Seattle City Council Briefing 1/13/2025

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is January 13th and the City Council briefing meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.03.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Moore?

Present.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Thank you very much.

So today we've got two presentations and two proclamations and no executive session.

So moving right along, on tomorrow's city council meeting agenda, there are five items on the introduction and referral calendar.

Initially, we had just one weekly bill payment ordinance and council bill 120933, which would allow residential uses in the stadium transition area overlay district.

However, I think I understand that there were some late-breaking additions to the IRC from Councilmember Rink's office that were inadvertently not included in time to be published on the IRC that went out earlier today, so that will be republished.

And these are a resolution relating to City Lights Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan and three appointments.

And on the consent calendar tomorrow, We have the weekly bill payment ordinance and 13 appointments, including nine appointments from the Housing and Human Services Committee, three each to the Disability Commission, the Human Rights Commission, and the LGBTQ Commission, and then four appointments from the Libraries, Education, and Neighborhoods Committee.

three of them to the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council, and one to the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council.

And there are no pieces of legislation from committees later on tomorrow in the meeting.

All right, moving on, just an update on the council vacancy process.

The application period ended on January 9th at 5 p.m., and the clerk's office has disseminated to council members a list of 20 eligible applicants for consideration, and that list and all of the application materials are also available to the public as well.

And we only had one community group express interest in hosting the community forum on January 21st.

So congratulations to City Club who hosted our community forum for the vacancy last year.

So they will be doing it again this year.

And they're working on logistics for the forum, including the location and the exact time that it will start.

It will be in the evening.

And we'll also have further guidance for council members at the latest tomorrow morning on the formatting for selecting finalists and how we'll conduct interview questions and the timing of our opening of our upcoming special meetings.

So that's where we're at on the vacancy filling process.

So moving on to our presentations.

First, we have a state legislative session update.

So I'll Can folks come to the table, please?

Today was the start of the legislative session in Olympia.

And as you may know, this year the session is scheduled to go for 105 days, and OIR, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, will be here at briefing going forward to talk about what's going on in Olympia.

So we are very lucky to have folks tell us what's happening down there.

And meanwhile, staff is down there working on our behalf in the rooms of the legislators.

So go ahead and please introduce yourself and you're free to begin your presentation.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, council president Nelson and council members.

I'm Meena Hashemi.

I'm the director of the office of intergovernmental relations, and I'm joined virtually by my colleagues from our state relations team, Samir Janejo and Anna Johnson, who you'll hear from momentarily.

Thank you for having us.

It's day one of the legislative session.

Over 500 bills have been prefiled.

The governor-elect has been busy making appointments and hiring policy staff.

Newly appointed legislators are racing to get situated in Olympia, and the preliminary schedules for this week have been released and next.

The scheduled the first week of session is atypical, given Governor Inslee's farewell speech tomorrow and the governor-elect Ferguson's inaugural address, as well as all of the opening ceremonies this week.

Committees began meeting today, and in the first week, there are 77 hearings scheduled, including important hearings on the governor's budget, as well as other policy proposals on the city's list of priorities.

Our in-house state relations team and contract lobbyists are well prepared going into session, and they're now on the ground in Olympia, hard at work advocating for the city.

We want to thank you, council members, for your participation in the legislative agenda setting process and for your engagement with our team this session.

We look forward to keeping you and the public updated throughout session at these regular legislative briefings.

And with that, I'll turn it over to my colleagues, Samir and Ana.

Samir Janejo, State Relations Director with OIR.

And so our presentation today, we'll kind of talk a little bit about where things are at based from the legislative agenda and a short preview of where we are.

So I'm going to start with kind of what's happened since we last talked, which was the second week of December.

So Governor Inslee, he released his proposed budget and Governor Inslee's budget.

And as a reminder, the state revenue forecast shows a $12 billion shortfall over the next four years.

And the state has a requirement to have a balanced budget over four years.

So, Governor Inslee's budget deals with this in a couple of ways.

One, it proposes $2 billion in cuts via reductions or delays, and also proposes a wealth tax, which raises $10 billion, and some B&O changes, which raise $2.6 billion.

Governor-elect Ferguson, he released a budget priorities document, so not a full-fledged budget, but essentially an addendum to Governor Inslee's budget.

And in his budget priorities, he proposes an additional $4 billion in cuts, but makes clear that there will be no reductions to basic education and public safety agencies.

The way he does this is by directing agencies to make about 6% on average cuts.

and he does not propose any revenue proposals, so he will not be proposing the wealth tax review, no changes.

And separately, Governor-elect Ferguson's budget priorities also proposed $800 million in new spending, including a $100 million grant program for law enforcement recruitment, $5 million to clear the backlog of cases at the Washington Toxicology Lab, 240 million dollars for universal free school meals and 20 million dollars for ferry service and staff recruitment.

He also proposes 600 million dollars in housing in the capital budget.

And lastly, there was one change in the Seattle delegation.

Senator Joe Wain from the 34th District was appointed by the governor elect to head the Department of Commerce and an appointment for his seat is still will be coming later this month.

The cutoff calendar, this is a calendar of what the important dates for the session.

As you can see January 13th is where we're at right now to start the legislative session.

The next important date will be February 21st, which is policy committee cutoff.

So this is the date by which all bills have to be voted out of their respective committees.

If they're not voted out of their committees by February 21st, then they can no longer move forward this session.

The exceptions being bills that are necessary to implement the budget.

So all revenue bills, for example, are not subject to any of these cutoffs.

They just have to pass by April 27th, which is the end of regular session.

All right, good afternoon, everyone.

Great to see you, Anna Johnson.

I'm the State Legislative Affairs Director for OIR.

The next part of our presentation, we wanted to give you almost like a status update of where our priorities are as they stand today.

We had a number of bills get prefiled that are related to items on the agenda that we passed in December.

So like Director Hashemi mentioned, thank you for passing a concise and effective document that helps us with our lobbying efforts in Olympia.

So I'm going to go through some of the priorities and where they stand based on the subsections of the agenda.

So starting with public safety, we saw that Senate Bill 5098 sponsored by Senator Valdez was introduced and actually has a hearing tomorrow that This bill essentially allows weapons and firearms to be restricted in parks, community centers, public buildings, county and state fairs.

This bill is important to us because it does impact our Seattle Parks and Recreation Department as well as all of our city buildings.

We also saw that House Bill 1112 sponsored by Representative Favar get introduced and also scheduled for a hearing this week.

This bill is specific to our Seattle Municipal Court and it allows us to hire pro tem judges that live outside of the city.

House Bill 1228 was also introduced.

This is sponsored by Representative Hackney.

This bill deals with the toxicology lab backlog and allows local governments to use certified or accredited labs to send DUI evidence and forensics to instead of the state toxicology lab.

Samir mentioned that the Governor Inslee's budget was released in December, and one thing that we noticed is he reimposed the 25 percent cost shift back to local government for training new law enforcement recruits.

You may recall last year that the state passed a bill and in their budget included 100 percent of the costs for law enforcement training.

So that's something we're going to be working on moving forward with the budget writers.

Next, we had Senate Bill 5052 from Senator Solomon get prefiled.

This bill deals with clarifying the extent in which law enforcement is able to question juveniles when they're a victim or a witness of a crime.

This is something that's related to the youth access to counsel program that the state law requires, and it provides some clarifying measures that will help local law enforcement moving forward.

This bill also has a hearing this week.

And then something that the city is leading on that's in progress is bill that allows pedestrian safe system.

So essentially being able to have cars and pedestrians share the roads safely in our cities.

Moving on to behavioral health, so on our priorities, we had Involuntary Treatment Act legislation, and so we haven't seen a bill on that, but we have heard that Representative Davis will be dropping a bill on ITA, so we'll be monitoring that pretty closely.

There's also Senate Bill 5126, which is OSPI request legislation sponsored by Senator Nobles, which establishes a statewide network for student mental and behavioral health, so we'll be watching that one closely as well.

On economic development of small business, we are working on a bill that has not been has not dropped yet, but we're still drafting a bill which would update our outdoor dining requirements and also Seattle Center alcohol regulations, modernizing these regulations to allow for better use of our public space.

And so that's still in progress.

And also, we're generally going to be watching and supporting the 2026 World Cup funding asks that the local organizing committee will be leading on.

And also, we're obviously watching for small business legislation.

We haven't identified anything yet in the pre-files, but we'll be monitoring any business, any bills that help small businesses very closely.

Housing and homelessness, the governor's budget included $25 million for asylum seekers.

So this includes housing services, but also other support services.

Also included $38 million for encampment resolutions on state rights of way.

Those are both slightly lower than previous bienniums, but because of the revenue shortfall, we wanna make sure that at the very least they are still funded and are not reduced more.

We also know that there will be a condo liability bill sponsored by Representative Taylor.

It's in progress, has not dropped yet.

This will reform condo liability law with the intention of making it easier for developers to build condominiums for homeownership.

And as mentioned previously, there's $600 million in the governor's capital budget for housing, which includes housing trust fund, but also connecting housing to infrastructure program and also the rapid capital acquisition program, which helps with housing folks on the state rights away.

