Good afternoon, everybody.
Today is Tuesday, December 18th at 2018 at 2.02 p.m.
My name is Mike O'Brien.
I am chair of the Sustainability and Transportation Committee, joined by my colleague, Councilmember Rob Johnson, staffed today by Jasmine Marwaha.
Thank you all for being here.
It's our last committee meeting of the year, unless something weird happens and we have to schedule a special one like we did We have about 12 items on the agenda today.
The agenda shows that we're going to start with seven appointments to the Transit Advisory Board, although Council Member Johnson and I have been asked that we move up the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight appointment and the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board appointment before that, because one of the members for the first one is, I believe, at a media event announcing a new director of SDOT.
That might give them enough time to be here, so we'll take those nine appointments, then we're going to Consider and hopefully vote on an ordinance to about the state route 520 project which we had a discussion committee two weeks ago we have Ordinance that will vote on hopefully about property transfers around the South Lander street grade separation project Then we have ordinance around naming city streets.
And finally, a resolution granting conceptual approval to HT Seattle for a property near the new Convention Center.
So we will start with public comment.
I have four folks signed up.
Alex Zimmerman, you are first, followed by Megan Kruse, then Abby Lawler, and Megan Murphy.
You'll each have two minutes.
They hired my dirty Nazi garbage rats.
Antisemite and cretina.
My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I want to speak about something that I think is very important.
You approved today seven people for Seattle Advisory Transit Board.
Transit problem what is we have is a critical right now.
It's not only critical, it costs us $100 million for last couple of years.
How is this people who care?
I'm so sorry, to me this look like a children, you know what I mean?
And I try to be, nobody accept me.
These children never have a real decision about sound transit.
So what is we have with sound transit?
How many billion dollars we spend?
I give you example, how is this people working?
$4 billion for 520, $5 billion for Tunnel, and you're against Tunnel Council.
Yeah, I know you, and I support you many years ago.
I'm against Tunnel, too.
Next step is sound transistory.
This will cost another $100 billion.
Guys, we spend $100 billion when 12,000 people die in the streets every day.
Homeless, 50 percentage people in total trouble.
We need approximately 250,000 for low income housing, 250,000.
Guys, why are you talking?
Why enjoy these children, you know what I mean?
Or people who support sound transit, buses or bike, or another, pardon, BS, what is, I see this.
So my question right now, can Seattle 700,000 Emerald degenerate idiot wake up and talking about money, what is we spend for pleasure, not for real business for the people?
So right now I speak to everybody who listen to me.
Stand up Seattle.
Stand up America.
We need clean the Tory chamber from this crook and cretina.
Thank you very much.
Megan?
Thank you.
I'm here today to ask you to please reconsider Council Bill 119398. It's a bill that SDOT has had significant input to.
It seeks to change transportation level of service standards, but it actually has severe consequences.
Every day in Seattle, we hear about the looming traffic crisis.
We watch high-rises pop up.
Sometimes they're planned two to a block, and they each hold 1,000 people.
Instead of recognizing and trying to mitigate these serious traffic impacts that will spring from them, this bill gives new towers a free pass.
It releases them from having to follow the same mitigation rules that apply to development outside downtown.
Reducing single occupancy vehicles is a really good goal, but this bill doesn't go far enough.
It ignores the emerging sources of traffic, the explosion of e-commerce deliveries, and ride hailing services.
Now's not the time to say anything goes.
This bill is directly linked to Seattle's success in the future.
Unless it's amended, the approach will lead to complete traffic dysfunction and not successful density.
Please reconsider and amend this bill.
Thanks.
And for folks, that bill is not before us today, but it will be tomorrow morning in Councilmember Johnson's committee.
Abby?
Good afternoon.
Abby Lawler with Unite Here Local 8. I'm here today to urge you to vote no on conditional approval for a term permit for below-grade tunnels connecting the Hyatt Regency with a future hotel on the adjacent Lot B. RC Hadreen Company has failed to demonstrate that the proposed tunnels lack reasonable alternatives and are in the public interest, the standard for council approval.
Both the Hyatt Regency and the project on Lot B are serviced by an existing alley.
Hadreen has argued that the tunnels are desirable because, in short, they make the alley less alley-like, facilitating the through-block pedestrian connection that Hadreen has proposed in order to meet the requirements for significant public benefit associated with combined lot development.
To be clear, denying the requested term permit does not prevent the proposed project from participating in combined lot development or contributing fully to affordable housing through MHA.
What a no vote does do is create much needed accountability for Hadreen to provide significant public benefit in conjunction with the Hyatt Regency and with the future Lot B project that reflects the city's pressing needs for affordable housing and human services.
This is the second time that Hadreen has sought to transfer development capacity between the two sites.
In 2014, in order to achieve additional square footage for the Hyatt Regency, Hadreen committed to providing public benefit in the form of the through-block connector and a smaller building with better massing on Lot B. But after the upzone of downtown and with increased capacity on both sites, Hadreen is now looking to transfer square footage from the Hyatt Regency site back to Lot B, effectively undoing the massing improvements that were previously touted as public benefit.
Hadreen has reneged on this previously approved benefit, is attempting to double count the through block connection, and now has put the city on the hook to facilitate the public benefit by asking that primary alley functions be moved below grade.
These projects need to be held accountable to provide real significant community benefit in the form of affordable housing and space for human services.
And that starts with a no vote today.
Thank you.
Thank you, Abby.
Megan.
I'm here to comment about the Transportation Committee last week on December 13th that met downstairs.
There was Bryce Yarden and he is a State Policy Director for FutureWise and he said actually the Growth Management Act was the first climate policy in the early 1990s and there's 14 requirements to this climate aspect.
So when they go to lobby in Olympia, they want to reshape those 14 requirements to more equitable environmental justice.
But that act started minimum density requirements to kind of be taken into scope.
