Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 9/15/21

The Transportation and Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 9.31 AM.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

I mean, here.

Sorry.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Chair Peterson?

Present.

That's five present.

Thank you.

Approval of the agenda.

If there is no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Good morning, and welcome to the final meeting of our committee before all regular committee meetings are on hold to consider our 2022 city budget.

We have on our agenda today items from all four of the departments we monitor in this committee.

Because this is the last meeting as we get ready for our two-month budget process, the departments that transmitted this legislation are asking us We could vote all of it out of committee today.

If there are follow-up questions on items, we can always delay when the full council considers the items.

For example, instead of sending an item to the September 20th full council, we could send it to a later one, like October 4th, for example.

Depending on how many questions we have about items, I anticipate today's meeting might last until 11.30 or 12 noon today.

So let's go ahead and get started.

I'm not seeing anybody registered for public comment to speak, and I just want to have our IT folks confirm they're seeing the same thing, that no one is signed up this time.

There are no public comment registrants.

Okay, thank you.

And for folks watching, you can always email the council at council at Seattle.gov on these items.

So I'm just going to quickly open and close the remote general comment period because we are not seeing anybody signed up for the public comment period for the Transportation Utilities Committee this morning.

And again, folks interested in commenting on these items can send us emails as well.

So we'll move on to the first item of business.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the first agenda item into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 120160, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, adding a new section to Chapter 2149 of the Seattle Municipal Code to establish the Renewable Plus Program for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we had an extended presentation on this council bill during our previous committee meeting, so today is really an opportunity to ask any remaining questions before we vote on this proposal.

As you'll recall, this council bill would expand City Light's ability to contract with both electric power suppliers and large customers to increase the amount of sustainable and renewable electricity.

As we heard in the utilities presentation and discussion on August 18th, this authority will make it possible for City of Lake to purchase and supply significantly more green power as energy needs increase over time.

The results are expected to provide both fiscal and environmental benefits for the city and its ratepayers.

Our central staff analyst, Eric McConaughey, prepared a memorandum.

that was circulated earlier this week and posted on our agenda.

The memo further explains proposed program and I'd like to give our central staff analysts an opportunity if you wanted to highlight anything in the memo and we have our general manager of City Light here, Deborah Smith, and her team to ask questions about this Renewable Plus program.

But first to our central staff analyst, Eric, anything to share with us?

Thank you.

Good morning.

Yeah, Eric McConaghy.

I'm the central staff.

It's good to see you all.

Just very briefly, I would just add that the legislation would extend the contracting time for City Light from five years to 20 years.

It's typically now that City Light has five years of authority for contracting, so that's one thing to note.

And that while this would establish, this legislation, if it passes, would establish the Renewable Plus program, City Light would come to Council in the future to for Council's decision on a rate for Renewable Plus customers.

That's another decision to come in the future.

So I think those are the key features I just wanted to point out.

Thanks for the opportunity.

I'm here for any questions, but otherwise I'll just step down.

Thank you for your memo to us.

I know some questions we had raised previously were about the, we're excited about the concept, but what are the risks to the city and are we able to maximize public benefits?

And as I hear you saying, because they'll be coming back to actually set the rate, that's another chance to revisit this.

Okay.

And I'll look for any council member questions, but also wanted to offer to City Light if you wanted to say anything further about the program that you're trying to start here.

I can offer just a couple of comments, Council Member Peterson, Chair Peterson, thank you, and thanks for your time today.

This is, it seems like in the last year and a half or so, we haven't had as many opportunities as we'd probably all like to put forth new programs and things that prepare us for the future, and this is just that.

And I think it's super timely because as folks generally know, we're, well, I personally am not going to spend $500 to go see Coldplay, although I'd love to, but I hear the live streaming will be awesome.

But we know that Climate Pledge Arena is essentially done and we're all ready to start enjoying that.

And so one of the, you know, that is a good example of just one customer for whom the Renewable Plus program will allow them to meet their enhance sustainability goals.

And so this is a program that's in direct response to customer requests that we've then gone back through and made available in an equitable way to all customers who meet the guidelines in terms of size and type of load.

And we're just very excited to be able to offer something that's new and that positions Seattle for the future and allows our particularly climate conscious customers, that's hard to say, the opportunity to explore this concept of additivity.

And that's important.

It's something that we'll probably hear about in the future, but it means that a customer chooses to not just meet their load with renewable power or with green power, but they are actually financially participating and encouraging development of new renewable resources.

So they are bringing new renewable resources to the region that wouldn't otherwise exist.

And so I think that's something that aligns very closely with the city's climate goals, and we're just excited to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions.

Councilmember Morales.

Thank you.

So thanks for that summary.

This seems like a very interesting program.

I'm really interested in how it supports workforce development.

So if you could talk a little bit about any work that you're doing with labor to try to retrain folks who are currently in non-green economy jobs, and any partnering that you might be doing or contemplating with local schools or technical colleges.

As we try to make this shift, I think it's important that we really start to flesh out what concretely what connections to building a pipeline look like.

And I'm particularly interested to get folks from South Seattle, especially those who may not be going to college, start building the infrastructure and the systems that we need to help move people into these kinds of good jobs.

So can you talk a little bit about what that might look like?

Sure, I can talk just a little bit at a very high level and then I can commit to getting you some additional information.

And I also would invite my colleague Craig Smith to jump in because workforce development and the creation of green jobs is something that he is our chief customer officer, but also something that he cares about and has done work around.

In general, what's important about this particular project or this particular program, I should say, is that the jobs that, so certainly, we are at a transformative point in our industry.

That was interesting.

That was my soft phone coming in.

Anyway, we all, our jobs and our industry is transforming.

And most of our jobs, most of the jobs in the electric utility industry are becoming greener because we are becoming greener and because customers want green options and they want renewables, they want green options, and they want local choice.

Those are critical things and so we are doing a lot of things to to feed the pipeline.

We're working closely with labor.

We are developing a regional consortium that includes PSC, Tacoma, Snohomish, and City Light so that we can leverage our opportunities as a region, the Puget Sound region, to target and bring a more diverse workforce into the new jobs that we're creating.

So that's work that we are actively doing with the IBEW and Patalka, who is The third party contractor that in particular does a lot of work for PSE, they are also partnering with us and they're part of a national firm, actually multinational.

So that's an exciting opportunity.

Just this fall, our high voltage apprenticeship class is being marketed to city employees.

So one of the things we really wanted to do was to create opportunities for, again, increased diversity, but also for city employees to have Income potential and so by by making this program available the apprenticeship program this class making that available to city employees only we know that.

It will be an attractive option for many of our material handlers, for instance, and that is one of the most diverse employee classifications that the city has so again.

Working on that and then I think you're aware generally we do works with Seattle College.

We have the basic engineering and math program that we provide and that we fund and assist us with that.

And that is a way that we can ensure that.

folks who don't perhaps have the skills that they need or the math and science that they need to be successful in an apprenticeship can participate in those programs at no charge, which then presents them with the opportunity to compete effectively for a variety of apprenticeships.

I think I'll see if Craig or anyone has anything to offer to that.

I do want to be clear that the projects that we would be funding here, what we did was we issued an RFP and we brought some information to you and shared information with count with you about that.

at the end of, actually it was the very end of 2020. And so the projects that we will be potentially selecting and contracting with may not be local.

And I would ask Scott to share any information that he can about the kinds of projects we're looking at, but also first turn to Craig.

Okay, thank you, Debra.

So in addition to the areas that Debra cited, we've been doing a lot of work around building energy efficiency, building energy efficiency retrofits, and then also through various programs trying to increase the efficiency of buildings and new construction.

That's an area where we believe there's a lot of opportunities for us creating pathways for women in BIPOC communities.

We just recently funded a study that we'll be releasing here shortly with Emerald Cities and the Seattle Jobs Initiative.

to really look at the demographics of the existing building construction workforce, both clean energy and general building construction, and identify that there's some significant gaps in terms of representation of BIPOC communities and women in the building construction workforce.

So, huge opportunity to do some things, not only with expanded pre-apprenticeship programs, but we're also looking forward to engaging labor to look for ways that we can move people out of the pre-apprenticeship programs and into the apprenticeship programs themselves.

Because the class make-ups for certain trades, There's some pretty significant gaps.

We've also done some work over the last several years with Emerald Cities and folks that own and operate commercial buildings, looking at the building operations workforce, those folks that operate and maintain systems in buildings.

And we've had some pretty good success.

and moving the needle on the building operations workforce through various engagements to increase the number of building engineers.

Still some opportunity to grow there, but I'll say that our greatest opportunities are in building construction.

And I can speak to the program itself and some workforce development considerations in that.

Scott Cooper, I'm with City Light, obviously, and leading the program design team that's been putting together the Renewable Plus program.

And so, as Deborah mentioned, we sent out the RFP late last year in 2020. We got 35 to 40 responses, a really strong response, which was exciting for us.

All the projects were wind and solar located in eastern Washington and eastern Oregon and Montana.