We're also separately working with Representative Macri, King County, KCRHA, and homelessness providers on a joint budget ask to fund critical homelessness services and prevent closure of any shelters who are losing their one-time federal funds that are provided by the City of Seattle or King County.

That's also in progress and we'll be updating you as that goes on.

All right, in the climate and environment space, we saw that House Bill 1150 from Representative Barry was introduced.

This bill was formerly known as the RAP Act.

This year is the Recycling Reform Act.

This bill will help subsidize curbside recycling for all of our residences by creating an extended producer responsibility program for papers and plastics.

Also on our agenda, we wanted to support any sort of funding and policy that helps decarbonize buildings, whether that's public buildings, multifamily and also buildings within the city of Seattle that have to comply with our building emission performance standards in the future.

So in governors in Inslee's budget, there was a number of programs, mainly in the capital budget that's going to help with building decarbonization.

And these are grant programs, programs for low income folks and programs for multifamily buildings that are funded by CCA dollars.

And then our last section on our legislative agenda dealt with the adequate funding of services for local government.

And as we start to analyze the governor's budget and see the House and the Senate make their own respective budgets, we'll have more to share and kind of where things are landing in terms of funding for services.

And like Samira mentioned, we'll be keeping our eye out for revenue proposals as those don't have to follow the cutoff deadline so they could come at any point during session.

And then we're gonna conclude today's presentation with what to watch this week.

So hearings have begun today, this afternoon.

Today, we saw that House Bill 1217 from Representative Alvarado gets scheduled for a hearing.

This bill is the rent stabilization bill, capping rent increases at 7% annually for multifamily properties.

On Tuesday, one of our priority bills is getting heard, Senate Bill 1598. Like I mentioned earlier, we plan to testify pro on this bill.

Wednesday, another one of our priority bills was scheduled for a hearing.

Like I mentioned, the bill that clarifies the youth access to counsel program.

We also plan to have someone from the city testify pro.

And then on Thursday, House Bill 1253 sponsored by Representative Ybarra.

This bill is the city light request legislation that expands the ability of consumer owned utilities to enter joint use agreements.

with private entities so essentially joint use agreements can help with our energy generation capacity as a city and also take advantage of federal tax credits and we'll have someone from city light testifying pro on that bill and i think that's the end of our presentation we're happy to take any questions and we look forward to briefing you throughout session do my council members have any questions for our

Thank you, Madam Council President, and thank you, Director Hashimi and Ana and Samir for your very helpful overview today.

Really appreciate the first of more to come on this really important topic during the session.

First off, I guess it's good to see the $240 million for the free school meals on Governor Elect Ferguson's priority list.

Colleagues, you'll recall last year that is something that we collectively as a new council aligned on as a priority and I organized an effort to get a letter signed by all of us and then it was ready to go and ship And then I think that bill then and that session became DOA for some reason.

And then it appeared on our own city's priority list for this year.

So it's good to see that one looking like, well, Nothing's guaranteed, but putting more action around that.

So we'll stay tuned.

My question pertains to slide four on those various items that were listed.

That last bullet point there that says, quote, in progress pedestrian safe systems legislation.

As chair of our city's transportation committee, I'd just be curious to learn a little bit more.

Can you talk just a little bit more about that one, what it is, Safe systems, I note, is a federally designated approach to keeping people and communities safe on our roads.

So I don't know if there's a direct tie or overlay with that.

But yeah, can you just talk a little bit more about that one and next steps as well?

Thank you.

I can speak on that one.

So the idea is something I think that is being referred to as shared streets.

So these are streets where vehicles and pedestrians can share the roadway.

There's no legal designation for that currently under state law, even though certainly you see it happen in places like Pike Place Market and otherwise.

And so this would be a new state law designation for a shared street and also would allow the city to lower the speed limit below the state floor of 20 miles per hour just on these particular streets.

I can send you more information as well.

Yes, please.

Please do send more information offline and What are the next steps on that one?

Uh, well, we're working with some legislators who have expressive interests, but, um, kind of working to get a, to get a sponsor and get a bill hearing, um, that we have socialized it and talk to the transportation chairs and they're all very intrigued by the idea and, uh, you know, we're optimistic.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Council member, uh, Mercedes ring.

Go ahead.

Thank you so much for the presentation today.

It's my favorite time of year at state legislative session.

I'm sure you're feeling the excitement.

I just have a couple of questions today.

The first of which being, could you speak to perhaps where are some areas that the city is most concerned about losing funding for and what kind of impacts you may be tracking to our respective departments or any programs or staffing?

I'll flag, you know, as I mentioned, we're working on an ask related to homelessness services, and so we're keeping a close eye on that.

I think it's a little early to say because the budgets themselves, the legislative budgets haven't been released, and so that will be our first indication of really where things are going to be cut.

Certainly the revenue conversations are going to be part of this because how much they cut will be dependent on what kind of revenue options they'll be looking at.

So I think we're looking at certainly housing and homelessness in particular, particularly homelessness because that's an operating budget.

When it comes to housing construction, which is in the capital budget, there's less that's less connected or less that issue because the revenue forecast impacts that less than it does the operating budget.

And then definitely anything in the transportation sector, because the transportation budgets are also have not just a shortfall, but also because of inflation and cost overruns, they're really looking at trying to just they're looking at cutting existing projects as well.

So that's one that we're concerned about as well.

And then we can there's there's a there's a lot more that we can flag for you as they come up.

But I think later and later this during session will be we'll give you a kind of a bigger budget overview.

Thank you so much.

And certainly appreciate the hard work tracking all of the bills related to policy.

Curious about if OIR will be planning to track things related to local community projects, LCPs that each member of the state delegation may be advancing.

Yeah, we typically, um, sometimes those organizations that are requesting LCPs, um, ask for the city support.

So we certainly find out about that through the process.

Um, but we typically find out about the LCP list once the house and the Senate released their budgets, and then we incorporate that in our tracking as well.

Um, and we see which projects are geographically located in Seattle, which organizations are going to get the funding.

And that's certainly something we report back to, to council and everybody.

Once we know more.

Fabulous.

Thank you so much.

Are there any other questions?

I'm not seeing their hands.

Okay.

Closing comments.

Thank you.

Thank you council members.

Um, as we said, we look forward to keeping you updated at these regular briefings.

And again, want to thank you all for engaging with us this session and, um, we look forward to working with all of your teams individually as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for making it today on your first day.

Have a good one.

Thanks.

Okay, the next item is city programs and policies in a changing federal context.

And while folks are coming up to the table, I just want to remind people that this presentation is being held today at the request of council members who are interested in knowing how changes at the federal level could be impacting city programs and resources.

And so we're going to have people address various aspects of thinking and concern and I've asked the mayor's office to present on various issues that I've heard brought up from council members.

We have with us Deputy Mayor Wong, as well as the directors of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, still in again, and the Director of the Human Services Department, and the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

So I really want to thank you, the Mayor's Office, for turning this presentation around so quickly and providing us with some information from the get-go and perhaps being able to help focus our efforts going forward and where it will be most important.

And I want to stress to council members that there may be a number of issues or legal questions that our panel will not be able to answer today.

And so there will be another forum, there will be additional opportunities and another forum to have those questions answered coming up soon and we will provide information about that as well.

So I don't want to proceed without saying again, thank you very much for being here.

And why don't you go ahead and present your presentation and then we will have council members ask questions afterwards.

Thank you.

Is that one on?

Yes.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I'll scoot over a little bit here.

Thank you very much, Council President Nelson.

Council members, we're very pleased to be in front of you today.

I'm Deputy Mayor Greg Wong.

I'm from the Mayor's Office.

With me are Director Meena Hashemi, Director of our Office of Intergovernmental Relations, Director Hamdi Muhammad from our Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Oksana also from OIRA, and then Director Kim from the Human Services Department.

We really appreciate the opportunity to brief you on this.

As we know, presidential terms are four years, so there's many different times and opportunities that we'll be able to address different issues as they arise.

But before we go into some of the specific things we're doing to prepare for administration change, I wanna be able to ground us a little bit in our values because regardless of what we do or what happens nationally or internationally, we always wanna make sure that we are grounded in our values, in the kind of actions we take and responses we have.

And so one of the things that Mayor Harrell has said is that in one Seattle, we value prioritize building a city that's inclusive, It's welcoming for all.

It's where we champion human rights, women's rights.

We stand for environmental sustainability and international peace, where we recognize the contributions of immigrants, refugees, the LGBTQ plus communities, communities of colors, and those that are historically marginalized.

I'll pause there while we get our tech issues sorted out here.

Is it working now?

OK, great.

Thank you.

So I just want to ground us in that.

You can go back to the value slide.

Because that is actually really important.

Because one thing that we know is that there's been a lot said and a lot of conjecture out there about what a new federal administration means.

And that's true any time there's a change in leadership, and particularly one when it's a pretty big swing between our current leadership and new leadership.

So there's a lot of, I think, chatter.

And one thing I want to make sure to just keep clear is that we are being very strategic and coordinated.

in however we're able to respond to whatever the issues are that come up.

Since November, we've been assessing the potential federal changes that may come with the new administration.

I was actually at a breakfast briefing this morning that a local law firm put on for public entities about the change in administration.

