Seattle City Council Briefing 2/7/22

are recording.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is Monday, February 7th, and the council meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.01.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Herbold.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Mosqueda.

Nelson.

Present.

Peterson.

Present.

Council President Juarez.

I'm here.

Seven, present.

Great.

Thank you.

Let's go on to approval of the minutes.

There is no objection.

The minutes of January 31st will be adopted.

Hearing or seeing no objections, the minutes are adopted.

Move on to the President's Report.

Normally, I don't have a lot to say on the President's Report, but I have a little bit more today.

On today's agenda, we will be hearing from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

And also, I understand Council Member Strauss will be proposing a proclamation.

And with that, I'd like to give you a few updates.

As you can see, for tomorrow, we're going to kind of start a new format on the approval of the consent calendar.

You will notice on tomorrow's council agenda, there is a new section titled approval of the consent calendar.

I would like to share with you a few things to know about how we plan to use the consent calendar.

A consent calendar will contain routine items that can be approved in one motion near the beginning of the council meeting.

Any item can be removed from the consent calendar at the request of a council member.

If an item is removed, it will be taken up immediately following the adoption of the consent calendar.

To begin, only the following items will be approved on the consent calendar, and that is the council minutes and the IRC.

In the near future, we will also include appointments that have already been heard in committee, the payroll bill, and possibly any other clerk files or council bills that have already been heard in committee and also are routine.

And again, we're still just kind of working out the bugs.

This isn't written in stone.

There's opportunity and movement to change things.

if people have different opinions about that.

This process is similar to the budget consent package wherein a number of items are approved with one vote, but also any item can be pulled and heard individually and voted on individually at the request of any council member.

The consent calendar is a tool used by legislative bodies to handle routine items publicly and in a more expedious way.

So what I'm trying to do is just moving along the briefing.

So there's more opportunity for council members to talk about what they did last week, what they did this week, what they're going to do next week.

I don't need you to read your whole journal and the diary into the record.

I know council member Strauss isn't happy about that, but so that's hopefully where we're heading.

So next we're going to have another wonderful report from our great state legislative team.

Gail Tarlington is the interim director, and I will hand it over to Gail for briefing and discussion.

Gail?

Thank you, Council President Juarez, and hello to all of the council members.

It is Happy Fiscal Cutoff Day in Olympia for the House and the Senate side, and I do refer to it as Happy Fiscal Cutoff Day because now We know what's coming before us for the next five weeks before the end of session.

So I know many of you have made yourself available at the last minute to speak with testimony in front of the virtual Olympia and to raise concerns as well as interests and commitment to colleagues in the Seattle delegation working hard for all of us.

So thank you so much for that.

And I'm going to turn it over to Quinn Majewski, our state relations director, who is back.

In the game, yay.

And to Elsa Brown, our state lobbyist.

And I think Elsa is gonna kick it off and Sierra Howlett Brown will have a couple of things to pass on regarding the federal affairs portfolio after Elsa and Quinn.

So Elsa, your call.

Yeah, thank you, Director Tarleton.

We really appreciate the time before all of you.

As she mentioned, it's fiscal cutoff today.

So I would say we'll know sort of the breadth of those bills that are still moving forward at the end of today, if not now, because there are still ongoing executive session in ways and means and appropriation and in the transportation committees.

So not fully determined yet.

On the council bulletin that I shared with you all last night, Some of the bills have not made it out of policy committee.

Those have a strike through them, which means they are unlikely to move forward this session.

I think I mentioned this last week, but never say never on a bill.

There are some special cases where a bill will be considered necessary to implement the budget, in which case it is not truly dead but may come back.

It's pretty rare for a bill to be declared NTIB, so I think it's a good rule of thumb that if we've, if it hasn't made it out of committee and we've stricken it through in your bulletin that it will likely not move forward this year, but just to raise the concept that there are some exceptions to that.

Um, so we will be looking forward this next week to house of origin cut off.

So bills will need to be off the floor of their house of origin by the 15th and exciting upcoming news is also the.

We are looking forward to the expected release of the supplemental budgets for this session.

There will be a revenue forecast on the 16th and we expect the budgets for the capital operating and transportation supplemental budgets to be released soon after that revenue forecast comes in.

week or so.

And, you know, I would say Quinn will be covering some environmental priorities and transportation priority priorities in their current status, but I will touch on housing.

We are still following the middle housing proposal that the governor has introduced.

It is up for executive session and house appropriations today.

I don't believe it's yet moved, but we'll continue to watch that.

The Senate version of that bill did not move forward, so the House vehicle is sort of the sole vehicle on that policy.

I think I mentioned to you that there were some other similar concept bills.

They've been sort of either stripped down or haven't moved forward, so 1782 is the vehicle that we'll be tracking for you all moving forward.

In addition to that we're continuing to track 1880 for a preventative reuse housing benefit district bill and articulate Seattle's interest in being included in that bill and continuing to support the governor's investments in housing and homelessness and support his policy 5662 to develop a intergovernmental process between the state of Washington and the city of Seattle as well as other local jurisdictions on right-of-way issues.

Part of the governor's proposal is significant funding for housing and for operations of that intergovernmental process, so we'll continue to follow that.

I think that that's probably the top issues I would mention in the housing space.

Some of you have been asking us to follow some safety net and health care legislation this year.

Unfortunately, some of those exciting new concepts are not likely to move forward this legislative session.

That includes concepts like baby bonds and also concepts around basic income or UBI type ideas, we are not expecting significant new revenue to come out of this legislative session.

