauss.

If you could slide forward two slides.

So one more slide here, we'll talk about the Ballard Pump Station.

And this is a public facing portion of a really massive public infrastructure project that's 90% underground.

So the public is not seeing most of the infrastructure that's actually being created here.

But we at the commission feel it's really important to highlight the work that this infrastructure is doing for us as the public through an engaging and vibrant design that really invites the public to engage.

So the project team has done an amazing job at creating that and facilitating that.

Our review on this project in 2020, it was our third review of the project.

We had previous reviews in 2018 and 2019, but there was some pretty massive design changes from SPU.

So that led to another review this year.

And back in 2019, some of the pieces that we challenged the project team to elevate and focus on when they were iterating this project was treating the pump station, The 24th Avenue shoreline street end and also the future development parcel that's that's part of this project on the south east side, treating them as an integrated approach to place making.

instead of kind of having a piecemeal approach to that.

We also really stressed that they needed to elevate the role of the art and the artist who is a native artist in the project concept and design, not having kind of plop art that's added later and after the fact and not integrated.

And the last piece was having a focus on developing partnerships and a program for the long term management of the landscape plan that featured a tree farm.

So, with the latest iteration that the project team came back with here in 2020, we were really impressed with the work that SPU did in addressing these issues.

Some of the things that I think really, really just got us excited and happy about the progress was the way they enhanced the architecture and design through the use of lighted mesh wrapped around that above ground water element.

It's a modern approach to celebrating this infrastructure, as I talked to you before.

We've seen some of the neoclassical designs of infrastructure, like the head house at Cal Anderson Park.

And this really continues and updates that tradition of not just trying to hide this infrastructure, but really celebrating it.

The team also worked to elevate and enhance the role of the on and off-site green water storm infrastructure.

And they work to foster equitable outcomes in the design through the inclusion of the indigenous Coast Salish and Maritime themes.

The artist Jeffrey Veragay, he was brought in to work on this project and incorporated again at that concept level.

So that was something that we really, really appreciated.

And his art is amazing.

If you haven't seen it before, please check it out.

His Black Panther comic cover is probably my favorite piece, but he has a lot of really great work.

But back to the project.

The, the updated project also maximizes that connection with the 14 Avenue street and which we really thought was a key feature of this project.

And I think the last piece that I'll touch on here is that the team did expand their, their tree farm concept, so that it can be used by SPU and other other projects.

So, they've been pushing hard to make this a public amenity and both both through the physical manifestation, but also as an amenity moving forward.

And so we really appreciated that piece.

So that's it for the Ballard Pump Station.

I think we have one more slide to show some of those.

Sorry, when you come to Ballard, I've got some things to say.

You know, I want to thank you again for highlighting the indigenous artist here.

It's very important that, especially per the last conversation that we had, to recognize that the site that this pump station is on was the site of a Native American village here on the map that I have from the Burke Museum for Culture and University of Washington.

It is named as Tucked Away Inside.

This was a village site, so this is where people have lived for millennia.

Just That's my editorial comment.

And then my other aspect is that I've been putting my kayak in at the 24th street end my entire life.

So hoping that that will also remain to be able to be done throughout the future because connections to our waterways for paddlers and people is important.

And it will be that access will be there and I to touch on your last point, I think Jeffrey having Jeffrey come in and create just some beautiful art that is integrated in the space.

I think pays pays a lot of respect to that history.

Um, yeah, his piece is called octopus woman and I.

I, I loved his 1st iteration, which they found was not really structurally feasible.

So he had to make some.

Some changes to the design, um, to make it a little more feasible.

Um, but yeah, I, I recommend everyone.

Uh, see that piece, you know, before it's constructed here pretty shortly.

Uh, and then go visit the site, uh, often council member Strauss 1 1.

One thing that was important for the commission here was the disposition of the Yankee Diner site.

