Council Briefing 12/2/24

Pro Tem today.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Councilmember Moore.

Present.

Councilmember Morales.

Here.

Councilmember Nelson.

Councilmember Rink.

Here.

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Councilmember Strauss.

Present.

And President Pro Tem Kettle.

Here.

Okay, we have seven present.

Thank you.

The first item, approval of the minutes.

If there is no objection, the minutes of November 25, 2024 will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objections, the minutes are adopted.

Next up is the president's report first time as president pro tem I don't really have much to say except for I hope everyone had a very thankful Thanksgiving and an enjoyable Thanksgiving both here and across the city and of course on Seattle Channel I Wanted to note that I am thankful for all of us working through the budget process.

So thank you to CHAIR STRAUSS FOR THAT.

I'M ALSO REMINDED OF THE HARD WORK OVER THE COURSE OF THIS YEAR.

I'M THINKING NOW LIKE THE TRANSPORTATION PLAN, THE TRANSPORTATION LEVY.

THANK YOU CHAIR SACA FOR THAT.

AND REALLY ALL THE WORK ACROSS THE COMMITTEES TO INCLUDE OF COURSE THE PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE.

SO I'M REALLY THANKFUL FOR ALL THE SUPPORT THAT WE RECEIVED THERE.

AND I'M THANKFUL THAT WE HAVE THE SELECT COMPREHENSIVE PLAN COMMITTEE COMING UP WITH COUNCIL MEMBER SOON TO BE CHAIR MORALES OF THAT COMPREHENSIVE PLAN LOOK.

AND THEN THE OTHER THING FOR TODAY FOR THE PRESIDENT'S REPORT, I JUST WANTED TO OFFER A VERY WARM WELCOME TO OUR NEWEST MEMBER OF THE CITY COUNCIL, COUNCIL MEMBER RINK.

YOU WILL HAVE A CHANCE TO TALK LATER.

in terms of things that may be coming up on your calendar and so forth.

But since you're so new, I just wanted to offer the opportunity to say hello and introduce yourself quickly and anything that you may want to add.

Wonderful.

Emphasis on quickly, I'm sure.

Well, this will be a short meeting, so you can go as long as you want.

Well, thank you all so much for having me.

I'm feeling very thankful to be here and excited to just get to work.

You'll hear more from me in my update, but just trying to balance all of the briefings and trainings for my team, as well as hiring, and as well as just get to work on the important legislative work ahead of us.

So feeling very thankful and honored to be here.

Well, of course, we've all got a little experience.

We have the older hands here, but also those that have been in since January 1st.

to offer insight in terms of the different pieces.

And by the way, speaking of being thankful, I am thankful to, and thinking of what you're going through right now, I am very thankful for the city clerks, to those that support across the board.

And as you saw, the support came in earlier, which is fantastic.

And then also, and I don't see anybody here, but the central staff, you'll learn to be very thankful for the essential staff led by Director Noble.

So with that, we will now move on to, there's no signing of letters or proclamations.

I understand they'll be shifted to the next meeting.

So in terms of preview of city council actions, council and regional committees, we will begin our next discussion as a preview of this.

And order discussion is established by the rotated roll call from the city council meetings, which is designated alphabetically.

by last name with the Council President called last, or in this case, Pro Tem.

And so we'll start with Council Member Hollingsworth, who I believe is not with us today, correct?

So we'll move right along to look up to Council Member Moore joining us remotely.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you very much.

I just wanted to say hello.

I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.

And also wanted to say a warm welcome to our new council member, Rink.

Looking forward to working with you on the Housing and Human Services Committee and on the committee that you'll be chairing, Sustainability, City Light, Arts and Culture.

So looking forward to lots of good work ahead.

For my report, it's very brief.

The next meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee is next Wednesday, December 11th.

The agenda is being finalized, but we are planning to have some commission appointments.

The Office of Civil Rights Commission, various commission updates, RSJI presentation from the Office of Housing.

and HSC's 2025 HUD annual action plan, which I guess is something that they have to present yearly in order to receive ongoing HUD funding.

That will be that.

And District 5, this upcoming Sunday, December 8th, we will have the Lake City Winterfest at the Aiken Building on Lake City Way from 2 to 6. And all are welcome to join.

And that's about it for District 5. Unless there are any other questions, I'll turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Welcome, Council Member Rink.

Nice to see you here.