There was over 100 participants from school districts, cities, the county, the state, all with very similar questions.

And the number one word that came up during that briefing was uncertainty.

There's a lot of uncertainty.

And so we just need to make sure that we are responding in uncertain times by leading through our values and being able to be ready to address whatever comes our way.

That said, there are things that we can do that are within our control that we can make more certain.

And there's really, I'd say, three main components of what we've focused on in the executive so far.

First is very strong internal coordination with all of our executive departments.

Clear communication, working together as one team is going to be critical in these times where there may need to be a rapid response or a question of how we're addressing a policy.

The mayor's office has already brought this to our cabinet, to our cabinet meetings regarding protocols to be in place and department readiness.

You may have heard some already from OIR and our federal lobbyist in Washington, D.C., who I believe was with you last year to talk about some of these issues.

They're already briefing the departments.

So again, we can be ready to know what's coming and then how we're going to respond.

The second thing is that we're ensuring that we're in communication and coordination with other jurisdictions.

We know that federal changes, by their nature, are federal.

They're gonna be nationwide.

And I think this is a really important thing to keep in mind, is that Seattle does not stand alone.

We will be working with our partners at the state level, certainly, the Governor-elect's office, the GLX office, with our partners at the county, with our partners, really nationally, with other cities that are similarly situated, to make sure that we're coordinated in our response efforts.

And we've already begun many of those conversations.

Third, we have looked at, given all of the different things that could happen, where are we most likely to see some of the first actions?

Because we know that the administration has said that they're gonna take certain actions on day one.

And we believe, based on those statements, that really we're thinking that they're likely gonna land, and no big surprise, in the immigrant, refugee, and migrant space.

So there'll be a portion of today where we really dive into that and some of our preparedness.

We know we can't cover all of the federal changes and potential steps in one briefing today.

So we're gonna keep this at a relatively high level.

OIR is going to kick us off with talking about some of the high level federal changes we're gonna see.

OIRA will then speak to the immigrant, refugee, and migrant response.

And HSE and I will touch on a couple of discrete issues we heard regarding vulnerable populations based on some of our conversations with you.

One thing we do know, however, is from the prior administration, is that where local programs are threatened, often there is one piece of it that is a strategic response that may involve a legal response.

I want to be very clear that today we're not here to talk any legal strategy, any sort of things that may happen under certain laws.

That's not our place.

Certainly you all in an executive session with the the attorney's office can have those discussions, but I just wanna be clear, there may be times if there's a legal component to something, we may defer to an executive session on that.

So with that, I'd like to kick us off by handing it over to Director Hashemi for an overview of the federal changes of note.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong.

Good afternoon, Council President Nelson and council members.

Today I'll be talking about what our Office of Intergovernmental Relations is expecting from the incoming Trump administration and the 119th Congress, and how we're preparing and coordinating with other departments and governments.

OIR has an experienced and organized team in place to handle federal relations, including staff who served the city during the first Trump administration, a dedicated federal affairs director, and an expert lobbying team on the ground in Washington, DC.

There are a number of things we're expecting in the coming days.

Congress will use budget reconciliation, which allows them to approve budget-related legislation with a simple majority in the Senate to pass a package centered on immigration and tax cuts.

Slowdowns on the departmental level due to turnover on both the cabinet and staff level are expected, and Congress will begin hearing the president-elect's nominees this week.

We're also expecting a slew of executive orders directed toward issues such as immigration, health, and defense.

In his first presidency, President-elect Trump signed seven executive orders in the first 10 days.

And last week, he previewed 100 executive orders to Republican leadership.

There is a lot of nuance to federal funding, but we're thinking about it in three buckets.

Funding set on a formula basis will remain more stable than the competitive side.

Some examples of formula funding that the city receives are the community development BOC grants and the home investment partnership program.

Fiscal year 2025 earmarks are expected to pass under the continuing resolution, which is set to expire this March and the city has five pending.

However, there is a possibility the amount of funding could decrease and new conditions may be placed on competitive grant opportunities, which we will be monitoring closely.

Some examples of competitive grants are the U.S.

Department of Transportation RAISE grant, for example.

Okay.

OIR has been hard at work with the mayor's office to prepare for these changes.

We are monitoring announcements, proposals, and policy daily.

We are establishing even stronger lines of internal communication to maximize coordination and analysis in a really rapid pace.

We are in constant communication with the city's on the ground lobbying team in Washington, DC, as well as our congressional delegation here in Seattle.

We are coordinating regionally with government partners at the state, county, and local level.

And we have ongoing preparedness for the administration change, including finalizing grant agreements, evaluating existing resources, and evaluating impact and response to potential federal policies, planning for staff trainings, and more.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Director Muhammad.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And good morning, honorable members of the council, Council President Nelson.

It's good to be in front of you all today.

My name is Hamdi Muhammad, for the record.

I'm the director of the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

Before I dive into some of the work that we've done, I think it's important to just set some foundational information.

We all know and have heard that our US immigration system is broken.

It faces deep systemic challenges.

And I would say policymakers across all spectrum would agree, regardless of their ideologies, that our system is outdated and requires significant reform.

And we often hear people say that we are in need of comprehensive immigration reform.

And that is a fact.

that we can all agree on.

But while the rhetorics may shift and ideologies may be different, one of the things that we know is that when each administration comes in, they do set a tone and you do see a direct impact into communities.

I will be talking about what occurred in 2016 through 2020. And I just wanted to also underscore that while the rhetorics really did shift in our country during that period, the deportation numbers did remain pretty consistent when you compare it to previous administration.

But again, when those rhetorics change, when we have new immigration policies get introduced, when we hear about increased enforcement, there is this huge uncertainty that gets created in our community.

There is a lot of fear.

And what we end up seeing is an impact on our community.

We see an impact on the economy.

We see folks who fear their government and are not able to access services that are essential to them and that they need.

So during 2016 and 2020, there was a number of policy changes that happened.

I flag a couple of them here for you.

The family separation policy, there was the attempt to end DACA.

We saw the travel ban in 2016, an executive order that was introduced by the administration at that time, which led to protests across the country at airports across the country.

And that travel ban was targeting folks from majority Muslim countries.

And it was known as the Muslim ban at that time.

And the other thing that we saw was a lot of legal immigration restriction.

A lot of programs that were in place to provide work authorizations and legal pathways had administration changes to them.

And that also added to the fear.

We saw the change in the public charge rule, which expanded the criterias around green card eligibility and visa entry applications.

And those criterias were changed in a way where It discouraged immigrants from accessing things like essential benefits like health care, housing, because of the fear of being seen as a public charge and not being able to either get a green card or be denied entry into the U.S.

And then we also saw a lot of asylum restrictions that remain in Mexico policy and so forth.

And so I just wanted to kind of flag some of the stuff that happened in 2016, 2020 that we may see reoccur again.

Next slide, please.

So you all are probably hearing from your constituents and community members.

We are also, as an office, hearing from our constituents and community members.

And so is the mayor's office.

And in this slide, I just flag and call out some of the concerns that we're hearing from folks, the fear of mass raids, the reinstatement of public charge, threats to immigration protections.

And a lot of this comes from specific policies that have been called out by the incoming president, policy agendas that have been discussed widely in the public, in the news, and agendas like Project 2025 that really spell out the changes that the new administration or folks in the community want to, or folks in the public, or I should say the Heritage Foundation would like to see changes to.

And so that obviously is creating a lot of discussion and just a lot of fears.

And the thing that I want to underscore is that Regardless of these actions occurring or not, what will happen is the chilling effect.

That is the real consequence that we will see in what we saw in 2016, is folks will begin to fear accessing services, In 2016, we saw parents afraid to send their kids to school.

And people being afraid to report crimes against themselves or crimes that they witness and being afraid to engage with law enforcement.

And so that chilling effect is going to be a reality regardless because of this rhetoric that is happening in public forums today.

And so next slide, please.

Thank you.

There are a number of policies in place to ensure that all residents in the city of Seattle, in Washington State, can access services and that their lives can continue regardless.

And I wanted to just also note that Washington The city of Seattle, actually, is home to over 140,000 foreign-born residents today.

When you look at the city of Seattle, for instance, we have over 50,000 entrepreneurs in our community who identify us as immigrants.

And there is a report that was put together by the New Americans Economy in 2019 that showed that $12 billion was paid in taxes alone by our immigrant communities here locally.

So these are folks contributing to our local society.

And there are strong policies in place today to make sure that everyone in the city of Seattle can access services.

And I outlined some of the policies in place.

Seattle Ordinance 121063 prohibits city officers and employees from inquiring about immigration status unless it's accompanied by some sort of judicial order or some law behind it.

And that is to ensure that folks can feel safe and share information about themselves and access our services.

And there's also the Washington State Keep Washington Working Act that is put in place.

That's also a similar law, ensuring that folks can access services across Washington State and restricting law enforcement from collaborating with federal immigration law or law enforcement at that level.

And that, again, is to ensure that people feel safe to go to places like their jobs.

Moving us forward.

I also just wanted to share that in our office, we have strong partnerships with our community-based organizations.

We're in contract with about 30 organizations that provide direct services.