We had an evaluation matrix and scoring criteria to winnow that down and get from that long list of 35 to 40 projects down to the short list where we're at now.

And one of those first criteria we were looking at was workforce development.

And so we wanted to hear from these projects what kind of green jobs are they going to be creating in the community in which they're based, what community engagement are they doing with those communities they're going to be based in, and other kinds of partnerships that they're exploring.

So this might be working with local community groups or schools or things like that.

So that was one of the first criteria we looked at in all the projects we received to get down to our shortlist.

So that's something we prioritized at the outset and are confident the shortlist projects that we're at are going to be good neighbors for the communities in which they're based.

Thank you for those thorough responses and thanks for that question about the green jobs and moving toward a just transition.

Council members, any other questions about this?

Otherwise, we can vote to, at least for the committee, to move this forward on the establishing the Renewable Plus program.

All right, well, Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120160, item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the Council Bill.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass Council Bill 120160.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation is that the bill is passed and will be sent to the September 20th City Council meeting.

So unless we designate otherwise, we'll just assume that things will go to the next City Council meeting, which is September 20th.

All right.

Thank you, everybody.

I think City Light, we've got some more for you here, though.

So will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Council Bill 120170, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, authorizing the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of City Light to establish and fund an early actions Skagit Habitat Enhancement Program in anticipation of new Skagit River Hydroelectric Project license conditions to implement meaningful habitat and watershed improvements in the Skagit River watershed.

for Endangered Species Act listed species for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And as I understand it, this is enabling Seattle City Light to honor a commitment they've made previously and want to get this done before the budget process starts.

wanted to offer our central staff analyst, Eric McConaghy, if you wanted to make any introductory remarks on this item.

Otherwise, we can go to General Manager Smith from City Light.

Oh, you're on mute, Eric.

I knew eventually I would do it at least once in committee.

I'm sorry about that.

I don't have any introductory remarks, but thank you for the opportunity.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, General Manager Smith, please tell us about this council bill.

Great, yeah, thank you.

And I'm actually going to be participating in this presentation along with my colleague, Chris Townsend.

And Maura, you're going to be putting the slides up, is that right?

OK, well, while she works on that, I'll just quickly introduce the team and ask for your indulgence, because I recognize that we have not yet had the opportunity to fully brief you on Skagit and where things are at.

And probably much of what you know, you've watched on King Five or read in the paper, and I want to assure you that we are actually very early in this process.

And I'm going to give you about a two to five minute, catch you up to where we are today, and then we'll jump into the specific action that we're looking for.

So as you all know, our Skagit license is set to expire And our plan at this point is to submit for a new license in early 2023. So the way that works is there are places and stages through this process.

And the very first thing that we have worked to negotiate with our partners, and we refer to, and you will see reference to the notion of licensed participants.

And licensed participants are actually a fairly large group.

Chris, how many licensed participants do we have that are in that category?

Well, there have been over 30 that have participated.

Non-profits, local government, state, federal, tribal entities, First Nations in Canada.

Perfect.

And Chris Townsend, by the way, he is our Director of Relicensing for Seattle City Light.

This is his first license that he's negotiating, but he's doing an awesome job.

And I also have with me today, in addition to Maura, Mike Caines, who is City Light's Chief Environmental and Generation Officer.

And so Mike is overseeing the relicensing, working with Chris and our team.

So the first piece that happens is we engage in discussions with the licensed participants about what kind of science and what kind of information folks need to make decisions.

And that all culminates in us submitting, which we did in May, A final, a final plan to FERC, FERC is the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and they issue licenses for non federal projects.

So it's kind of confusing because we talk about FERC as the federal entity.

Federal projects are, for instance, the Columbia River system, so we call that the federal FCRPS, the Federal Columbia River Power System, which consists of all the dams on the Columbia River and the Lower Snake River.

Those dams produce the power that is marketed by Bonneville in the region, and we purchase a block of power.

from Bonneville, which largely comes from those systems.

In addition, as you know, and I'm just giving a little bit of background and context, the City Light has several of our own generation projects.

And so we have the project at Boundary.

And then we have the project at Skagit.

And we call them projects because they really work.

They're very different.

Skagit and Boundary are very different types of projects.

Boundary is what's called a run of river project.

So we don't have the ability to hold water, for instance, at Boundary in the same way we do at Skagit.

At the Skagit, we have three powerhouses and three dams.

And we have the ability to hold water.

And when we talk about water in a hydro system, water is the fuel.

So our ability to store fuel, i.e. to store water, is what allows us to generate more power during the times when Seattle needs more power.

And then hold water during the times when we don't so that it's available for when we do need it.

So that's the very, very high level notion of how the systems work.

And so the three dams on the Skagit do all work together.

They were designed to work together.

It has to do with both how the the generating system, the infrastructure that the city installed, how that works, but also the geography of the three dams along the way.

So that all works together.

And the reason that's important is because, you know, you've heard there have been some calls around removing Gorge Dam.

Gorge Dam is what provides a great deal of the flexibility and the flood control that are critical to this project and critical to the system.

And so it is not as simple as unhooking one piece from a system.

And I just needed to explain that very quickly up front.

So as we've been in these negotiations around what would go in the final study plan and what science we would conduct over a, it is intended to be a two-year period, And that is the timeline that we're still operating with under.

So it's science this summer, science next summer.

And then we would begin to negotiate the actual terms of the license request to FERC.

And then ultimately, FERC tells us what all we need to implement.

As we were doing that, you've heard that our relationship with, in particular, the tribes got rocky for a bit.

I'm here to tell you that things are much better now.

There are two pieces of pending litigation.

I don't want to gloss that over.

One is a PDR suit from Skagit County.

We are continuing to work through that, and you should know that the city attorney's office believes we have, in fact, the PDRs that we were, that the complaint was filed over are in fact still open and we are still working to gather information that is responsive to that.

So we are working hard on that front.

There was also a piece of litigation filed by one of the three primary tribes, so by the Sauk-Suato, and that piece was around removal of Gorge Dam.

And so that is playing itself out.

But our relationship with both the Swinomish and the Upper Skagit, we have worked hard to reset those relationships.

We brought in new legal counsel, a local firm, Cascadia Law, which includes help from Jay Manning and Matt Love and people that most folks here know and the tribes are familiar with.

And as a result of a lot of changes and soul searching we've done in terms of how we communicate, how we make commitments and follow up on those, we are feeling actually pretty positive for where we are right now in the process.

So let's go to the next slide.

So what we're asking for today is it's an ordinance that establishes this habitat enhancement program and funding levels.

It relies on existing appropriations.

So we're not asking for money.

What we're asking for is authority for me to sign agreements as we make awards from within this fund.

There is no impact to rates.

Those funds are part of the overall budget for the Skagit project, which, again, you approve as part of our overall CIP and budget that we bring forward.

The other thing that this does is it creates a partnership opportunity for the tribes and agencies.

So I think you're, I know you're aware that we have a review panel.

You've heard from them recently on our strategic and operational planning.

Well, we kind of think of this as a smaller version of the review panel as well, or at least a more narrowly focused review panel.

So the idea here is that we would create this fund and that we would use monies from the fund to do projects and to supplement projects.

Rarely would we be out there on our own.

We would largely be working as a partner with other work.

And it would largely be focused on the estuary and the area below where the Sauk River intersects the Skagit.

So for us in relicensing, there's this concept about the area of impact.

and so we are responsible for it and work hard to mitigate our impacts within that area.

It is very hard to clearly identify impacts from our project on the estuary below the SOC, but we recognize that the Skagit is an incredibly important source For for salmon and for our community and for the watershed in the valley.

And so, by making this funding source available, and then working directly with our licensed participants, our partners to award funds allows us to participate in habitat enhancement.

And 1 of the things that we've really.

focused on is saying that we are interested in a ecosystem wide approach to this relicensing.

So we are looking at fish, we are looking at habitat, we are looking at people, we are looking at cultural impacts.

We are really trying to take the broadest view.

Let's go to the next slide.

So I started talking a bit about the process, and this is a very skinny down version of a slide that you may see another time as we move through our process.

But the notion is we learn, we plan, we do, and then we are constantly evaluating.

So right now, learning, we are in the study phase.

So we actually have, Chris, how many folks are out there working at any point in time right now on science?

We have about 30 to 40 people out in the field at any given time.

We've hired almost every single consulting firm in the region.

It's a very big effort.

And so we have tons of scientists working on the river and then they will be working and taking the data that they accumulate.

And again, the science that we're doing is also in conjunction with the licensed participants.

So they've helped us and they are helping us design the studies and they will help us evaluate the data.

There is very little point in doing any of this if we aren't doing it in collaboration and partnership.

With the folks who are vested in the river, because at the end of the day, all of this data will be used to develop a license application that hopefully they can all support.

So we welcome them and we work closely with them.

Our final study plan determination came out July 16. And one of the things that Seattle did when we submitted the final study plan to FERC was we made a few commitments.

We committed to do some early action items.