And legislators have indicated that because of some of the work that was done last year, they're probably going to be holding steady on major tax and revenue issues this year.

So some of those more innovative safety net bills are likely to be a further discussion in years to come because they would require significant new revenue.

And then I think that it was Councilmember Morales who brought up following this fertility bill.

Unfortunately, that will also not be moving forward this session.

And there's been some reproductive rights bills that are not moving forward this session.

So I think that with that, I will turn it over to Quinn for some transportation and environment policies, but available for any questions at the end about specific bills that you all may have.

Thank you Elsa.

It's a pleasure to be back with you all here.

I want to extend my, my deep thanks to to Gail and Elsa for making sure that the city was fabulously represented in my absence, and just my profound thanks to the city of Seattle for allowing me to spend some time bonding with my son Luca.

on the matter of Olympia and the state legislative session.

A few updates in environment and transportation.

The biggest in environment, unfortunately, is some bad news, although not entirely unexpected.

Senate Bill 5697, the Renew Act, which would make further improvements building on last year's EPR, extended producer responsibility legislation, building on those and more.

Further improving our state's recycling and product stewardship rules and regulations.

That did fail to advance this session.

It did move out of the policy committee, which I think is thanks to some of the really tremendous work done by SPU and the other advocates.

Unfortunately, it's not going to be moving out of the fiscal committee today.

Nonetheless, a lot of really, really positive groundwork for some really far reaching and ambitious legislation that I think will benefit us and other advocates moving into the next legislative session.

better news on the transportation front.

Some of the city's top priorities in terms of moving, extending the pilot on automated enforcement, Senate Bill 5707, and doing some some clarification around the renewals and sunsets around our transportation benefit district authority House Bill 1523, and the Senate companion.

Those have all passed out of their respective policy and fiscal committees transportation, being fiscal committee.

Those are now headed to the floor, so we'll continue to monitor those.

That's good news.

And then the other issue that I wanted to highlight is that we are expecting and have heard that House and Senate transportation leadership will be announcing their proposal for a transportation revenue package tomorrow.

This is it's very exciting.

I do want to clarify.

It is, it's probably going to be a little bit different from some of the proposals that we saw last year.

We have heard that, in contrast to those proposals, it's not going to include any new gas tax revenue.

It's going to be primarily revenues from the Climate Commitment Act, some new fees, some unused bonding capacity, and a few other things.

So it's going to be smaller.

It's going to be focused a lot on backfilling some gaps on existing projects, investing more money in maintenance and preservation, and more money in some grant programs, which the city is poised to be competitive for certainly.

So we are hopeful that we might get some funding for some city projects, which I know are of interest to you all.

We don't have confirmation yet, but we will find out tomorrow, and we'll be back with more information and details for you next week.

Is there any, oh, I see a hand up.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President Quinn.

Really great to see a congratulations on LUCA coming into this world.

My question is one that you're probably already familiar with, and I know Director Carlton is very involved with as well, which is the Ballard to Interbay Regional Transportation Corridor.

If you don't know the answer now, happy to just circle back with me offline.

I just want to make sure that some portion of that is still in the negotiations.

And just hearing what you said, focused on maintenance and preservation of existing infrastructure, this falls right in that category.

No need to provide any updates now, unless you have them at the tip of your fingers.

We'd just love to circle back to you on it.

Yeah, unfortunately, we don't have language at this point or a project list.

We expect that to come out tomorrow.

Obviously, we're hopeful about BIRT, North Aurora, and the other projects that we've been working on these past couple of years.

But we won't know for sure until tomorrow.

But we'll definitely follow up.

Is there any other, my colleagues have any other questions?

Quinn is smiling so happy now being a new dad, but yeah, that'll end.

Just giving you a hard time, Quinn.

It's good to have you back.

Is there any other questions from our colleagues before we move on and we can say goodbye to our friends at OIR?

Ciara, Council President, Ciara may have had an update, quick update on the federal relationship.

I saw her memo.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

No worries.

Hi.

The only thing of note I would mention is we were expecting and hoping for fiscal year 22 appropriations to be passed by February 18th and that's looking a lot less likely now.

They are currently negotiating a third CR, continuing resolution, that will extend that process even further and give them more negotiating time.

So just wanted to put that on our radar, too.

We had the 18th as a deadline that might be getting pushed, but any federal questions, happy to answer.

Is there any questions that we have for Sierra?

Hello, good afternoon.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has been engaged in this session.

And yes, welcome back, Quinn.

It's good to see you.

Just wanted to thank you, though, because I recognize how many bills again for the second year in a row, maybe the third.

The second year in a row that you've been dealing with remote nature and how many bills OIR is fielding.

I just, I'm so thankful for your work and to be doing this on a cutoff day is a huge sacrifice of your time.

So thanks for tracking all of this with us.

I did want to also take this quick second to talk about a bill that you may have already discussed, but I wanted to flag for all of us and the viewing public.

You know, Seattle's been generally very supportive of the Voting Rights Act legislation, whatever iteration it comes in year over year.

And this year, my understanding is that Senator Saldana had Senate Bill 5597. Unfortunately, it sounds like the Association of Washington Cities and maybe the counties have testified in opposition over the weekend.

I just wanted to make sure that we were explicit about our support for expanding and expanding access to voting and remind folks to vote by tomorrow.

for our local elections as well.

