Good morning.
Today is January 6th, 2020, and the time is 9.30 a.m.
I was pausing because my notes say 2019. This is the regularly scheduled council briefing meeting of the Seattle City Council, and we are in council chambers.
I am joined, I am Council President Pro Tem Shama Sawant and we're joined by Council Members Herbold, Strauss, Peterson, Lewis, Morales, and Gonzalez.
We know Council Member Mosqueda is on parental leave and Council Member Juarez has sent her apologies.
Welcome to everybody, especially Council Members who are newly taking office.
If there is no objection, the minutes of December 16th, 2019 will be adopted.
Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.
Per the council rules, I as a senior council member for this first meeting will act as council president until the council president is elected at the beginning of the city council meeting this afternoon at 2 p.m.
At this point in the briefing, as many of you are familiar, the time is provided for each council member to briefly announce any upcoming committee meetings, legislation or other announcements that you would like to highlight for other council members and for the members of the public who might be watching live or listening to Seattle Channel or may watch later on recording.
All those committee reports, we also have, after all those committee reports, we also have an executive session.
As is the case after every new council election, there are new council committees formed.
And in the resolution making those committee assignments on the agenda for today's city council meeting, which we will be voting on, I will be chairing, my office will be chairing the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee, which will hold a regularly scheduled meeting on the fourth Tuesday of each month.
So the first regularly scheduled meeting of the committee will be on the 28th of this month at 2 p.m.
And in the past, my office has often looked for opportunities to hold committee meetings in the evenings and on weekends to make them more accessible to the public.
So we will let you know in advance when we intend to do that in the coming year.
But this meeting is scheduled for chambers at 2 p.m.
And on the whole, the committee will be discussing and acting on renters' rights legislation such as relevant to rent control, economic eviction protections, 180-day notice for rent increases, portable background checks for renters, a winter eviction moratorium, and a Green New Deal for Seattle and the accompanying legislation to make a Green New Deal happen.
Most immediately as Council Members Herbold and Gonzalez are aware, I have brought forward a legislation based on a recommendation from the Renters Commission to have a moratorium on winter evictions.
And we'll be discussing that in the committee and there are some recommended amendments from central staff.
We would like to have a discussion on that, so we welcome Council Member input on that.
Are you anticipating discussion of this piece of legislation at the first committee meeting?
Yes.
We're hoping to have it voted on as soon as possible.
Obviously, it's not just about this winter.
It's about every, on an ongoing basis, we want to make sure that we have a humane policy towards renters and evicting renters onto the streets in the winter is especially something that we would like to avoid.
But we would like to have it voted on as soon as possible.
So we're hoping on the 28th, we will be discussing that.
On other topics, one week from today, I would urge everybody to join me and the dynamic fighting labor leader, Sarah Nelson, who is the president of the Flight Attendants Union, and hundreds of our friends and neighbors as we not only have my inauguration, but also launch the 2020 Tax Amazon Movement.
The rally will be held at Washington Hall on January 13th at 6 p.m.
And as we know, there is a great need for affordable housing funding and for services funding.
We've just had an election that virtually in all the districts has shown that voters want a city that is actually affordable and livable for everybody, not a city that just works for the largest corporations like Amazon and other corporations like Amazon.
And so we want to make sure that we use that mandate responsibly and make sure that we don't lose the momentum.
And I know many council members will be holding your public swearing-in ceremony both today, and I think some of you also have it in your district, and I know you'll be announcing that.
But I wanted to make clear that the January 13th rally, in my case, is both an inauguration of the office and also a launch for the TaxAmazon movement.
And we are really, really lucky to have Sarah Nelson coming, who will be speaking not only will be swearing me in, but also will be speaking about the need to make cities and metropolitan areas affordable for working people.
Over the past week, we have seen the Trump administration hurtling the U.S. towards war in Iran, first with bombing raids and then with assassination.
Most recently, you may all have read this article in the New York Times, which, you know, titled, U.S.
Stops Dozens of Iranian Americans Returning from Canada.
in which citizens of Iranian descent, just because they are Iranian, often families with small children are being detained at the Canadian border over the weekend.
I'm sure we all agree this is completely unacceptable and the city of Seattle should take a clear position against both war with Iran and against racial profiling of people of Iranian descent.
My staff is drafting a resolution and I really welcome participation from other council members.
If you would like to have input on the resolution or co-sponsored it or both, please let my staff know.
I would be, I would really welcome that and we're hoping that we can get that voted on as soon as possible.
And I would now welcome Council Member Herbold to share her comments.
Thank you so much.
I just want to welcome the new council members.
I'm really looking forward to to the upcoming year and the opportunity for us all to work together towards a more just city in 2020. I have no items on the full council agenda from the Civil Rights, Utilities, Economic Development, and Arts Committee.
This afternoon, and my committee should the resolution that we will be deliberating on today at 2, my committee will be the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.
It will be meeting for the first time on January 14th at 9.30 a.m.