I'll be brief.

The next Land Use Committee meeting is this Wednesday, December 4th at 2 p.m.

We have two items on the agenda.

Council Bill 120833, the Living Buildings Amendment.

And resolution 32156, which is the sales tax exemption resolution.

I mentioned these last week.

We will have OPCD there for a reminder briefing on the living building amendment and the sales tax resolution.

But I do expect to vote both of those out of committee.

This week, I have a PSRC growth management policy board meeting.

This weekend, I attended a tree lighting ceremony at the Filipino Community Services.

That was great.

They bought their tree from El Centro's tree sale, so community helping community.

That was terrific.

Tomorrow, I'll be participating on a panel discussion on civic engagement with the Washington Bus, which, as we all know, is a statewide organization that works to...

increase political and civic participation in young people.

And then on Thursday evening, I'll be attending the D2 zoning update discussion on the comp plan.

So I know they're doing those briefings in all of the districts, and this Thursday is mine.

And that is all I have, colleagues.

We've been busy with other things the last few weeks.

So yeah, thank you very much.

That is right.

And Council Member Rink, as an alphabetical order, you'll soon get used to this rhythm, you're next.

Fabulous.

Well, again, very excited and grateful to be here and excited about the work ahead of us.

Currently, I mean, truly finding the balance between all of the trainings and hiring up our team, as well as getting to work on some things.

Now, we do have the City Lights Sustainability and Arts and Culture Committee, Coming up this Friday at 9.30, we do intend to hold the meeting.

I am finalizing with staff the agenda, but do have an intent to make sure we have a briefing on with City Light related to the windstorm and outages and just having some reflection on the response.

I think that's a timely opportunity for that committee to take up.

And so we'll finalize that and communicate that.

Tomorrow, we also have our ceremony as a part of our regular council meeting.

Very exciting.

And there will be a reception at 3.30 to follow in Bertha Knight Landis' room.

And I also understand tomorrow we'll be voting on our state legislative agenda.

And just to flag for folks' attention, I do intend to walk on some amendments.

and we'll make those available.

There are two amendments that we've been working on, and I'll also apologize in advance.

I do not intend to make walk-on amendments a practice by any means, but of course the timing hashed out in such a way that the amendment deadline was my first day.

So I hope you'll forgive me this time.

These two amendments, the first of which pertaining to one of the paragraphs under the housing subheader.

This is much more of a vernacular change to include an explicit reference to the housing trust fund.

This to align some of our legislative advocacy with other advocacy organizations and with some of our affordable housing providers advocacy.

And the second amendment is more directly related to some of the fiscal tools that the state legislature can consider when addressing the state's budget deficit.

So I will make the amendment language available to you all shortly, but wanted to flag those for your attention.

And finally, just wanted to reflect that we're also hiring up our team and look forward for the whole community getting to know the rest of our staff.

But that concludes my update.

Thank you.

all right thank you very much uh council member rivera thank you council uh president pro tem kettle can you hear me is this working okay um and welcome and congratulations to council member rink look forward to working with you um as i spoke a bit la about last week the d4 has seen an increase in crime and gun violence which is obviously of concern to residents and to me as well.

As you may have seen in the news, SPD apprehended a suspect in the recent shooting in Wedgwood, where a bullet came through a car hitting a car seat a toddler was sitting in.

Thankfully, the toddler was not hurt.

And this individual has been reported to commit other crimes.

And so that individual has been apprehended.

We're grateful for SPD's work on this.

In addition, today I met with the mayor's office, with SPD and the city attorney's office about crime in the district, specifically in and around Magnuson Park and in the Wedgwood neighborhood.

The mobile precinct is now currently stationed in Wedgwood and SPD is investigating the other incidents in the area.

I'll continue to share more information as I am able to, colleagues.

If you have questions, you can also feel free to speak to me directly and I can try to answer those for you.

I'm also looking forward to the select meeting on the comprehensive plan.

I attended OPCD's public engagement event in the D4 at the Magnuson Hangar earlier in November.

It was the day of the power, the winds, and some of the power outages across And Sandpoint Way had some power outages, so I'm grateful as we talk about all the things that we are grateful for that most of our residents are back online with the power, you know, subsequent to the power outage and have power.

I'm very grateful for Seattle City Light's work.

They always do a top-notch job getting folks back on track.