But is there any update on Senator Saldana's bill in any way that we could support Senate Bill 5597 besides just explicitly sending messages of support their way and trying to counter the message that came from our partnering association at BWC?

Thanks, Councilmember.

Appreciate you flagging that for us.

Yeah, the City of Seattle is definitely supportive of voting rights.

You know, one thing that we've definitely highlighted for you every week on the bulletin is Senator Hunt's bill on increasing automated voter registration with, you know, the DOL and that type of thing.

We have shared Senator Saldana's legislation for review with our city attorney's office and are monitoring that bill and happy to discuss that offline with you further.

Council President, I think you're on mute.

I'm sorry.

I just made a joke.

I said, Council Member Skater, are you sure you got nothing else?

Well, you know I do.

And OIR's team has been very accessible.

So thank you for that.

In addition to the labor policies and the housing bills that I know you're tracking, I just wanted to lift this support up for the Voting Rights Act and Senator Saldana.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Is there anything else you want to add, Gail, before we say goodbye?

Thank you for your time, Council President and members of the Council.

And we'll be back next week with probably a lot more information about budgets.

Yeah, thank you so much.

And thank you for meeting with me offline and answering some of my questions.

So again, thank you.

Thank you.

See you guys.

So let's get back to our agenda, apparently.

It looks like Council Member Strauss has a proclamation for our signature.

Council Member Strauss, do you want to lead us in your discussion about the clash, which probably started before you were born, but go ahead.

Yes, ma'am, that's true.

Just call a spade a spade, that is correct.

And you know, something that is special about the clash to me is the fact that they are The things that they hit on in their music and their message takes generations to implement and change.

And so just by way of background, the Clash Day started 10 years ago on KEXP when John Richards decided to play multiple Clash songs in a row.

Being independent radio, John was able to do this without any oversight.

And this became and turned into International Clash Day.

Sorry.

It became formalized as Clash Day, the National Clash Day, and then International Clash Days, and communities across the world began participating.

The Clashes stand against racism.

Fascism is as important today in 2022 as it was in 1976, when Joe Strummer said, we're anti-fascist, anti-violence, anti-racist, and pro-creative, pro-human.

We are against ignorance.

Just to take this moment to say that International Clash Day continues to uplift and broadcast the Clash's timeless message, because the bending of the moral arc of the universe towards justice takes generations to accomplish, not just one band or one group of people.

And so with that, we honor the Clash and International Clash Day every year to keep our attention to the unifying messages that they uplifted.

Washington governors, Seattle mayors, and many of you have already recognized International Clash Day in the past.

And I thank you for your recognition again for tomorrow's 10th annual celebration.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Is there any, does anyone have any questions for Council Member Strauss regarding his proclamation?

Okay, seeing there is no further discussion on the proclamation, will the clerk please call the roll?

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Herbold.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Nelson.

Aye.

Peterson.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven in favor.

Thank you.

So do you want to actually say affix my signature, is that it?

We're good, we just did the whole thing, right?

We all fixed our signatures.

Oh, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Yes, ma'am.

I wanna know when we're gonna have International Selena Day or Madonna Day, but I'll hold off on that one, so.

You name the day, I'm there.

Okay, so with that, let's go to our round robin.

And so this week, the lineup starts with Council Member Sawant, Straus, Herbold, Lewis, Morales, Mosqueda, Nelson, Council Member Peterson, and then myself.

Council Member Sawant, please begin.

Thank you, Council President Villes.

Good afternoon.

There are no items on tomorrow's City Council agenda from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee is on Friday, February 18th at 9.30 a.m.

At last week's committee meeting, we heard a detailed briefing from central staff members.

We're having a hard time with your video.

I don't know if you have to turn it down.

Maybe IT, can you help us out here with her?

I just turn it off and then we go.

Son, can you help us out or somebody?

Council Member Sawant, are you guys hearing what I'm hearing?

There's a ton of static.

Yes, we hear the squelching, but there's nothing we can do on our end.

There's nothing we can do?

Not on our end, no.

OK, so can you help Council Member Sawant on her end?

Is it still?

Is it still, one second, let me, let me.

Because we can come back to you, Council Member Sawant.

No.

She can try a headset.

How about this?

Is this better?

I honestly don't think it's on my end because I do many, many things on my laptop and it's never a problem except for the city council meetings.

Is this better?

We have our volume down.

I don't know.

Oh, it's getting a little bit better.

Is that better now?

I think if she talks quietly, it might not have so much of an effect.

Maybe if she could, it's like picking up too much noise.

Try quietly or putting a cloth in front of the speaker.

Is this working?

I have no idea.

I'm not doing anything different than usual.

At the end, it's normal.

It's like when you talk silently.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee is this Friday.

Is that better?

Should I keep going?

Yeah, just speak quietly like I do.

I am being quiet, I don't know what, I can't be silent though because then you won't hear me.

I'll just try, let's see, it's not, I don't have a very long comment.

Just softly.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the committee is this Friday, February 18th at 9.30 AM.

At last week's committee meeting, we had a detailed briefing by central staff members on the legislation from my office supporting the demands from the climate movement urging financial institutions to end their backing of the fossil fuel industries, and particularly its new fossil fuel infrastructure projects.

My office is sponsoring the legislation climate activists have requested to give the Green New Deal Oversight Board the option to rate financial institutions that bid on City of Seattle projects based on those institutions' ties to the fossil fuel infrastructure.

If the Green New Deal Oversight Board chooses to rate bidders, the Finance and Administrative Services Department is instructed to give those ratings a weight of 20% of the decision of which bid wins the city contract.

