Seattle City Council Briefing 1/8/2024

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is January 8th, 2024. The council briefing meeting will come to order, and the time is 2 o'clock p.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Councilmember Moore?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Rivera?

Present.

Councilmember Saca?

We are here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you.

Was that Seattle Channel that wanted to say anything out there?

No, okay.

No, they just had a hot mic, that's all.

Gotcha.

Thank you very much.

Our first item is approval of the minutes.

If there's no objection, the minutes of December 11th, 2023 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Okay, we've got a full agenda today.

We will have three presentations, a state legislative session update, a presentation on city powers and how they are exercised, and a presentation on the next steps in the vacancy-filling process.

And all of that before the Huskies play in the College Football National Championship game, which starts at 4.30.

Go Dawgs.

Let's go Dawgs.

Try to move through my...

I should pause here for fandom here.

All right, I'm not wearing purple, which I have a lot of at home.

Anyway, so I will try to move quickly through the more routine items, starting with the president's report.

So first, congratulations to all the new members for your first week in office.

That was a great and energetic start to our new term, and seeing everyone bustling about was...

A great way to set a new tone for City Hall.

And speaking of that, I want to thank you for coming to briefings here on the dais.

That is a bit new, and it is my hope that at some point we can work through some technological issues and meet at the briefings table like in way back times, but we've got to work through some things first.

But thank you very much for being here.

Okay, at tomorrow's council meeting, we will have a discussion and likely vote on resolution 32125 relating to participation for 2024 and 2025 on King County committees, regional committees, state committees, and the city of Seattle committees.

and superseding resolution 32038. My office circulated copies of this resolution last Thursday, I believe, and materials can be found on this council agenda online.

Because we will not be having a briefing next Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, we'll have a special city council meeting this Friday, January 12th, starting at 2 p.m., and that is to advance our work to fill the council vacancies.

So the presenters for the item five on the agenda will be covering the content of that meeting.

I think it is.

The last presentation when we talk about that that work, you can ask questions about what precisely will be covered in that meeting on Friday.

So, and finally, I just want to note that I am in communication with the mayor's office and SPD about the protest and I-5 closure on Saturday, and I realize that council members might be fielding questions from constituents.

And I suggest that you reach out to the council liaison, our SPD liaison, if you would like a briefing or more information.

But just know that I've been, I asked for one myself and I'm in conversation with those folks.

All right.

Moving on, I would like to say that if presenters would like to come up to the table, if you would like to.

Today's the first day of the 2024 legislative session in Olympia.

And every Monday, we'll be having a briefing from the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to brief us on live bills.

And OIR staff will also distribute a bulletin of the bills that they will cover during the briefing prior to the briefing.

Today's presentation will be available to the public on the agenda after the meeting online.

So these, just so you all know if you haven't watch these briefings.

This is your opportunity to weigh in on live bills, ask questions, sometimes bring attention to legislation that you're interested in, and to make sure that they're on OIR's radar.

So that's what we do here in these briefings.

And before you begin your presentation, I would like to thank OIR Director Gail Tarleton and her team for bringing, for all the work that went into preparing for this year's legislative session.

So welcome, please introduce your team and begin.

Thank you very much, Council President Nelson, and to all the members of the Council.

Welcome, we are thrilled to be here today on your first work session.

I am here in person.

I'm Gail Tarleton, the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

And on the screen, down in Olympia are my Director of State Relations, Samir Jenejo, and the State Legislative Liaison for OIR, Anna Johnson.

And as the Council President noted, today is an auspicious day.

It is the first day of the short session in Olympia.

It's also Husky National Championship Day.

And it's your first day in person here in a work session on behalf of the people of Seattle.

Thank you so much for your service and for your time today.

So as Council President Nelson mentioned, we'll be giving you these briefings once a week on Mondays.

And during the rest of the week, should things come up in Olympia, Samir and Ana will be available to you and your staffs at all time.

I also wanted to reassure you that the communications from Olympia are solid.

and things will happen really fast in this short session.

It's a 60-day session, and Samira and Ana will go through the sort of pace that you can expect during the next 60 days, which is really only eight or 10 weeks of briefing to all of you.

So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Samir, and he and Ana will kick off the presentation for what we know right now you might expect to see coming out of Olympia, and then there will always be surprises.

So, Samir, I'll turn it over to you.

Hi, good afternoon, Council Members.

Again, my name is Samir Jenejo, the State Relations Director for the City of Seattle.

here talking to you from Olympia on the first day of the 2024 legislative session.

Before I get into a little bit of the preview of this session, I wanted to give you an overview as to what it is we do.

So OIR, we represent the city at the state level, and that could mean relationships with the state legislators, but also the state agencies, the governor's office, and we advocate for the city's positions on our priorities and also react and track to other bills that are introduced other legislators and analyze them for impacts on city business and city interests.

As Director Tarleton mentioned the process is quick and so I'll just do a quick overview of that.

So, first I'll mention the budgets.

So the legislature does budgets on a biannual basis.

So in the odd years, they release a two-year budget.

That's the biannual budget.

And then in years like this year, they release a supplemental budget.

And the three budgets we work with are the operating budget, the capital budget, and transportation budget.

Generally, later this year, you will see proposals from both the House and the Senate on all three of those budgets, and then by the end of session, they reconcile their differences and pass a final budget on all three of those.

The session calendar starts today, the first day, and we're going toward the March 7 signing die, which means end of regular session.

A bill has to get introduced.

And usually it's heard in a policy committee, and it has until January 31st to get out of that policy committee.

If it has a fiscal impact, it then has until February 5th to get out of a fiscal committee, which in the Senate would be Ways and Means or Senate Transportation and the House, I mean, the House Appropriation Committee or the House Transportation Committee or the House Finance Committee.

Then the bills move to their full chambers, and they have until February 13th to move out of the chamber.

And then the same exact process goes back essentially again, but in the opposite chamber.

And so they have an even shorter amount of time to go through that same process in the opposite chambers.

And you'll see some of these dates are there's a very short time in between in order for these deadlines to get met.

So you'll see that A lot of bills, you know, will not pass, and a lot of bills that do pass will have to move very quickly.

All right, great.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Anna.

I'm the state legislative liaison in OIR.

Giving you a little bit of preview here on what's to expect for this session.

As Gail mentioned, it's a 60-day legislative session.

started today.

They're working on a supplemental budget, which Samir just explained, and so they're building off of last year's budgets.

The state revenue forecast was pretty positive, and we're expecting about $1.2 billion in additional revenue to be available to spend in this year in the supplemental budget.

And this money does not include any of the funds raised from the state's cap and trade program.

And then roughly of that $1.2 billion, or sorry, roughly $1.1 billion of the total revenues from this biennium are from the new capital gains tax that was passed a few years ago.

This session, we also had some changes in committee leadership, which is important to note because it does change the dynamics of policy bills and how things move throughout the process.

And so in the House, we have a new chair of the Civil Rights and Judiciary Committee, Chair Jamila Taylor.

And then in the Senate, we have a new chair and vice chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, so Chair June Robinson and Vice Chair Joe Nguyen.

So back in December, the governor released his budget, and this is a budget that the legislators continue to kind of consider as a starting point as they begin to decide what they want to include in each chamber's respective budgets.

And then lastly, I'll just note this session is Governor Inslee's final session as state governor within his final term.

So he might be interested in certain legacy projects, and he is kind of weighing in on the legislature for his final time.

And then I wanted to explain a little bit about the city's legislative agenda setting process.

This really begins the late summer and fall leading up to a session.

So this will be a process that new council members will be able to participate in this year.

And we also had current council members participate this past fall.

The way we kind of gear up for session is we work to collect priorities from both the executive and legislative branches of the city.

So that means soliciting priorities from all of the departments, all of the council members, as well as the mayor's office.

in order to form a city-led agenda.

We create an all-encompassing legislative agenda, and that is what is put before the council for a vote, usually in December.

This legislative agenda covers a lot of policy topics because of the wide-ranging nature of the different programs and business that the city has, as well as our values.

And we use that document to kind of help steer us during the legislative session.

But as bills are introduced throughout the process, we are taking those one by one to analyze them with our departments and with the elected officials in order to ultimately figure out their impact and figure out what kind of engagement we want to have on each bill that is up for consideration each session.