Rebecca Ponzio was also there, and she said, that a lot of the environmental groups are white lead and usually green energy is pitted against revenue.
So she wants to see that pitting to stop and to break the monopoly of the oil industry and increase health.
So she would like to see bio fossil fuels and incentivize clean jobs and electric vehicle incentives new and used.
for the zero emission goal that Inslee said.
And then Debolina said that vehicles in the state of Washington emit 40 to 45% carbon.
And she's working with Front and Center and Puget Sound SAGE.
And she said the environmental health mapping tool with UW, they're mapping out who are the most burdened by climate change.
And she also works on interconnected issues such as workplace democracy, transit climate justice, and affordable housing, and it's grassroots and multi-issue.
Dawn McKenzie said there's four levels of climate justice.
Travel less, increase vehicle occupancy, better fuel economy, and use alternative fuels.
Locally, we can't change our fuels.
It has to be federal, but if they did make it federal, then the oil companies would find communities where they could put the dirty oil.
Anyways, I appreciate Inslee's goal about the whales and everything's like circling around the whales, but maybe if we focused on everything else, the whales would be good, you know, so thank you.
Thank you, Megan.
Megan's the last one to have signed up.
Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to provide public comment?
Seeing none, we'll close public comment.
And Council Member Johnson, if it's okay with you, I propose that we hold agenda items one through seven, and hear those after agenda item nine.
Great.
So we'll go ahead and call forward, Jasmine, if you want to read agenda item number eight in, and I'll invite Ron Postuma.
Appointment 0-1-2-1-1.
Appointment of Ron John Postuma as member, levied to move Seattle Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2021. Welcome.
Thank you.
So you're getting ready for the Rose Bowl with your sweater here?
Yeah.
I figured it wouldn't be a bad color.
Why don't we start with introductions?
Sure.
I'm Ron Postema, appointee for the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee.
Rachel McCaffrey, the SDOT staff liaison to the Oversight Committee.
Great.
And so, Ron, I'll say that when I saw your name on here, I thought it was a typo because it said appointment, not reappointment.
But I recognize you're going to be serving a different role.
Yes.
But so maybe you want to walk through and tell us a little bit about what the committee does.
Yeah, I'll start with the committee.
So the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee was formed in 2016 after the voter approval of the Move Seattle Levy and their role is to monitor revenues, expenditures, and program and project implementation and to advise the City Council, the Mayor, and the Seattle Department of Transportation on responding to program and and project cost savings or overruns.
And Ron is being appointed today to a general levy oversight seat, but has previously served as a representative on the oversight committee as a representative from the transit advisory board, because four of the seats on the oversight committee are representatives from the four modal advisory boards.
So today it's pivoting to a general seat.
Great.
Ron, you want to tell us a little bit about you care about transit?
Yes, I do care about transit.
So I'll be sad to leave the Transit Advisory Board, but you got good people, you know, coming up here soon to fill in.
The thing I'm most excited about with staying on the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee is I think we've got, you know, a challenge to kind of restore public trust in the city's ability to deliver that levy.
I think we did a good job with the reset that we did, you know, earlier this year.
But there's a lot of work to do to kind of accelerate the rate of implementation, to make sure we stay true to some of the good, you know, multi-modality goals that were in that levy.
and work on making sure people can move around safely in the city.
So there's a lot of work to do, and I'm happy to continue to provide what advice I can on that.
Great.
Well, you've been a great voice to have on that board.
As you mentioned, the last year has been pretty intense with a lot of thinking and reworking of how we're going to deliver the commitments.
And your career has been outstanding too, and so really grateful for you to bring that expertise to this.
Well, we're sitting here, I'm assuming at least the schedule is the mayor is announcing the new head of SDOT.
I'm not going to say that person's name just in case it's delayed a little bit because I don't want to break the news, but it'll be great.
He's starting in theory at the end of January.
So, you know, we'll have been a little over a year with, he'll be the fourth director, but hopefully bring some stability to the department.
And I think from the community perspective, and certainly from my perspective on the council, I think it'll be great to have someone in that as a permanent position to move forward.
And I think I'm sure we'll be excited to get the new director to the oversight committee relatively soon.
Council Member Johnson, do you have any questions for Ron?
I mean, I think, you know, you've got a lot of fans on this side of the table, Mr. Postema, so the fact that- He's the only one on that side of the table, just to be clear.
Just me.
But you know grateful to you for your willingness to serve and I wonder Rachel if you could talk a little bit about what the transit advisory boards process looks like for replacing Ron as the staff member on the love of Levy Oversight Committee since Ron will now just be a formal member of the Levy Oversight Committee
Yeah, so the modal boards under their own authority appoint someone to serve on the Move Seattle Oversight Committee.
And they have assigned Alex Wakeman-Roos to serve starting in February for TAB.
Okay.
Well, excited for your willingness to serve, Ron.
And thanks for that expertise that you bring on project management, project oversight, fiscal responsibility, all those things.
So excited to have you there.
Thanks for your willingness to continue.
Great.
So I'll go ahead and move appointment 0-1-2-1-1.
Second.
All in favor, signify by saying aye.
Aye.
You'll have to wait till the new year for us to formally approve you the full council, but we'll get on that as soon as we get back from recess.
I think January 7th is the first meeting of the year.
Thanks, Ron.
Thank you.
Jasmine, you want to read agenda item number nine in, and I'll invite the presenters forward.
Appointment 0-1-1-7-4, appointment of Selena Urena as a member of Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board for a term to August 31st, 2020.
Welcome.
We'll start with quick introductions.
I'm Selina Arena, and I am the appointee for the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board.
And I'm Serena Lehman, and I'm the asset liaison to the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board.
And would you like to tell us a little bit about the position, the role, and the appointee?
Yeah, so the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board is a 12-member committee.
It advises the city council, mayor's office, and SDOT on bicycling issues in Seattle.
We're really excited to have Selena joining us.
She comes to us from Transportation Choices Coalition.