The bill was discussed at the last meeting of the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

They've sent the minutes of their meeting to the committee members as well, and it will be discussed by the board again.

On tomorrow's City Council agenda is the resolution from my office in support of Starbucks workers who are struggling to form a union here in Seattle, as well as at locations around the country.

By voting yes on this resolution, Seattle City Council members will take a stand with Starbucks workers I would call on Starbucks Corporation to accept card check neutrality, which is recognizing a union when the majority of a workforce signs union cards and committing to allow employees to discuss unionization free from threats, intimidation, anti-union propaganda, anti-union meetings, and lawsuits.

If Starbucks workers in Seattle unionize, the resolution further urges Starbucks to bargain a fair contract such that the workers can have good standards of living and the company's overwhelming wealth does not flow just to the top executives and shareholders.

Last but not least, the resolution recommends all workers in Seattle organizing to unions to collectively fight for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

This is monumental because, and the struggle, the union drive is monumental because the successful unionization of Starbucks workers in Buffalo represents the only United States employees of this multinational corporation to get unionized anywhere in the country.

And it has happened at a time where union density has fallen to a historic low.

particularly in the private sector.

Ironically, at the same time, support for unions and the number of non-union workers who would like to organize into a union is at the highest it has been since the 1960s.

However, for that support to translate into successful organizing drives, requires courageous workplace organizing and standing up to vicious human busting by corporations like Starbucks.

And that is why any community support that can be provided is important.

Also progressive elected representatives need to provide support as well.

And this resolution is being put forward in that spirit.

As council members know, I've mentioned before, that an alderman in Chicago or the Chicago City Council has also put a resolution forward in a similar spirit and a council member from Minneapolis has also announced that she is bringing this in the near future.

And I know council members have received over 770 emails from community members urging them to vote yes on this resolution.

That is the end of my report.

Are there any questions or comments?

I don't see any questions or comments, so I will hand it off to the next Council Member in the rotation.

That is Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council President and colleagues.

Here in District 6, last week, I continued to hold the operational coordination meetings with community leaders, governmental entities and non-governmental entities to make interventions and address homelessness in specific places in District 6. If you'd like to meet with me regarding specific projects or for more information, please do sign up for my office hours.

I speak to District Six residents every week about this.

My partnership in this area specifically was called out by Deputy Mayor Washington during Mayor Harrell's press conference regarding public safety last week.

And I wanna thank both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor for their work, continued collaboration and efforts in these areas.

Last week, I also attended the monthly Finney Ridge Community Council meeting with neighbors Tuesday night regarding our homelessness response coordination work at Woodland Park and had a lively discussion about providing affordable and missing middle housing while preserving our history's character and the feel of our neighborhoods.

More on that later.

I'm very excited about duplexes that I have found in my neighborhood to keep the shape and feel of the neighborhood.

More on that later.

I also had staff attend the North Precinct Advisory Council meeting on Wednesday and heard from Inspector General for Public Safety Lisa Judge regarding her office's work to provide independent, systemic oversight of the management practices and policies of the Seattle Police Department and the Office of Police Accountability.

I encourage anyone who wants to to read her office's sentinel review of police response to the 2020 protests in Seattle.

In District 6, we also had staff attend the Wallingford Community Council meeting that is still in District six a little bit.

Um, I also hosted district office hours Thursday, where we met with I met with three people from Ballard, one from Crown Hill, one from Green Lake, one from Loyal Heights, one from Sunset Hill, one from Tangle Town, one from Finney Ridge.

We discussed traffic, uh, around the Goodwill site on 8th Avenue, public safety, homelessness at Woodland Park, public safety issues in the industrial area and stay healthy streets and stormwater and land use code enforcement.

I also met with Estat regarding 14th Avenue Northwest safety improvements and will continue to meet with Estat weekly to bring short term changes to Ballard Avenue.

In the next few months, we're using Ballard Avenue again as the pilot for the Cafe Street program to be rolled out citywide.

Also want to take a moment to thank City Light engineers who quickly deployed and got the lights back on on Aurora on the street lights between 59th and 41st and the Woodland Park pedestrian overpass I want to thank the residents who brought it to my attention and City Light for working quickly.

I was also able to meet with City Attorney Anne Davison last week and where we discussed the need to disrupt organized crime, separate predators and organized criminals from homeless people experiencing homelessness.

As we know, there are enterprises hiding behind homelessness, and we need to prioritize diversion programs to truly be effective in intervening with people who are vulnerable or being taken advantage of It was a good meeting, and I'm looking forward to continue working with their office.

I'm working with community leaders as well, as I said a moment ago, to address some of the issues that have come to our attention in the Ballard-Fremont Industrial Area.

We've been engaging in this work over the last number of months and continue to do so.

This week in District 6, I'll have office hours from 2 p.m.

to 6 p.m.

on Thursday.

As always, feel free to sign up on my website.

staff will be attending the Ballard District Council meeting on Wednesday on my behalf.

Outside of District 6, last week I attended the Washington Association of Washington City's Board Legislative Steering Committee on Tuesday and as well as their weekly City Action Call on Friday regarding the legislative session.

I was also able to attend the Puget Sound Regional Council Growth Management Policy Board where we talked about transfer of development rights, and I'll be attending the Transportation Policy Board this coming week.

as well.