So in this city agenda setting process, we had a number of city leading issues that we identified that we needed to request from state legislators.

And so I'm going to go through a few of the bills that we are leading on as the city of Seattle that we're hoping to see accomplished this past session or this upcoming session.

So starting with Senate Bill 59-59, this bill is essentially an omnibus bill related to automatic traffic cameras, but specifically included in this bill is a provision that allows non-law enforcement to review our automatic traffic camera safety violations and issue tickets.

This bill is important for us because we're having, we're installing and increasing our authority to use automated traffic cameras within the city and the workload is becoming more than SPD staff can handle.

And so we want to be able to be more flexible with the type of staff that can review these violations.

Next is House Bill 2012. This bill is a technical fix to the nonprofit affordable housing property tax exemption statute, which gives our nonprofit affordable housing programs and developers a property tax exemption.

And we want to make sure that when we're braiding funding coming from the city, so like our housing levy or MHA funds or mandatory housing affordability funds or and our Jumpstart corporate payroll tax, any of those funds, those can qualify a property for the property tax exemption, which already exists in statute.

Next is House Bill 2499. This is an extended producer responsibility for paper and packaging.

So essentially, this bill is really trying to improve our recycling system within the state and make sure that everyone has access throughout the state to a recycling service and putting the kind of cost to run that program on the producers of paper and packaging products.

And then finally, the other bill that we're requesting this session is House Bill 1178. This bill lifts a preemption on local government's ability to regulate firearms.

So this one would essentially allow us to have additional rules and regulations for firearms specifically within the City of Seattle.

We also have some budget asks this session that we'll be working on.

Um, some of those include additional funding for diversion, um, for pre arrest pre booking diversion.

Um, we also increase funding for the behavioral health system.

Just generally, there's a lot of, um, interest in capacity of the system and treatment capacity.

So we'll be advocating for more funding into that system.

On transportation issues, we have a request of $5M for the rural Avenue North safety improvement project.

This is actually a project that was funded 2 years ago by the legislature at $50M as part of the move ahead transportation package.

That funding has not been allocated to the city yet.

And so we will be asking for 5M of that 50 to be allocated this session.

We're also asking for $30 million to complete the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement program.

This is as part of the state scope of the project, and this $30 million will be the final funding to complete the project.

As part of the Climate Commitment Act, which is the state's cap and trade program that's bringing in revenues to the state, we will be requesting some climate environmental funding for the city.

This would include solar power technology upgrades for Seattle City Light, acquiring some property to have a water quality facility in South Park for Seattle Public Utilities, and also funding to decarbonize our municipal buildings, especially in order to create community resiliency hubs.

Now we'll get into a little bit of a preview of some of the issues that we'll see this upcoming session.

The session is not always predictable, but we'll try to give you a sense as to what we think we'll see and then hopefully give you a sense of what issues you'll want to follow in the next 60 days.

So starting with budget and revenue, there is a bill to increase the local property tax growth limit.

There's a 1% revenue growth limit factor right now in local property taxes.

And this bill would allow for that growth for population change and inflation, but capping at 103%.

This is a bill that King County in particular has been asking for and will be asked for last session and will continue to ask for this session.

Two other revenue bills that are in discussion, but bills have not been dropped yet.

One is related to the real estate excise tax, amending it to create a dedicated revenue source for affordable housing, and also a public safety sales tax, which would provide cities with councilmatic authority as opposed to voter-approved authority to impose a sales tax to fund public safety programs.

In the climate environment space, there's going to be a lot of talk this session about the Climate Commitment Act, which is already in state law.

On this slide is a bit of information, kind of where we're at with the program, how the auctions have been going, and a little bit about a citizen initiative campaign to repeal the Climate Commitment Act.

I want to mostly focus on legislation that will be introduced this year to pursue market linkage with other jurisdictions that have carbon markets, so Quebec and California.

Those bills have been introduced and have a hearing this week, actually.

The Senate bill has a hearing this Friday.

So that would be Senate Bill 6058. And this is Department of Ecology agency request legislation to link or begin the process to pursue linkage of our market with Quebec and California.

On health care and behavioral health, generally this session, behavioral health will be a big priority, both on policy bills and also funding.

Behavioral health system improvements will be a big budget priority, and there's a list of things that we will watch for to see what kinds of things will be funded, but it will run really from everything from access to locks on all the way to school support to diversion.

There will be policy bills that will cover 988 implementation, crisis responder liability protections, ambulance funding, children and youth, and also bills related to increasing the behavioral health workforce.

Housing and homelessness will again be a top issue this legislative session.

One of the bills that will be a big priority for the governor and also other members of the legislature will be transit-oriented development, which requires cities to allow certain amount of density around transit stops.

Another big priority will be a tenant bill related to rent increases and restricting rent increases in certain situations.

Both of those bills, transit-oriented development and the rent bill, will be actually heard in committee this week in the legislature.

Another issue we'll be watching is bills that would incentivize conversions of commercial buildings to residential buildings.

We'll also be watching for capital investments in encampment resolutions along state rights of way.

The governor's budget included funding for a rapid capital acquisition program for these encampment resolutions.

So we'll be watching on the budget conversation on that.

And then also there will be Funding asks for stabilizing the affordable housing providers through things like insurance solutions, workforce investments, and also operations and maintenance funding.

Some labor and commerce bills that are being heard actually this week will be a bill to provide unemployment protections for striking workers.

It will also be a bill to protect employees from what are called captive audience meetings, usually as in relation to meetings related to unionization.

There's also a bill being heard this week, which will update the state's equal pay law to include all protected classes.

So, in addition to gender, we'll also be watching funding for tourism and bolstering the creative economy.

Right, and on the public safety front, we know a number of gun violence prevention efforts are going to come up again this session.

I've listed a few of them here and the bill numbers associated with them.

None of these bills have a hearing yet this week.

We look forward to having hopefully some legislative conversations maybe week two or week three of the session.

But things we're tracking is regulating firearms in sensitive places, requiring a permit to purchase a firearm, reporting lost and stolen firearms, bulk purchasing restrictions, and also dealer accountability and code of conduct.

Police accountability is also gonna be a topic this session.

A few of the bills that are likely gonna come up is a bill around independent prosecutions of police use of deadly force.

This bill would essentially take the workload of the independent investigations office that's already been set up at the state level, and then run a non-biased prosecution effort of those independent investigation findings.

Additionally, a bill related to law enforcement deception is under consideration.

This bill actually has a hearing this afternoon, I believe.

And then bills reforming what law enforcement is allowed to do within traffic stops, and then a bill giving the Attorney General's Office power to investigate and reform law enforcement departments throughout the state that have patterns of misconduct.

We're also looking in the budget for increased funding for the basic law enforcement academy classes, as well as the new criminal justice training academy regional training facilities.

These facilities were set up last year through the budget throughout the state, and we're hoping that in creation of those regional facilities that will open up capacity within CJT's location in Burien for more law enforcement to go through the Basic Law Enforcement Academy.

And then we're also looking for tools and policy that is going to help improve law enforcement recruitment and retention.

On the social programs and education front, the legislature is going to continue making strides towards universal free school meals.

The free school meals bills are listed here on the slide, and one of them has a hearing actually this week, I believe, on Thursday.

And we're excited to see them continue this conversation.

This is a bill that was brought up last year but was ultimately scaled back, and the legislature is trying again this year.

We're also looking out for funding for a lot of food-related programs and emergency food assistance, helping food banks, food programs through EBT for students and families, and then also Meals on Wheels for seniors.

Another policy and budget topic that we're tracking is unemployment for undocumented immigrants.

And then we're also tracking different policy levers related to our childcare slots, as well as the state subsidization of childcare for low-income families.

Lastly, on transportation, as I mentioned earlier, traffic safety will be a big priority on the transportation space, and especially through automated traffic safety cameras.

So we'll be watching that space to see what other policies around traffic cameras will be introduced.

There also will be legislation regulating autonomous vehicles, especially as related to we'll be watching if those bills preempt the city in that space.

And on the transportation budget, The budget will be addressing transportation project overruns across the state, which includes the 520 Mount Lake project.

And there you can find our contact information where we're happy to talk with anyone about your issues that you're interested in and what we can help you track throughout this legislative session.

We're happy to set up one-on-ones and get a sense as to what it is that we can help you on.

But please, happy to answer any questions and looking forward to working with you all.