Before this, they worked at Bike Works for three years, a nonprofit that promotes bicycle use to strengthen communities and empower youth.
Selena brings experience to the board from nonprofit transportation organizations.
Selina, tell us a little bit about yourself, your experience, and why you're interested in serving on the Bicycle Advisory Board.
Yeah, I always like to say that I could write a book about what not to do on bicycles, which is how I began my introduction into them.
From there, I decided to overcome that and became a bicycle mechanic, worked up to working in a bicycle nonprofit, just trying to connect people to bikes and their community via bikes.
And then since I'm a multimodal commuter, I moved into some more multimodal nonprofit work.
I'm a fundraiser.
Excellent.
I think there's some other connections at this table for that multimodal nonprofit work.
A lot of activity happening around the bicycle master plan.
You know, we just had a conversation a little bit about the move Seattle Levy and the work to kind of reshape the final six years of that.
But one of the pieces that has yet to be done is the bicycle components of that, because waiting on the modal boards to come out with a kind of implementation strategy, I believe in March next year's timing.
So jumping into the middle of that, are you ready for it?
What do you hope to accomplish?
Yeah, I'm ready for it.
I've been following SPAB, at least meeting minutes wise, for a couple of years and working up courage to apply myself.
So I'm here now and excited.
And yeah, excited to lend my expertise and anything that I can towards the implementation and guidance.
We're an advisory board, so that's what I intend to do and delve in in any way that I can.
That's great.
Well, really excited for your experience you're going to bring to this, and appreciate you having the courage to apply, and it's great that you're being appointed.
Council Member Johnson.
Selena, if a couple years from now, when your term is concluded and you're coming back for a reappointment, what's one thing that you hope that you will have accomplished as a member of the board?
I hope to have seen the implementation of the bicycle master plan, I'd say on schedule, but as we can and move forward within all of that.
Great.
Yeah.
Well, if there's no further questions or comments, I'll go ahead and move the appointment number 01174. Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Great.
Selina, thank you so much for being here today.
This will move to the full council for approval the first meeting of next year on January 7th.
You're free to participate, read all those minutes over the holiday breaks.
But thank you for your time and commitment.
I know it's going to be a big time commitment and really appreciate your commitment to that work.
Thank you.
Now, we will jump back to Agenda Items 1 through 7. So, folks want to come on forward.
And Jasmine, you mind reading those in?
All right, here we go.
Appointment 01062, appointment 01210, 01209, 01227, 01226, and 01228. The appointments and reappointments of Barbara A. Wright, Elizabeth Lynn Hubbard, Keiko Budek, and Julia Day, Marcy Carpenter, and Andrew P. Martin to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board for terms to August 2nd, 2020. and appointment 01225, the appointment of Michelle Ziedman as a member of Seattle Transit Advisory Board to a term of August 2nd, 2019.
Welcome, everyone.
Thank you for your patience while we jumbled things around.
Why don't we go ahead and start with introductions?
Sure.
I'm Benjamin Smith with Seattle Department of Transportation.
I'm the Transit Board Liaison.
And I'm Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the appointees.
Michelle Ziedman, one of the appointees.
Angelia Day, one of the appointees.
Keiko Budich, an appointee.
Marcy Carpenter, reappointee.
Thank you all so much for being here.
Benjamin, do you want to give us a quick overview of the role and a little bit about these appointees or the process?
Sure, definitely.
So the council created the Transit Advisory Board in 2015 after the passage of STBD Proposition 1, which is our transit service funding source for bus service in the city of Seattle.
So in the past three years, the Transit Board has advised you on the STBD reports on transit issues with Metro and Sound Transit and city efforts.
So right now, we have a slew of vacancies, and so now we have a slew of appointments.
two council-appointed new appointments, and that's Angelia and Michelle.
We have three mayoral appointees, and that is Lynn, Keiko, and Barbara Wright, who hopefully will join us this afternoon.
And then you have two council reappointments, that's Marcy Carpenter and also Andrew Martin, who couldn't make it today.
Great.
So why don't we just start and give you all a chance to make an introduction and tell us a little bit about your background.
and why you want to serve, why you want to volunteer so many hours in the basement of City Hall, toiling away on transit policy issues.
Okay, Lynn Hubbard.
I love Seattle, first of all, so I want to help make the city better.
I was hit by a car several years ago when I was crossing the street, and it made me look at the city in a different way and realize how crazy we are, the way we use cars now in the city.
So I'm hoping to improve transit from a safety perspective as well as social equity, environment, efficiency.
I mean, it's not great that you were hit by a car.
I actually think you meant that.
But I really appreciate that perspective and passion.
I'm Michelle Zeidman.
I live in the Green Lake neighborhood.
And I used to work in transportation policy and planning.
Several years ago, I took a sabbatical to travel.
And when I came back, I took a job working in environmental philanthropy.
So this is a real opportunity for me to re-engage on transit and transportation issues, which I care a lot about.
It's what I studied in graduate school, and I am a multimodal rider, and so I have a lot of interest in making sure that the plans that we're doing take into account how people use transit as part of a multi-step process for getting where they need to go.
And Michelle, you have fans from around the country who've called in to speak your praises.
So it's exciting to have you here.
And good to know that there's some people out there that think very highly of you that were willing to call us up.
So thank you.
I really wanted this seat.
Good afternoon.
I'm Anjali Ade.
I am a fairly new transplant to Seattle from the East Coast by way of London.
I have close to about a decade of transportation planning experience and enough of environmental planning experience to be a bit dangerous.
I really like sort of that intersection from sort of NEPA compliance and sort of project initiation.
So I have a background primarily in consulting and also kind of quasi-government.
So this was just part of extending that passion.
I really like the conversation around the narrative of transportation, particularly multimodalism.
And that's also kind of was the drive for me to move, no pun intended, across country to be a part of that, that this could have emerging sort of interconnection very tech-driven transportation planning, policy, and development.