Lastly, outside of the district, we met with myself and Noah, my committee director, met with the Seattle Planning Commission co-chairs about the 2022 work plans for both their commission as well as the Land Use Committee.

In the Land Use Committee, there are no items from the Land Use Committee on today's full agenda.

There's one item from the Land Use Committee on today's introduction referral calendar.

This is legislation that grants a six-month extension of the temporary rules for home based businesses adopted by my bringing business home legislation last year.

SDCI is finishing their work on permanent regulations, and this extension will help them complete their work in a meaningful way rather than rushing their process.

The next land use committee will be held this Wednesday, February 9th at 2 p.m.

There are three items on the agenda, a briefing on Council Bill 120207, which is sponsored by Council Member Peterson, and I am a co-sponsor, establishing a registration requirement for tree care providers.

We have a public hearing and vote on Council Bill 120253, which extends for six months, the temporary floodplains regulations we adopted last year.

Again, similar situation.

SDCI needs a little bit more time to work out some of the details.

And then finally, a briefing on a quasi judicial contract rezone of a property at 10713 and 10735 Roosevelt Way Northeast.

Again, these projects are quasi judicial, and any communication with outside of just Ketel or the hearing examiner would be ex parte communication.

So council members, please don't talk to anyone but Ketel and the hearing examiner.

And lastly, Colleagues, Central staff will be sharing our Land Use Committee work plan later this week.

And please do let me know if there's anything we missed.

It's a very comprehensive document at the moment, and I'd love to have your feedback with that Council President.

Colleagues, that is my report.

Do you have any questions?

I am seeing no questions.

And so with that, Council President, colleagues, I will hand it over to usually it is Council Member Herbold.

I see she is not present.

So up next is Council Member Lewis.

Good afternoon, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

And on that point, I will also be sharing during my presentation some notes from Council Member Herbold as she is unable to join us this afternoon.

So first, I'm going to start with some updates from the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee.

On February 16th, which is a week from this coming Wednesday, we will have our next committee meeting.

That agenda is still a little bit fluid, but we do know that we will be considering four appointments to the Park and Recreation Board of Commissioners.

We will also be hearing a presentation from Climate Pledge Arena and our partners there on how that public asset has come together and what the first couple of months have been like for them, and also just a little bit of an overview of the process and putting that together.

I know that'll be a good sort of completing of the loop for Council President Juarez, who, of course, is very instrumental in bringing that project together.

So we're really looking forward to that presentation.

We did, during our committee meeting last week, have one substantive item that I believe is going to be on this week's full council agenda.

We reported out of committee Council Bill 120264, legislation related to concession permitting in Seattle parks.

That legislation was reported out of committee unanimously for consideration, and I'll reserve the rest of my comments on that legislation for our meeting later this week.

Moving on here to...

Sorry, I'm trying to get the email up here to do our updates from Parks and Recreation regarding some of the departmental specific items.

You just bear with me for one moment to get the clean city information.

But I am happy to report that, you know, as has been the custom, when Council President Juarez chaired this committee, Parks and Recreation continues to send along for our statistics for every week and this email is not opening so I'm going to look at it on my phone.

I do apologize for the delay in getting this together.

So this upcoming Wednesday and Thursday, to start with the libraries updates, the board of trustees is going to conduct final round interviews for the chief librarian candidates.

As folks have probably read in the media, Tom Fay, the interim chief librarian of Seattle Public Libraries, will interview on Wednesday, February 9th with a virtual public forum for patrons and community members to attend from 4.30 to 6.30, or sorry, to 6 p.m.

Chad Helton, the director of the Hennepin County Library, will interview on Thursday, February 10th with a virtual public forum from 430 to 6pm.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

I'm going to send this in my next newsletter later this week.

for members of the public to have access to this information as well.

This is a great appointment for us to be considering coming down the pipeline as a city community and appreciate the board of trustees reaching out to the council to give us this information in advance so we can let the public know how to participate.

is also wrapping up with some of their year-end statistics.

And we know that the last two years have been a difficult time for the Seattle Public Library, considering the constraints of the COVID pandemic.

So as you can imagine, the statistics have looked very strange.

But in 2021, we saw a huge increase in circulation again.

The branch with the highest increase, everyone do a drumroll, was in District 7 in Magnolia, which saw a 197% increase.

And Douglas Truth Library was not far behind at 195% increase.

So the system-wide increase was almost 92%, so we are starting to get back to something close to pre-COVID levels of library circulation.

In real numbers, the branches that saw the highest circulation were Northeast, Greenwood, and Ballard.

So Councilmember Strauss, your district very well represented there is library patrons.

Clean City Initiative, as I animated earlier, just to close out, The Seattle Parks and Recreation crews removed 234,000 pounds of trash and collected 8,294 needles from 126 and can't clean up locations between.

the beginning and end of January of last month.

This is a really important program that really underlies why I thought it would be appropriate to merge the public assets and then homelessness committees to make sure that we are putting together a lot of the relevant programming to how the city conducts ongoing outreach, but also mitigation and hygiene services that a lot of us take for granted and don't have access to.

to provide that essential service and appreciated the opportunity to bring forward this update on their activities for the consideration of the entire Council.

As a last note before I move on to Councilmember Herbold's brief that report is now live on my council website.

I'm going to disseminate that report to the public through my newsletter in the middle of this week.

So I'm looking forward to being able to do that and share some of the really critical things we were able to do in 2021 as a council and some of the things looking forward to 2022 that we will want to strongly push for the implementation.

So moving forward to Councilmember Herbold's updates.