Council President, I think all of you were also provided a list of the bills and public hearings that are currently being scheduled for this week.

If you have any questions about those or want to report back on what was part of testimony, please don't hesitate to give Samir and Ana a call or a text or an email, okay?

Thank you very much, Ana and Samir, and Director Tarleton, for this overview.

I know that you had to move things around and scramble to be able to brief us today, the first day, and you have other meetings and things you have to get to.

So I just want to address the fact that this legislative agenda was approved by the last council, and there is a natural...

I won't call it a tension, but it could be that this new council has different opinions about the legislative agenda or the positions that your team is taking in Olympia.

So what is the best way to surface alternative opinions or concerns about what the city might be advocating for that folks do not favor and in the reverse.

So how does that work?

Excellent.

And I'll have Samir and Ana share with you how they handle it down in Olympia as well, just so that you know.

You will all have a chance to read the legislative agenda.

But each week, as Samir and Ana are giving you presentations, which you will get in advance, you'll get the information in advance on what bills are being introduced, what hearings are being scheduled, and then what positions we are planning to take based on feedback from the mayor's office, from the council members.

you will have an opportunity to weigh in and say, how did it get to this point where we are signing in in support or in opposition or we're testifying with concerns?

All of you need to know that the city does not have to take a position of pro or con always.

We can testify with concerns.

We cannot testify.

We don't have to sign in.

We can monitor and track.

a lot of the legislation, which we do.

And the most important thing that Samir and Ana will be able to provide is ongoing discussions that they're having with prime sponsors of the legislation, with the governor's office, with the other legislators, with the committee chairs, so that you have a sense of which priorities are emerging in the legislative front not just in the city and where our priorities align or don't align with what's happening in Olympia.

Samir and Ana, perhaps you would want to address the way some of these considerations are handled in your briefings and in your conversations with legislators.

Yeah, I think we, in any case, in any situation, we're always happy to help council members testify on their own behalf on any bills.

especially if you have something that is interesting to you, we're happy to help you make that happen.

Nowadays, you can testify virtually in almost every situation.

And then if you have concerns or have an interest or want your opinion known, do let us know about bills.

Again, we don't often know what our position will be until we see a draft and have it analyzed by staff.

a lot of work that goes into that but um please do let us know about if you have a position or if you have an interest in it and we can loop you into those conversations thank you for that so do i understand correctly that we have the that these members have the ability to uh to weigh in on can can some of the things on this list that you will be advocating for they can they can express their difference of opinion and then they don't then Is that the way to work?

Yes, and as you know, and many of the previous council meetings have included discussions where there were differences of opinion within the council members, between the council and the mayor's office, as well as between the city and the prime sponsors of legislation.

This is, as I think I said to the council in 2022, It is an inherent feature of the legislative process that there will be debate and dissension.

You cannot reach a point of convergence or consensus until you have gone through that process of debating the different perspectives.

And I do think, Council President Nelson, you have helped articulate that no council member should ever hesitate to...

examine why it is the city is supporting or opposing a particular piece of legislation and what the implications are for existing city policy, existing ordinances, as well as existing state law.

Much of state law and legislation that is being introduced is not brand new law.

It's updates to, revisions to, improvements to existing law that needs to be changed and so i i value these meetings these public meetings because it allows all of you to hear the different perspectives that are coming out of olympia and from our seattle delegation in particular on many of these pieces of legislation that anna and samir have are being carried by members of the Seattle Legislative Delegation.

They represent all of us, right?

They're representing different parts of the city.

And they are also available to each one of you to have more in-depth conversation, meetings before, briefings, before testimony, they really welcome that.

So I look forward to making sure Samir and Ana can connect you to the legislators as well as to the environment in Olympia.

And if you wish to testify, you don't need to go in person anymore.

You can testify via Zoom because the legislative agenda in Olympia frequently conflicts with your meetings.

So testimony is going on in public hearings right now in Olympia.

So we wanna make sure your schedules are available.

Okay, thank you very much.

I will pass it to Council Member Strauss and then I will recognize Council Member Saka.

Council Member Saka was ahead of me.

Go for it.

Thank you, Council President Nelson.

So excellent presentation.

Thank you for this overview.

Would love to kind of double click just for just a moment on SB 5959. It was described or listed in the city leading issues Slide, and also separately in the transportation slide as well, would love to learn more, just that next layer of detail about what that proposed bill is specifically intended to accomplish.

As I understand, it's intended to add capability to address the volume of, and to automate the process for traffic safety violations.

But I guess first question is, is it intended to remove a human from the review process for those purported traffic safety violations?

And then secondly, if the answer is no, then what is the delta between this proposed bill and what exists today?

Go ahead, Ana.

Yeah, I can go after that one.

The the proposal would not remove humans, it would just remove and make it so non law enforcement officers can can review other public employees can review those citations.

And when I understand because of capacity issues, the police department isn't always able to prioritize, you know, reviewing the citations and a significant number of the citations go on unreviewed because of the lack of, you know, just law enforcement capacity.

And it sounds like that we have other public employees who would be able to do that work and can be able to do that work.

And so that's that's the that's the nexus.

And it's also it's also state the bill itself is broader than that on other issues.

And so I can send you a summary of the other traffic camera related provisions in that bill late after this meeting.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Director Charlton.

Sameer, Ana, always great to see you all.

Just taking a moment for colleagues, I have found advocating in Olympia, sometimes it is better when Seattle doesn't testify.

Sometimes it's better to testify.

Sometimes it's easier just to send a text message or a note to a legislator that we know.

So Ana, Sameer, my standard policy applies again today.

And throughout the session, if you need me, just call on me and I will...

send a text or advocacy in the way that works best for the city.

Also noting OIR sits within the mayor's executive branch, and so while we may want...

That's kind of the natural tension that Director Charlton was talking about, that we as the legislative body aren't within that decision-making hierarchy, and we have always found a way to...

be at the same table and advocate in the same way.

And I think that that's a challenging thing that your office does, and you've handled it very well.

I've always really enjoyed working with you all.

But that to say that our legislative agenda can feel like a kitchen sink And it is almost intended that way in some regards to allow the Office of Intergovernmental Relations to advocate or to defend against any particular bill because we have codified it within our agenda.

So it's a natural tension of...

fast moving work in Olympia.

And so what my office does is we always, we highlight a couple bills that we really want to have to make sure that we're on top of because they call them weekdays in Olympia, not because they're Monday through Friday, but because a week's worth of work is done within a day.

And so if you miss a beat, you might miss out, which is why we highlight a couple bills and then we meet pretty regularly on outside of council briefings so that this time can be reserved for kind of the weekly updates.

We're one of the only two, only one of, we're only one of very few cities, we have 281, 86 cities and towns in the state that has an office of intergovernmental relations that gives this type of briefing.

And so, we're very lucky in that regard.

I guess I didn't have a question.

Sorry, Director.

Wouldn't you agree?

So basically you're saying that this is the mayor's legislative agenda?

No, I was just commenting and putting additional context to the organizational chart of the city of Seattle and then why our legislative agenda may feel like it encompasses everything because it allows our OIR team to advocate or defend against legislation within that bucket.

No, I mean the list that we're discussing today.

I guess I didn't comment on that list.

Well, perhaps, Council President, what I did not earlier explain is that we have an unusual charter in city ordinance 3.14.400, which was established in 1979, which created the Office of Intergovernmental Relations for the City of Seattle.

And that charter document in our ordinance stipulates that the Office of Intergovernmental Relations will support the executive branch, the mayor, and I am appointed by the mayor, but confirmed by the council.

We will support the mayor's agendas at the federal and state levels of government in consultation with the city council.

And in consultation with the city council also requires that the state legislative agenda be developed In the executive branch, as Samir described at the beginning of the presentation, it's developed within the executive branch initially through the departments.

It's bottoms up and then it becomes more top down and lateral.

It goes up to the mayor's office.

And at the same time, Samir and Ana were working simultaneously with each of you on the council and your council staff.

Okay, so the legislative agenda is being, it's evolving and it is being developed simultaneously pretty much by July and August at three levels within the departments, in the mayor's office and within the city council body.

And the most important aspect of the ordinance, it stipulates that the state legislative agenda and the legislative program must be adopted by resolution by the city council for each legislative session.