That's great.
Thank you for that.
Hi.
Yeah, I grew up in Seattle, and so the Route 75, I was in District 3 growing up, and so that was kind of my main mode of transportation, and that was my first kind of look at the system.
I served on the Planning Commission as a Get Engaged member, so through that, I kind of realized that this is such a great outlet to actually advise on policies that affect outcomes and thinking about how we can focus on making those policies meet the needs for transit-dependent riders and increasing access and thinking about transit equity and making it affordable and accessible for everyone in the city.
So, thank you.
And Marcy, you're a reappointee, so thank you so much for coming back.
We don't require the reappointees to be here, but tell us a little bit about why you want to continue on.
Sure.
So first I have to say we've had several members of our board have other opportunities, and so we've been down members for a while now and so excited to have a full board again.
You know, I'm a citizen transit nerd, planning nerd, and there is so much going on with Road to Transit the next few years.
I really want to stay involved in that and mentor the new members and see what kind of exciting things we can do.
The upcoming squeeze is going to be scary, but it also provides some opportunities to see what else, how creative we can be in getting people around.
So, look forward to it.
Marcy, it's been great to work with you over the past few years on a number of issues, and I really appreciate your leadership and your willing to serve again.
And for the rest of you folks, it sounds like a great mix of expertise and passion and interest here moving forward.
As Marcy mentioned, we're entering into some uncharted territories here in a few weeks.
The city council at our first meeting on the 7th, in theory, should pass a resolution.
We're going to change our start times for committee meetings for the three weeks to delay them a little bit.
You know, we obviously want to encourage folks who are driving downtown to leave those cars at home and take another mode, but we also know that during rush hour, The buses and trains are largely full and there's not a lot of room for new folks.
So we're also encouraging folks who currently ride transit to come in a little earlier, maybe before 7 or a little later, maybe after 9 and in the afternoon maybe outside of the 4 to 6 window to create a little more space.
And it's going to be interesting.
You know, this is one of those things that, whether we wish for it or not, it is going to happen.
And as a community, we're going to have to come together and all make some little adjustments.
Some people have more flexibility.
Some people have maybe no flexibility at all because of the reality of their job or where they live or what transport choices are available to them.
But I'm hoping that as a community, we can all make some little adjustments, keep an eye out for each other and make this work.
But it's going to be really fascinating to hear from you all.
We talk about the Seattle squeeze is three weeks, but it's really the beginning of you know, a couple years, but it's really forever.
We're having some fundamental shifts in our transportation system, and we're just, we're not going backwards.
And transit is going to play an ever-increasing role in that, and so the work you all do to help make sure that we get those policies right is going to be critically important.
And the perspectives you bring from the communities can be really important.
Councilmember Johnson, I know you know a little bit about transit, too.
Yeah, but, you know, far be it for me to tell these folks who also know a lot about transit what they should be doing in their job.
I mean, you know, as we look at, Marcy, the list of folks that are joining you and a couple of other folks that are still around as part of the advisory committee, I think it's just a really wonderful indication of the diversity and expertise that we have from so many of our citizen transportation planning nerds, as you so self-identified.
But, you know, That tongue-in-cheek aside, I think that there is a lot of expertise around this table at the Transit Advisory Board, and I would just continue to encourage you to think big, think broadly, and continue to push on all the rest of us within the bureaucracy to execute on those big and bold plans.
Benjamin, Barbara's not here today.
We're not going to stall any longer.
A couple options here.
I know Barbara a little bit.
I think Rob, you know her too pretty well.
If you'd like to speak to her, we could move the appointment today.
I'm comfortable with that.
If you think she'd rather come at a later committee meeting or if she comes later, we could put her in the agenda a little later today.
But I'll defer to you if you feel comfortable speaking for what makes sense.
And if not, we can just decide.
Barbara is a retiree that I believe worked for King County Metro and other entities.
She's well regarded in transits and transportation issues, such that she was part of the Mayor's Committee to find our new director.
So I think that lends to her credibility and the expertise she would bring to the board.
Councilmember Johnson, are you comfortable if we go ahead and move that appointment at this point?
And if Barbara does show up later, we can invite her to the table to say a few words.
Yeah, I am.
And, you know, in addition to that sort of brief bio that Ben gave, Barbara has served on early iterations of a lot of city committees, including the Bridge and the Gap Levee Oversight Committee before we had the levy to move Seattle.
So has a lot of experience working on a lot of different committees inside government as a staff member, both at public health and other places here in the city and King County, as well as in retirement, too.
So I feel very confident in her ability to work with the other members of the Transit Advisory Board and have no problem advancing that to the next one.
And then Andrew's a reappointment, not here also today.
I don't know if you want to say a sentence or two about Andrew?
Sure, definitely.
So Andrew was an appointee from last year, filling a vacant term.
He, at the time, was both a member of the city's Transit Advisory Board and Metro's Transit Advisory Commission, so he brought a good connection between the county and the city efforts.
And he has brought a lot to the board, even in the year, year and a half that he's joined, and he's our current vice chair.
Great, excellent.
Well, seems like a great crew.
Council Member Johnson, as you mentioned, it is a group with a lot of expertise, so, and we'll need it.
I'll go ahead and move agenda items one through seven.
Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Great.
Thank you all so much.
Those appointments will all move to the full council on January 7th and look forward to working with you all going forward.
Thanks.
Thank you.
All right.
We are moving on to agenda item number 10. Jasmine, you want to read that into the record and we'll invite for presenters forward.
Council Bill 119416, an ordinance relating to the State Route 520 project.
Calvin, how are you?
I'm doing great.
Want to introduce yourself?
Calvin Chow with Council Central staff.
Excellent.
Council Member Johnson, we had a full briefing on this and a good discussion at our last committee meeting.
I did not realize that some folks were expecting us to vote on it last time, so I just put it off.
But there's nothing new that came forward, and I have no concerns about it.