In discussions with Seattle Public Utilities, it's clear that that site will need to remain in service for them through construction, which will probably be 2026 or beyond.

However, in conversations with SPU and with MAMI, we had some really good conversations about, after that, what is the highest and best maritime?

or public use for that property?

And how can the designs here either not inhibit future development there or preferably create a larger hole for this, for the Yankee Diner site in here?

And so, you know, again, Mami Hara and I had some really good conversations about that.

We're looking forward to participating with them in the future disposition of the Yankee Diner site.

Yeah, Michael, I think one of the things you just highlighted was something the commission places a huge focus on is having that long range vision.

And we know there are budget constraints.

But if we don't, if we don't kind of finish off projects, when we have that initial push, a lot of times they never get finished.

I think another another project that I can Look out for my window here in the office is the Madison Street ped bridge that connects over to the waterfront and the ferry.

And I think that's another project where a few years back, we did make a huge emphasis on finishing the project because we would hate to see this beautiful project completed 90% of the way, and then have this really poor finish to the project that may never see funding.

So I think Michael hits on a really important piece there that I think we focus on a lot of our reviews.

And the last editorial point here is the adjacent shipyard, Pacific Fishermen Shipyard, is a co-op that was founded in 1946. And before that, it was building minesweepers that were that were transformed into the Jacques Cousteau's Calypso and John Wayne's Wild Goose.

So not only are co-ops a not something that we see as often any longer.

They also created some of the most famous ships in the world.

That's awesome.

I don't know if you have Wikipedia up right now, or this is just off the top of the head?

This is just being valid one right.

All right, that's great.

So yeah, thank you for this.

Feel free to continue on.

Awesome.

Thank you very much.

We just have a few more views here of this project, the street end that you mentioned, putting your boat on the water.

It'll continue to be accessible there.

And I actually think it's been closed off.

So this will really enhance that space a lot.

If you could slide forward one more slide, I'll finish with our last, oh, and again, one more slide here of the Ballard Pump Station.

But this is our last project here where we'll share a street vacation project that we worked with Seattle City Light on.

This is the Diagonal Street Vacation.

And City Light requested to vacate a segment of Diagonal Avenue abutting the South Service Center in Soto.

And this vacation allowed for them to enhance the security features of the facility.

So really for any of the vacations that come in front of the commission, there are really two parts to our review.

First is the public trust review, which includes any issues with vacating that right of way.

That's what we review as that piece.

And then the second portion, If it's approved to actually vacate the right-of-way, we review the proposed public benefit.

So how is the remaining public realm, how is it enhanced to offset the loss of right-of-way?

We reviewed the public trust in July of 2020 and then the public benefit package in September.

And we unanimously unanimously supported the vacation.

It was a clear case of improving operations on the site.

And when we, when we then reviewed the public benefit package presented by Seattle city light.

It was developed really to enhance requests by the Georgetown neighborhood to.

to have additional neighborhood open space.

If you could go to the next slide, we'll see that space that is the main element of the transfer.

It was a City Light-owned property named the Flume Property between East Marginal Way and King County Airport.

And so they proposed to make this open space along with funding to advance and implement the design that included some open space, a dog park, seating, and also bike and trail connections.

So on this one, City Light partnered with SPU and SDOT for these amenities.

And this is something that we really appreciate on many of our projects when multi-departmental efforts can come together to really foster integrated solutions that leverage these resources from the city side.

So that was really, really great to see.

If you could forward one more slide here, This shows one of the projects that is kind of integrated with the Flume property project that we reviewed.

Again, this Flume property owned by City Light also provides an important link to investments under development between Georgetown and South Park, including the one shown on your screen.

which is the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

The council funded this in the 2021 budget, and we just completed our initial review of this project.

And if you could forward one more slide, this project also dovetailed nicely in with the South Park Plaza project, which is a project we just completed our second review of.

And this project, this park plaza project is a really important project.

It creates some really necessary park space in the under-resourced and marginalized community of South Park.