That is not required for the federal government because, of course, Congress doesn't really work on a schedule, whereas the state legislature and the state executive branch does.

So we want to make sure that this council knows at every stage through this process you have not only the opportunity but the right by ordinance and the responsibility for your constituents to have a say in what the city is advocating for.

And it is not unusual that there will be differences of opinion between the executive branch and the legislative branch, within the legislative branch and within the executive branch.

The departments don't always agree.

You would be amazed to find.

So that's good.

That's what I was saying, Council President.

That level of, I don't mind tension, I don't mind differences of view.

That level of the churn and the scrum is really valuable to the development of good policy.

And so I really, I know Samir and Ana have worked intensely with your predecessors, with your staff.

They look forward to working with all of you again and with the mayor's office and with the departments to make sure that the city's interests are very well and fairly represented in Olympia.

and to make sure you have an opportunity to have a say on House Bill or Senate Bill 5959 Council Member Saga, a really important decision about the operations of the police department and revenues to the city being able to write traffic violation citations for things that are violations.

And so we look forward to that.

And this is a really short session, it will feel, you work full time year round, the legislature is working year round, but only in session part time.

And so it will feel like it's really fast, but hopefully every week you get public hearings and public meetings and more than once a week, you'll have private conversations.

And I think all of the council members have a chance to really get to know what's going on on the ground on the few things that really will come back to your committees.

And I think, Council President, that's what I would like to close on.

The legislative session will end on March 7th.

and your committees will have started, I expect.

And one of the things that Samir and Ana will do for all of you is give you a rundown on what happened in session that could have potentially affect city laws, regulations, workforce situations, and feed that into your considerations for your committees.

during the coming year.

And maybe things will be better, sometimes things will get complicated, but it's also a reminder that sometimes laws have an unintended effect, and so it gives you another six to nine months to say, let's go back and fix what happened if it didn't work out quite the way we anticipated.

I don't know if there are any other questions for Samir and Ana.

I do know they need to get to a couple of the Transportation Committee hearings that are probably scheduled and other hearings, but anything else, Council President?

We're at your...

I did see Council Member Moore in...

Okay.

Okay, good.

I don't know your time.

You stay with us, Samir and Ana, as long as you can, okay?

I'll try to be brief.

Thank you very much for this orientation.

It was very helpful.

I guess I'm just trying to get clarity on the issue of the issue area preview.

a number of the issues have bills identified with them.

Has the city council stated that it is in support of those particular bills that have been identified in this slide deck?

Samir and Ana, could you address the council member's question on that?

Uh, did those since we're since it's still early with the city hasn't taken a position on any any bills yet since the hearings haven't taken place.

But that's something that those bills are being reviewed and then discussions are happening.

And so you all haven't still have an opportunity to let us know if you'd like to.

I will add on the city leading issues slide.

There was there's those couple policy priorities.

Those are ones that we are actively have already begun, you know, asking state legislators to address.

And so we're leading with a pro position on those and then hoping that they receive hearings.

Obviously, if they're, you know, there might be other things included in the bills or the bills might change throughout the process.

And so there's a lot of nuance and change.

And so we can help by letting you know how the bills are shaping up and moving through the process.

And your feedback is always welcome.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I believe that council member Rivera was next.

Nope.

No.

Yeah, go ahead.

Thank you so much for this presentation.

Very helpful.

Just a point of clarification on best way to communicate our committee meetings.

I heard you say that a director that our committee meetings are of a conduit by which your staff is able to communicate with us, but we all know committee meetings only.

happen twice a month and the legislative session is so fast.

So is there another point of entry for communicating on the bills of importance to our committees or what's the best way?

So I think as Council Member Strauss said, and Council Member Morales and Council President Nelson know this, you can text Ana and Samir directly if you hear, you're gonna hear from colleagues down in Olympia, right?

That that happens.

It's really important information that gets fed to you or you need to feed to them.

And so any day, any time where you're thinking you want to feed information to Samir and Ana or get clarification, more information, explanation, their email and phone numbers were on that contact slide.

And you can feel free to contact them directly.

You can always contact me.

I can relay to them.

And in session, I just want you all to know All of us are literally online.

a lot of the 24-hour day, okay, Monday through Sunday.

And you'll be getting information from Samir and Ana on Sundays typically or Monday morning for the work session, but session is all in all the time.

And I don't want you to hesitate to text as Council Member Strauss said, text, call, email, We've been known to get Facebook messages.

I mean, things happen.

So whatever makes you feel most comfortable is the best communications channel to use, okay?

Thank you very much.

Okay, Council Member Kettle.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Council President.

Good afternoon, Director Tarleton, and appreciate the briefing.

And to echo what the Council President said, we're basically going to come up on a two-thirds swap out of the Council.

And as you can imagine, for example, the Public Safety Committee will have a different direction.

And as part of the good governance piece, we're definitely going to be doing our stakeholder engagement and particularly early on within the city government.

So I look forward to meeting with you because, you know, I know the list from my previous life of coming from the neighborhood public safety perspective, but, you know, it really could be a question of emphasis and priority, and so I would love to...

you know, take advantage of that invitation, you know, maybe before the end of the month to, you know, check in with you to, you know, kind of go through some of these things and get a sense from your perspective on these, particularly the public safety piece.

And there are some overlaps, obviously the, you know, the traffic safety one, there's, there's an overlap there between the two communities and we can work together on that.

So I just want to get that invitation out now and thank you ahead of time.

And I appreciate it.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

This might have been the most difficult hearings of the session, sorry.

Well, thank you all for the time, Council President, and you know where to find us.

Okay, thank you.

All righty.

All right, next up we've got a presentation from our own legislative staff as well as our internal counsel, and this is to basically give a bit of information are new members, but also existing members on city powers and how they are exercised.

So please go ahead and introduce yourselves and begin the presentation.

I'll just start out here.

I'm Ketel Freeman, council central staff.

And Lauren Henry, your legislative legal counsel.

I'll pull up the presentation here.

This is, of course, attached to the agenda as well.

All right.

You all see that?

Good.

All right.

So this is a first of four briefings that will be provided over the next couple of months about subjects that inform policymaking and implementation.

We'll start today at a high level with modes of municipal power, resources, how they're exercised, a return on the 22nd to talk about oversight and policymaking functions of council committees.

That's really the bread and butter of council work and where you'll be spending much of your time in the next two years.

In February, we'll provide a briefing on the city's Race and Social Justice Initiative, which is now a codified body of work for the city's Office for Civil Rights, and then close with a briefing on the budget, which is the all-important power of the purse.

But starting today at kind of the highest level of abstraction, we'll talk about modes of municipal power.

Let me just skip a few slides ahead.

I think they're a little bit out of order here and give you kind of a preview of what we're going to talk about today.

modes of municipal power, sort of what are they, talk about Seattle as a charter city, discuss those powers that are reserved to the council, provide examples of how those powers are exercised, and then talk about some of the how those powers are exercised, they have to be exercised transparently, there's some limitations on those powers, and then talk a little bit about the special subject of giving those powers away.

So I'll touch on the first several bullet points and then Lauren will follow with the final.

So modes of municipal power.

This is a rubric that folks may find in a public policy textbook or law review article on municipal law.

These came to me through Hugh Spitzer, who is a professor at the University of Washington.

took his municipal law class many years ago.

But there are essentially four modes of municipal power.

There's the one that most people think of, the power to provide general governmental services, so think libraries, parks, fire protection, those types of public goods that local government typically provides.

There's police power.

That's not just about police.

Whenever you hear the word police power, think regulation.

It's the power to regulate activities to protect public health, safety, and welfare.

Often that's done through things like zoning laws, regulatory licenses, things like that.

A power that people don't often associate with municipal corporations is proprietary power.

Here the city of Seattle has that actually in spades.

It's often the power associated with the sale of commodities or services because the city owns two electrical utilities.

Often a lot of decision making by the council and the mayor relates to this proprietary power.

One thing that you may know or may not know is that the city has power marketers who work at City Light, and they sell, buy and sell electricity on the market.

So that is an exercise of the city's proprietary powers.

And then finally, there is corporate power.

That is essentially the power to exercise those other three modes.

That's usually done through hiring, contracting, property management, structuring government.

It is...

also a power that is often exercised by the council but not necessarily appreciated.