The Public Safety and Human Services Committee is going to be meeting tomorrow morning before full council on February 8th.

It's going to involve an overview of the Office of Emergency Management's winter weather response.

We're going to have a report from the Pre-Basic Law Enforcement Academy, or BLEA, program.

And that's going to be for briefing and discussion.

And there will be an update, a potential update, on payout policy legislation that Councilmember Herbold's office has been working on.

to be considered by the committee for a briefing and discussion as well.

So more to come on those topics at the meeting tomorrow morning, and looking forward to digging into that before full council.

If there are any questions, I will take those before I pass it to Council Member Morales.

Seeing no questions, I will pass this on to Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Let me see.

My next committee meeting of the Neighborhoods, Education, Arts, Rights, and Refugee Affairs, I'm going to start calling it NERA committee for short.

The next meeting will be this Friday at 9.30.

We will have a preview of the 2022 work plan from the Arts Department, Office of Arts and Culture, as well as two appointments to the Human Rights Commission.

And then we've added something kind of last minute.

So I do want to let you know, last week we had some technical issues.

DEEL had some technical issues with the announcement of their youth-led social justice grants.

And so I've asked them to come and just share with us what happened and what we need to do as a city and as this department in particular to make sure that in the future funding awards go smoothly.

So that will be added to the agenda, which I think will be official tomorrow.

Let's see, we did not have any external committees last week.

This weekend, you may have noticed that the local paper highlighted the work of our Rainier Beach neighbors.

As you recall, the last couple of years, we've been trying to support them with city funding for the restoration of Rainier Beach, the Beersheba Park.

And so the article was just sharing the success in them achieving their goal of raising two million dollars, which is very exciting.

But it also raised some real concerns about the way as a city we allocate resources in a way that is equitable.

And so we heard from neighbors through the article about the challenge that they had in spending several years trying to get cobbled together different pieces from different jurisdictions.

So I say all that because one of the things that I would like to be working on this year and we'll be talking with you Chair Lewis about in your committee is how we assess the equity with which parks money gets allocated without having to put too much burden on community.

But also, you know, I've heard for several years now about how community space gets reserved, how play fields get reserved, and there is a concern that we might be able to do this in a way that is more equitable, particularly for the people who actually live in the neighborhoods where those parks are located.

where that green space is located.

So all that is to say, we will follow up with you, Chair Lewis, about these issues and look forward to that conversation this year.

Last week, I met with residents and small business owners from the Little Saigon neighborhood.

We heard about concerns with the illicit activity that is happening, particularly at 12th and Jackson, and the impacts that that has had on businesses and on residents of the neighborhood.

Also heard from some service providers.

I was particularly glad that a representative from Harborview was there to talk about the need to invest more deeply and more upstream in behavioral health supports, mental health supports, and as we all know, the kind of housing that's needed in order to really help move people into more stable situations.

So I want to thank Deputy Mayor Harrell, who was there.

King County Council members Zahalai and McDermott were also there, as well as a representative from Congressman Smith's office.

I think everybody is on the same page about the need to to invest and to be really strategic in how we support this neighborhood that has historically been ignored frankly by many different jurisdictions.

So we will be having bi-weekly meetings with folks in the community and look forward to really engaging deeply to make sure that we're surveying folks in that neighborhood well.

I also met with a constituent this week, last week, who would like me to share with council a request to make sure that we are including the voices of black mothers in particular in our policymaking and budget making, decision making as we move forward this year.

This particular conversation was about education and about the need to make sure we're listening to Black mothers, but the request more broadly is just for us to keep those voices at the decision-making table as well.

This week I have two meetings with Mount Baker neighbors.

We have bi-weekly meetings with folks there and then we're also taking a tour of King's Hall this week to see what we might be able to do to provide temporary permits, temporary use permits, particularly to the artists in the art space, Arts Loft space and surrounding neighbors who are interested in really using that for cultural sector.

So hopefully more on that to come.

and then also this week Council President Juarez mentioned this last at last week's briefing I believe but on Wednesday from 5 to 7 there will be the community advisory group for the CID and SOTO for the Sound Transit West Seattle to Ballard Light Rail.

And so if folks are interested in participating in that online conversation, you can go to wsblink.participate.online.

And or you can also find it on Sound Transit website, although I'll admit it was a little hard for me to find, but the advisory group tab has it in there.

And I'll also make sure that we're posting this on our website.

That is all I have, colleagues.

If anybody has questions, I do not see any hands, so I will hand it over to Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you very much, Council Member Morales.

Colleagues, tomorrow, there are no items on from the Finance and Housing Committee meeting on the full council agenda.

We do, as Council Member Sawant noted, we are excited to have an amendment on the Starbucks resolution, as I noted this in last week's meeting, at the request of UFCW 21, MLK Labor, Teamsters, and Unite Your Local Eight.

We have a small amendment that we are offering and that has been circulated to all council members and should be on the full council agenda.

Again, a friendly amendment as discussed last week.

We do have some items on the introduction and referral.

Excuse me.

We do have some items coming up for our February 16th meeting.

Again, that's the next meeting will be at 930 a.m.

on February 16th.

We'll have the council appointment at the Sugary Sweetened Beverage Community Advisory Board.

We will be considering confirmation of Julie Dingley for the director of the city budget's office.

Again, colleagues, thanks for the questions that you have submitted to our office and to Sejal Parikh, my chief of staff for circulating those questions.

We have submitted those to Julie and she is currently working through the proposed questions from council.