So, Calvin, I don't know if you want to maybe say one or two sentences about it.
Just to remind folks that this piece of legislation authorizes a maintenance agreement between the City of Seattle and the State of Washington for maintenance roles and responsibilities on the new Montlake Lid.
That lid is going to be in construction early next year.
And I think one of the benefits that the executive highlighted is that as it's being built, the contractor now knows who to talk to for as issues arise with the construction, they know who the ultimate owner of the infrastructure will be.
And I think that's a very important piece of having this in place now.
Yeah, that's great.
And I think they highlighted that It seems like a relatively straightforward thing to figure out, but the complexities of actually which part of a project or which square foot of land is, who's responsible for it, is often quite a challenge to administratively figure out when you have a couple of big agencies negotiating all those things.
And so having that clarity up front hopefully will streamline things and make that project move, what's a very complicated and complex project, move more smoothly.
Councilmember Johnson, do you have any concerns or questions about that?
You know, I can see how in the course of last Times three-hour meeting we might have just gotten a little bit off track I just want to surface that I have no problems voting on this today and will reinforce what I said at our last meeting which is my intent to bring forward at some point in 2019 a resolution that asks for the Washington State Department of Transportation to stay consistent with in the conversations they've had with me about advancing the construction of the second bascule bridge to the first part of the phase three of construction.
Right now it's slated to be at the end of that phase, which would mean we would conclude all the construction in Montlake, we'd do all the construction in Portage Bay, and then we'd come back around and build that second bascule bridge.
I tend to be a big believer that we should leave Montlake and be done with all the construction in Montlake, as opposed to leaving Montlake for seven years and then coming back and doing more construction in Montlake.
Just want to continue to try to reinforce that collaborative commitment from between the city and the state Not a part of this resolution not a part of this vote today, but just want to continue to say publicly I think that that's an important value that the city and WSDOT continue to collaborate on.
Thanks for highlighting that again.
Great.
Well, I'll go ahead and move council bill 119416. Second.
All in favor signify by saying aye.
Aye.
Great.
Thank you, Cal.
That will go to the full council on January 7th.
Jasmine agenda item 11. If there's such thing as a short version on that, you can go for it.
Yep.
Can't really see.
Council Bill 119417, an ordinance relating to the South Lander Street grade separation project.
There's a semicolon.
Excellent work.
Presenters want to come on forward.
Look at those trains blocking traffic.
Soon to be a thing of the past, huh?
Why don't we start with introductions?
Hi, I'm Maya Honeywell.
I'm the real property and environmental services manager within CPRS at SDOT.
I'm with SDOT as well, and I'm in the real property group.
I'm the SDOT project manager for the Lander Street project.
And we tell each other names.
Sorry.
Thank you.
Who wants to start the presentation?
I can do that, so this presentation is going to be about, of course, Lander Street grade separation project, and this will be going on why we needed the property acquisition.
So we'll go over the background, project area, existing conditions, proposals.
Background on Lander Street project, it was envisioned over 20 years ago with the freight action strategy.
Seattle Comprehensive Plan, Seattle Freight Master Plan, Move Seattle, and the Seattle Industrial Freight Access Project created by the city and the port.
The project area is in Soto on Lander Street between First Avenue and Fourth Avenue.
Currently, existing conditions are heavy traffic on the lanes due to events such as CenturyLink, Safeco Field.
We have the Starbucks headquarters and the light rail station at approximately 5th and Lander.
Currently, we have approximately 13,000 vehicles and 1,400 pedestrians per day.
intersection intersects with four BNSF railway tracks that are at grade between Occidental and 3rd Avenue South and Those trains keep the crossing closed for approximately four and a half hours per day It ranks in the top half percent nationwide for the highest risk risk at grade crossing by the Federal Road Administration Wow Sorry, top half percent?
Top half percent, yes.
Over half of the freight that BNSF moves in the state is on these rails.
Existing conditions, this is my favorite slide.
It tells why we're doing this.
We have 100 trains a day.
We have 13,000 vehicles, 1,400 pedestrians, 100 bicycles.
We have over 100 closures per day.
Each closure is almost three minutes long.
And like I said earlier, we're closed for almost five hours a day.
I have personally been there for 45 minutes waiting for a train to clear.
Bet you were pretty happy during that time.
Yes.
We have 485 crossing violations per day.
That is mostly pedestrians that are crossing while the arms are down.
Over the last five years, there's been 85 collisions, and we've had three fatalities, all of those being pedestrians.
The project builds a bridge over the South Lander grade crossing between 1st and 4th.
The structure will have four-lane cross section.
It will enhance mobility, connectivity to the critical freight area and transportation corridor on Soto.
It will also increase public safety for the people walking, biking, driving, and as well as keep freight moving on schedule.
These are just some artist renderings of what the structure will look like.
Another artist rendering, this is looking north and west.
And then the reason for the property acquisitions is that as Lander Street Bridge comes down the grade, as the grade comes down, pardon me, at 3rd Avenue, we need to raise the grade of the intersection.
And so what the property acquisition does, it just gives us the ability to build two to three foot high retaining walls that let us keep the footprint of the roadway and the sidewalk that we need while still letting the, it gives us the property that we need to do that and it just also lets our structures crews get in there to maintain them if they ever have to.
Okay, so in order to construct the project as planned, we needed to acquire property at each corner on the intersection of 3rd Avenue South and South Lander Street.
There were a total four acquisitions at a total cost of $109,700.
And you can see each acquisition at the corner, but I can break it down further if you'd like.
No, that's great.
Thank you.
And so judging from the artist rendering on the previous page, it doesn't look like any of these modest property acquisitions will affect the operations of the underlying businesses.
Do we go through a condemnation process or do we just negotiate with all the property owners and essentially offer them a per square foot price?
Yes, just through negotiation.
Great.
And I assume that that was all over here.
So it must have all worked out okay.
Yes.
Excellent.