The resolutions that you all passed, that will pass tomorrow for the external committees and did pass last week is kind of an example of the use of that corporate power.

Just a couple words about this rubric.

Like all rubrics, you know, it's a useful framing device.

The lines between these modes of power are blurry.

This is not necessarily exhaustive.

There are often times where the council will be exercising multiple modes of power at the same time or where this council may exercise one mode of power and the mayor may exercise another mode of power.

So moving on here.

So Seattle is a charter city.

The state of Washington, the RCWs, establish three categories for municipal corporations.

There are first class cities, second class cities, and towns.

First class cities are those with a population over 10,000 and that have a charter approved by the city's electors.

There are 10 first class cities that are charter cities in the state of Washington, Aberdeen, Bellingham, Bremerton, Everett, Richland, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, Vancouver, and Yakima.

One thing sort of interesting to observe about that list is that some of the bigger cities are not actually charter cities.

Bellevue, for example, is not a charter city.

Kent is actually a pretty big city.

It's not a charter city.

Those are code cities.

One important thing about charter cities is that the form of government is established by a charter.

So the electors of the city establish the form of government.

There are essentially two that a first-class city can have.

There can be a council mayor form of government and a council manager form of government.

Seattle is, of course, a council mayor form of government.

Tacoma, Vancouver, Richland, Yakima, those are all council manager forms of government.

So one thing to touch on before we talk a little bit more about the council's powers is that there are, of course, other elected offices.

There's the mayor and city attorney and the municipal court judges.

The mayor and city attorney are established by the charter as being elected offices.

Municipal court judges are not required to be elected by the charter.

That's rather through an ordinance passed by the council when that municipal court was established.

A few things about these offices.

The mayor, of course, has the primary duties to see that the laws of the city are enforced, directing and controlling a subordinate office of the city, except insofar as such enforcement, direction, and control is by this charter reposed in some other officer or board.

But it is essentially the job of the mayor to implement policy.

The city attorney has primary responsibility for all litigation of the city.

The Municipal Court is a court of limited jurisdiction.

One thing to just note about the Municipal Court, you all are probably familiar with the balance of powers that are present in the federal constitution and may be inclined to analogize the Municipal Court as having a check and balance function that, say, an Article III court and federal law would have, and that's actually not the case.

They have a very important function.

Prosecutions of misdemeanor offenses occur.

They play a role in adjudicating disputes about city ordinances, but they don't provide that function of a constitutional check on the mayor or a council.

So it's largely the mayor and the council which are checks on each other.

So what are the powers reserved to the council?

Where does it come from?

Essentially, it comes from a few sources.

One is the charter itself.

And then the other is, of course, the Revised Code of Washington and the Constitution of the State of Washington.

There are 18 powers that are enumerated in the Charter that are reserved to the Council that can only be exercised by ordinance.

Most of them have to do with those modes of powers that we discussed earlier.

Some of them are largely historical.

The council can appoint officers, organize city departments, exercise power vested in the charter.

That's largely the city's corporate power.

You have the authority to do that by ordinance.

You can assess and collect taxes, borrow money, create local improvement districts, do all those things associated with the power of the purse.

That's also required to be done by ordinance.

Importantly, for the council, you can acquire and dispose of property.

Any kind of property disposition that happens in the city has to come through the council, has to be a public hearing on it.

You can construct and operate public utilities, which the city of Seattle does.

And then importantly, you can make laws to protect the public health, safety, and welfare.

That's the police power mode of power that we were talking about earlier.

And if you were to look at all 18 of the enumerated powers, you would find some and think, am I ever going to do this?

Like acquisition of quarries.

Am I ever going to use my power to acquire a quarry?

Probably not.

Those are largely historical powers that are granted to the council.

and essentially reflected in enabling legislation for charter cities.

So other sources of power outside of the charter, where do other sources of power, so where does power come from?

Largely it comes from enabling legislation at the state level.

So there may be some authority that's not specifically spelled out in the charter but is reserved to cities of all classes that the council could take advantage of.

Maybe I'll just sort of step back here and talk about a distinction that sometimes municipal lawyers use about home rule versus Dillon's rule.

You all may be familiar with this.

Dillon's rule, home rule, sort of home rule states grant local governments all the powers that are necessary to sort of provide their general purpose governmental function unless there is some proscription that's out there.

Dillon's rule, Dillon was a judge who had a couple of rulings in the early 1800s, and he has a rule associated with his name, and it's kind of the inverse of that.

It says local powers are limited to those that are expressly granted by statute or necessarily implied.

Some folks debate whether or not the city, whether or not a home rule, whether or not the city of Seattle is a home rule city, or whether or not the Dillon's rule applies to the city.

I think the short answer is that if there's not explicit state statutory authority for something, that doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have the authority to undertake some action.

It just means that as a practical matter, if the authority is not expressly provided by statute or charter, you may want to check in with Lauren or the city attorney's office to make sure that you actually have the power to do that thing.

So first look at the charter, next look at enabling statutes, and if it's not there...

Come see me.

Come see Lauren.

So we're going to go through a few examples here now of sort of times when the council has exercised its power by ordinance to do any number of things to sort of make this a little bit more real.

The first example is the community assisted response and engagement function of the city, the alternative to 911 response.

So what is it?

It's a department created to improve the public health and safety services by unifying and aligning the city's community focused non-police public safety investments and services to address behavioral abuse, substance abuse, and non-emergent low-risk calls for service through diversified programs that are equitable, innovative, evidence-based, compassionate, and effective.

So it's essentially a function.

The outcome here for CARE is a police power function.

It's to protect public health, safety, and welfare.

CARE was created initially through Ordinance 126233 and then renamed through ordinance 120707. But the mode of power to get to that police power objective is corporate power.

So that was an example of the council using the authority that it has in the charter to create a new department to achieve a public health, safety, and welfare objective.

The next example we're going to use here is the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax.

So as you all are I'm sure very familiar with it, it's a tax on business payrolls of $7 million or more with different rates determined by the size of the business and levels of compensation.

It's created to fund essentially general governmental functions like affordable housing, equitable development projects, economic resilience programs, so it has kind of an economic development function as well, and green new deal projects, which are largely economic development functions too.

The tax was created by Ordinance 126-108.

A spending plan was approved through Ordinance 126-109.

So there was an action taken by ordinance, two ordinances.

And the motive power here is, again, to provide general governmental services.

But you won't see the authority for this expressly in the charter.

You'll find it in other sources, like the RCWs.

There's authority for excise taxes on businesses, and that authority was affirmed in Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce versus the City of Seattle in 2022. So that's an example where there is not specific charter authority, although there's some implied authority there, but there is authority from the state, and that authority has been affirmed by a court of appeals.

So a third example here is the minimum wage.

So what is it?

It's an increased Seattle's minimum wage to $15 per hour when initially it was adopted, and it was phased in over time, and there are required inflationary adjustments, and You've all probably seen articles from last week, and we now have the highest minimum, one of the highest minimum wages in the country.

It's a labor standard.

It was created by Ordinance 124490. It was put together by both the council and the mayor at the time, Mayor Murray, and the council convened a blue ribbon panel and ultimately developed some legislation together.

The mode of power may be a little bit surprising, but it's the mode of power that is often used in our city's business regulations.

And that is police power.

So it's a power that's executed to protect the public health, safety and welfare charter and police power authority granted to first class cities give the city the ability to impose a minimum wage and other labor standards.

So now I'm going to turn it over to Lauren, which is going to walk through the limitations, the how and other aspects of the council's exercise of power.

Thank you, Ketel.

Good afternoon, Council President and members.

Might I pause there for just a moment and see, I know Ketel covered a great deal of information at the outset.

Are there any lingering questions before I hit the last few slides for us?

All right, great, perfectly clear information, wonderful.

Okay, last few slides we have are how you exercise your powers publicly and transparently.

Each of you have already received your OPMA, that's the Open Public Meetings Act training, and Public Disclosure Act training.

So I'm not gonna belabor those points, but just to say that, The revised code of Washington chapter 42.30 does prescribe the work of this body in terms of its public nature and its transparency.

And so the actions that you take like today and having an open session are in conformity with that state law.

As it relates to transparency, another charter provision that we wanted to highlight for you today is the single subject requirement for legislation.

This requires that the scope of a matter relate to a single subject that's identified in the bill's title.