I think there's actually a slide, so maybe I'll stop right there and just finish going through here.

So once we have the science, then we will plan.

We will implement early commitments, including this Habitat Enhancement Program.

And that means that as we learn, as we complete studies and we gain knowledge, If there are things that we know we can and should do, we won't necessarily wait for the license.

And FERC does allow you to do early action items and then to take credit for those early action items within the license implementation.

Because again, there's no sense in waiting if you have information that can help now.

Then we will implement the requirements of the new license.

We'll submit the application in April of 23. It generally will take a couple of years and there'll be a process that's somewhat iterative during that time and FERC will do a lot of review.

and hopefully have a new license by April of 2025. And then the evaluate, adjust, and do, that's the ongoing adaptive management.

So the river system is a living system.

It is constantly changing.

We all know that.

And climate change and other impacts are constantly causing things to behave in different ways.

So adaptive management is incredibly important.

And it says that as we learn and as things change, we will modify and change our approach along the way.

And that's a critical piece of the license.

So now let's go to the next slide.

So the pre-license commitments that we are talking to you about today and that we made to the tribes and to the licensed participants in the form of a letter that they received at the time when we filed our final study plan with FERC.

had largely three components.

So one is to restore flows to the gorge reach of the river.

So you see two pictures on the screen and the left picture is how that reach typically looks.

Now, when I say and when we say restore water, we spill.

There are times when there is water in that reach.

And the picture over on the right, Chris, could you actually do the little, tell your story about this picture, because it's kind of cool.

Yeah, the picture on the right, I happen to be up at a meeting at the Environmental Learning Center on the hottest day of the year, January, whatever that was, it was 109.

June 30th.

Sorry.

June 30th.

It was the hottest day of the year, and it was about 109 at the project.

And it's really unusual for the project to spill in the summer.

That's when we're really conserving water and generating electricity of whatever water we have.

But since it was so hot, every single air conditioner in Seattle was on.

And the glaciers were melting faster than they normally do, which is kind of scary.

So we had an overabundance of water, and we were spilling at least Diablo, which I was on top of and watching, and then drove down to see what the spills looked like at Gorge.

And this is a 2700 CFS flow, which is over top of Bank.

So this is more full than the river would ever be expected to be.

But the participants are asking us to put a flow in for aesthetic and recreational, potentially for fish habitat.

So it'll be somewhat lower than what you see on the right, but it's an unusual opportunity to see what this looks like and maybe conditions that could become more frequent with climate change in the future.

We hope not, but that could be what the future brings.

What spill means is, in case there's anyone here who doesn't know, spill means when we divert water around the turbine.

So you've got so much water coming down the river that we can't run it all through the turbine.

And so we spill it around the powerhouse.

And so that's generally what spill means.

So as you can see, just from looking at these two pictures, this is an incredibly important early action item.

particularly to the upper Skagit Indian tribe.

This is in their backyard, and they experience the picture on the left, and of course seeing it in real life, they experience that as a piece of cultural trauma.

So we expected that FERC would ask us to re-water that reach, and so we have made a commitment to move forward with it.

And so we're working with DEQ and other agencies, as well as the tribes, to figure out how we can best do that in a controlled and appropriate way.

So that's happening right now.

We're not sure how long it will take, but we certainly hope that that reach will be rewatered within, say, two years.

We already talked about the Habitat Enhancement Program, which again is particularly focused downriver in the estuary.

And then, as I mentioned, we would also implement critical early actions prior to issuance of the license.

And when we were talking through this program and talking with Council Member Strauss, He asked, well, are there examples?

And we really don't have them yet.

These are things that we will learn as we participate and do the science.

And to the extent that things come up that we can go ahead and move forward with, we will.

So I think that's where that is.

Next slide.

So the habitat program, the idea here is it's a fund for habitat enhancement work.

We would initially fund it at the 2.5 million dollar level.

And then we would add an additional 500,000 each year prior to the new license.

So each year that we are in the negotiation process.

we would include in our budget an additional 500,000 deposits so that as we're making awards from the fund, we're keeping it at a somewhat consistent level.

We would hope to initially here announce both the creation of the fund by the city along with an initial award that we expect to be in the $500,000 range.

Taking this action now demonstrates our commitment to salmon recovery during the process.

It also really demonstrates our commitment to doing what we say we'll do.

So we issued this letter again back in May, and it's important for our partners, all of our partners, to see us moving forward to take action as soon as we can.

So it will bridge the ecosystem investment between the old license and the new, And again, it's an opportunity prior to negotiating the terms of the license for us to work together with our partners in a really constructive way.

So as we're talking about and making decisions about projects that we could fund here, we will practice and have some memory muscle on how we make those decisions in a collaborative, respectful way going forward, which will be super important when we're actually negotiating the terms of the license.

Next slide.

Questions.

That was a lot.

Thank you, General Manager Smith.

I know we'll have some questions here.

I think just to thanks for providing the broader context and for pointing out that it's in 2023. It's in a couple of years when we'll be reengaged in this more thoroughly.

So I appreciate providing the full context.

Just to clarify for everybody, all we're being asked to do right now is to approve a $2.5 million Habitat Enhancement Program that City Light has promised as part of the early steps in this process.

But we're not endorsing anything larger than that.

We're not signing on to any sort of process or what's happened thus far.

It's simply this $2.5 million program from existing funds, is that correct?

Yes, that's absolutely correct.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks, and you may have covered this, but I heard you say that as you're announcing the fund, you're also going to announce a $500,000 award, and I'm just, I'm struggling a little bit with how that is possible.

I'm imagining if it's a fund, people have a chance to apply.

Are you saying that absent the opportunity to apply to the fund, the utility is going to choose a project some other way for this $500,000 initial project.

Thanks for the question, Councilmember.

Chris, can you take that one?

Yeah, definitely.

We're getting late into 2021, and it's not going to be possible to form the committee that will be making the consensus decisions about the investments that we'll be making.

And so we thought that it was important to get some money on the ground early.

And we've been coordinating with the three tribes, and they're very interested in that.

And they have a couple of projects in the estuary in mind.

So it will still be a collaboratively selected one, but just not under the full committee.

that we'll be using to distribute the rest of the funding.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And then as far as eligible activities that will be possible under this fund, is land acquisition an eligible activity?

It would be yes, and it would be the license participants are interested in it being as as broadly interpreted as possible so that we can deal with the priorities in the in the watershed.

Thank you so much to raise a really good point.

Council member herbal because in fact, and.

One thing I didn't say is, in many ways, this is modeled after a habitat program that was under the prior license that you have seen regularly.

In fact, recently, when we brought forward a ratification opportunity for you around Skagit Valley property purchases.

So the location is different.

That was more in the valley.

This is more in the estuary.

But we do have experience with this type of program.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

So General Manager Smith, I know that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is the key entity in charge of this process.

However, before the 2023 submission, I think we'd like you to come back and give us some more information as we get closer to that key moment of submitting an application.

Absolutely, we're going to want to come in and probably carve out some good chunks of time.

Because when we submit that license, it will it will have significant impacts for the city in terms of our power rates.

You know, we at this point don't know whether there'll be decrements to what we're able to generate.

I mean, right now, we really don't know anything, except that have a strong collaborative relationship with our partners is really important, but yes.

And we also will probably ask if we can take some of you up there, take a look at things.

If you haven't had a chance to go up there, that will be important.

So yeah, there's gonna be lots of engagement.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions about this Habitat Enhancement Program for the two and a half million of existing funds?

And just wanted to check again with our central staff analyst, Eric McConaughey, if he wanted to say anything else about this at this time.

No, thanks.

Just noting that any land acquisitions that happen, those deed acceptances have to be finalized and formalized with council action.

That would be another step in the process.

And this committee has seen those in the committee and the council has seen those even this year.

So that has happened in this gadget.

That's part of what City Light has, the kind of work City Light has done there.

But any land acquisition would actually have to be finally approved by council through a formal act.

Good.

Mike, do you have anything that you wanted to throw in or are we good from your perspective?

Thanks, Debra.

I'm good.

We've got a lot of work to do and I'm just looking forward to moving forward.

Council members, I'll go ahead and move this item and we will, you know, Obviously the general measurement is available for further questions before the full city council meeting on this.

So council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of council bill 120170, item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation that the bill be approved for forwarding to the full City Council?

Gonzales?

Council President Gonzales?

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes, and we can circle back to the Council President.

Hi, sorry about that.

It's OK.

The motion carries.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you so much.

We really appreciate it, and we can't wait to continue the education.

It really is an incredible opportunity for the city to engage with our communities, to be responsive, and to, the way I think of it is, yeah, there's just a lot of opportunity to work closely together for the benefit of all.

So thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

We'll definitely have you back to talk more about the process.

Thank you.

So the motion carries, and the committee recommendation that bill pass will be sent to the September 20th city council meeting.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item three, council bill 120161, an ordinance relating to Seattle Public Utilities updating water regulations to conform to current standards for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

This small bill amends a section of the Seattle Municipal Code concerning broken, missing, and difficult to read water meters owned by Seattle Public Utilities.