And that's all I have for today.
Thank you Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Strauss.
Yes, good morning.
I also have no full items on the full council agenda this afternoon.
We do have the fourth quarter supplemental, which was not voted on last year due to quorum issues, highlighting that.
Thank you Councilmember Gonzalez for you and your team's work on creating the resolution regarding committees.
Should it pass this afternoon, I will be chairing the Planning, Land Use, Zoning, and Neighborhoods Committee, which will meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays in the morning.
We will not be having our committee meeting the second Wednesday.
And so our first committee meeting will be January 22nd.
I'd also like to welcome my staff, Alison McLean, Lena Tebu, Peter Nguyen, Noah Ahn.
And we will be opening a district office tomorrow and doing a short walking tour.
The first of many walking tours throughout the district.
And I am excited to get to work for District Six in the city of Seattle.
Thank you so welcome councilmembers Morales Lewis and Strauss it's nice to not be the new one here anymore so since committee assignments haven't been finalized there's nothing from me coming to full council today, but stuff in District 4, we did have our office hours.
Last week, we had our first in-district office hours, Fridays and 4, and we'll be meeting every week with District 4 residents at Magnuson Park, Building 30, from 3 p.m.
to 6 p.m.
You can sign up on our website, and it's something that I promised to do over the last year, is set up these consistent district office hours, so we're already off to a good start.
We heard from several people.
One of the more interesting requests was about increasing or making our community centers stronger.
So there was talk about Green Lake, there was talk about Lake City, and also Magnuson Park community centers.
Last week I announced my intention to introduce a resolution to expand our fiscal note so that it examines carbon impacts.
And I believe that measuring and assessing our city's carbon emissions and fossil fuel use is the first step to producing some additional actionable progress on climate change.
This council passed the Green New Deal before some of us got here.
We want to keep that momentum going.
And so I look forward to working with central staff, the Office of Sustainability and Environment, the mayor's office, and my colleagues on this initiative to expand the fiscal note Tonight, after the council meeting, I'll be meeting with the Cub Scout, PAC 167, which is part of District 4. We'll be showing them around the council chambers and talking to them about how young people can get involved in making our city better.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Lewis.
Thank you, Council Member Sawant.
Just to echo the comments my colleagues earlier very excited to be here coming in with councilmember Strauss councilmember Morales and and to look forward to the the mentorship of the the wise long-serving councilmember Peterson Who's been here for two months longer than us and it's great to be here with all of you at this table who are here for the first time or who are returning and and I am very excited to get to work for the people of District 7. I want to first introduce my staff, some of whom are in the audience here today.
Camila Brown, Jacob Thorpe, Parker Dawson, and Catherine Sims will be here working with me to help represent the people of District 7 and make some material progress on the challenges that we're facing.
I look forward this week to sending out our first newsletter to the district where I'll be able to introduce my staff who will be just as integral a part of that service as I will be as a council member.
And I'm really looking forward to sharing their backgrounds, their bios, their life experiences with all the people of District 7 and how they can be a partner in service and government.
Additionally, tomorrow evening I'll be attending a meeting of the Magnolia Community Council.
It's my intention to either personally or have a staff representative present at every community council meeting in my district on a regular basis from Pioneer Square all the way to Magnolia to Queen Anne and to have that real sustained presence and communication.
And I look forward to letting everyone know how it went when we're back here next Monday.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you so much for welcoming us, newbies, to the Council.
I'm looking forward to representing the people of District 2 and making sure that we are in service to them.
I wanted to let folks know that next Monday, we will be having an in-district, a community swearing-in at El Centro de la Raza at 6 p.m.
I'm sorry we will be missing your event, but we look forward to hearing about it and participating later.
And also, assuming that our resolution passes on committees, I will be chairing the Community Economic Development Committee, which I'm very excited about.
Our focus will be on the changes that need to happen in order to build community wealth, particularly among communities of color and low-income folks.
You may have seen the article in the paper today by Naomi Ishizaka talking about one of the small businesses in the Central District that is really struggling.
And I think there's a lot that our city can do to make sure that we are keeping our legacy businesses, protecting our small businesses, and making sure that our neighborhood business districts are the kind of places where our communities can thrive.
And I'm looking forward to doing that work on behalf of all of our neighbors.
Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.
Good morning.
Thank you, Council President Pro Tem Sawant.
That's a lot of words.
Welcome to all of you to the new year.
Happy New Year to everyone and welcome to the new council members.
Really excited about what 2020 brings for all of us.
It's going to be a really exciting year and really looking forward to all of the good work that I think we're going to be able to do as a city council, now one of the most progressive city councils in the country.
So I think that our reputation precedes us and we have a lot of work to do to rise to the occasion and looking forward to working with all of you on those particular issues.
For me, I have three bills on the introduction and referral calendar for consideration this afternoon during city Council full agenda.
Those three bills are all related to the Clean Campaigns Act.