Okay.
And then this is just going on to schedule.
So currently we did start construction this spring.
We are getting close to starting our shaft work, which means we basically have completed our underground utility work.
So now we can start the shafts and the shafts will take another quarter to half a year and then we'll start actually going in the air where people can see the bridge being built.
That's great.
Right now we plan on having traffic on it early 2020 with it being complete mid-2020.
Well I know the project has been something in the works since I've long before as a council member and we're just transportation policies Councilmember Johnson I mentioned it's been under your radar for a while too.
So it's great to see it I know it's a fair amount of disruption down there right now with a project going on, although I appreciate that the pedestrians and bikes can still get through for the moment, so that's great.
And appreciate your work on acquiring these small parcels of land to allow the project to go forward.
Any questions?
Can't wait for it to be built so that we can reduce those incidents where we've got folks that are getting hit and in some cases killed by trains.
But a nice reminder to everybody that don't try to run for it.
Those gates are down for a reason.
They're down so that you can stay safe.
So, please don't ignore those gates.
Stay behind them.
Yeah.
85 over five years.
Wow.
Well, unless there's any other concerns, I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119417. Second.
All those in favor, say an aye.
Aye.
Thank you all for your work, really appreciate it, and great project.
Thank you.
Get it done.
All right, agenda item number 12, Jasmine.
Council Bill 119415, an ordinance relating to city streets.
Welcome, everyone.
Why don't we start with a name and introduction.
Matt Beaulieu with the Seattle Department of Transportation's Transportation Operations Division.
Excellent.
Thank you.
Erin Harris, Seattle Department of Transportation Traffic Ops.
Thank you both for being here.
So renaming some streets, huh?
Yeah, so this is going to be a little bit of a memory refresher for the 2016 time we came to talk to the council.
This is a routine process that we do and we look through, sorry, I'll follow my slides instead of just extemporaneously speaking.
Part of this is really supporting our goal to make sure that we have a reliable and safe transportation system.
And a big part of that is making sure that people are able to understand and our emergency responders, as well as our constituents in general, are able to understand where they are and how to get where they need to go.
So when we walk through the presentation, what you're going to see is a little bit of history about what our streets were named and some proposals that we are recommending for a few changes.
What you'll see here as a background item is that we've got a couple streets, and you're going to see signs on the slide here, that we've actually already posted signs to name a couple of these alleys.
And what we're finding is that we've been using historical addressing off of these alleys, but we were unable to find any record of ever going through the legal process of legally naming them.
So this is once again a case of we had the opportunity to discover a way to do things a little better and go back and clean up a few items and make it work better in the future.
So two of the locations we're talking about are naming alleys to match the colloquially used names.
And as you can see in the signs, the fairly officially recognized names as well.
And that's going to be consistent with some addressing that's actually been historically used on these.
So that's really a cleanup opportunity there.
Have those signs been there for a while or are the signs relatively new?
I want to say it was two years ago.
A few years ago when we were doing the citywide street name sign replacement program and the bilingual street name signs in the international district, we did install new bilingual street name signs at these locations.
Although records show that we have had street name signs here since the 60s.
Oh, okay.
So it's been around in practice for a long time.
Correct.
It's very much the historical community name for these alleys.
And then the other one that we'll be talking, I'll get into more detail on them momentarily, but the big issue is we want to make sure that we have transparency and it's intuitive to users, both residents and visitors.
We're actually going to start up in the north end of the city.
This is up near Karkeek Park.
The alleys we'll be talking about in a moment are down in the International District.
This is a case where Northwest 113th Street was named and is inconsistent with the way we've addressed the streets on First Ave Northwest.
If you live in a house just north of Northwest 113th, you might assume that your address street number starts with 113. In this case, you're going to find out that it still starts with 112. So what we're proposing is that we go through and name it 112th Place.
Sorry, Northwest 112th Place.
When we jump to the alleys, the first alley I want to talk to you about really briefly is Maynard Alley, and we'll also talk about Canton Alley.
These are down in the International District, and these are a couple of alleys that have been historically used as both navigation waypoints and for addressing.
One of the interesting things here is unlike when we talked to you in 2016, we're actually not changing anyone's address as part of this proposal because we're going to be changing the streets to be consistent with the addresses as opposed to the other way around.
So does that mean that no one lives on?
what will formally be known as 113th Street?
Correct.
There's no parcels addressed off of.
Got it.
And so it's a pretty short segment and the adjacent parcels are addressed off of the north-south streets.
Excellent.
And Canton Alley and Maynard Alley, are their addresses there or is it?
They actually do have some historical addresses and they're historically addressed off of Maynard and Canton Alley.
In this case, we did an action last year when we realized that there were some inconsistencies with the way those were addressed, but that was part of what led us to discover that this particular alley had not been formally named.
So the addresses are currently on Canton Alley South or Maynard Alley South.
So we're changing the street to officially be consistent with that.
or more accurately we are proposing changing the street to be consistent with that.
And then just kind of...
For clarity of our process, these came up through some internal and some external discoveries.
We actually got a call about one of them about some confusion from a constituent.
And then we had some others where we were looking at addresses and we were, we kind of furrowed our brows and had to do a little bit more research.
So we've been partnering with our partner organizations within the city.
SDCI did the original outreach.
And that was actually a pretty intensive translator-supported personal visits to the sites, which is, I think, pretty important when we talk about trying to make sure we're getting the message out to this community.
And then as I guess the SDOT outreach, we mailed to the property owners and the residences of all of the adjacent parcels, because as I mentioned, we're not changing addresses, but if your parcel abuts this, we would have sent you a mail information on this so people would have a chance to respond.
We received one community response, and it questioned, one, whether it should be Maynard Alley South or Maynard Alley, and why we needed the South designation As you probably already know, that's to be consistent across the city for wayfinding by the quadrants of the city is how we assign the different suffixes and prefixes.