And I know we'll be prepared to answer some of the questions that you brought up and the discussion that will happen at our finance and housing committee meeting next week.

Appreciate interim director Dingley's interest in this position and the full participation in our robust consideration process.

We will also have a briefing on the Seattle Rescue Plan and a presentation on an exciting new topic that we are working on jointly with other council members and community to talk about the impact of cannabis and regulation of the cannabis industry.

So more to come on that soon.

Regarding events that we participated in in the last week, I want to highlight that I had the chance to meet with directors from the departments that we work with on finance from the administration at finance and administration.

Excuse me. financial administration services.

And we also met with members of the Office of Labor Standards and the City Budgets Office, specifically looking forward to continuing our conversation with FAS and OLS about some legislation that affects Lyft and Uber drivers that's currently being considered in Olympia and ways that we can work to modify state statute to really put in a high watermark for Seattle on how to, that Seattle passed on how to protect lifted Uber drivers across our city, excuse me, across our state.

I attended the National League of Cities Board of Directors Orientation Meeting.

As I mentioned earlier this year, I'm proud that I was able to be nominated and get appointed to serve on the National League of Cities Board of Directors.

Our first meeting will be held in March coming up on March 12th and 13th.

I do plan at this point to travel to Washington DC and I'm very much hopeful that the current variants of COVID continue to show a decrease in transmission and that we get our little kiddo who's under the age of five, the ability to access those vaccines, and I look forward to participating in the National League of Cities conference in mid-March next year, next month.

I currently serve on the National League of Cities Board of Directors, also the Housing Task Force, the Women in Municipal Government Committee, and the Hispanic Elected Local Officials Committee.

So looking forward to reporting back on how those conversations go after the meeting next month.

This week, I'm looking forward to attending the Affordable Housing Committee meeting, which will be held on Wednesday, a regional meeting to look at affordable housing needs across our city and region.

And we'll be doing a walking tour in Belltown.

Thanks to the folks from the Belltown Business Association, the Belltown Community Council, and other neighborhood organizations.

This is a follow-up to a walking tour that I did about three years ago, and then another tour that members of my staff did about two years ago to look at ways that we can improve accessibility and safety and promote local businesses and workers in the area.

For department updates, just two updates, one from FAS and one from OLS.

First from the Finance and Administrative Services.

I mentioned that they're continuing to look at House Bill 2067. for ways to address labor standards and inspection and regulatory framework in the TNC legislation.

And the bill is expected to have an executive session or be moved into rule soon.

We're looking forward to future conversations with the King County and Port of Seattle in those discussions as well.

Thanks to FAS and OLS for their ongoing conversations about the ways to make that legislation conform with our city's policies and values.

They also are reporting out that FAS's city payroll system is looking at the changes being made to the long-term care payroll tax that has been suspended in Olympia until more is known about the state's next steps.

FAS has an all-employee email that went out to employees on January 28, notifying our city of the delay of implementation of long-term care insurance.

pending additional conversations at the state level about the bill that is being currently having a pause put on it as we get out of the COVID implications here and appreciate that members of SEIU and the state legislative members worked on a solution there to harmoniously put a pause until next steps can be identified.

Finally, from FAS, the risk management department at FAS has seen a claims increase with 148 claims filed last week alone.

Most of the claims pertain to pothole damages.

Adjusters are working exceptionally hard to address those and the unique aspects of making sure that there are sizable demands to address the thousand plus dollar pothole claims that are consuming our city and looking forward to continuing to address this challenging issue across our city.

Finally, from the Office of Labor Standards, in late January, they wanted to report out that following an investigation of Domino's Pizza, franchise operator with 14 Seattle locations had reached an agreement with OLS for the company to pay more than $2 million to 1,330 affected workers.

And that means $600 went to the city of Seattle for alleged violations for the secure scheduling minimum wage and wage theft ordinances.

They did send out a press release on that, so we wanted to lift that up.

Additionally, OLS entered into a settlement last week with Traffic Management Incorporated on alleged violations for the Seattle Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance and minimum wage and wage theft ordinances.

The total financial remedy was over $250,000 and will be paid to 244 affected workers.

Again, a press release went out about that last week.

And finally, in mid-January, OLS began a series of five meetings with stakeholders to develop future rules for independent contractor protections.

This week marks the second of such meetings.

The public can find out more about the rulemaking process, which will go into effect on September 1st, and how to participate in the rulemaking currently underway with OLS at labor standards websites.

Labor standards backslash ordinances backslash independent contractor.

Thank you very much.

Any questions?

Okay, I will hand it off to Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone.

There is nothing on the agenda from the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee tomorrow.

My next committee meeting is on Wednesday, February 9th at 9.30 in the morning, and we will be hosting a roundtable discussion with small business owners and representatives of neighborhood business districts to hear their public safety concerns and also their recommendations for some actions the city could take that could help their workers and their businesses.

We have, so I'll just go right into what we did last week.

Last week we attended, and I think it was similar tour to what Councilmember Muscade is about to go on.

My staff and I attended a tour that was hosted by Belltown United to listen to business owners and other organizations in the neighborhood talk about neighborhood issues.

Some of the same themes will be addressed tomorrow in our, I mean, in our Wednesday committee.

I attended my first meeting of the PSRC Economic Development Subcommittee on last Wednesday.

And again, they presented their upcoming work on industrial lands and workforce development.