And so once you caption a bill as relating to X, You've set the field under which all the provisions of that law will relate.

In doing so, you transparently lock yourself into that one matter and create open discourse that relates to that one matter.

That, again, is a charter requirement that's also recognized in the Washington state constitution.

Kettles described the robust nature of the council's governing authority to make those laws and regulations for the residents of Seattle.

There are limitations on those powers most directly seen in state constitutional limitations and by extension, state law.

Some examples resting with the Washington Constitution, Article 8, Sections 5 and 7, relate to restrictions against the lending of the city's credit or the gifts of public funds.

These are transparent measures meant to retain to the people their funding for their purposes, and so each council action will need to be in conformity.

with that set of examples of a state constitutional limit.

As we heard from Carol Tarleton and her crew, the state passes a robust set of laws each session, and the Revised Code of Washington are living and breathing documents that are amended over time.

When the state chooses to act, they can preempt the city from engaging in particular fields of regulation.

They can do so by categorically stating that cities may not regulate a particular area.

This is seen by one example in residential rent control, RCW 35.21.830.

creates that preemption over the field of residential rent control.

And so you may recall last year when the council took up a residential rent control bill, it had to do so by the only legal mechanism possible, a trigger law to say, if state law were to change in the future, here's how city law would come into being.

That was a direct byproduct of state preemption.

So over time, as you consider your amendments will do so within the conformity of existing state law.

And finally, an important aspect of the Seattle city charter is that the people themselves have reserved the authority to initiate policy themselves by initiatives and referenda.

So that can be found in Article IV, Section 1B.

It's actually one of the first notes within the legislative department section of the charter is actually to say that the people reserve to themselves the authority to legislate as well alongside us.

And moving to how we lawfully delegate or give our powers away, a natural extension, as Ketel said, of this mayor-council form of government is that the council enacts laws and the mayor or independent offices implement those laws.

And so the natural extension of that is that at times, this council may pass a broad statement of law and then empower directors of executive departments to fill in the meat and detail of what that law will mean for its implementation or enforcement.

This is done by director's rules, and those are not done in a vacuum, and they're not done without transparency.

Any director's rule must be enacted pursuant to this city's Administrative Procedures Act, which is its own Seattle Municipal Code.

And so by one example, Municipal Code 3.06.040 describes authority given to SDCI to have rulemaking authority within the confines of the ordinances that have been established within their purview.

So that's not to say that they can create a rule about anything, but if it is consistent with the laws that have already been adopted, they may provide kind of meat in detail to our ordinances.

And they do so transparently through the Administrative Procedures Act.

And then finally, one of these mechanisms that by purview of our code already exists is when there's a civil emergency that occurs, the mayor can think of it as stepping into the shoes of the council in enacting usually time sensitive or emergent decisions relating to budget or procurement or which laws may be effectively waived for some period of time.

This is not an event that is just taken on the whim of an executive, but must be in conformity with existing city code.

And the council does retain its right to terminate a civil emergency by resolution that's adopted by two thirds of the members.

This is an example of a check and balance that's played.

In a time of emergency, the mayor may step into the shoes of the council, but the council retains their authority to continue to regulate and step in and end that civil emergency should they choose.

All right, good news.

We made it through the substance there.

The final slide is takeaways.

As Ketel aptly described, four modes of municipal power shapes how you think about your role and which power you're exercising when you take up a particular public policy.

You do have broad discretion in the exercise of those powers via legislation.

that broad discretion is limited in part by the Washington Constitution and Washington state laws.

And so you navigate that discretion within the boundaries that have been set by higher powers.

And then finally, there are instances in which you elect to delegate your authority in order to make the mechanisms of city business happen or in a civil emergency situation.

there are mechanisms in place for the mayor to step in and perform some of your lawmaking duties.

But that ultimate decision on how long that lasts and how the executive exercises their powers rests with you.

That concludes our presentation.

If there are any questions.

Yeah.

Are there questions, colleagues, for Ketel or Lauren?

I have a quick question.

If you could go back to the conversation about OPMA and deliberation, you may not be able to answer this, but we are all getting emails, phone calls, requests to have conversations about the vacancy.

Can you share with us anything about how and whether we should be responding either to the individuals or amongst ourselves to avoid the deliberation not in public space?

Sure, sure.

Issue.

It's a good question, and it bleeds very aptly into the final presentation of the day, which will be on the vacancy.

So myself and the city clerk, and I believe our communications director will present, but just briefly, the OPMA is meant to kind of highlight this idea of not having an active quorum.

either among a particular committee or this body as a whole, deliberating, making final decisions, not in public.

And so individual questions to you as an individual member would not violate the Open Public Meetings Act.

Our process is meant to be as transparent as possible.

At a minimum, if you could direct the individual to make sure that they're making, you know, if they wanted to apply for a vacancy position, make sure that they know that just contacting one council member is not sufficient to be submitting an application and that they need to be diverted towards the public process.

So that might be helpful guidance right now.

And then once the vacancy window closes and all of the applications are in front of all of our coworkers, that's when kind of OPMA restrictions might apply so that critical mass of colleagues are not gathering and discussing any particular coworker.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Agenda item three.

I'm sorry, I had to step out for one moment.

Thank you very much for this presentation.

I have to note that sometimes we think we know what...

It's hearing things over and over again that really does help.

And one thinks one knows how to exercise power.

I mean, after all, here we are, we should know.

But I didn't realize, for example, that we don't have the typical three branch of government where our court system will weigh in on our laws or those decisions then.

Yeah, and you do.

It's just saying thank you.

Yeah, sure.

And just to be clear, you do.

It's just not through the jurisdiction of the municipal court.

It's through the Washington State courts.

Yeah.

Thank you very much for this research, and I look forward to the future presentations.

Thank you very much.

And we will now move on to the last presentation, which is to talk, to dig into greater detail on the vacancy filling process.

And we will be joined by, let's see, our City Clerk, Sharon Dedman.

And I believe Dana is available.

I'm not sure if she is going to be joining us.

Hi, all.

Can you hear me okay?

Yep.

Shireen, go ahead and take it away, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I apologize for not being able to be there in person.

I have a sore throat today, and I thought it would be best to not bring that to the entire office.

Um, so thank you.

I'm glad we have this option to be able to do this remotely.

Um, but good afternoon council members and today I am going to discuss the next steps in the current vacancy for position 8. I want to thank Lauren Henry legislative council for being present and joining me today in person.

Together we are here to answer any questions you might have after this presentation.

And let me share my screen.

Just a moment.

Can we all see this?

Okay.

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

So On January 2nd, council member Teresa mosquito resigned from her position, creating a vacancy that was effective on January 3rd.

The vacancy appointment process is 20 days guided by the city charter and Seattle municipal code.

The appointed council member will serve until the November 2024 general election, which is actually a special election that's going to be held concurrently with the November general election.

And once that election is certified and qualified.

The current position 8 committee assignment is the sustainability city light and arts and culture.

All public information regarding this vacancy has been provided on a dedicated web page, which is updated regularly.

At this web address, as you can see, and this information does include the open application process.

Applications will be accepted via email until tomorrow, January 9th at 5. P.

M. Applications sorry must include all of the 3, all 3 of the following documents in order to be considered complete.

So, cover letter.

Resume and financial interest form applicants are notified if their application is complete or incomplete.

And if the application is incomplete, it is noted which documents are required to make the application complete.

All candidates must meet the following minimum requirements.

They must be a citizen of the United States.

They must be able to read and write the English language.

They must be a qualified elector of the state of Washington, and they must be a registered voter of the city of Seattle at least 120 days prior to filing an application.

We currently have received 28 completed applications.

16 of whom have been confirmed as registered voters in the city of Seattle.

Um, but we are still waiting to confirm how long they've been registered to vote in the city of Seattle.

We've been doing it daily as batches.

So.

We've had a couple of days of applicants to check and we'll just keep sending them to King county and I want to think in county elections for their assistance with this process and they have been replying very fast.

So, um, excuse me.

The code provides an opportunity for a public forum to be held with the input from community entities, community entities, wishing to participate in the development of the public forum, or to host the public forum may submit a letter of interest and indicating the entities capacity to assist with the form and relevant prior experience.

By 5 PM, tomorrow, January 9th.

For community entities who wish to provide feedback regarding the public forum.

including recommendations for the forum structure questions for the candidates, or any accessibility consideration, they must use the online form that's available on the website submit.