I know it causes, of course, understandably, lots of concern for residents, and I know that Seattle City Light works very hard to try to get everyone back online.

They can't always meet the deadlines that we would like, but I knew that they try their hardest, so I want to give a shout-out to Seattle City Light for that.

Also want to say that our neighbors, God bless you, our neighbors in the district had a lot of questions and concerns about some of the proposed neighborhood centers and the associated zoning changes in the district.

I want to ensure that their feedback is heard by the planners of OPCD and plan to engage with OPCD on that feedback ongoing.

And then lastly, I'll say, well, two more things, actually.

I'll say I have also an amendment to the legislative agenda.

It has been posted, however, so I believe I met that deadline, so you should see it, but it really is to just add one piece.

I'm very grateful to OIR for including education as part of the legislative priorities, and this just adds a couple sentences to specifically call out preschool.

early learning basically, childcare and preschool to the already they had listed K through 12. So again, very grateful for them for including that and this is a friendly amendment just to really make sure that we're including early learning in that as well and I'd spoken with them.

about that prior, so that is a friendly amendment.

And then lastly, I feel really privileged and honored to be attending the Boards and Commission Appreciation Reception this Friday.

I'm grateful to so many of the folks who volunteer their time and do not get paid.

So that is really no stipend most of the times and really volunteer their time to provide advice and perspective to city departments and to all of us and to the mayor's office on the work that we do that really impacts residents across the city.

And so I'm very glad to be able to participate in an appreciation ceremony for all the hard work that they do.

And unless anyone has questions, I will pass it up.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you for the Magnuson Park public safety challenges.

I'm up to date on this, but I think it's really important because a lot of the focus is on downtown or the CID and D4, Magnuson.

Those areas need to be understood by the rest of the city, so thank you for that.

Okay, next, Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Mr. Council President Protem.

AND COLLEAGUES, WELCOME.

HELLO.

GOOD AFTERNOON.

I WANT TO SAY A SPECIAL WELCOME TO OUR NEWEST COLLEAGUE, COUNCILMEMBER RINK.

WELCOME.

WE ARE REALLY EXCITED TO HAVE YOU.

AND I LOOK FORWARD TO PARTNERING WITH YOU ON SO MANY THINGS.

ANY NUMBER OF THINGS TOGETHER.

Welcome to the transportation committee.

We ultimately declined to have our meeting tomorrow in part to make it a little like the transition a little easier on you.

But don't rest assured our next transportation committee meeting.

is going to be two weeks from tomorrow.

Our regularly scheduled one where we're gonna, we're still finalizing the agenda, but it will be steeped in highly technical permits and addressing the backlog of permits and vacation requests.

And so you have the pleasure of sitting on Two of arguably the most technically complex policies in the city, land use and transportation.

But we'll do everything in my power to facilitate that journey.

And, you know, make sure you have the smoothest possible onboarding there.

But fun stuff.

Open invitation.

One thing that I have found to be very helpful in terms of facilitating my onboarding and my journey is to just get out in the field and tour things and like...

EXPERIENCE THINGS FROM A WORKER'S PERSPECTIVE.

SO I'VE LITERALLY HELPED FILL POTHOLES, TOURED, YOU KNOW, WHERE THEY MAKE STREET SIGNS AND THINGS LIKE THAT.

SO ON THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE FRONT, COUNCILMEMBER RINK, YOU KNOW, HERE'S AN OPEN INVITATION TO JOIN ME, AND NEXT YEAR WE'LL GET SOME MORE OF THOSE THINGS ON THE CALENDAR.

WE'D LOVE TO HAVE A BUDDY TO TAG ALONG, BUT THAT'S A GREAT WAY TO EXPERIENCE THE SITUATION ON THE GROUND AND CONNECT SOME OF THESE SOMETIMES DRY, policy decisions to the actual impact it has on people whether the people are workers or constituents so in any event welcome excited to have you that is mostly all I have on the transportation committee front with respect to OIR legislative agenda colleagues as I mentioned a few days ago I have my own amendment that I will be offering tomorrow, I think.

Well, I finalized and approved it last week.

I hope it's published.

But, you know, here it is.

It's basically a highly technical amendment to clarify, you know, and hopefully prevent what happened to the family of Mubarak Adam when families, aggrieved families of gun-filing victims in that case were just...

Victims of crime, you know, they want answers and they need answers.