We have decided to separate the three bills they were Introduced as one bill, but because we want to avoid any potential single-subject issue challenges we have decided to to separate all of those bills into three bills that stand on their own.
The first bill will be related to requiring additional disclosure by commercial advertisers as it relates to political ads both during on and off election years and it also will cover policy advocacy.
We have heard from some stakeholders, specifically the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, that they want to make sure that that particular bill is reconciled with existing rules around lobbying and potential changes that they're considering proposing to the City Council for adoption.
related to lobbying activities.
So we intend to vote that bill at a committee tomorrow morning, but it'll likely be subject to some additional refinement before full council on January 13th.
The second bill is related to prohibiting foreign-influenced corporations from making campaign contributions, both directly to a campaign and to packs of any sort in the city consistent with federal law.
That bill does have currently some language that relates to and is connected with the SuperPAC bill, which is the third bill.
So we're going to be working with Council Central staff, Liz Schwitzen in particular, to see if we can do a little bit of cleanup on that bill to be able to get it ready in time for Voting it out of committee on Monday.
Excuse me voting it out of committee tomorrow, but then having it for full council consideration on Monday and then lastly the third bill is the bill that would Create reasonable regulations on independent expenditure activity by what are commonly referred to as super PACs and we have some additional stakeholder engagement work that we need to do and on that bill, and we also have some additional legislative record that we would like to build in order to make sure that we can bolster our legal arguments in defense of that particular piece of legislation.
So all of those three bills are on the introduction referral calendar.
All three will be discussed in the Select Committee on Campaign Finance Reform.
that is scheduled for tomorrow morning here in Chambers at 9.30 a.m.
That is a committee of the whole, which means that all council members are invited to attend.
I believe we set the quorum at three, so I need at least two more bodies in Chambers to be able to hold.
That particular select committee will be making the rounds later this afternoon to confirm folks' attendance to make sure that we have the quorum necessary to convene the Select Committee on Campaign Finance Reform tomorrow morning at 9.30.
We will be voting and discussing and possibly voting two of the three bills out and on the third bill we will continue to do some additional stakeholder engagement to ensure that we have done the work that we need to do in the background to make sure that folks are comfortable with both the new responsibilities and obligations under that particular bill.
And I want to thank Councilmember Herbold who has agreed to work on this issue in my absence during the first quarter of this year.
And really appreciate her willingness to continue to work with us and to work with my staff on seeing it over the finish line in terms of the stakeholder engagement.
And we'll pick it back up.
beginning of quarter two when I return from maternity leave.
The next thing on the full council agenda that I'm assuming I'm gonna talk about because I'm the only one left on the council that was part of the committee, which is the finance and neighborhoods report on the quarter four supplemental budget.
That is a pretty standard bill that will allow us to amend the budget for 2019 to add additional expenditures and revenues related to quarter four as Councilmember Strauss mentioned we were unable to vote on this at the end of the year due to some quorum issues and so now we have the requisite number of council members in attendance for this full council this afternoon and we will consider that particular vote.
The last thing is there are three resolutions one related to establishing the council's committee structure for 2020 and 2021 and providing Assignments to all council members related to regional and external committee assignments and then establishing a pro tem council president pro-tem schedule for quarter one First up will be councilmember herbal to follow by councilmember Juarez and then in March it will be councilmember Mosqueda.
So really want to appreciate Everybody's willingness to continue to provide input and to work on all those resolutions.
I'm really excited about what is in front of us in terms of how we are going to continue to do our work.
A little bit of a culture shift for us as a city council, but one that I think is important and one that I think will result in a lot of productive work for us as the legislative branch of the city.
And then lastly, I will say that I will be at the conclusion of today's full council meeting asking to be excused for the first three months of this month to be able to bond and welcome my first baby.
And we'll be really looking forward to being able to step away for three months to take maternity leave.
This weekend was super exciting for us because My husband got to apply, go online and apply for Washington State's new paid family medical leave insurance, which my office did a lot of advocacy around and organizing for in conjunction with a lot of the labor and.
working family organizations at the state level.
So it was pretty historic to be able to sit in our living room and going through the process of applying for him to be able to qualify for that wonderful benefit.
So I'm really excited that thousands of workers across the state beginning January 1st, 2020 are now able to go through the same exercise and be able to take some time with pay to be able to bond with a new child.
And I was really excited to be able to be a part of that.
So I'm excited.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Gonzalez.
If there are no further comments, we'll move to the executive session scheduled for today.
There's a standard script for starting an executive session, which I will read now.
As presiding officer, I am announcing that the Seattle City Council will now convene an executive session.
The purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending or potential litigation.
The council's executive sessions are an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with city attorneys as authorized by law.
A legal monitor from the city attorney's office is always present to ensure the council reserves questions of policy for open sessions.
I expect the executive session to end by and end in 40 minutes, so by 9.36 or so.
Sorry, 10.36, not 9.36.
And if the executive session is to be extended beyond that time, I will announce the extension and the expected duration.