It clarifies how Seattle Public Utilities prepares an estimated charge until the meter can be read.

And as I understand it, this probably does not change the utility's overall policies or practices, and we'll hear more from Seattle Public Utilities on this.

But before we turn it over to SPU, I just wanted to check in with our central staff analyst, Brian Goodnight, if he had any introductory remarks on this.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

No, nothing in addition to what you said, and it's a fairly simple bill, and I'm happy to turn it over to SPU for their presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I see we've got Deputy Director Lee here.

Did you want to lead it off?

Yes, yes.

Good morning, Committee Chair Peterson and Council Members Morales, Herbold, Gonzalez, and Strauss.

My name is Andrew Lee, and I'm the Deputy Director for Drainage and Wastewater at SPU.

I'm pinch-hitting for Mami this morning, who's unable to join us, unfortunately.

First, thank you for considering this proposed legislation to update the City Code dealing with damage to water meters and estimated billing.

The Seattle Municipal Code describes when SPU bills its customers based on estimated meter reads and how estimated bills are calculated.

On average, less than 3% of our bills are based on estimated reads, so it's very much a minority.

Minor codes, minor updates to the code, however, are needed to accurately describe SPU's current business practices and to clarify how estimated bills are calculated.

So we're proposing this morning additional minor and non-substantive revisions to make the code more readable.

I'd like to introduce Dan Ward, who is SPU's lead for this update, and he is here to walk the committee through the proposed code modifications.

Sorry, yeah, hopefully you're able to see the slide deck now.

Good morning.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here and I will jump right in.

So this is indeed minor changes to SMC 2104480 and the proposed changes are primarily about estimated reads and how the utility calculates estimated bills.

So I'll provide just a quick background on estimated billing.

walk you through the proposed changes.

And then, of course, we'll be happy to answer any questions.

So I'll just start with a simple background on how we build customers.

And SPU relies, in most cases, on meter readers actually going out and walking around or driving around.

And they will, in most cases, lift a lid.

They'll obtain a visual read of the register of the water meter.

And then that read will then be used to bill the customer for both water and wastewater.

It's very accurate.

It's a good way of doing things, and we're generally very good about getting actual reads for almost all of our customers every billing period.

And as Andrew mentioned, it's between usually 1 and 3% that our bills are estimated.

And so we're here today to talk about some proposed changes to capture that scenario when we have to bill based on estimates.

And although it's not a huge percentage, it's still an important issue for us.

So just to talk through some of the different scenarios.

So we make every effort to get an actual read, but sometimes there are things that prevent us from doing that.

So I'll give you a few concrete examples that will highlight this.

So if there's snow or ice, there may be scenarios where it's difficult or dangerous for a meter reader to go out and walk up a steep hill and lift a lid.

So if there's inclement weather, there are times where we can't get an actual read.

And that's when we would need to bill a customer based on estimates.

Another good example is cars parked on or over meter lids.

So in many parts of the city, especially where there are no sidewalks, it's perfectly legal for cars to park in areas where They might be over a lid.

The problem with that is that if a meter reader is out there walking the route, they're not going to be able to get access to the meter and then get an actual read that we can use for billing.

Another big category, construction.

So if you have a big site that's under development, there might be fencing up.

And similarly, our meter readers won't be able to get access to that meter.

It will be obstructed.

So that's another scenario that happens there.

So just to kind of jump through the minor changes, right now the SMC says that SPU will bill customers based on estimates if the meter fails to register properly, or in other words, if the meter is broken.

And so the proposed changes are touching on that other scenario where we're not able to get a meter read.

And so that's just a pretty minor change.

It's something that we're already doing.

And it's just a reality that there are occasions where we can't get that actual read.

The other change is on how we calculate estimated bills.

And right now the SMC has language in there about using the prior months of when we have good reads to bill a customer.

So the proposed changes actually touch on using historical water consumption.

That's a really good metric generally for a customer's actual usage.

So for example, if you use a customer's consumption from July, from the year prior for July of this year, it's generally pretty good.

And it's something that we would use as our primary method.

But we added in some language to allow for some flexibility where there are other weird situations.

One example of that would be we put post-repair consumption in there as a method.

What that refers to is imagine a customer has a water leak and their consumption jumps way up.

That's not going to be a good period to use for estimated billing in the future because that's a period when their consumption was artificially much higher than normal.

So that's something we want to be able to address.

The other is, having this flexibility to use other reliable data.

Great example there is COVID.

So during COVID, a lot of businesses were shut down or running at less than full operation.

And so you can imagine the consumption during that period is going to be, for some of these customers, much lower.

And so you would not want to bill that customer for their historical water usage from the year prior when they were using a lot of water if they were shut down during the relevant time period.

So that's again, we want to have this flexibility where we can bill the customer as accurately as possible and get it as close as we can when we issue an estimated bill.

And then I guess the last point on this is that when we do estimated billing, in most cases, we are able to eventually get an actual read.

So if there is a difference between the estimated bill and the customer's actual consumption, They will eventually get a corrected bill that will, if it's up or down a little bit, it will be fixed.

But we want to get it right when that estimated bill goes out, if we can, because then it's less of an impact to the customer when they get their final bill.

So those are the two issues that we're proposing changes.

The only other issue, non-substantive changes to add in some references to some other relevant SMCs.

so that if someone's reading this SMC, they'll know where to find other SMCs that could be helpful to understand other relevant issues.

So that's all I have for today.

Thank you again.

I'm happy to answer any questions as well.

Thank you very much.

Council members, any questions for Seattle Public Utilities about these changes to the water meter reading rules?

Great, all right, well, I appreciate you coming here with this presentation.

We know SPU's got another presentation right after this, so we'll go ahead and move forward with this bill here.

So council members, if there are no questions on this water meter reading bill, I'll go ahead and I'd like to move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120161, item three on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments?

OK, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill be forwarded to the full city council?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 20 City Council meeting.

Thank you, everybody, who presented on that one.

And will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item 4, Council Bill 120175, an ordinance authorizing Seattle Public Utilities to execute agreements under RCW 70A 140-040 for projects and programs that prevent water pollution using green stormwater infrastructure and other nature-based approaches for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as I understand it, this bill implements a mechanism to improve water quality policies that were initially called for and authorized by the state legislature and confirmed by the city council.

These green stormwater infrastructure policies are carried forward into Seattle Public Utilities' strategic business plan that we had approved, and the bill authorizes SPU to enter into performance-based contracts for handling stormwater, as the presenters will explain.

And as we know, by encouraging additional green stormwater infrastructure, we can provide another tool for managing our city's stormwater runoff to help prevent pollution of our waterways.

Our city council central staff did distribute a memo this past Friday, and the memo's on our committee agenda.

So I wanted to give our central staff an opportunity if they wanted to help set the table here.

Otherwise, we can turn it over to SPU to discuss the bill.

Brian.

Thank you, Chair.

I'll just briefly mention that I'm sure SPU will cover it, but really the function of this bill is to delegate authority from what is authorized in state law for the city council to perform some functions, and this is delegating that authority down to SPU.

So SPU will cover it in more detail, but I just wanted to make that clear at the beginning.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, welcome back, SPU, and Deputy Director Lee, you want to get it started?

Absolutely.

Yeah, so, you know, Brian stated that this is really about authorizing, ultimately, SPU to have the authority to do an accelerated project delivery or contracting mechanism to implement our environmental programs related to green stormwater infrastructure.

And those programs are all about decreasing polluted runoff into Seattle's water bodies.

I am particularly excited about this because we view utilities work as a platform for greater social good.

And one of the amazing things about this mechanism is it enables us to partner with community-based organizations, ultimately to realize additional benefits beyond just water quality and ecological benefits.

And some of those things include things like job creation, particularly in BIPOC communities.

And we achieve that through this community-based partnership.

and with organizations that specialize in that work.

And as was mentioned, our current contract procurement toolkit does not include this unique contracting mechanism.

It is allowed by the state of Washington, but this piece of legislation would authorize us to be able to use it.

At this point, I would like to hand things off to Tracy Tackett, our Green Stormwater Infrastructure Program lead, to provide more details on this.

And we also have Pam Emerson here to potentially answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you.

Hello, good morning.

Thank you for your time this morning.

A little bit on jargon, just to make sure everybody is familiar with what Green Stormwater Infrastructure is.

Just at its core is the use of natural systems and natural systems thinking as we solve our drainage and wastewater problems.

And so that includes things like floodable open space, fire retention, floodplains, riparian area, engineering approaches that help make hard surfaces act more like natural surfaces, and things that use natural based systems like rainwater harvesting and reuse so just a little bit of grounding and several folks have already kind of teed up what this is so, but it is an ordinance around.

delegating authority from City Council to Seattle Public Utilities.

so that we can do this contract delivery mechanism.

And we're really excited about this contract delivery mechanism using performance-based contracting.