There's a list of questions available for to answer and they will go ahead and submit that.

Once a community entity is chosen, the location in time for the public forum can be chosen.

So it's not available as of yet.

Translating this process into a timeline Wednesday, January 10. Redacted copies of the applications will be posted on the vacancy website and provided to council members for review.

Council members may choose to meet with any applicants individually.

On Friday, January 12th, as council president mentioned at the beginning of this meeting council will meet at a special city council meeting to consider the feedback from community entities.

To select the community entity or entities to host the community forum as well as to select finalist candidates.

This discussion will occur in an executive session and the selections will be announced in open session.

The community forum will be held either Wednesday, January 17th, or Thursday, January 18th.

And on Monday, January 22nd, at a special city council meeting, sorry, a special city council meeting will be held to accept public comment and to allow council to interview applicants and open session and to discuss their qualifications in executive session.

And finally, at the regular city council meeting on January 23rd, city council will vote on an appointment.

So, with all of that being said.

I'm open to hear any questions you all may have.

And I'm going to stop sharing my screen.

Do we have any questions?

Thank you, Clerk Dedman.

I really appreciate you going over this.

And like I said, reiteration really does help.

And I want to note that you said something that was important, which is that although the deadline is January 9th, I'm just reiterating what you said, we will know, we will get a list of the applicants that have been cleared by King County on Wednesday.

So although people will be very interested in knowing, okay, so who's at play here, there is an additional step that I at least I didn't realize, and some other folks didn't, that the addresses and voting record has to be checked by the county.

So a little bit of expectation setting here.

Yeah, as well as the redaction, you know, so everything, this is a bit of a tedious.

Exactly.

So thank you very much for going through that.

I will ask if there are any other questions.

I see a couple of hands up.

I'm not sure who raised it first, Council Member Strauss or...

Okay, go ahead.

More.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, for this very helpful presentation.

And I had a couple of questions, and I don't know whether they're directed to you or to Council President, so I'll just put them out there.

I noted on the first one that the...

appointed council member will serve until the special election in November 2024. And I'm assuming that that just means that's when their term ends, that whoever receives that appointment, should they choose to run, would not be prohibited from running?

Right.

It speaks nothing to the election process.

So it only speaks to the vacancy, the position as it is, and They're, as you said, the timeline for when they can serve.

So if they choose to run and be elected, then they can continue to serve.

Okay, thank you.

Hold on, I think that I see that...

Oh, sorry.

There's no legal bar to someone who chooses to serve in position eight and be appointed.

There's no legal bar from that individual submitting their candidacy and running for election for the same seat.

Okay, thank you.

And if I may ask one more question.

Well, actually two questions.

So in looking at the schedule of deliberation, it includes the individual council members may meet individually with each applicant.

And I guess this is probably a question for our lawyer, counsel, and I think Council Member Morales was sort of getting at this.

Should we even though we may, should we?

And then lastly, is there going to be a list of the questions that we will be asking in open session?

Who is going to develop those questions?

Thank you.

I can answer that last one, if that's okay.

That is what the community organization entity is, I believe, was designed to help with, which was hosting that public forum at which those questions will be asked.

We won't have our own questions?

Oh, yeah.

Yes, that is...

I thought that was a given, so yes.

I mean, we can ask of the...

For our open session, who will be drafting those questions?

Will it be each individual council member?

Will it be yourself?

Will it be questions that weren't asked in the forum?

This body has discretion to shape the interviewing process.

You'll want to be mindful of how many candidates are before you in shaping those questions and perhaps giving some standard amount of time to each so that we might move through them.

But beyond those considerations, this body can decide for itself if there will be a set set of questions that's asked for each, if it might be more open-ended.

Each of those components are to the discretion of this body.

Thank you.

And again, this is the first time that we are following a procedure that is set down in code now.

And just speaking for myself, so much of the process going forward after the 10th depends on how many candidates that will inform the time we have at the dais.

It'll inform how many which will then lead into how many questions, et cetera, et cetera.

So I feel like we'll have a much better understanding of how things will go forward once we understand the size of the field.

Thank you.

A point of clarification, please, Madam President.

The community forum, is it that the community will submit questions to those those folks that have submitted resumes?

By the Seattle Municipal Code, we as a council are required to host a public forum.

In practice, it had been done previously that a community entity was selected to act as the facilitator and provide those interview questions to the candidates.

With the process that the council has set up now, we have the opportunity for a community entity that wishes to host to provide a letter of interest by email by tomorrow 5 p.m.

But if there are other community entities that just wish to provide some general feedback and give you all guidance on how they would like the public forum structure to go, the questions that will be asked at the public forum and the accessibility considerations, the city clerk has provided a form that those community entities can go to that council vacancy website and fill out.

So kind of a bifurcated community engagement process.

has been has been formed.

What's the online form you would submit the community entity would submit to say we should do only community questions or we should do only the host entity questions, etc.

And so that feedback would be welcome there.

Thank you, Lauren.

It is welcome there, but we have responses and sort of the question that we are asking it is to provide questions that they would like to see asked and not the difference of You know, which questions will be will be asked.

So we have had feedback from 7 community entities so far with the questions that they would like to see asked as well as 1 that submitted a letter of interest.

And I meant to give that update.

So I wanted to mention it here.

Thank you, Council President.

This question stems from one that you were just answering a moment ago, Lauren.

I know in past vacancy, filling vacancies, the council made it very clear that they were looking for a caretaker, someone that was not going to run again.

Is that something that we can put...

in this application?

Is that something that we just have to ask people's preferences?

If somebody was to say that they were going to be a caretaker and then decided to run, is that legally able?

And then also, colleagues, my apologies for not wearing a suit jacket.

I'm wearing my dog colors today, and I realized that if I put on the blue suit jacket, I'd be wearing the wrong team's colors.

So point of personal privilege today, colleagues.

I appreciate your graciousness.

Councilmember, to your question, prior vacancies may have elected to signal, the council themselves may have elected to signal their preference for whether the individual was restricted more to a caretaker role rather than the first of perhaps several desires to hold public office.

That is a discretionary call that this body can make.

Right now, the applicants must meet the minimum criteria that the city clerk has already gone through.

So by consensus, you might modify or at a minimum in interview questions, request that an individual give their preference for the duration of time in which they hold office.

Just to follow up on that, we can simply request we don't have any legal standing to say you are only able to serve any applicant, even if they agree they could still legally campaign.

Correct.

Okay, thank you.

That is precisely why.

Because we cannot enforce whatever anybody says they will or will not do regarding running for the permanent position or after.

It's not permanent for a year and then they have to be up again in 2025. That is...

I believe that it is a preference that we can all hold individually and you can seek the answers to that question from individual candidates, but we are not stating a preference one way or another that this is a placeholder or temporary or somebody that will be going forward to definitely run next November, this coming November.

All right, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I want to get back to what I think Council Member Moore was asking about the differentiation between the public forum questions and the council questions.

So my understanding is that community organizations have been solicited or can submit an interest in helping structure the forum.

They can submit questions that they would like to be asked at the forum.

how the decision gets made about which questions will be asked and who will ask them is one question I have.

And then in terms of the council, we will have our, I've lost the timeline, but we will have a council session where the candidates will be before us.

And I think what I need to understand better is if we have an opportunity to ask a series of questions at that point or if the expectation or the previous practice has just been that each candidate gets two or three minutes to speak and it's not really an interview as we might think of an interview, in which case, presumably, each of us will want to talk to these and interview them ourselves.

Am I understanding sort of the broad process correctly?

So the code does vest a great deal of discretion in this body to shape the vacancy process that it would like to have.

That includes whether or not specific council members will be the ones that ask questions of members either at a public forum or on the 22nd when you have your opportunity to hear from these candidates.

I'll note that the code requires that the council interview applicants and that term interview is given and so that's why January 22nd is that opportunity and the The slides noted that that's the moment for you to interview applicants.

Should you choose to do so individually, that would still be in conformity with the OPMA and with the vacancy code that's been established by ordinance.

I can just imagine, though, if I might follow up, Council President, if we have, let's say, eight candidates and eight council members, individual interviews would be...

very time consuming for the eight candidates to meet with each of us individually.