And then yesterday, I attended, or on Saturday, I attended the groundbreaking of Africatown Plaza, which is a wonderful project with a lot of community partners.

It's led by the Africatown Community Land Trust, and very exciting to see that groundbreaking happening.

And I also attended the memorial service for K-9 officer Jedi, who was killed in service January.

So this week I will be attending the Community Technology Advisory Board and my staff will be listening into the Community Police Commission Community Engagement meeting and both of those meetings are on the 6th, tomorrow at 6 p.m.

And I meant to say that I invite my colleagues, anyone who wants to join the the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee meeting on Wednesday that you are welcome.

Thanks.

Any questions?

I pass it to Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

On tomorrow afternoon's full city council agenda, there are no items related to our committee on transportation and Seattle Public Utilities.

Our next committee meeting will be Tuesday, February 15 at 930. That committee will have Sound Transit as our guest to discuss the draft environmental impact statement regarding their next big phase of implementing the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions.

That draft EIS is on Sound Transit website, and public comments are due April 28th.

Earlier today, I joined the Pothole Rangers in District 4. The Pothole Rangers, a team within our Seattle Department of Transportation, has been working hard to fill the backlog of pothole requests in the aftermath of the recent winter storms.

I appreciate both SDOT and Seattle Public Utilities coming to our committee last week to provide a thorough after-action report detailing their responses to the snow, ice, and heavy rains that ravaged our streets and delayed the pickup of trash and recycling throughout our city.

Last week, I was honored to be the guest speaker at the Wallingford Community Council.

I answered questions about the mandatory housing affordability program, as well as the recent increase in crime in Wallingford's neighborhood business district, as well as the crime that's been occurring repeatedly along North Lake Way during the past several months.

As I mentioned last week, I welcomed several other city officials to the U District on January 28th to hear firsthand the stories of violence and vandalism against small neighborhood businesses there.

So I greatly appreciate Mayor Harrell's press conference this past Friday when he acknowledged the increase in crime in Seattle over the past year and pledged to take action.

I'd like to thank Councilmember Strauss as Chair of our Land Use Committee for scheduling this week Council Bill 120207, which he mentioned, which would finally register all tree service providers.

Many thanks also to Central Staff Analyst Yolanda Ho for her work on this small but necessary step to increase protection of our city's urban canopy and its many environmental and health benefits.

This concludes my report.

Any questions before we turn it over to Council President Juarez?

I just wanted to know why they're called the Rangers.

Alex.

I they've been called upon all Rangers.

I don't know.

I can look into that and get back to you.

But the workers there, they've worked really hard over the last several weeks to fill potholes in all of our districts, and they happen to be in my district today.

So it was great to see them, and they even let me try to fill a pothole myself, but I didn't do a great job.

I actually did that three years ago, and I actually filled up two potholes.

I did a pretty dang good job.

Just want you to know I could handle that machine, so.

Excellent.

Okay, with that, thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Are you done?

Yes.

Okay.

Okay, so let me give you a few items from me.

Let's start with, there are no items from the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee on tomorrow's council agenda, but our next committee meeting is on March 17th at 9.30.

See, in regards to sound transit, you've probably all been hearing a lot about the fair enforcement.

I also sit on the writer experience and operations committee known as the Rio.

And since there has been a lot of public interest surrounding the sound transit for enforcement.

We will be meeting this week, the REO, Wednesday, February 9th at 2.30.

So tune in for that.

Our office also did attend the North Precinct Advisory Council.

That's been a standard appointment we've had with them since I've been in office.

And my understanding is that with the North Precinct Advisory Council, you can look at the minutes, you can go to their website.

I don't have it off the top of my head, but you can check our website.

I know they have a blog as well, but you can actually look at the meetings and all the notes.

And they have a lot of really good statistics, but again, it's for the North precinct.

So it isn't all the precincts that when they break down the crime, it's for the North side, not the whole city.

So it might be a bit misleading if you look at some of the statistics there.

Last week's summary, this is regarding Senate Bill 56662. I joined Governor Inslee, King County Executive Constantine, Mayor Harrell, Mayor Woodards of Tacoma, my friend, and Spokane City Council Member Betsy Wilkerson at a news conference to discuss the historic new amendments in addressing homeless encampments near highways.

Senate Bill 5662 is a truly collaborative effort between all levels of government and the tribes to shelter our relatives, Senate Bill 5662 would create the Office of Intergovernmental Coordination on Public Right of Ways, where there are homelessness encampments, to assist people living in unsanctioned encampments on land owned by WSDOT, that's Washington State Department of Transportation.

As you all know, those of us that have districts where I-5 cuts right through our districts, and it should matter for all of us, regardless if you represent a district, that people living on this type of property is not only dangerous, but it is certainly inhumane and cruel.

So I am glad that we have an office that will coordinate along all local and regional partners to prioritize folks living in these public rights of way.

So more to come on that.

My understanding is the total number of the bill, I think is 815 million.

with 51 million being dedicated to the Office of Intergovernmental Coordination, which all cities can apply for, and I'm hoping that we will be a city, and we will, and be able to submit our five-year plan and make sure that we get funded so we can work with WSDOT and the state, or other state agencies, and the City of Seattle, and SPD, and SAILFIRE, and our third-party homeless people that come out there to help house our folks.

Let's see.

I think that's it.

That's it for me on my report.

Before we adjourn, are there any questions?

Not seeing any from anybody, okay.

So this concludes today's agenda and our next regularly scheduled council briefing meeting is scheduled for February 14th.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.