And so very technical, very specific to preserve the ultimate intent of the original legislation that is modeled after Seattle and King County legislation, by the way, to preserve that intent while also just offering a very minor technical clarification.

So I'll have my own amendment tomorrow I'll be proposing.

And I ask for your support on that.

Let's see.

Finally, I guess I'll just note some holiday magic and fun.

I don't know about y'all, but during the holidays, it was a time of thanks and celebration.

For me and my family, it was a time of overeating.

And which is great.

It was a time of celebrating fellowship.

And it was a time for me of just being reminded of how thankful I am to to serve in this office and work for constituents in District one and constituents across the city and colleagues.

was also a reminder of how thankful I am to call each of you my colleague as well.

So I try to practice an attitude of gratitude year-round, and I don't try to limit that to just Thanksgiving, but real talk.

And in terms of future holidays, I'm proud to share that on Saturday, we'll be doing the tree lighting ceremony for the Junction.

Big celebration.

Awesome event in West Seattle, and I look forward to joining the team.

The Junction BIA is leading that effort, but we'll be lighting the Christmas tree there and celebrating the holiday season with various members of the community.

So excited for that.

That's all I have, Mr. President Pro Tem.

Now, as a new council member citywide, does council member Rink have pothole responsibilities across the city, or are they just limited to certain areas?

Citywide, but as chair of the Transportation Committee, I don't just care about the potholes in South Park or West Seattle.

I care about all of them.

But she literally represents the whole city.

So we'll find some potholes to patch together if you're so interested that...

you know, in an area that makes sense to you.

So in any event, thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Continuing the attitude of gratitude.

I love that, Council Member Saka.

That's really great.

With that, I'm giving you your Wednesday morning back.

We do not have committee this coming Wednesday.

out of gratitude for passing the budget a couple weeks ago now.

For full council, I too have some amendment.

I have one amendment that has a number of different things in it to make the voting process more seamless.

I am also pretty concerned.

I don't want the legislative agenda to stretch more than two pages.

And so you'll hear me talk tomorrow about, I was already looking through and wordsmithing some of mine, To see if I can make it shorter and I'm going to provide OIR at least the freedom to be able to wordsmith to get the same content across because I'm not tied to the exact words and I don't need a long sentence.

One of my amendments will shorten a two sentence item to one sentence so.

little give and play here.

There are four of them.

So first, under public safety, continue our support to address the high rate of disappearance and murders of indigenous women and people.

The second aspect is under public and behavioral health.

It would state our support for safe access to abortion and other reproductive health care services for all.

Third, this is the one where it shortens.

It would include an updated language in the economic development and small business section regarding our LCB that we're running this year.

And then third, or I guess fourth, under climate and environment, it would say state our support for policies and investments to fight climate change, and specifically assistance for local governments to remove fish passage barriers.

What folks may or may not know, our municipalities throughout the state are burdened with the requirement, but may not receive financial contributions from the state.

And so this is really making sure that we support that work for our other 280 cities and towns in our state.

In the Land Use Committee, Council Member Morales, I won't be able to attend this week.

I've submitted that excusal request.

And giving you a heads up, the resolution for the public hearing regarding the sales tax exemption for conversions is currently listed for January 30th, which is a Thursday, not a Wednesday, because of the select comprehensive plan committee, I am letting you know, I have a Seattle city employees retirement board meeting at that same time.

And so I'm giving you a month, two months notice that if there's not quorum on the 30th, I will be in another board that I'm sharing.

So I won't be able to attend.

Regarding my other external committees beyond SIRS, I'm also continuing to meet with Sound Transit about the upcoming work that's coming before us.

And in District 6, as I stated last week, I'm doing over 20 hours of office hours between today and recess.

And so directly from here, I'll be leaving back to the D6 district office to do office hours this afternoon.

Council President Pro Tem, that is the report.

Colleagues, any questions?

All right.

And then back to you, my friend.

Thank you very much.

By way of information, Council Member Strauss is also known as the Council Historian.

So if you have any detailed background or some legacy pieces, just check in with him.

Today, my fun facts were about the carpet.

Yes.

Yes.

So he gave that background, which I'm very appreciative of, by the way.

For me, first, regarding council committee, public safety committee, our next meeting is next week on Tuesday.

And we're taking up the bill, less lethal weapons.

As you may know, crowd management, this is part of the consent decree work.