And specifically, the type of performance-based contracting that we're looking at for this stormwater mechanism is called a community-based public-private partnership.

It's got a cool name.

You're like, this is something fun about this.

What it is about is working programmatically with the type of partners that we're interested in, for this set of tools in a distributed fashion.

So instead of working one project at a time for some of these small distributed projects, we can contract out for a larger set of solutions at one time.

So this would mean that, you know, so we set the performance criteria about what is our stormwater management goals, and then, and as well as our community priorities and our community co-benefit goals, which I'll talk about in just a second.

As a whole, by doing this contract mechanism, will be able to have us save some costs through transferring risk in that this partnering mechanism is better set up for working on the one-on-one parcel owner, large-scale parcel owners.

And if some projects that don't come to fruition are ones that SPU will not pay for, it is up onto the contracting prime to really work through all the details and find the right solution.

So as a whole, there'll be a lower set of soft costs on our part working through those projects.

But what it also offers this this mechanism is a really deep ability to work with our community partners for identifying project sites and implementing projects and really supporting the resourcing to help develop that out those elements.

From the community benefit side, on a programmatic scale, we're also able to set performance criteria of what needs to be embedded in the contract.

And as Andrew said, one of the workforce goals are pretty key to us.

So we're able to use the concept of priority hire, but expand that to being for inclusion of not just the construction phase, but how do we use local workforce in our underserved communities And bring that into our work, not only for construction, but also for design and project selection and community outreach.

So for all phases of the project.

So this performance based contract will allow us to Require that and grow those skills.

So there's requirements within the contract around business mentorship.

and resourcing and centering community for identifying the projects.

And our last community goal that we're really hoping to bring into this contract, and we're still working on these elements, is how to leverage public funds, leverage our utility dollars for having some of the community space amenities be built into a project but funded outside of the utility.

So we call that the whole project, you know, and we're able to get all the stormwater management and aspects that are within the utilities mission, but also some of the added community amenities that the public would like.

Excuse me, Tracy, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Yeah, Tracy, I appreciate you going through that and particularly referencing priority hire.

Can you talk just a little bit about how this process will not just focus on sort of support and mentoring of some community members, but will actively draft the RFP so that minority businesses are also encouraged to apply.

I know we have a lot of you know, contractors who are moving into this kind of space who don't typically get access to city contracts like this.

So I'm just interested in what ways you're sort of reaching out and encouraging newer entities to participate and apply for these kinds of things.

Yes, so thank you for the question.

And we are, our lead for this, Pam Emerson, has been very attentive to try to help ensure, you know, how do we help pair the larger contractors with some of the smaller contracts for this, for this contract delivery mechanism.

And so has, you know, just earlier this week had a listening session to try to help connect the different contracting aspects.

And what we're, it's really the foundational way the contract's set up is that it's a performance requirement.

And so it's a payment, there's not a, it is requirement for payment that these targets are achieved.

So it's foundational to the way the contract's set up.

Does that cover what you're asking?

Yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you.

All right, so a little bit more detail, and then we'll move on to the ordinance.

Green infrastructure work as a whole is work that the council has directed us to do.

So you guys probably know lots about it.

Just a moment of grounding.

If you look at this image on the bottom, we all know that with time, our area was initially forests, deep forests, and with time, it's become more and more impervious as development happens.

all of us move here because it's such a lovely place, with all that new impervious surface creates stormwater problems for the drainage and wastewater utility.

The green infrastructure solution is, you know, again, using that natural systems and natural systems thinking to help solve those stormwater management problems.

And we've been leading this nationally.

We're national leaders, you know, since kind of the origin of green infrastructure in early 2000. but yet there's still so much more to grow.

So we, I feel like, you know, we are confident that we have the foundation and now we're ready to expand our approach.

And so that was a specific strategic business plan direction was, you know, to scale up.

And part of our scaling up of how we're growing has these four primary priorities.

I would love to spend lots of time sometime describing what each of these categories are, but today is not the time to get into too much detail.

but to say that it has been on our radar for a number of years to figure out how to expand our delivery modes to allow more of this partnership.

And so we're really excited to be at this point in time of being ready to do this community-based contract.

And...

Could you go back two slides?

Just wanted to...

Yeah, the Troll Avenue, I just wanted to...

point out that photo.

So that's the dividing line between my district and Council Member Strauss' district.

So I just thought that was a great photo that you included there.

So thank you.

Thank you.

That idea of partnerships, of how do we work with our developers and our community where we can have this green space, and stormwater management problems have been happening for over 100 years.

We can't solve this alone in Seattle Public Utilities, so we really need to help support those kind of enthusiastic community-based groups who are trying to manage stormwater as well.

And that Troll Avenue project is one that we're all very excited about and trying to make sure we can support more of.

Thank you.

So there are so all of this is about existing impervious surface and how do we help encourage management of it, you know we have a stormwater code for new and replaced impervious surface and new development.

This is about all the existing development, and so we already have two existing approaches that we help support partnership one is the RainWise program.

which is really set up for a small roof area, churches, single family properties, you know, smaller roof areas, and it's a rebate process.

And we wanted to grow that program, and as we, you know, really did a lot of introspection about how to really grow partnerships in more areas, we established that this community-based public Pirate Partnership is the way to go.

The other way that we partner with developers and other community-based groups is through direct resourcing and one-on-one MOAs.

And that makes sense for really big projects, but in order to scale up with lots of small distributed projects, we're interested in this new delivery mode.

And so, again, it's, you know, focused on one contractor, one prime, and then they have lots of subcontractors as part of the program with, again, meeting those local hiring targets and goals of working with our community.

Then they, you know, there's a third-party inspection of sites that are placed and their performance with all of our community priorities.

And this, and so, yes, that's the general idea.

The community-based P3 foundationally was started by EPA, I don't know, maybe about 10 years ago, EPA region three, to solve this problem that we have of connecting community with our stormwater and our green infrastructure, and how can we solve for water quality while also increasing increasing our benefits for the community.

And so beyond those stormwater improvements and the permit compliance.

So we have a lot of focus for meeting our stormwater management goals, but how can we expand the benefits to our community as we solve those goals?

I think one of the main aspects that is why we can do this work now is because there was a lot of work by state agencies and the Department of Commerce to do the look at, you know, is this type of contracting mechanism allowable within Washington state and that that analysis was done, led by the Department of Commerce and established that we can that it is an applicable approach in the state of Washington, which made us so that we can move forward to this step.

So foundationally, we'll be striving again to take the base cost of what we need for our stormwater goals, but to increase the values that we're delivering.

And so this first phase, we're, you know, starting with an initial project, somewhere in the 10 to $15 million range, and then there'll be a future phase after we've grown and learned for a longer term contract.

Other parts of the country, these are 20 to 30-year contracts and $100 million.

So we're starting with a place for learning and getting some of our outcomes delivered.

And just to help understand, again, the kinds of work that we're talking about, these are just some visuals to get an understanding of what do we mean by bioretention, rainwater harvesting, permeable pavement.

The program includes riparian restoration, again, floodable open space and aspects like that.

And we would, you know, the goal is to take existing spaces, you know, this being like a concept of a community gathering space where the community is interested in revitalizing it, adding more amenities to have it be a gathering space, and how can our stormwater management needs be incorporated into the site design so it's a win-win for both the the parcel owner as well as the utility.

Thank you.

And Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So a couple of slides back, you mentioned impervious surfaces, pavers, that sort of thing.

And yeah, and particularly with the slide about the community center, it's just making me wonder if there's any sort of conversation or partnership happening with SDOT as our transportation department is, you know, Working on sidewalks or pavement or streets, is there any conversation with them about how to incorporate that into our transportation system?

Yes.

SDOT has been a good partner with us over the years.

We have, for the last 15 years, done a large number of buyer retention and roadway projects.

So we have a lot of buyer retention in partnership with SDOT.

And SDOT does sometimes install permeable pavement.

It's one of our stormwater code requirements.

We have not started installing permeable pavement in the road streetscape, but more in the parking areas and in the kind of slightly lower use areas.

But it is an approach that, for things in the right of way, we do work in partnership with SDOT for sure.

Any other thoughts?

As far as within the street right-of-way, we've gone as far as having what is standard details and plans and specs so that we've worked through a lot of the innovation on how do we do this kind of work in the right-of-way.

So it is a tool that people can use for sure, which we are excited about.

Well, and I guess my real question is, it's great that we're encouraging, you know, private property owners to be looking at using this, but I'm wondering as a municipality, if we are moving in the direction of trying to do that just as a matter of our public infrastructure.

We're moving in the direction and we could still move further.

Okay.

Thank you for that.

May I add a few things on that question?

Thank you for the question, Council Member.

A few years back, we had a new requirement in our stormwater permit that required us citywide to incorporate essentially green infrastructure and low-impact development techniques in all land-use codes.

That was a new requirement in our stormwater permit, so we did that look citywide.