We're talking to them regularly, convening them, and the concerns that they bring up, we discuss that with them, and we have workforce development programs, legal service programs, and in 2025, we wanna make sure that we ensure that people get accurate information in any way that we can, that we combat misinformation, and ensuring that we have things like Know Your Rights trainings to support coordination, prevent outcry, and save public dollars and resources, and ensuring that we are building trust with our immigrant and refugee communities.

Next slide.

Thank you.

And this just kind of underscores, again, regional collaboration will be a big focus for us this coming year.

We are participating at the state level.

I serve on the Governor-Elect's Project 2025 committee.

We're in conversation with the state Attorney General elects office as well to address any policy changes and things that may happen.

And the goal is to just make sure that we have a unified approach, we're talking to each other, and we're coordinating where it's needed.

And I think Deputy Mayor Wong really underscored that, and that will be a focus for our office as well, is coordination and regional collaboration.

I believe this is my last slide.

And I'll just say in closing, our goal is to avoid creating unnecessary alarms with our community as speculation about policy changes come about.

We want folks to remain calm and that we address challenges as they arise and avoid causing any sort of chilling effects.

However, we're not naive.

We are closely monitoring policy changes, new agendas that are coming from the federal level, and ensuring as they get introduced that we communicate that information accurately to our leadership and are being very responsive to our constituents.

With that said, I will pass it along to Deputy Mayor Wong.

Thank you, Dr. Mohamed.

I'm going to circle back in here because the mayor took a recent action related to the immigrant, refugee, and migrant space that is relevant.

Last week, the mayor issued a mayoral directive to all departments, to the directors, that outlined many of the laws at play that Dr. Mohamed referenced.

We have very strong issues.

state and local protections in place related to our immigrant communities, and also asked them to take immediate actions to prepare for potential changes.

That included making sure that we are protecting our vulnerable communities' privacy rights, their safety, and also making sure that our resources, which are limited, are used for city work, not for the work of the federal government.

So all departments are identifying lead staff to serve as a point person, so we have a quick, rapid responsibility as changes come.

All departments will be reviewing their policies to ensure that everything we're doing is aligned with the current law in Washington state.

There was the Keep Washington Working Act that Director Mohammed referenced was passed a few years ago, wanting to make sure that everything is square with the current law and policies.

OIRA is also going to design a training program, a train-the-trainer program, where they will be able to train all of our executive departments on what to do in certain situations if federal authorities show up at the door and how to best support our communities.

The Know Your Rights training, that was something that Dr. Muhammad referenced, that's something OIRA does on an ongoing basis.

It actually wasn't in this mayoral directive because we already do that and will continue doing that work.

Another key piece on this is there's a lot of uncertainty if ICE shows up at a city building or city staff.

We made it very clear that if that happens, all staff are to immediately to call the mayor's office, counsel, and we'll work with the city attorney's office to understand whether or not there's sufficient judicial authority for ICE to access whatever the request is for, whether it's a building or information.

because, again, we have very strong laws protecting against that, and it's only in limited situations where it's authorized.

And then we'll be, as we always do, and I know you always do very well, engaging with our community throughout in this.

The mayor will be meeting with several organizations.

OIRA, as part of the mayor's executive, has been doing a fabulous job of holding all those relationships for the city of Seattle, and will continue to do so moving forward.

So I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that that directive went out as well.

As I mentioned, it's uncertain what's gonna happen, but I do think what is certain is something's gonna happen, right?

We're not, as I think it was really well said by Director Muhammad, we're not naive here, right?

So there's a way we can be strategic and planned out without creating crisis around every single potential thing.

If you've read some of those documents that were referenced, it's thousands of pages.

hundreds if not thousands of proposals.

And we know there's a lot of good work.

Again, Governor Luck's office transition team has a whole group working to analyze the potential impacts.

A lot of our community partners are working on that too.

So we're part of this.

While we see the most likely first actions in the immigrant, refugee, and migrant space, I wanted to touch on two other ones.

Populations that we think are vulnerable, that there's been a lot of rhetoric around, to just let you know kind of what's in place for protections.

First is for our LGBTQ plus community.

Supporting, celebrating our LGBTQ plus community is something that is just, I think, strongly ingrained in our values as an administration and as a city.

The good news on this is that both the state and the city have very strong laws in place that provide protections.

Both gender identity and gender expression are actually protected classes under state law and city law, which gives them ability.

to make sure that there's all anti-discrimination laws are applied equally to LGBTQ plus communities.

And certainly we want to make sure that there's not a rise in discrimination and also not a rise in hate crimes as well.

That's certainly something we're concerned about for our communities anytime there's a change and there's rhetoric that can be targeting communities.

So we feel very good that our state and local laws are strong to protect against hate crimes and discrimination.

Our Seattle Police Department has a bias crimes unit that is dedicated to investigating hate crimes, bias crimes.

So as those, we hope we don't see an uptick in the city of Seattle in those types of incidents, but if we do, we're gonna be prepared to investigate and be able to go after the perpetrators of those hate crimes.

And then our Office of Civil Rights, their enforcement division, always investigates allegations of discrimination, including for LGBTQ plus communities.

So they'll continue in that enforcement role.

And we also not only think about the protections we give to communities, but also how we're investing in them.

Because our communities are strong, they're resilient, and we want to make sure that we're investing in them to do that.

And so I'll hand it over to Director Kim, who will talk a little bit about some of our investments.

One thing, particularly on LGBTQ plus investments, we actually do this throughout all of our departments.

So it's not like there's one budget line item you can point to.

But we wanted to highlight a few things that Dr. Kim will talk about in the budget that you recently passed that helps to support our community.

Great, thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong.

So in the Human Services Department, oh, I'm Tonya Kim.

I'm the Director of Human Services Department for the record.

In the Human Services Department, we do provide a safety net.

And for today, we're just highlighting four investment areas.

Again, that represents multiple departments, but in HSCS sampling for you and your consideration, what are we doing locally and what are we doing now?

And I'll also start that this is a part of our base budget, so we should be really proud that we are proactively investing in our community.

So for you, wanted to highlight different responses that we have in the city.

For the Seattle LGBTQ plus center, we really focus on empowering BIPOC LGBTQ individuals.

And so I know this is a lot of terms that we hear on a regular basis, but for those in the viewing public, it's really considering our communities of color and the intersectionality of also being LGBTQ+, and ensuring that we offer workshops and supports for those community members so they are empowered to respond to harm within their own communities and build those relationships of resiliency.

And so there's an investment there.

We also invest in the Gay City Health Project, which is a resource and referral line.

And there are different ways in which people can access information.

It's the old school referral line by phone.

It's available online and in person.

It's very important to connect people with resources so they can have access to the other resources that are in community.

Also wanted a flag for you just to show a range of the breadth of investments is Lambert House.

We are investing in homelessness in this space for youth who are at risk.

And it's a wonderful drop-in program as well.

So Lambert House offers in-person and online programs to meet the needs of LGBTQ plus youth.

They do everything from job skills development.

They discuss, they have groups.

It's really important to have the peer supports as well.

Everything from bullying to coming out to your family, particularly when it's a hostile situation.

and education around HIV STD prevention.

They also offer safe spaces for social connection and community building, which is incredibly important.

These programs address the common challenges LGBTQ plus youth face, and I had mentioned, but just summarizing family conflicts, what's happening in their social network at schools and in community, and also, of course, depression, mental health, self-esteem, and substance use issues.

So I talked about just helping community help each other, talked about accessing resources, talked about the needs of young people.

But we're also investing in our older population.

And this is really important.

And this is a capacity building contract that we have with GenPride.

They work with other organizations who work with LGBTQ older adult community.

and they are ensuring that those organizations and human services are culturally responsive.

It's very critical for older populations to also promote that community connectedness, and we learned this through the pandemic too.

Social isolation is really easy, but then you add the layers of the various needs and wants, and it's important to bring that cultural response notes together.

Why is it important?

We talked about Deputy Mayor Wong framed it beautifully, but we'll just underscore that the LGBTQ community is overrepresented and a lot of the issue areas that we're trying to face as well together as a community.

So it's homelessness, domestic violence, sexual assault, commercial sexual exploitation, mental health, et cetera.

So it's really important that we have these ongoing investments in our base for this community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Kim.

The one other topic I just wanted to touch on very briefly, because I know certainly there's a lot of rhetoric around it, is reproductive rights and how we protect them.

Abortion has been mostly a federal and state issue.

I mean, we certainly know Roe v. Wade was law of the land for decades and it was recently overturned.

The state has very strong protections in place for abortion access as well.

Just a couple of years ago when Roe v. Wade was overturned, however, Mayor Harrell and this council looked at what else could we do in this space?

While it's mostly a federal and state issue, we obviously as a city value hold it very dear and want to make sure that our woman and the right healthcare is protected and supported.

And so these were some very relatively recent actions taken in, oh, I'm sorry, I'm on the state slide still.

Just to outline, there's these state laws that are in play.

They really do protect abortion rights at the state level at pretty much the highest level that you can.

And then locally, and we'll go to the next slide now, after the Dobbs decision, the city enacted a number of ordinances to further protect people seeking abortions, including making sure that that is also a protected class under our laws, putting in a misdemeanor charge for people who encroach on individuals who are seeking abortions or gender-affirming care, shield laws that prohibit SPD and really any city assistance with out-of-state enforcement.