We had a hearing with Judge Robarts, worked with the Federal Monitor and all these different pieces that are involved.

you know, part of this process and, uh, less lethal is part of that.

And that'll be the first meeting will be next week on Tuesday.

Um, In terms of this week, tomorrow, Southlake Union Community Council I'll be working with.

And for the council meeting, I have one amendment for the legislative agenda.

But mine is basically comma, mental health comma under the education piece.

So that is it, because I think it's really important to advocate that Olympia does its duties as it relates to education, but also mental health.

which is a big thing as we know in public safety.

As I've said many times before, if we were number two out of the 50 states in this country in terms of mental health spending, like our dogs were last year in college football, imagine where we would be today in terms of the capacity and what that would translate to in terms of our public safety posture on our streets.

For those individuals, where they would be and the care that they would get, but also the impacts on our streets, on our neighborhoods and on our communities It's huge, and so it's kind of a gentle reminder that they do have responsibilities for mental health and education, and specifically in this case, it's related to the schools.

As you know, we're doing our share, but the state really needs to do its share, too.

And so that's comma, mental health comma, basically.

On Wednesday, thank you Council Member Morales for allowing me to join you on the Land Use Committee as you look at the livable buildings pilot program.

I appreciate that.

I also have a Regional Water Quality Committee meeting that day with Council Member Hollingsworth, chaired by Chair Balducci from King County Council.

And then that night, as everybody's now into the Comprehensive Plan.

There's a Queen Anne Community Council meeting on the Comprehensive Plan that evening that I'll be joining in on.

And since mentioned on Friday, talking about Christmas trees or holiday trees, Troop 72 and Queen Anne Helpline, my family helped on that one.

And then Queen Anne, we're gonna have the tree lighting on Friday early evening.

So if you're in Queen Anne or just in the area, come to the plaza there by Trader Joe's.

for the holiday tree lighting.

For next week, again, I already mentioned public safety.

I have a Transportation Policy Board meeting I'll be joining Councilmember Saka on.

And then Thursday, there's the lead policy coordinating group.

I do have the challenge of having another meeting at the same time, but maybe able to join that.

And then on Friday, the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, really important, something that I've been speaking with council member Moore about.

So that's basically this week and next week.

So that's it from my position.

Any other good of the order?

Council Member Sacco.

Thank you, Mr. Council President Pro Tem.

It's good to hear that, you know, we have all these great amendments to the OAR agenda, and I'm glad that at least a few of us are inserting words or constructs into an existing bullet or priority as opposed to me, which is I'm adding one, but it's only one net new construct.

I like the comment, Councilmember Strauss, that you made at the end, and I fully support that, like, allowing the team at OIR to...

I'm agnostic on the final wording.

I just want my priority baked in there.

And so with some creative wordsmithing by person or generative AI tools or both, I imagine we could...

you know, further streamline and simplify.

Again, I just want to make sure, you know, my priorities and our priorities because we're, everyone at this table and our colleagues who are not at this table currently and the mayor, we're directly accountable.

We just want, we just want.

So, but I support that, like allowing them the flexibility after we adopt our priorities to wordsmith and twinker around the edges, to tinker around the edges to make sure that it's in a more simplified version.

So, in any event, thank you, Mr. Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

I see Council Member Moore, you have your hand up.

Yeah, thank you.

I just wanted to approach this idea.

I'll put my hand down.

I had talked to my staff about maybe requesting an executive session or a mini retreat for us to talk about whether we should include OIR.

You know, LA is already beginning to craft legislation relating to the Trump administration.

And it would be helpful if we could kind of have a discussion about where we might think, where we think there might be areas of conflict or potential collaboration, where we think our funding might be threatened and how we can address that.

sort of be proactive.

Certainly need to talk to the executive.

So I just wanted to float that idea there that perhaps we should have an executive session if that's permissible.

I'll follow up with law to see if they think that this is an appropriate topic.

But I just just something that's been kind of on my mind and I wanted to raise it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

I will provide that feedback to Council President Nelson, and then obviously it's an item of discussion potentially amongst us all.

Any other additional items go to the order?

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

I wanted to clarify, I think I accidentally misspoke, but child care is already as part of the legislative agenda, so it's including early education, childhood education.

I think I accidentally said child care, but I meant childhood education.

Okay, thank you very much.

That concludes our agenda today.

Hearing and seeing no additional hands raised or requests, we stand adjourned.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.