I think that was back in about 2015, and new requirements were incorporated into both land-use code the right-of-way improvement manual, what we now know as Streets Illustrated, to provide this kind of information citywide into all codes.

And then also, SPU does have a whole other program called the Natural Drainage System Partnering Program that's focused on partnering with SDOT to do our own retrofit projects in the right-of-way where we can get much Many of those projects are regional scale, meaning they manage a larger contributing basin of runoff in the right-of-way, and super high value for our rate payers, and also very complex projects and expensive projects.

So we do do that work kind of on another side of our department, but this program is focused on working on parcels.

Thank you.

Yes, we're trying to grow on all of our fronts.

So this brings me to the ordinance.

The summary of the ordinance is the same almost as what was described right at the beginning.

So this is, again, an ordinance delegating authority from city council to Seattle Public Utilities General Manager.

That way that we can use this authority to initiate our solicitation and expediently go through the process of developing this contract so that we can start delivering this program.

And that is the highlights.

And we have a couple of websites should anyone want to know a lot more about green infrastructure and this great annual report that gives the highlights of what we've accomplished in the last year.

And I'm happy to come back any time with more detail.

Thank you.

And thank you, council members, for the questions along the way.

And are there any more questions about this proposal?

Okay.

Let's go ahead and move this forward.

This is item four on our committee.

We've got four more items after this.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120175, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill be approved for forwarding to the full council?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 20 City Council meeting.

Thank you to all the presenters.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item five, Council Bill 120174, an ordinance granting permission to the Board of Regents of the University of Washington to continue to operate and maintain an existing underground pedestrian concourse tunnel under and across Sixth Avenue, north of University Street.

For briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

And we've got S.

here, but I also wanted to give our central staff panelist, Lish Whitson, a chance if you wanted to make any introductory remarks.

So this is a bill that's similar to many others that you've reviewed this year.

It extends a term permit for a tunnel.

in downtown Seattle that's operated by the University of Washington and connects to Union Square office complex to the University of Washington's Metropolitan tract.

As with many of the other term permits, the term of the permit is being changed from a 10-year renewable term to a 15-year renewable term, and it will be renewable once And I'll be around for any questions.

Thank you, Lish.

Welcome to the SDOT team who works on these.

Beverly Barnett, do you want to lead it?

No.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thanks for having us here.

Lish, I think, did a good background memo and orientation.

And Amy Gray has prepared a PowerPoint that shows the maps and the connectivity.

So Amy's going to go through, and we're happy to answer any any questions following that.

Thank you.

Hello, I am Amy Gray.

I work in the Seattle Department of Transportation on the term permit program that we administer after council votes for approval.

So this is the title slide shows an image of one of the buildings that this tunnel connects.

And like Lish said, it is an existing pedestrian tunnel.

And this request is to renew the permit for this tunnel.

It's located under Sixth Avenue, just north of University Street.

The University of Washington is the permit holder for this.

And like Lish said, it connects to the metro track towards the west.

And it connects the Union Square buildings to the Hilton Hotel, the Washington Athletic Center.

and the terminal is open to the public during business hours.

And we are here today to recommend council approve this renewal.

Next slide.

Renewals are granted by ordinance by City Council, and they detail the terms and conditions of the permit, including the fees.

And for 2021, this fee will be $32,736.

The maintenance and inspection obligations and the amortization to protect the city, and any insurance or bond requirements.

And when we do term permits with the University of Washington, we don't normally have a bond requirement because they are a large institution and we have a good partnership with them and we know that they're going to be around for quite a long time and not walk away from the tunnel and not have to remove it.

And then we also accept the fact that the University of Washington is self-insured and we have a whole process and established procedures for that.

Next slide.

Here are some images of the tunnel currently.

It looks pretty bleak.

That's because it was during COVID when these were taken and downtown workers and visitors and other people were not using them just because nobody was downtown.

Normally, there are lots of people walking back and forth between the properties.

There's different kiosks and food vending things, and it's a very lively and well-used pedestrian concourse tunnel.

Next slide, please.

We are here to seek your approval for this renewal.

And like Lish also mentioned, we're moving to a 15-year term and one renewable 15-year term for all term permits.

And so this one, if you grant it, will be in effect till 2036. And the UW might apply for an additional 15-year term after that to 2051. And that's the end of my presentation.

And I'm here if you have any questions.

Thank you, Amy.

Council members, any questions about the renewal of this term permit for an underground pedestrian tunnel?

Oh, yes, Council Member Morales.

Well, I'm just going to show my ignorance here.

Can you explain why UW owns this tunnel in the first place?

So I'm not I know generally list probably knows very specifically so the Fairmont Hotel, the current Fairmont Hotel is the original campus of the University of Washington and the streets around there are actually owned and manages them I would we just signed a new.

10-year lease with the University of Washington to manage those streets And so they own the property kind of all around there and they are the underlying property holders for the for the parcel and Unico Vicky is here from the Unico properties that manages is the property manager If anyone can clarify that with a lot more detail go for it I Have a little bit more detail the when

The one to Union Square buildings were being built.

Unico was built those buildings and connected to the University of Washington's Metropolitan tract.

This tunnel connects to a tunnel that goes under the Fifth Avenue Theater and connects to Rainier Square.

And so it connects the The people working at the Union Square buildings to the retail opportunities at the Rainier Square block.

It also connects the office tenants of Rainier Square to the parking garage under the Hilton Hotel at the corner of 6th and University.

And so office tenants there use parking under the hotel.

Thank you.

Council members, any other questions about this renewal?

Okay, I think I'll go ahead and move it forward here.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council 120174, item five on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill be approved for forwarding to the full city council?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the September 20 City Council meeting.

Thank you, everybody, from SDOT.

Thank you very much.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

agenda item 6, resolution 32019, a resolution providing an honorary designation of Thomas Street between 1st Avenue North and 2nd Avenue North as Lenny Wilkins Way for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, colleagues.

This is a resolution from our Seattle Department of Transportation that would convey an honorary designation, Lenny Wilkins Way.

We've got Bill Laborde, former legislative aide and city council transportation expert here to give us the presentation.

Good morning.

Thanks, Council Member Peterson.

As you mentioned, Bill Laborde from the Seattle Department of Transportation.

And I'm actually going to turn over most of this presentation to my colleague, Adonis Duxworth, and I'll let him introduce himself.

Great.

Thanks, Bill.

I'm going to share my screen.

And my name is Adonis Duxworth.

I am the interim Deputy Chief of Staff at the Seattle Department of Transportation.

And I'm super excited to give this presentation as I was a member of the Seattle Supersonics organization in high school when I went to O'Day, my junior and senior year of high school from 91 to 93. So we are elated to officially rename Thomas Street between First Ave North and Second Ave North to Lenny Wilkins Way in honor of a lifetime of service both on and off the basketball court.

Lenny Wilkins arrived in Seattle in 1968 and he has been a three-time all-star And he was the coach of the Seattle Supersonics when they won the NBA World Championship in 1979. And as we all know, when we win big championships, it's a big deal.

I was four when my parents were there, and I guess it was a very, very, very exciting time in Seattle.

In the years since his basketball career, Lenny has been an unwavering champion of civic engagement efforts across our region.

from the Lenny Wilkins Foundation for Children, Youth Sports, to his work with the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic and Seattle Children's Hospital.

We're very proud of Lenny's contributions to not only the city of Seattle, but also the entire region.

And as we look back on his legacy, we're also looking towards the future.

with the new Climate Pledge Arena nearly complete and ready to host our Seattle Storm and the new Seattle Crackin' Hockey Team, as well as concerts and other community events.

The future is looking bright along the new Lenny Wilkins Way.

The Seattle Department of Transportation continues to invest in mobility enhancements, safe travel options, equitable access to transportation, and critically important climate action goals.

As we envision the future of the Uptown neighborhood, and the city of Seattle as a whole, we appreciate the many civic contributions that Lenny Wilkins continues to share with us each day.

So opening up some questions there.

Thank you.

Thank you for bringing this forward and for sharing that with us.

Colleagues, any questions about this honorary designation for Lenny Wilkins?

And when this comes to the full city council, will we have others who might be a part of the presentation?

My understanding is that there'll be a representative, at least from the foundation, at the full council meeting.

And there is also in the works a celebration planning for probably late October for the unveiling of the street sign.

Great.

Thank you.

Council members, any questions about the resolution before we vote on it?

Thank you.

Thank you again for that presentation and for bringing this to us.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of the resolution 32019, item six on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the resolution.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that resolution be approved for forwarding to the full city council.

Gonzalez?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the resolution pass will be sent to the September 20th City Council meeting.

Thank you again for that presentation.

Thank you, Paul.

Okay, well, we've got two more items, council members.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item seven, presentation, Seattle Department of Transportation's use of a cyclica technology for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

Colleagues, as promised, we'll hear an update on the transportation management technology called a Cyclica.

As I understand it, our Seattle Department of Transportation has decided to phase out and replace that traffic information technology by December of this year, but we promised the public we would hear more about this technology, so I wanted to keep it on our agenda.