We get questions about, well, if there's an out-of-state law that they're trying to enforce something, we have a law in place that prohibits city personnel from being part of that investigation.

And we made those proactive funding decisions.

So at the time, it was a $250,000 to the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is kind of the preeminent fund in the space in our area.

I believe that current investment that the council passed in their most current budget is $274,000, so that amount increased as well.

So we have those same balance of protections with investments to help our community.

Next slide.

So with that, and again, we know there's probably, we could spend weeks on end talking to you about all the things the federal government does that impact the local government, but wanted to give you this high level overview.

Our next steps in the executive, again, thinking about immigration space being kind of day one actions, is making sure the mayoral directive is implemented so we're well situated to respond citywide.

We will continue to work with OIR, our lobbying team in DC, and our departments on any potential changes.

Certainly, as referenced earlier, some of those responses may be legal in nature when we will partner with the city attorney's office, and some of them may be legislative at some point in nature.

If this body decides to do anything at that time, that would be council coordination.

So we will continue to collaborate internally, externally with all of our partners, certainly throughout the state, throughout the country.

The mayor is a very strong leader in the U.S.

Conference of Mayors, so has very strong connections with other mayors, and we'll be talking to make sure that we're aligned.

in all of the responses and that we have a strong coordinated and strategic response to make sure that no matter what comes these next four years, good or bad, that we will come out as a stronger city that reflects our values and supports our community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that briefing and for bringing it together so quickly.

In listening to you all speak, a repeated message was that we want to avoid causing unnecessary fear and concern because of the chilling effect that it can have and has had in the past on our immigrant community especially.

And then wider impacts on...

children's education and our economy, et cetera.

And so I really did take that to heart.

And I think that's what's important for us to realize is another theme was we are prepared.

And so you did speak briefly to some of the actions that you're taking, and I'm sure that there's a lot going on that we don't have really time to get into right now.

But that was a very, I can speak for myself and say that I feel that what's most important It's most important to be prepared and to convey to our residents and communities and constituents that we have their back.

No matter what, we have their back and we are working with our partners at the state and the county and also with our lobbyists in D.C.

to make sure that we are prepared and ready for anything that might come down, but that it doesn't serve us well to stoke fear unnecessarily.

So thank you very much for all the hard work that you're doing on that front.

I see that you have your hand up, Councilmember Rivera.

I know that you have been speaking with Director Muhammad frequently the past few weeks as well, so I welcome your comments.

Thank you, Council President, and thank you, Mayor's Office and OIRA and HSD and OIR for being here.

Really appreciate the presentation and the update.

I want to say that Director Muhammad in particular, because OIRA sits on the committee that I chair, We've been in contact all of last year.

As you all colleagues remember, migrants came to ask for assistance from the city, and Director Mohammed has been very active in this space.

And I say that to give assurance that the city is doing its due diligence and very actively involved.

I have Director Mohammed has my vote of confidence.

We do talk regularly about these issues and we know that since then she's been involved at the county level and at the state level even before the November elections happened and we knew what the next administration would be.

So I say that to really say I feel really good about the partnership with the department, also with the mayor's office.

I will say that Deputy Mayor Wong and I were in contact right after the elections and before the holidays.

on the immigration issue and making sure that we were abreast to know as much or to share as much as we knew.

I will say that I asked for in the committee that I chair a presentation from Moira, but after talking to deputy mayor and council president decided to do, and I'm glad we did a bigger briefing because it's not just immigration.

And I will say that I very much appreciate the partnership.

I've been invited, and thank you, Deputy Mayor Wong, to an upcoming community meeting where we're going to talk to community-based organizations that are working in this space.

And all really to underscore what the panel has said and you, Council President, stay on the same page and connect it and show a united front because we very much agree on all of these issues.

Seattle is a sanctuary city, let me be clear, that is not gonna change.

I can say with confidence after speaking with the mayor's office, with the Director Muhammad and with Council President and many of you that we all are all aligned on that.

And so immigrant communities in the city of Seattle can rest assured that we have their back.

Full stop.

And we are going to work together.

We don't know what's going to happen.

And I echo your sentiments, Director Mohammed, Deputy Mayor Wong, and Council President on the we don't want to stir alarm because alarm does have a chilling effect on communities.

And we don't want our immigrant community in Seattle not to seek services because they're afraid.

And we don't want them not to send their kids to school because they are afraid.

When we know that we are going to work very actively, continued to work actively to ensure that we are protecting our immigrant populations here in Seattle.

And so I really wanted to underscore that.

You know, as legislators, I think one of the things that's incumbent upon us and that we have responsibility for is not creating panic, but actually calming our communities.

That is what we can provide, comfort in knowing that whatever comes, that we have their back.

If we don't show panic, community doesn't show panic.

And I think that is a very clear message that we should be sending to community and with obviously frequent communication.

so that they're abreast on what we know and that they know that we are actively working with our Office of Intergovernmental Relations here in Seattle, but also in D.C., because we have federal lobbyists in D.C.

who are on top of...

communicating with Congress and the White House and making sure that we at least know the information.

And it also brings me comfort that we have our senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, who are also advocates on our behalf.

And they will let us know information as well when we need to act, And, you know, there is no current cause for panic, notwithstanding I know the issues that may be coming down the line.

We are not ignorant.

We know things are coming.

We just don't know yet.

And the best thing that we can do is prepare, and I feel confident that we're doing that.

And I will also say that for those of us that have been here on this planet a while, and we're here for the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that had huge consequences for immigrant communities, and I happen to be in D.C.

working in those days.

You know, every, I mean, it's just cyclical, and I feel like you're correct, Director Muhammad.

This is something, welfare reform is something that's been the ongoing issue that we have not solved for in a way that we would all like, and that, We have to constantly stay on our guard, but we are, or, and we are.

And again, I feel, you know, I feel really lucky to be in Seattle.

Not every city is what Seattle is.

And I look forward to working with OIR and OIRA, the mayor's office, all of you, to make sure that as we move forward, we stay abreast.

You have my commitment in terms of the committee that I chair.

What I know, I will share with you all, and that we will continue to work together to ensure that our immigrant population feels the support and can rely on Seattle to be there for them, not just now, but ongoing into the next four years.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you.

Council Member Moore.

Okay.

Council Member Rank.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Well, thank you again for today's presentation, and certainly also want to express my appreciation for Councilmember Rivera's comments on that commitment.

And I would state we're aligned in making sure that we are committing to really standing by our immigrant and refugee communities.

And truly, today's presentation, I appreciated the background, the context we're working with, especially looking at the previous Trump administration.

Just really appreciated the level of detail you brought forward and would echo also the sentiments from the deputy mayor, we could probably have a lot longer of a conversation about everything there is to discuss.

And I would emphasize we need to have a continued discussion about, as well as regular information from the executive branch on these issues, especially as we move into very uncertain times.

I've spent the past couple weeks working with community partners from immigrant and refugee communities to our labor community, folks who work in the realm of reproductive justice and LGBTQIA health care, and again have heard that recurring theme of uncertainty, but also a sense that there aren't enough folks talking about what is to come, and a real desire to be having these grounded, centered conversations and at least shining a light on the matters as they stand.

There are a lot of things that may be out of our control in the months to come, but what is in our control is being able to get good information out there about the important work that the executive branch is doing, and being able to make sure that we in our role as council are getting that information out to our communities respectively.

And so with this in mind and the circumstances ahead of us, I know I've spoken with a few folks now, both in community and here, around establishing a special select committee to be focusing on these matters.

So we as council have a regular landing place where we are having these focused conversations, especially with so many emerging matters that may come out.

in the coming months.

I believe that there are a lot of other topics we could have covered today around impacts from the federal administration.

We know, especially seeing what has come to light in California, a true natural disaster with the wildfires.

It has me thinking about the safety of our FEMA funds, particularly looking at, you know, we had a FEMA disaster aid request for wildfires that destroyed Eastern Washington that left one child dead in 2020. I think there's concern about retaliation towards the state of Washington and Seattle.

We've seen that historically, Seattle and Washington being singled out by Donald Trump and his administration.

And so I raise this notion just to say, this is going to be, there will be an incredible amount of misinformation, disinformation coming at us.

We inform throughout the next year at the very least, likely the next four years on policy and budgetary changes that will likely impact our department's ability to serve our constituents citywide.

So I look forward to having a continued discussion with my colleagues, perhaps, on potentially setting that up.

And again, thank you for taking the time today to share the important preparation work you all have been doing.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much for this briefing.

I have been panicking, and so thank you for your remarks about the need to keep that down, because it is our job to role model and to really let our constituents know that we are there for them and to take things as they come.

But I really do appreciate all the information, all the thought that's gone into this.

I know part of my concern was I wasn't really hearing, but I wasn't hearing because you were all very busy.

figuring out how to respond and what all the different pieces are.

So I actually feel quite reassured to Council Member Rink's comments.

Again, I think this is something we need to continue to have ongoing conversations and really very important that we be kept in the loop too, so that we can respond quickly if we need a legislative response.