And then there was another section of alley that we did not extend to because it had actually been vacated via a previous ordinance.
And so we don't name, we typically don't name vacated facilities.
I guess as a next step item, should council choose to pass this forward, we've done our outreach, and so at that point we would be updating databases and getting ready to update signs.
As you already saw, the two alleys are already signed, so it would really be signs up at 113th, which would become 112th Place.
Well, thanks for all your work on this.
And I really appreciate having the outreach specifically.
I haven't heard from anyone with any concerns about this, which could mean a variety of things.
But I'm going to choose to believe it means that all the outreach is like folks are pretty comfortable with this.
And the fact that no one's having to change an address, it's pretty straightforward.
So I'm curious of the history of why city council votes on street changes of all the things we vote on.
Maybe there was a mayor naming streets after himself decades ago and decided to make it a council act.
But anyway, here we are.
Councilman Johnson, any questions or thoughts?
I'll go ahead and move Council Bill 119415.
Second.
All in favor stand by for saying aye.
Aye.
Thanks for your work on this and we'll have this done on January 7th.
Thank you.
Final item, Jasmine, agenda item number 13.
A resolution granting conceptual approval to HT Seattle owner LLC to construct, install, and maintain two pedestrian tunnels under and across alley west of 9th Avenue south of Stewart Street.
Sorry, this is resolution 31785. Great.
Hello, Amy.
Would you like to introduce yourself?
My name is Amy Gray.
I work for the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Thank you.
And we had this in committee at the very beginning of the year, and then had some concerns about some of the issues around it, so it's been kind of stalled out for a while, but I know the applicant's been anxious to get it back here.
If you don't mind giving us quite the refresher.
Sure, I can happily do that.
So, as it was mentioned, these are for two pedestrian tunnels under the alley west of 9th Avenue South and south of Stewart Street.
And these tunnels would provide circulation and transportation of supplies, food, laundry, sort of the back of house operations for the hotel.
And it would be, the proposal is to move these operations below so that the alley environment could be more pedestrian friendly and enhanced and really have it activated.
And we're recommending approval.
Oh, I'm too far away from the...
Just added a couple images of some ideas.
These are not specific to this project, but they're just some of the ideas put together for So these are some things that people have done in the alleys, and this is something that the owner is looking at to do as well.
The project is located at 808 Howell Street, and as you know, term permits are a two-step process.
The first step is why we're here today for the resolution for council to provide conceptual approval, and then at the point where they have We would come to counsel for the term permit ordinance that specifies the terms, conditions, fee, bonding, inspection requirements, that sort of nitty-gritty obligations on the applicant.
Thoreau Johnson, do you have any questions on any of these things?
I mean, one of the things that was confusing to me in looking back at the conversation that we had about this, lo those many months ago, was the fact that these two projects aren't totally designed yet.
You know, usually when these issues have come in front of us before, we've had projects that were not only designed but permitted and were, you know, what we were finalizing was conceptual permits.
for two projects that were wholly designed, ready to go, and then you would come back to us after the projects are built and do all the things that you just said you would do.
When I asked the Department of Construction and Inspections earlier this week to give me some analysis about the final plans for these two projects, they alerted me to the fact that I don't think that we still have a final plan yet for one of the other projects.
Is that your understanding as well?
I don't really have information on that.
I know that when council took this up last year, and it was tabled, the tech, since SDOT permits activities within the right-of-way, the applicant had what we call a street improvement permit in for that, and it had reached 60% technical approval, so that was our trigger.
And then as they work through the final design of the encroachment within the right-of-way, That's when they would get to the 100% SIP.
As you mentioned, those design features of the actual structures on the private property is an SDCI permitting purview, and we would at the point of our SIP reviewers, the Street Improvement Permit reviewers, they connect with the SDCI reviewers to make sure that what happens in the construction of the right-of-way is consistent with what it would be attached to on the private developer or private property site.
So, unfortunately, I don't have information on the SDCI permit status or development status.
Sure, I understand that.
I mean, it puts us in an awkward position.
So, in the one hand, you know, I think conceptually the idea of eliminating an alley walkway between two facilities where we constantly have folks that are shuffling back and forth out in the elements to take back of the house issues from one building to another building makes a lot of sense.
However, at the same time, if we don't really have the final permits on what that other building even looks like to understand how these operations might actually fit together, so that we can confirm that the tunnel is going to do the things that we're being told it's going to do in terms of consolidating operations in one place or another.
It puts me of a mind that it feels like we're putting the cart before the horse.
I don't know, Council Member O'Brien, you mentioned at the beginning here, and you're now looking at your calendar, ha ha ha, that folks have been hanging out waiting for this for a little while, but it seems to me like that's an appropriate reaction.
If we still don't have the final design of the other building, I struggle to see why the urgency of advancing a term permit to allow I stopped to continue to twiddle their thumbs until we know exactly what the other building is going to look like and then can wait for a long time before it comes back to us once the other building is constructed, the tunnel is constructed, then we circle back around.
My preference, if it's possible, would be for us to hold this item until we actually have the final permit from the applicant on the other building.
And I just haven't had enough chance to have SDCI circle back around to me to tell me where that is, how far along the permit is in the process, et cetera, et cetera.
Understand I'd welcome your thoughts on the direction on this and you know defer to your expertise and chairpersonship Thank You councilmember Johnson The concerns you highlighted I share The in my conversations with STC I You know, my understanding is there was originally, through a combined lot development, a transfer of some development rights from the parcel that is yet to be developed to the parcel that, I don't know if it's opened yet, but it's moments from opening.
And with a combined lot development like that, there's a set of public benefits that come along with it.
And some of those public benefits, I believe, were around this alley and also around the bulk and scale of the building.
In the interim, we've done some zoning changes.
There's now more capacity on both lots.
And so now the property would like to transfer some of the development rights back, which means those original public benefits that were around bulk and scale would go away if the SDCI approves that and would need to be replaced with some other public benefit, I would assume.