Cyclica tracks travel times.

with the goal of helping traffic flow, which is a valuable tool.

However, it needed greater scrutiny after issues were discovered regarding a company with whom the city previously contracted.

So we'll hear from SDOT about how these issues were addressed and look forward to what's going to happen in the future.

Well, we want to ensure that it is in fact phased out in just the next four months or so.

It means a separate surveillance impact report for maybe moot because the city won't be using the technology going forward.

So when our city auditor provides his look back on retroactive technologies next year, we can have him double check the technologies that SDOT has in place for traffic management.

But let's hear now from our panelists from both SDOT and our Seattle Office of Information Technology.

and our city council central staff.

Please.

Morning.

Hello, everyone.

I'm Jason Cambridge from SDOT.

Morning.

I guess I'll go ahead and get started.

So I am the data and technology manager for the operations division at SDOT, and I'm responsible for managing both the acyclica and license plate reader systems.

Just as a quick update, we completed the council review for license plate readers in 2019, and as Councilmember Peterson stated, we're requesting that we hold the CERT submission for acyclica because, you know, we've investigated and aligned on an alternative that we feel should provide greater benefit to both SDOT and the community.

So yeah, we use both of these to gather travel time information to improve our decision-making.

We also provide it to the public so no travelers can make more informed trip planning decisions.

The license plate readers were originally installed in 2011. So at this point, they're just an aging legacy technology.

It's end of life.

It's no longer supported by the vendors.

So we certainly need to come up with an alternative for that.

And in 2019, we recommended that that alternative would be a cyclica.

Similarly, a Cyclica is also a hardware-based solution, so it's installed in traffic cabinets throughout our city.

We began deploying that system in 2014. We've completed a pretty exhaustive analysis of alternatives.

We even published a white paper at that time about our findings.

We built in the privacy requirements.

A Cyclica even hired an independent security firm to perform an audit.

And there's never been a breach or other incident that would cause concern regarding their privacy practices.

When we did engage with that relationship with Aciclica through an intermediary, you know, Aciclica was functioning as an independent company.

And then in 2018, Aciclica was acquired by FLIR.

And we were familiar with FLIR.

They're big players in the transportation space.

But then in May of this year, FLIR was acquired by Teledyne.

So, you know, from our perspective, the relationship was just getting a bit diluted.

We're still working with the same small team, but you know, there's improvements to alternatives.

So now we just feel like, hey, it's time to modernize.

And we're committed to the substantial removal of both these systems by the end of the year, and ultimately requesting that both LPR and the cyclica be removed from the surveillance ordinance master list.

Next slide, please.

So that solution is probe data.

So we did look at it back in 2014 when we ultimately selected a Cyclica, but it wasn't mature enough yet.

The data mainly focused on highways and less on city streets, but today with the emergence of TNCs like Uber and Lyft, there's just more connected vehicles out there.

There's fleet management systems and probe data has just become much more attractive and a viable alternative.

So what is it?

So there's big vendors out there, TomTom, Here.com, Inrix, And they enter into business relationships and acquire connected vehicle movement data from automotive manufacturers, GPS providers, in-vehicle navigation systems, trucking companies, fleet service providers.

And then they provide back to consumers just speed and travel time data, which contains nothing that's personally identifiable.

So basically, this approach completely removes SDOT from the data collection process that we're currently engaged in with both LPR and Acyclica.

And we'll simply be consumers of data that's already out there.

If we go this direction or not, this data is already available.

And transportation agencies across the country, I've done some research, Los Angeles Metro, Bellevue, our neighbors there, New York City, Washington DC, about 30 different agencies have already transitioned to this approach.

So we would certainly not be tip of the spear.

And we also hired a consultant to review the accuracy of the data from eight different vendors.

And they produced a report confirming, you know, that it is indeed a viable alternative, at least from a data accuracy perspective.

And, you know, moving this direction, it really aids our department's core goals of improving safety and equity while also, you know, reducing our climate impact.

So we really see it as a win-win for both SDOT and the community.

So now we'll have speed information for the entire city.

Currently, if we need to know the speed of a corridor and we need to set up equipment and do a study, and now we'll have speed information for every major arterial in our city.

And it can provide benefit to multiple different teams and initiatives within our organization.

It can be tied to our speed limit reduction safety goals.

And as we are, you know, reaching our climate goals becomes more of a focus for our organization, we'll have metrics and be able to strategize and see, you know, what is the success criteria that we're trying to reach as we work towards, you know, our climate initiatives and goals.

And additionally, it increases equity.

Now we only have data from the streets that are outfitted with either the LPR or Cyclica hardware, but when we move to probe data, all neighborhoods will be represented equally.

So we'll have the same amount and types of data for all the neighborhoods in our city, which will allow us to just hopefully reduce bias from our decision-making and empower our engineers to just be more equitable in the way they approach projects.

So we've submitted to ITD privacy reviews for the top probe data vendors, and Omari from the privacy team is going to discuss the results of that evaluation.

Omari?

Good morning, committee.

Thank you, Jason.

So, yes, as Jason mentioned, he followed the kind of IT policy for reviewing new acquisitions, and we do these reviews on technologies to make sure they are not running into any privacy or surveillance concerns.

So from the information that was provided by Jason and the vendor, we can confirm that these solutions do not contain any personally identifiable information.

The vendors are essentially aggregating and all of the data is anonymized before it even reaches any of the kind of other consumers of the data.

And most importantly, from our perspective, this solution no longer relies on the license plates.

So although SDOT was not in possession of any of the license plates, they were being sent to WatchDot and so there was potential for license plate data to be included in that.

These solutions do not include that or any other unique identifier.

So with a Cyclica, there was the Mac addresses that are used on mobile devices.

And again, even though there was a complex encryption method that was used to anonymize those Mac addresses, they are being completely removed from the equation.

So there's no identifiable information at all in this data stream.

And so as a result of our review, these solutions do not meet the definition provided in Seattle Municipal Code 1418, the surveillance ordinance, as SDOT's receiving a feed of that data that already exists.

And this data does not include any personally identifiable information and is not analyzing the movements of any specific individuals.

Thank you.

I want to commend SDOT for doing the due diligence on the new technology here so that we could have a better solution in place going forward and provide that traffic management data in a better way.

And I know it's a lot of work when you always have to keep renewing things and looking for better ways of doing things and to do all that due diligence again and to start over on it.

So thank you for doing that.

I also want to thank information technology folks.

Just this entire process that we've gone through with the surveillance ordinance, it's amazing how seamless it's been in terms of IT working with all the departments through the city who have different technologies.

It's the collaborative approach and the executive on this issue has been really helpful.

So I just wanted to compliment really involved in in bringing these technologies to us.

We'll see that in our next in our next item when we talk about the fire department items that will be will be hopefully approving.

But council members, any questions about this technology that's now going to be phased out this year?

And Lisa Kay, just so you know, Lisa Kay on central staff has been tracking this carefully for us.

So if there are no questions that council members have today, I encourage you to follow up with our city council central staff who can also provide you the information on this.

Okay, well, I want to thank both SDOT and the Information Technology folks for bringing this presentation to us.

These materials are online, too, for those viewing this, if they want to check out more of this.

But we can go ahead and move on to the next item, which is also surveillance-related.

All right, council members, let's go ahead and have our committee clerk read the next and final item into the record.

Agenda Item 8, Council Bill 120171, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting surveillance impact reports for the Seattle Fire Department's use of emergency scene cameras and hazardous materials cameras for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, this is a, Council Bill 120171 is a single piece of legislation that includes two surveillance impact reports on technologies used by our fire department, hazardous materials, cameras used during hazardous material incidents, and then cameras for other emergency scenes.

We'll discuss and vote on this legislation, which will complete batch 4A of our technology list.

list of existing surveillance technologies that we've been approving under the surveillance ordinance.

You'll see when we talk about these technologies, they're really just cameras, but we want to make sure that we honor the definition in the ordinance for surveillance technology, and so they've been included in the list, and so we've gone through the full process here.

So let's go ahead and Um, and I did want to offer an opportunity to Lisa K. If she did want to say anything and thank her for her memo that she circulated on this.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

I think I have some comments that I can make to introduce the legislation after after the fire department talks a little bit more about what the cameras do and how they're used.

Thank you.

All right, hello.

My name is Evan Ward.

I'm here with the Seattle Fire Department.

I'm the Privacy Champion, Public Disclosure Officer, and so on here.

Thank you for having me.

Hopefully you can hear me okay.

I'm sure my voice is a little obscured.

I need to wear face coverings since I do have colleagues around me.

So I'm here, and as Council Member Peterson accurately described, this is actually like a really simple technology that we all use all the time.

They're just your typical digital point-and-shoot cameras.

But we use them in really three ways.

So, Vin, if we could proceed, please.

So, perfect.

So really, I don't want to go into too much about the actual, like, the make and model of these cameras, but really how we use them.

So as you can see, we've got a chief here holding one of the cameras.