And also just the power of the Voli pulpit.

I thank you, Council Member Rivera, for your remarks about we are here.

These are our values.

excuse me, and they are not going to change.

And I'm incredibly proud to be a member of this body, to be a member of this city, this county, and this state for these very reasons that we do really support human rights in this city, in this community.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you so much for the work that you're doing and please feel free to reach out to my office if there's any way that I can be helpful and I look forward to ongoing conversations and ways to work through what is going to be, what are going to be interesting and challenging times.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

I just wanted to say, Deputy Wong and the team, thank you for being here.

Generally, I don't think we really need to respond to every little piece that comes out.

I don't think that's productive.

How we respond, is basically doing our jobs.

And I think that's the key thing here, is we just do our jobs.

When it comes to public safety, I have nine entities that fall under the committee, SBD, Fire, Care, OEM, to the point made earlier about FEMA, working with those, working with our accountability partners, the city attorney's office, clearly, the Seattle Municipal Court.

and to ensure that we are doing our job to create a safe base in our city.

So I think it's important to have this baseline, but to the point you raised, not responding to everything that happens.

I don't think that is helpful.

And I think the key thing is, again, to respond by doing our jobs.

And I just wanted to...

to reemphasize that.

And one thing, and Council Member Rink beat me to it a little bit, but probably the most important bullet in the entire briefing comes from OIR.

It says, ensure residents receive accurate information and counter misinformation effectively.

One key thing that is clear from my perspective, both as a council member and my former profession, is that the disinformation and the misinformation and just knowing the difference between the two is key.

And the countering that is to, again, do our jobs, place out there what is the actual truth, whether we do it in committee or we do it here on the council or wherever it is.

That is so critical, because it's the lack of upfront information, the base information that we have from our city, from what we do, that is going to be so valuable.

And just understanding that, whether it's from the various communities throughout the brief, or just everyone in a more general sense.

And so I think, again, understanding the difference between disinformation and misinformation might be the biggest step that any of us can take.

So, yeah, Councilmember Ring beat me to the point regarding that, regarding misinformation.

But I just wanted to emphasize that point, too.

And, again, thank you for the briefing.

Okay.

I'm not seeing anybody else's hands up.

I will let you...

Go do your jobs.

So good point, Council Member Kettle.

So thank you very much to be continued as necessary.

Thank you.

All right, moving right along.

Let's see, let me get my place here.

We have proclamations.

Council Member Moore has a proclamation for signature today proclaiming January 2025 to be Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Councilmember Moore, please lead the discussion on the proclamation and then I will ask if there is additional feedback before requesting signatures.

All right.

Thank you very much, Council President.

So colleagues, I'm honored to bring this proclamation before you today.

As you all know, human trafficking or commercial sexual exploitation remains a scourge in our community.

And I wanted to thank everyone for your support last session.

in passing the CSC legislation which is I think a really important first step to addressing what we're seeing both in terms of law enforcement response but also very importantly enhancing and beefing our social services response.

So thank you for that support.

And I'm extremely, I wanted to also say I'm extremely grateful to all of the advocates who are working, putting, you know, countless hours in their work to support survivors who are navigating a path forward.

And just want to acknowledge that this is a problem and that we need to continue to support survivors and help them find a way, a path forward.

And appreciate the mayor and HSD's office bringing forth this request for a proclamation.

And I hope that you would be willing to sign.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this forward.

Are there any questions or comments?

No.

Yeah, I... Go ahead.

Sorry, Bob.

Go ahead, Bob.

He had his hand up first.

Okay, go ahead.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Council President.

I just wanted to...

Thank Councilmember Moore for bringing this forward to, you know, highlight the issue and to, you know, raise awareness and also to thank Councilmember Moore for her work more generally here on the council, both in terms of her background and desires to work the issue, but also as chair of the of the Housing and Human Services Committee and the efforts that she's done to increase resources to help in this area specifically and then more generally, as you know from our work in 2024. So I just wanted to say thank you, Council Member Moore, for raising this and of course I'll support it.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council President.

I too want to echo a note of gratitude to Council Member Moore for keeping this at the forefront.

It is very much an important issue, and here's what I think about important issues.

We all agree, and we also need to say it publicly, ongoing, because just because we know we all agree doesn't mean we need to make sure the public understands that we take this seriously that we agree and then we have ongoing focus to it.

So I want to thank you for keeping the ongoing focus on this as an area that we're going to continue to work on and champion, you know, especially for the victims of human trafficking.

So thank you.

Okay, I'm not seeing any other hands up, so would you please call the roll on, please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signature affixed to the proclamation recognizing January as Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Council member Rivera?

Aye.

Council member Saka?

Aye.

Council member Strauss?

Yes.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Yes.

Council member Kettle?

Yes, aye.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rink?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Eight signatures will be affixed.

Thank you very much.

All right.

And then now we have the, we will move on to Council Member Rink's proclamation.

Council Member Rink has a proclamation recognizing January 26, 2025 to be Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church Appreciation Day.

Council Member Rink, please lead the discussion on the proclamation for any additional feedback before we solicit signatures.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you so much.

It's my first proclamation.

I hope I get a sticker.

Really honored to be presenting this today.

This proclamation proclaims January 26th to be Blaine Memorial United Methodist Church Appreciation Day.

Originally named the Seattle Japanese Methodist Episcopal Church, it ties to the Esai's first generation was assisted by Edward Lynn Blaine, hence the renaming to Blaine Memorial.

due to the fact that Japanese were not allowed to own property.

The church served as a space for people of Japanese ancestry who were forced into internment camps to store their belongings and were greatly assisted by the Nisai second generation.

The church, after being rebuilt in Beacon Hill due to redlining, shared resources, and were allies in civil rights and social justice endeavors, partnering with ACRS, Kimball Elementary School, and Rainier Valley Food Bank.

The church continues to tackle issues such as food insecurity, providing meals, Thanksgiving meals, and presents to the community during the holiday season.

It has had 120 years of service to the community and serves the broader community, including the Nikkei, all Japanese generations.

And should this go through, we would intend to present this in community on January 26th at the church at 1130 a.m.

and would welcome anyone who would like to join.

And I urge your support.

I hope you will support this.

Thank you.

Are there any questions?

Okay, seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the council members who wish to have their signature affixed to the proclamation recognizing January 26, 2025 to be Bulleen Memorial United Methodist Church Appreciation Day.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Aye.

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle.

Aye.

Councilmember Moore.

Aye.

Councilmember Rink.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Eight signatures will be affixed.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Next we have our regular blue sky unless there is further discussion on the proclamations.

And the roll call begins with Councilmember Rivera.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, I'll be brief.

Last week I met with the Ravenna Bryant Community Council who shared feedback on the comprehensive plan.

It was clear after meeting with them that they were unaware of the specifics of the proposal.

It just further underscores what I've been saying about the lack of community outreach by the department related to the comp plan and the importance of continuing to do that as we continue to to move forward in reviewing this legislation.

I also met with the new executive director of Pike Place Market, PDA Rachel Lichtenberg.

We had a great conversation.

Really happy that Rachel is there and looking forward to working with her as I know all of you are.

as we are all supportive of Pike Place Market.

Then I also attended the memorial service for Sean Yim, the Metro bus driver who was murdered.

right before the holidays.

Metro shared that they will be enclosing cabs on the buses.

They're making that commitment, and I was very happy to hear it, so I wanted to share it with you all so that you know.

I was there with Council Member Succa, who I'm sure will talk about this some more.

But that is what I've been working on.

And then other than that, you know, there continues to be public safety issues on the north end that I continue to be active with and in conversation with the Seattle Police Department and the Mayor's Office to bring focus to the north end.

And I look forward to continuing to engage with you, Council Member Kettle, as we continue to tackle public safety across the city.

Um, unless anyone has any questions, I will pass it over to my colleague, council member Saka.

Thank you, council member Rivera.

So colleagues, good afternoon on the transportation committee front.

I'll also endeavor to make this brief in the interest of time, but on the transportation committee front, our next transportation committee meeting will be next Tuesday, January 21st.

9.30 a.m., still finalizing the agenda there, but there are a number of really important substantive items that we will be considering.

Currently two new permits, two permit renewals, and at least one presentation as well, a few presentations, including on the Safe Routes to Schools program.

While we're on the transportation topic, colleagues, I would encourage all of my district colleagues to start thinking about, if you haven't already, who you might want to nominate and put forward to sit on the new Levy Oversight Committee.

So as we recall, the legislation that we created, pursuant to which voters ultimately approved our $1.55 billion transportation levy, the new Levy Oversight Committee has a revamped structure to help make things more transparent and accountable.

And part of that includes all the seven district council members get one appointment.

So please start to think about who you might want.

It need not be someone directly from your district for clarity, but you do get to make the call.

And happy to talk offline about that.

And I would encourage you to have conversations directly with SDOT as well about the levy.

The next thing I guess I will flag, I too was honored to attend the memorial of King County Metro bus driver, Sean Yim, who was murdered tragically in December.

So I attended that alongside council member Rivera.

I saw a council president there as well.

So I'm encouraged.

I'm cautiously optimistic about some of the things that I heard and I am meeting personally with Metro myself.

the leadership of Metro to discuss transit security and what more we could potentially do.