I think this project, I think the neighborhood of the South Park wants it to be so much more.

So we really had to focus our review on what it can be without over-programming the site here.

But this is a really great investment within that community that really sorely needs it.

So with that, I'll kick it back over to Michael to finish our time here.

Thanks, Justin.

Can I have the next slide, please?

And that's the last slide relative to South Park Plaza.

Again, reinforcing that what I think that the council did in 2021 by prioritizing the Georgetown to South Park Trail is creating that network, that equitable network that the community needed.

We're lucky enough to be able to participate in some of those reviews and we'll continue to monitor it.

But I wanted to thank the council for prioritizing the funding for this project to proceed.

Next slide.

So just in interest of time, we'll just hit a few highlights here and then one or two upcoming slides.

I just wanted to highlight quickly, we were the first, board of commission last year, starting in our April 4th, 2020 meeting to go online.

We have been there, we were, the mayor's office and IT helped us make that work.

Certainly staff has been fundamental to that.

Commissioners and people coming before us have made it a successful template We're looking forward to getting back as all of us are, but I just wanted to start off here saying our transition to online meetings occurred three weeks after we were all sent home.

And I know that everyone who has helped us, everyone that's come before us and the public has appreciated what we've been able to do and what we've learned by doing our work online.

We've taken a significant role in WSBLE through looking at a variety of policy documents that you see here, as well as our ongoing review of North 130th Light Rail Station, which will be coming back to us for our May 20th meeting.

Can I have the next slide, please?

For 2021, we're going to be finishing off our work with the Roanoke Lid and Portage Bay Bridge Project.

WSDOT has allowed us to have a significant seat at the table in reviewing their RFP, which we appreciate.

The Seattle Design Commission will be the primary body that reviews sound transit proposals.

for stations and guideway segments.

We are going to commence that review, hopefully in the fourth quarter of this year, looking at the alternatives that are disclosed in the draft EIS and doing what we call pre-concept or alternative analysis of station, select stations and guideway segments.

And we're going to continue with a number of our city capital projects that we reviewed last year, Georgetown to South Park Trail, South Park Plaza, finishing our work with Yesler Terrace, and the projects that you see here.

And next slide.

Matt's here for our presentation today.

Thank you so much for sticking with us.

We took a little bit of time and it was a packed agenda, but I really appreciate you giving your time and attention to the work of the commission.

This is my eighth year being the executive director and I tell people I have the best job in the city because my job is to help a group of 10 dedicated professionals provide valuable input for high-level expectations of how city funds are spent in developing and creating our infrastructure.

So I appreciate the role that I have, and I certainly appreciate the time that the commissioners spend in that role.

That's all I have.

If you have any questions for me, I'm happy to hopefully

I cannot thank both of you enough and all of the commissioners for your dedicated work.

This is a great presentation that only skimmed the surface of all of the work that you do.

You clearly demonstrated your work with Sound Transit, WSDOT, different city departments.

These are all entities that do not necessarily report to you.

And it is clear that your good work leaves a positive impression to make our projects better as the built environment is how we live our lives.

And so I look forward to once we get around this pandemic to sharing some time with you at the NOC or down there on 24th and Um, and, and see view and be able to maybe go for a paddle, uh, colleagues, any, any questions.

Seeing none.

I will let you be excused.

Uh, John, thank you very much.

Thank you.

I hope there's, I hope this has persuaded you to actually choose a favorite commission now.

Oh, no.

I can't.

I gotta try.

Take care, y'all.

See you soon.

Bye.

Thank you.

Any items for the good of the order, colleagues?

Nope.

Seeing none, this concludes the Wednesday, April 28th, 2021 meeting of the Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee.

As a reminder, our next committee is May 12th, starting at 9.30 AM.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.

Thank you, award-winning Seattle Channel.

Thank you, Chair.

Councilman Juarez.

Bye.

I'll give you a call after my next meeting.