Now, he is a safety chief.

Essentially, they will show up to certain incidents where a firefighter potentially could have been injured.

They're not taking pictures even of the firefighters or any other individuals.

This is simply to document certain equipment use and stuff like that.

They also show up to traffic collisions involving SFD apparatus.

So to be clear, just SFD apparatus, we don't take pictures of any people.

We only take pictures of the vehicles involved when the collision involves a Seattle Fire Department vehicle.

So those are used for our traffic, our collision investigations internally.

And then we also have a, it's on our, in our policies and operating guidelines or POGs for short, related to using cameras at certain medical emergencies.

Now, This is extremely rare.

I've spoken to paramedics and folks at our medic battalion.

This is extremely rare.

But if they are going to use it, it is a camera that is stored in the drug safe on the apparatus.

So that's like where all the controlled drugs are.

So you need a passcode.

It has a full audit log you can see to whoever uses it.

So we take it very seriously if we're going to actually take pictures of a patient.

The only reason we would do that is to document the mechanism of injury and as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words.

So it can be useful to provide some visual information to emergency room staff when we transfer the patient to their care.

Now we have strict policies also that we do not retain those photos of patients.

Those are immediately deleted from the camera.

They never leave the camera itself.

And they literally take the camera and they go up to the ER doctors and just show them those pictures and then they delete them.

And then it goes back into the controlled drug safe.

So that's really the three ways we use them.

Now in terms of protection, we, For like the traffic collisions involving Seattle Fire Department vehicles, those are stored on a department database that is safe and secure and accessible only to the safety chiefs themselves.

They are used for essentially just investigating our own collisions.

So I hope that's clear.

The other thing is about those medic response.

Like I said, we don't store them.

The cameras themselves are kept in an incredibly secure location inside a safe on only certain medic apparatus.

So there's also access controls when it comes to that.

Like I said, there's a pin code needed and everything, so it's only those paramedics that can use it.

And it's only on our few medic units that provide advanced life support.

So it's not something that's on every one of our rigs.

And then the safety chiefs as well.

that they, excuse me, our fire investigators also use cameras for documenting certain types of fire incidents.

So we generally perform a fire investigation when there is potentially suspected arson, though we are not the arson investigators.

That is done by the Seattle Police's arson and bomb squad.

But the, Pictures we do take for our fire investigations are stored on a secure CJIS database, only accessible by members of our fire investigation unit, which is a very small team.

So I think we can move on from our emergency scene cameras.

If you don't mind, Vin.

Excellent.

So the next is hazardous materials cameras.

And I think it's actually, I would say it's more like a hazardous material camera.

And to be clear of what this is, it is literally an iPad that they use.

and the HAZMAT team, if they're showing up to a HAZMAT response, and there aren't that many, but they will take that iPad, put it in front of them, and walk around to show via a live feed to the captain of the HAZMAT unit on the rig.

There's a monitor on that rig, and it's just streamed in real time, and all that is is to basically give the captain a a good visual line of sight on what may be inside a building.

It's possible for them to record or take snapshots.

My experience though is that that is extremely uncommon.

Generally if there's going to be some sort of investigation done that'll be handled by our fire investigation unit.

So like I said my experience and speaking with the captain of our hazmat unit actually storing, taking pictures or videos is extremely rare.

When it's done, it is stored on a secure Seattle Fire Department database, accessible only to members of that Hazmat team.

So I think that's really it, in terms of, and I hope that's all clear and makes sense.

Thank you, Evan.

And now we'll hear from our city council central staff analyst, Lisa Kane, who tracks all these surveillance items for us.

And there is also an amendment, amendment number one on the agenda, which was recommended by central staff.

And we'll talk about that as well.

Take it away, Lisa.

Okay, thank you, Chair Peterson, and thank you, Vin, for offering to run my slides.

It's very helpful.

I really appreciate it.

I'm Lisa Kay.

My staff memo begins on page 387 of your agenda materials.

That would be because the surveillance impact reports are very long.

I'll be brief in this introduction to the legislation, though.

So Council Bill 120.171 would approve the fire department's continued use of these emergency scene cameras and hazardous materials cameras and accept the surveillance impact reports for each one of them.

So, you know, this fire department does plan to adopt more detailed operating policies for these cameras following negotiations with labor partners.

And you'll hear a little bit more about that later on.

As Evan explained, the emergency scene cameras are used to provide images of trauma patients to emergency room doctors by the fire investigation unit and to help document safety investigations of collisions involving fire department vehicles.

Next slide, please.

The hazardous materials cameras, as Evan said, are Apple iPad cameras used together with encrypted video conferencing to help identify potentially hazardous materials from a safe distance.

Next slide, please.

The fire department received really very limited public comment on these two technologies.

I think they had two comments on each type of camera.

But the Community Surveillance Working Group did submit a number of recommendations in its 2018 Civil Liberties and Privacy Impact Assessment.

Those recommendations focused primarily on the purpose and use of the cameras, retention of data, and sharing of that data with third parties, especially law enforcement agencies.

You'll see on pages four to nine of my staff report additional detail about those recommendations, including a table that summarizes whether and how the recommendations were addressed in the surveillance impact report.

Next slide, please.

Pages 10 and 11 of the staff memo lists several policy considerations drawn from my review of the surveillance impact report and of the surveillance working groups recommendations.

The first one is really process oriented.

It just notes that many citations in the Surveillance Impact Report note that the department is developing more comprehensive operating policies that would become effective if supported during upcoming labor negotiations.

So in some ways, the SIR is still a little bit of a work in progress.

The next three considerations identify policies that haven't yet been addressed in the current version of the Surveillance Impact Report.

including guidelines for transferring the photos or videos off the cameras, retention requirements other than for injury photos, requirements for how and when data is shared with law enforcement, and specific privacy protections for individuals.

Next slide, please.

So should the committee choose to act today, then you have at least two options that would address these considerations.

The first one would be to pass a single amendment requesting that the fire department file a revised surveillance impact report with the clerk following labor negotiations.

This option recognizes that the fire department intends to update the current policies and the amendment would flag policy areas of interest to the council.

The surveillance ordinance requires that any material changes would bring the surveillance impact report back for council approval.

and that's the amendment that Council Member Peterson referenced is included in your packet.

Alternatively, the committee could pass amendments today that request that the Fire Department develop specific policies or protocols if there's concern that these may not be addressed in the Fire Department's updated policies.

Council Member Peterson, would you like me to go ahead and introduce your amendment also?

Yes, thank you.

Okay, Ben, can we have the next slide?

There we go.

So as I mentioned, Council Member Peterson has sponsored Amendment 1, which would enact the first option.

It asks that the fire department prepare a revised surveillance impact report with more comprehensive policies following negotiations that would address the use and operation of the cameras, privacy protections, record retention schedules.

So the fire department is already subject to the state retention schedule, but those just haven't been the policy and operating guidelines, the POGs that Evan mentioned.

And then another that the policies would address protocols for sharing data with law enforcement and training.

That is what I have to present to you today.

Thank you, Lisa.

And thanks to Evan and the Fire Department.

And thanks for IT for working, you know, you're part of the process here for us.

Council Member Herbold,

Thanks.

Lisa, can you go back to the slide where you have listed the options?

Thank you.

So one option is the option that Council Member Chair Peterson is proposing, and that's the first bullet.

And you're saying that there's a second option where there are subject-specific amendments.

But those, I just want to understand, that second option is just the approach of separating out the amendments that Council Member Peterson is already proposing.

Is that correct?

Yes, pretty much.

Okay.

I just wanted to make sure that, um, that it's still, um, the second option was still a, um, a request of a revised SIR and not that you were saying that we could require, um, these changes because the information that I recall receiving in the past when we've raised issues of changes that we wanted in the CERF is that we don't have the option of requiring changes.

We only have an option of requesting them.

The fact that they have to come back to us and we have to approve it before they can use the technology is definitely a hook.

But given that most of what we're approving are backlogged technologies, if I recall correctly, that are already in use, that hook isn't quite as effective as it would be with new technologies.

Exactly right.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And thank you, Lisa, for presenting the Amendment 1. There's just the one amendment, folks, and I'll make the motions to incorporate that amendment.

But are there any other questions about these two, about the cameras?

I'll go ahead and make the motions.

First, I'll put the overall bill on the table, and then I'll move to accept Amendment 1. Council members, I now move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 120171, item eight on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

I'd now like to move to amend Council Bill 120171 as presented as amendment one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Will there be any comments on the amendment?

OK, will the clerk please call the roll on approval of Amendment 1?

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

That's five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries to incorporate Amendment 1 into the bill.

Any comments on the bill as amended?

OK.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the bill as amended be approved for forwarding to the full council?

Gonzalez?

Sorry, yes.

Herbal?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Stress?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill as amended be sent to the September 20th City Council meeting is approved.

Well, Council Members, this concludes our committee for September 15, 2021, Transportation Utilities Committee.

We will plan to meet again on December 1st.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.

Recording stopped.