So, but yeah, glad to hear that announcement about the sort of barricade between the drivers and members of the public.

I also became aware that, so the second thing that ATU Local 5 ATU was calling for, can't forget the local designation off hand, but the second thing that we're calling for, which is something I as well wholeheartedly agree with, is the need to align on a regional approach to transit security, and I understand that next steps were initiated in that regard, and I look forward to plugging in and sharing more.

of what I learn as things evolve.

And then finally I'll note, colleagues, you all know that Eric Schmidt in my office started last week.

He is our newest district affairs director for District One.

And I've, personally introduced him to some of you all and your staff.

But please, if you have not already had the opportunity to go meet Eric, please do say hello.

And that is all I have from my perspective.

I welcome any comments, questions, feedback.

And hearing none, seeing none, I will pass it on to Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

I look forward to January 21st, Rob Saka Day here at the Seattle City Council.

Colleagues, with that, the January 15th meeting this week for Finance and Native Communities will be canceled.

We're working with Eden right now to create the calendar for the year.

of when we will have the select committees, when we will have the finance committees and how that is going to work.

And as well, I've been speaking with the comprehensive plan chair, Council Member Hollingsworth.

The last chair had not at least talked to me at all.

And so we're identifying the fact that there are some days that if finance isn't going in the morning, that we can move the select committee earlier in the day so that we're not here until 6.30 at night.

So thank you for talking to me.

Thank you for working with me.

And I'm happy to be flexible so that we're all working here together.

With that, I've got nothing for full counsel.

External committees, colleagues I want to bring up.

Last week I was at Seattle City Employee Retirement Systems Board as well as the Sound Transit Expansion Committee Board.

In both of those meetings, I have been asking for both of those external bodies to give me briefings before I take votes.

honestly been a little bit of a challenge.

I've been escalating my requests in a polite and pleasant manner, and it finally got to the point where I abstained from votes on both bodies.

I fully support the Stride I-405 and the Operations Facility South parcel, eminent domain of the parcels.

However, finally said, you have to give me a briefing before you're gonna ask me for a vote.

And so we've already been working with both SIRS, my office has been working with SIRS and Sound Transit to set up a more robust briefing schedule.

But if I'm gonna be representing each of you council colleagues on these boards, I'm not gonna take votes if they haven't briefed me.

So I also appreciate those bodies providing me that opportunity.

This coming week, we will have, well, let me take one step back.

I also wanna say that Sound Transit's been responsive.

We had an issue in December where The naming survey for the Deborah Juarez Station currently known as 130th Street Station soon to be known something different.

That survey closed before Council Member Moore or I or Council Member Rivera could send it out to our listservs.

And so Sound Transit did reopen that survey for us and was included and we also didn't delay any timelines for getting that information briefed to us.

I received a briefing this week.

I'm happy to share.

I don't want to spill the beans here on TV.

It's a good...

The number one name is a good name.

There were some issues raised with our comp plan.

Only in the naming...

sense because with a new light rail station there it is creating a new neighborhood in a certain way in the same way that the comp plan is and if the station name is different than the neighborhood name well it just makes us all look a little silly so let's get ahead of that ball here to work with all of you we do have a sound transit board meeting next thursday we should be taking up the i-405 stride bus rapid transit project the We have OMF, the operations maintenance facility, south eminent domain, as well as properties next to Federal Way light rail for the station that's open for surplus.

We will be adopting that station name for the Northeast 130th Deborah Juarez Street Station.

There's also going to be performance goals for the interim chief executive.

The new CEO process is fully underway.

We expect that the selection committee, which I believe is Summers, Balducci, Bacchus, and...

I'm blanking on the last one off the top of my head, but I know it's somebody from Tacoma.

So that selection process will be by the end of this month.

So they will be putting forward a few names for the board to be interviewing.

So I share that with you right now that if there are things that you are looking for in the next Sound Transit CEO, now's the time to let me know because this process is going to move pretty rapidly.

We will also be voting on the next board meeting for the agreement with Lehigh for the sale of the Sound Transit property in the U District to become affordable housing.

This is where Rosie's Village was.

This street vacation came through Councilmember Sacco's Transportation Committee, and so now Sound Transit's putting the bow on top.

Later this week, I will also be in the Association of Washington City's Bylaws Review Committee.

I know that Councilmember Sokka and Councilmember Kettle have signed up for AWC Action Days in February.

Thank you, colleagues.

I put in the plug now.

THE MORE THE MERRIER.

LAST YEAR IT WAS VERY HELPFUL TO BE DOWN THERE ADVOCATING FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE AUTOMATED TRAFFIC ENFORCEMENT CAMERAS.

THIS WEEK IN DISTRICT 6, I HAVE OFFICE HOURS THIS THURSDAY.

AND THEN COUNCILMEMBER HOLLINGSWORTH, I MIGHT TALK TO YOU ABOUT THE PARKS COMMITTEE.

COUNCILMEMBER RIVERA, I'VE GOT A REQUEST FROM teacher at Ingram to come speak to their class.

I met him through the Green Lake Advisory Council.

And I know Ingram is not in my district, but we are in the catchment period.

Or I guess, so that's Council Member Moore.

I guess I think of you because your student, your kids went there too.

So school districts lines don't align with Seattle City Council geography yet.

I might be going up there.

Just wanted to flag that for all of you.

And unlike my previous two colleagues, I was not short.

That's all I've got.

Any questions, comments?

I'll pass it over to Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Appreciate you.

Colleagues.

Parks Utilities Technology meeting will be Wednesday, January 22nd at 2 p.m.

This will be a short meeting.

We have some appointments that we have to run through, and then we also potentially have a briefing about licensing from our Seattle Center.

But all in all, we're still working on the agenda, and I anticipate this meeting will be pretty quick and to the point.

Also wanted to update everyone on the comprehensive plan.

We have everybody on the schedule to meet one-on-one with our office just to kind of set the table and go through some things.

The next meeting is Wednesday, January 15th.

This will be at 2 p.m.

WE TALK ABOUT GROWTH STRATEGY, WELL, THIS WEDNESDAY, OBVIOUSLY.

WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GROWTH STRATEGY FROM OUR MAYOR'S OFFICE, AND I'VE SEEN THE PRESENTATION.

THERE'S A LOT OF TECHNICAL SLIDES AND INFORMATION, AND SO IT'S GOING TO BE A GREAT CONVERSATION THAT WE'LL HAVE ON WEDNESDAY, JUST TO CLARIFY SOME THINGS.

ALSO, WANT TO THANK COUNCIL MEMBER STRAUSS FOR JUST going over scheduling and just being flexible there.

I know council president, you had mentioned as well about some flexibility options as well.

So just want to thank you both for that.

I also think council member Saka you offered as well.

Everyone's offering their meetings, their council meetings or their committee meetings.

open for comprehensive plan.

So I just want to thank you all for that.

Really appreciate it.

Our goal is to make sure that we can have enough time to go over a lot of the information is really dense.

There's gonna be a lot of questions.

Want to make sure that we have ample time to go over everything and for us to stay engaged and connected and to get our questions answered.

Last but not least, One, I was reading a couple articles, and I know we've all been watching about the fires that are in Los Angeles.

And whether we know that Los Angeles is, I don't know how many miles away, it still impacts our community and us.

And our heart goes out to the families and communities and people that have been tragically...

the lives that have lost and just the devastation that I've seen.

But definitely want to give a specific shout out to the 280 firefighters from Washington State that are down in California from 45 different engines, and four of them are from the Seattle Fire Department.

You know we received over 60 animals our shelter from Los Angeles and I know that there have been a lot of people that have had families and people connected down there so just want to send our love and appreciation for all the firefighters that are on the front line and saving homes and saving people and saving lives.

With that, this week in the community, next Monday is MLK Day, Martin Luther King holiday, and I'll be in the community connecting with a middle school and speaking at a high school.

presentation later on this week and then we have our first quarterly district 3 business meeting where we have all the different businesses from our district some of the business improvement areas and a lot of different small businesses in different areas where we'll have a quarterly meeting to go over a lot of cool informational stuff.

So anyways, just wanted to throw that out there.

Thank you all.

And if there are no questions, I will pass it off to council member kettle kettle.

Thank you, council member Hollingsworth.

Um, this week, uh, tomorrow, uh, we have our next public safety committee meeting As many of you know, it's on less lethal weapons.

This is the second meeting on that topic.

And thank you, everyone, for getting their amendments in so central staff and others could work them.

I really appreciate that.

This Thursday, I have a King County Board of Health meeting followed by the Regional Water Quality Committee.

And that night, I have the Queen Anne Historical Society is hosting a meeting at the Queen Anne Community Center on the com plan.

So that may be interesting in the sense of coming from the Queen Anne Historical Society in terms of how it's framed, but that would be another opportunity for the Queen Anne community to speak about the Comprehensive Plan.

And on Friday, we'll be meeting with the St. Paul's constituency in uptown Lower Queen Anne.

I also wanted to note this week that this evening, I'll be at the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue.

We have an Australian delegation in in town with a focus mainly on tech, STEM, astronautical, AI across the board.