So I guess what I'm getting at is we need to figure out what that January 22nd session is gonna look like because if we have questions that we think are gonna be important for each candidate to answer and we have limited time, we'll need to figure out what those questions are gonna be.

Okay, thank you.

We may be asking this another time or two, I think, to make sure we're all understanding it well.

So, you'll notice on page four of this presentation, Councilmember Morales, it says, Friday, January 12th, special city council meeting to select community entity slash entities to host community forum and, comma, if necessary to select finalist candidates.

Semicolon, discussion in executive session and selections in open session.

So some of those, so like I said again before, the size of the field could very well determine a lot of these logistical questions.

And so the issue about eight council members and eight potential candidates could be, there's a potential that we will need to winnow the field down and we can address that at this meeting on the 12th.

All right.

Let's see who is next.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

So I want to add another you know, dimension maybe to this whole, there seems to be a lot of curiosity amongst my colleagues about questions and the process and, you know, how that's going to play out specifically.

And I'm hearing that, you know, the question, there's, well, one, the council has a lot of discretion in determining and shaping that.

And I'm also hearing, you know, and I imagine there'll be some sort of consensus regardless, but like the questions can be crowdsourced, if you will, from communities and a combination of that and, you know, council questions as well.

You know, I'm hearing there, it sounds like there's some interest in learning people's intentions to run or not.

And then, you know, also like I'm personally curious to learn who's run before, how many times and, you know, the result.

So where I'm going is, is like, Maybe, and I think a lot of this kind of remains to be seen in terms of how we're gonna effectuate a lot of this, but again, depending on the number of applicants, it might make sense if it's possible for us to specify, okay, Well, present applicants with a questionnaire, a written questionnaire, because I imagine there's also gonna be a high number of, a high volume of questions, and to sort of sift through and winnow through live at the dais or otherwise, probably not the most effective or efficient use of time.

So maybe one thing we consider is like, you know, like maybe we have a subset of questions where we're gonna ask directly and hear from everyone directly versus, written out beforehand.

So more of a comment rather than a question.

But I do welcome your feedback based off what I just said.

You know, the only feedback I can give you is, yes, that would be a lawful way of exercising that vast realm of discretion that you described.

Those decisions could be made in any number of the sessions that we have for our special public meetings or our regular council meetings that we have upcoming to determine those things.

Are there any further questions?

Yes, go ahead.

no further questions uh by virtue of background dana robinson sloat director of communication just to put a finer point on council president nelson's um mention of the wednesday deadline in an effort to manage expectations because we don't have a sense until the process is closed how many applications there will be and as council president pointed out the county has a role to play in this.

I would imagine that would be towards the end of the day that you would receive the completed packets.

So to your point, Council Member Saka, the details about whatever materials they submitted, their resume, background information.

So with the list in front of you in the morning, you'll have a sense of the types of candidates that you'll be receiving, I would imagine, towards the end of that day.

I hope that timeline's helpful.

Yes, thank you.

Also, President, if I may, one last question.

Just at the end of the day, it's the 12th that we will have the conversation amongst ourselves to decide what the interview process will look like, the actual questions, who will do the questions, and all of that.

We will take the 12th to make those determinations.

That is your first opportunity after you've received all of the candidate information, that you would have the option in open session to do so, and an elective executive session to discuss the qualifications for those candidates, though the process itself cannot be in an executive session.

That would happen in open session.

Thank you.

Yeah.

All right.

More to come.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Is there anything else from the presenters?

Nothing.

Okay.

So moving on to item seven of our agenda.

This is the point in the meeting that usually takes up the most time.

And I usually would read this following script.

We will now begin our next discussion on the preview of city council actions.

council and regional committees and the order of discussion is established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings which is designated alphabetically by last name and with the council president called last and this week's roll call rotation begins with council member kettle council member kettle and then i would pass the mic to council member kettle normally i say because the um the the people council members would talk about what is coming out of their committee that's on the full council agenda the following day.

They would talk about legislation that is coming up in an upcoming that week council meeting and we would have the opportunity to get into my vision is that we use the council briefing time to actually get into a little bit of policy discussion if some of the things that are coming up in your committees that week are complicated or you know they will be of interest to people outside of your committee, there's an opportunity to talk about that more.

And we can have some occasionally, perhaps departmental directors that will be presenting incoming complex legislation, etc.

So that is...

So normally we will be using council briefings in this way, but I do want to provide people with the opportunity to go down the line in the correct roll call order for you to mention anything that you would like to bring to our attention.

I just want to...

I don't want you to feel put on the spot if you don't have anything to say also because you...

haven't met in committee yet, and we do not have a lot of items on the agenda tomorrow except for a couple land use things.

So, with that, are there any questions?

Otherwise, we will proceed to our roll call.

Okay.

I see no other questions.

Councilmember Kettle.

Nothing to add, thank you.

Okay.

So now I have to, okay, Council Member Moore, yes.

Thank you very much, Council President.

The only thing I'm going to add is that the first meeting of the Housing and Human Services Committee will be on February 14th, Valentine's Day, which is auspicious.

So thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I do have a short briefing prepared, so maybe I'll show y'all what we do.

There are no items on the full Council agenda from the Land Use Committee tomorrow.

We do have a contract rezone bill on the introduction and referral calendar that Council Member Strauss may speak to.

There will be a Land Use Committee meeting on Wednesday, February 7th at 2 p.m.

We have several items on the agenda, so for Council colleagues who sit on that committee, if you would like a briefing or just introduction of what we'll be doing.

My policy director is Devin Silvernail, and you can speak to him to get a little bit of an update.

Last week I attended the PSRC Growth Management Policy Board where we discussed the Black Home Initiative with Marty Kustra from Civic Commons, Covenant Homeownership Act with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, and we also discussed the 2024 Regional Transit Oriented Development Committee Work Plan of PSRC.

This week, I'll be attending the King County Executive Leadership Advisory Group meeting, and we'll also be meeting with the Housing Development Consortium.

And then just a couple quick district updates.

Tomorrow, I'll be meeting with constituents in the district to learn about the black community agenda for the city of Seattle.

And on Thursday, I'll be meeting with the urbanists, for their meetup with SHA's Director of Development, Terry Galini, and to connect with other neighbors in the Yesler Terrace neighborhood.

And that is all I have today.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Rivera?

Yes, so all I have is that our first meeting for our committee, the library's neighborhoods, And I'm sorry, Libraries Education and Neighborhoods Committee will be February 8th at 9.30.

Thank you.

More to come.

Go ahead.

Yeah, so I guess the only thing that I would add Madam Council President, it's kind of been alluded to, including by you.

But, you know, today, in approximately about an hour or so, the University of Washington Huskies men's football team is gonna be competing for a national championship.

And I can't state with enough emphasis how proud I am personally of this football team, this university, and the institution.

They are reflecting, regardless of the outcome, we want them to win.

but they are reflecting great credit upon themselves, the institution, the city of Seattle, and many people in my district.

And so the university does a lot of great things from a local economy perspective.

And the University of Washington is obviously a large global leading research, premier research institution, but I am very personally proud of this program and looking forward to cheering them on and proud of them regardless of the outcome here.

On the more substantive thing, I will say with respect to council business, We are gonna have our first transportation meeting next month as planned, so stay tuned for more information on that.

I hope each and every last one of you feel free to approach me individually and share your feedback that's of interest to you and your constituents, and I wanna make sure that we build a collaborative committee here that represents the voice of all communities.

So, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

In the interest of time, kickoff in 45 minutes, I just want to say that we do have some contract rezone legislation both being introduced tomorrow and was passed out of the Land Use Committee on December 8th.

We'll have that before full council on the 16th.

I will have my policy staff, Naomi Lewis, reach out to each of your offices.

It's all pretty cut and dry, but I'm happy to follow up with you Individually as well, it is all cut and dry legislation that we are required to pass within a certain amount of time.

Thank you, Council President.

Let's go dogs.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

No updates besides we're having our first committee meeting for Parks Technology and Seattle Public Utilities in February.

This week I have briefings with our Seattle Parks Department and Seattle Public Utilities as well to get up to speed on what's going on and go Huskies.

All right.

That is the end of my colleagues' comments, and I have nothing to add to the very eloquent expressions of support for our home team.

So if there is no further business, this meeting is adjourned.

It is 3.46.

Thank you very much.

See you tomorrow at full council.