But it's unclear what that actually looks like.
And I think any time we're doing these types of things that are not, you know, per se rights that a property owner has, whether it's transfer of development rights or term permit to use the street right away.
I really, you know, I feel like the focus needs to be on, is the public getting something out of this?
And there's, I don't have clarity on that right now.
I, and so, I also, Amy, I don't know if you're comfortable answering this, but I'll ask the question anyways, and you can shrug if you like.
The, you know, one of the things, especially around alleys, is these aren't thoroughfares.
They're designed to be very pedestrian friendly, and Well, on the one hand, I get like moving laundry back and forth in the tunnel might be easier on a rainy day than a street and maybe food too.
But that's also pedestrians that would otherwise be on the surface of the street, activating the street, calming traffic, those types of things.
And I know when I look at cities that have much harsher climates than ours, they put people in the sky bridges and the tunnels and the streets sometimes feel kind of vacant.
And so not to say that these two tunnels would do that, but I'm always concerned about doing permits that take people off the street.
And, you know, they've made an explanation as to why that would happen.
I don't know if SDOT looks at that at all, or it's...
Yeah, we do.
We look at it, and we want SDOT's position related to term permits, either at grade, below grade, or in a skybridge, is we want the pedestrian environment to be activated and not bring people off the street.
We have, in other circumstances like with hospitals, allowed sky bridges and tunnels because there's certain functions that aren't...
Medical samples that can't be outside.
There's things like, yeah, or the, you know, do you want in a hospital having their linens that have been used for hospital things with the people walking at the street level?
So, you know, we're definitely concerned about that and we do use it as an evaluation.
I think with our perspective on these two tunnels is that that the pedestrian environment is going to be enhanced because of the activity at the street level with the hospital and people coming and going and having an artistic element and that sort of thing, that we weighed that against maybe taking the back of house operations out of the alley.
And it didn't have a significantly negative impact on the pedestrian environment by removing them.
But it is something we take into consideration for all term permits.
I understand.
I appreciate that.
Councilmember Johnson, I appreciate your deference to be my suggestion on this one because the applicant has, you know, understandably been anxious to move forward one way or the other.
I don't know what their preference is at the moment, but what I would suggest would be to move this out of committee to the full council, but I would ask that work with the council president and suggest at least the moment of a full council date of February 4th, which gives us, you know, the holidays plus another month to see if there are things wrapped up.
If we can resolve things sooner and get some clarity on some of these questions, we could accelerate that with council president.
If it looks like it's going to take a lot longer, we can have some conversations to see if we want to just do a vote or wait till these questions are resolved.
I'm going to vote know on this, it will still advance out of committee with a no recommendation.
And, you know, depending on what we hear at full council, we're obviously free to change that vote.
But rather than keep it in committee, I'm thinking just moving it to full council.
If some information arises in the future that is more appropriate to hear at committee, then I'd be open to asking the council president to refer this back to committee and we could hear it again.
But I feel like I owe it to the, I'm not going to vote the way the applicants want, but I do feel I owe them to move it out of committee.
And so, if you're comfortable with that, that's what I would suggest.
Okay.
So, you know, if I had remembered about the combined lot development issue that you referenced, I had forgotten about it between the space when we talked about this today.
That only adds to my anxiety about wanting to make sure that we have a good understanding from the law department about what we can do with the building that is permitted and under construction and or completed construction and the public benefits associated with that vis-a-vis what a different set of public benefits might be with a different development that is yet to be permitted.
I mean, that just makes me think that a very appropriate delay to February allows for us to make sure that in an appropriate executive session, we can get some advice from the law department about what are the public benefits associated with the existing development and how does that transfer to potential other developments, given the complicated nature of the fact that we have had zoning changes in between those two things.
But, you know, from my perspective, I think that this is a weird one, because I went by and asked the clerk about this earlier today.
I think we're putting the cart before the horse, which puts me in a position of, I think, being uncomfortable voting.
If we're going to vote, then I will also be voting no, which is weird that two people who are here are both going to be voting no, but a bill comes out of committee anyway.
That seems to be antithetical to the usual committee democratic process, but I guess, according to our clerk, the council rules are such that a bill has to come out of committee.
And whether or not everybody votes for or against it is, I guess, at this point, somewhat irrelevant.
The bill comes out of committee no matter what.
Given all the uncertainty about the timeline of all this stuff, the legal questions, and just generally, I think a lot of confusion about this, I will be voting no too, and support your lobbying of the council president to give us some leeway in January and into early February to allow for further conversations to occur.
Yeah, it's, I actually, when I look at, this is a little aside, at other government bodies, and when things that have, seem to have popular support are killed in committee because of the particular makeup of the committee.
It always seems like undemocratic.
So I feel we're being democratic because it's just two of the nine of us.
But we're going to vote no on it.
But we're still going to move it out of committee.
And the whole body will get a chance to look at it.
Again, there's a lot of moving parts here.
So that may change some things.
And we'll see.
So I'll go ahead and move resolution 31785. I'll second that.
OK.
Any in favor, signify by saying aye.
Any opposed, say no.
No.
No.
None abstaining.
So this is a weird one.
I'm trying to think if something like this has happened in my nine years, but this is our rule.
So this will go to full council.
And my recommendation is that it will happen on February 4th.
And we'll just have to be in conversation with you and the applicants between now and then to see if we get the information we need.
If in lack of information, we still want to move forward with it.
or we want to come up with a different strategy.
But technically, it's out of committee at the moment, so it's something to check off by the end of the year.
And I know we're committed to providing you the answers that you have regarding the right-of-way questions.
Great.
Thank you, Amy.
Thank you.
That's the last agenda item.
I want to thank everyone for being here today.
Council Member Johnson, it's been a good, challenging 2018, but a good 2018. And I think we'll be back here in a few weeks, starting 2019. So thanks for that.
We're adjourned.