Amazon is a key player in this.

And I just wanted to highlight that there is a submarine tour.

But I'm happy to note that it's not in Bainbridge Island, as the program says.

It's good to note that our submarine bases are on Kitsap Peninsula.

Just wanted to let everybody know that.

So that would be an interesting.

Mayor Harrell will be there.

Also, in terms of the American side, US reps Larson and Smith and others will be there as well.

Next week, to continue the theme of things international, have a meeting with the Consular Association of Washington, their luncheon.

And then Thursday of next week, we have the PSRC Executive Board, the Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Board, and also the the newly established downtown community council public forum, which is gonna look at the work of the city council and what we've done over 2024 and a look ahead into 25. And speaking of the downtown community more generally, I just wanted to note last week, On Friday, I did have a meeting with SDOT, Director Spots, Pike Place, PDA, new exec, Rachel Leitenberg, and as well as myself.

And this is a direct follow-up, and this is the start of what happened regarding when we did the Seattle transportation plan regarding Pike Place.

So what's happening is we had this inductory meeting, a very great meeting, and SDOT and the Pike Place PDA are going to be working on the factors related to Pike Place in terms of all the various aspects that need to be accounted for, and then more details to come, but basically in early April there will be a large stakeholder meeting so then we can look ahead in terms of what needs to be done in order to create a thriving and vibrant Pike Place Market that is safe for all to those visiting and for our residents alike.

And so I just wanted to give a little heads up on that and coming out of last week's meeting with Director Spots from SDOT and Ms. Leitenberg from the Pike Place Market PDA.

That is it, unless there's any questions.

Going once, twice, three.

Council Member Moore, over to you.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Kettle.

Let's see.

So the most important thing is that I will be canceling the next Housing and Human Services Committee meeting, which is currently set for January 22nd.

Departments, OH and HSD, are hard at work on various things, MFTE and other issues, and they just need additional time.

So I want to be mindful of everyone's need to have protective use of time, so we will be cancelling that, I will be cancelling that meeting.

In terms of external committees, last week I attended the Regional Policy Committee where we approved the Mid Annual Report, the Housing Through Health Annual Report, and also the Automated Fingerprint Identification System Renewal Proposal.

So it was, I was there with Councilmember Rink, it was a pretty weighty agenda.

but also very encouraging to see all the efforts, really successful efforts that are being done at the county level and clearly, and obviously Seattle being an active participant in those efforts.

Also attended the Aging and Advisory Council.

And then the other thing I wanted to just give a heads up on is...

Everyone should have received an invitation from my office.

I received an invitation from the Islamic Center of Washington and they will be hosting their annual dinner on January 25th at the Idris Mosque in District 5 and they extended the invitation to everyone.

So if you haven't received an invitation from my office, please let me know if you're interested in attending.

I know they would Really really appreciate as many members coming as possible And I think that's really the main thing I have and also wanted to echo the comments of Councilmember Hollingsworth in terms of thanking our firefighters who are down there doing incredible work and also Continue to do good work here too as well.

So thank you.

No questions.

I will pass it over to Councilmember Rink

Go ahead.

Hello, thank you.

Well, excited to share.

We're going to be having our first Committee Meeting of the Year, Committee of City Light Sustainability and Arts and Culture will be this Friday at 9.30.

Our agenda, we will be discussing the Transportation Electrification Strategic Investment Plan, as well as doing several appointments to the City Light Review Panel, and then at last having the long-awaited briefing from City Light on the bomb cyclone response.

Again, expressing my appreciation to City Light for pulling this together.

I know the outages that affected our community were profound, but a lot of hard work went into restoring electricity for folks across the city.

So excited to have City Light share on that work and then also reflect on how they're preparing for future, any future kinds of events of that sort.

In terms of some of the external meetings, last week I had the amazing opportunity to meet with the African Community Housing Development Organization.

And for those who know the amazing person who heads that organization, Hamdi Abdullah, she's a community leader in her own right.

And I wanted to share just at the end of our meeting, she actually shared with me that in all her years serving our region, she had actually never been to the second floor of City Hall.

and never been in a council office.

And that was profound to me given how much work that she has done across King County and within the city and the work that that organization's pulling ahead.

And it just had me reflecting on the ways in which we can continue to bring folks into the halls of power and be able to advance true change that supports so many communities that have historically been left out of power.

And from that point, I would also share that my staff was able to join the vigil for Sean Gim last week as well.

And then we met with Seattle Fire Department, met with Chief Scoggins.

Actually, we would later find out moments before he made the call to send down firefighters to support with the fires raging in California and so deeply appreciative of the firefighters.

that we were able to send down to join in that effort.

I was also able to do Council Edition with the award-winning Seattle Channel alongside Councilmember Rivera and Councilmember Moore.

I imagine that should drop today or tomorrow.

Definitely tune in for that discussion.

And then this week, our team will be joining meetings related to FIFA public activations.

I'll be going to a Lunar New Year event later this week.

And lastly, would uplift that we met earlier today with the Sister City Advocacy Group to queue up sponsoring the annual No Rose Celebration that'll be taking place actually here at City Hall on Sunday, March 23rd.

This event was first brought here in 2017 as a positive and inclusive community response to the Trump administration's first administration's Muslim ban.

And this event really touches neighbors from over a dozen countries of origin in terms of celebrating the new year.

And so mark your calendars.

I hope to see you there.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any comments?

All right, I'll close us down here.

Let's see.

We had the first meeting of the Governance Accountability and Economic Development Committee last Thursday, and we voted out Council Bill 120925, which is the Seattle Department of Human Services fourth quarter employment ordinance, and that will go before full council for a vote next week on January 21st.

And this has just been legislation that has gone in the recent past straight to full council, but because there can be budget impacts from employee reclassifications, I processed one piece of legislation last year, which was the first quarter employment ordinance, and then did this one at the end, which is the last one from, there were only two in 2024. from 2024, and we had a very robust discussion about transparency and accountability within our decisions when it comes to reclassifications, not just from civil to exempt, but also when it comes to different levels of compensation.

So I appreciate folks' attention on that, can usually be sort of a dry topic.

Let's see.

The next Government Accountability and Economic Development Committee will be not on Thursday the 23rd as it usually is because we will be having a special City Council meeting to work on the vacancy, but rather on January 24th at 9.30.

So that's Friday, January 24th at 9.30.

will be our next meeting.

It's a special meeting and we're still finalizing our agenda folks, but there will be a briefing on Council Bill 120933, which would allow a limited number of residential units in the stadium district consistent with the preferred alternative in the final environmental impact statement accompanying the 2023 industrial lands legislation.

And you'll hear more about this coming up, but I'm advancing this legislation in partnership with a large coalition that includes but it's not limited to the Building and Construction Trades Council and lots of their affiliates, SEIU, our affordable housing providers, the Mariners, and Seattle Made, which is a non-profit association of over 700 small businesses, many of whom could benefit from having some space in that area for for making their products and also retailing them.

So that will be coming up on the 24th at 9.30 on a Friday.

And then finally, I just want to say that I also, as was noted, attended the memorial service for Shang-Yim last week with many of my colleagues.

And thank you for the update on Metro's decision to to install protective barriers because I had not known that and I have to say that I appreciate that move on their part.

So we've got a long way to go on public safety in this town and that is an encouraging development.

I will be attending the 2025 Organization of Chinese American Golan Circle Awards and Lunar New Year.

And I am lucky to be able to attend this year because I try to go every year.

And with that, a reminder again that we will not have council briefing next week in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.

Day.

And so that is all I've got.

And it is 3.52.

This meeting is adjourned.

Council President, I have a point of order.

I have my hand raised.

You just said we're adjourned.

I had my hand raised.

Go ahead, please.

I'm sorry.

I'm just kind of catching my breath as well.

Did I hear you say that we're going to be taking up the industrial and maritime lands discussion in your committee?

That is correct.

And how many meetings are you going to have on this bill?

I am happy to talk with you offline.

It's on the schedule for the public hearing and the committee decisions.

Council briefing is a really great place for us to have this discussion.

I'm going to flag for you right now that it is when we took up the industrial maritime lands, you were here, you were on the land use committee.

Colleagues, if you don't know, we ran the land use committee like budget at that point.

We had deadlines for amendments.

We had multiple meetings.

I was just trying to scramble right now and catch to see how many meetings we had on that topic.

I think what is most troubling for me is beyond you not wanting to have a discussion here at council briefing about it, is that it's not going to the land use committee or to the select comprehensive plan committee.

Colleagues, there was a lot of work on left to do around the stadium district.

including the Coast Guard, including Waska, including the Stadium District, including transportation improvements.

I guess I'm quite troubled to hear that we're taking a one approach and there was a real comprehensive plan set up last year and to be kind of caught off guard here on the dais like this without a desire to have additional discussion.

And this is the second week in a row that I've been troubled to hear that bills that should be going to in any other year under any other council president would be going to their committee of jurisdiction are not.

And last week you shared it was because of your perspective on the issue.

You can have your perspective, but the land use code, section 23 of our code is specifically for the land use committee.

And so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm a little troubled today.

Thank you.

I'm sorry you feel that way.

It is 3.55, and we are adjourned.

Thank you.