Seattle City Council Briefing 4/25/22

201 and this is the council briefing.

It will now come to order.

And my name is Deborah Juarez.

Can we, uh, clerk, can you please call the roll?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Council President Juarez.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

Moving on in our agenda, I will go to the approval of the minutes.

If there is no objection, the approval of the minutes of April 18th will be adopted.

Not hearing or seeing any objection to the approval of minutes, the minutes are indeed adopted.

President's Report.

Let me go over a few comments here.

So let me go through the President's Report very briefly.

On today's briefing agenda, we will first meet 19 new appointees joining Seattle's boards and commissions as part of the Get Engaged program coordinated by the YMCA.

And for those of you that are familiar with this, we do this, I think, God, we do it almost every year.

And usually when we're in chambers, you all show up and we get to talk to you.

I think this is the second time we've done it on Zoom, so thank you for showing up, and we can read off the names later in a minute.

Next, there will be two proclamations.

Councilmember Herbold will be introducing those.

One is the Seattle Denim Day, and one is the Older Americans Month.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

It will be submitted for signatures.

And after that, Councilmember Herbold also has a letter that she would like us to sign for the secure and safe enforcement.

that is regarding the cannabis and allowing cannabis businesses to have access to banking services.

On tomorrow's consent calendar, we have 24 appointments along with minutes, the IRC, and payment of the bills.

We will vote on all 24 in one consent vote unless any council member, again, requests that we pull any particular appointment from the consent agenda.

We will then consider a resolution from the Finance and Housing Committee that will be put forward by Councilmember Mosqueda.

We will then consider an ordinance from the Sustainability and Renters' Rights Committee concerning repayment plans for rental arrears accrued during or within the six months after termination of the COVID civil emergency.

We have Councilmember Sawant and Councilmember Strauss to thank for that.

Next, the Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities Committee will have two bills on the agenda.

Councilmember Peterson will be putting those forward.

And finally, we will consider a resolution related to the federal Medicare program, and Councilor Mosqueda will kick us off and fill us in on that particular resolution.

Today, we will begin by meeting our Get Engaged appointees.

I understand Chase Monroe from the mayor's office and Leslie Horton of the YMCA will be presenting.

Are they both here?

Oh, there's Chase.

So Chase, I understand we have 19 and I see some people got in after my after my I've been saying I've been greeting certain people that I said hi to Darcy and Taylor and Molly and Sarah and Lillian and Tao and Leslie and Afra.

So I'm going to let you go ahead because there's 19 of them.

And how many are here of the 19 Sarah?

Okay, that's okay.

I don't.

Okay.

Well, I don't know.

You didn't add up the checks.

I don't know how many are here, Chase.

So I know there's 19 but I think there's one to 10 present.

Is that right?

Is my math right on that?

We can't hear you, Chase.

Hey, Chase, we can't hear you, so.

OK, I know that now because it's not helpful.

So, Chase, what about, is Leslie here from the YMCA?

Oh, there's Leslie.

Nope.

I am here.

Yes, you are here.

So how do you want to do this, Chase?

Can Leslie pick up the slack till you get online?

We can't hear you.

Looks like he's trying.

I know he's trying.

You know what?

I have to laugh because I get this all the time and my staff screams at me.

Upper left corner.

So why don't I let Leslie start and then we'll let make sure give Chase some opportunity to catch up with technology.

Okay.

Okay.

Go ahead, Leslie.

Awesome.

Okay, well, I was, I think I was waiting for my introduction from Chase, but I'll just go ahead and jump in.

Yes, again, I'm Leslie Horton and I am from the Y Social Impact Center, which is the social services branch of the Y of Greater Seattle.

We serve young adults ages about 13 to 25 years old.

is our priority population, but the Get Engaged program is one of our civic engagement programs that we do hold at the Y Social Impact Center.

So the Get Engaged program has been around since 2001, and it's dedicated to cultivating the next generation of leaders and advocating for the influence of young voices in city affairs.

The Y Social Impact Center is very excited to support by facilitating this programming, which includes recruiting, prepping all applicants, helping connect the boards and the applicant for the interview process.

And then once all candidates are selected and confirmed, we do monthly get engaged cohort meetings where members share ideas, strategies, and interests around different leadership topics and different community issues.

So we are very excited to be here today.

And I think with that, we can move forward.

Oh, you might be muted.

Oh, I just did the same thing.

So we have 19 and 10 people are here.

So do you want to go through them?

Or how are we doing this?

Yes.

So I think do we still chase?

No.

Okay.

OK, OK, so I was sent an order of presentations, an order of the boards.

So I believe I will jump into that.

That's OK.

Chase, that's OK to do?

OK, cool.

Awesome.

So our first.

individual that we have is Sophia Faller, who is not present today.

Sophia is hoping to be confirmed for the Board of Parks and Recreation Commission.

Sophia for the past year has been working with students ages 7 to 12 in the Bitter Lake community.

Many of the students are Black, Indigenous, and Latinx and are disproportionately underserved.

As a counselor, Sophia tries to promote racial inclusion by making space for students to share their lived experiences through various games and activities.

As an employee of Seattle Parks and Recreation and a counselor to students in the community, Sophia cares about how park space is developed, its accessibility, and how recreational areas are served, or how they're serving our community.

Parks are a critical resource for our community and provide space to increase physical well-being and amplify community connections.

The City of Seattle continues to prioritize parks in the use of green space, and Sophia believes her experience working with Seattle Parks and Recreation will prove invaluable to the Board of Parks Commissioners.

All right, and then next we have Oksana Riva with the Community Involvement Commission.

Is Oksana on?

Negative.

Negative, OK.

I think I will need to come back to Oksana.

I thought she was going to be here.

So the next candidate that we have is Annie Shaw.

Annie is not here, correct?

Annie's here.

Oh, oh, Annie's here.

Oh, Annie, go.

Do you want me to read off, Leslie, who's here?

I can read off to you who's who's not here.

Um, that might be helpful.

Okay, let me tell you who's not here.

Sophia is not here.

Oxana is not here.

Charlotte is not here.

Yaakov is not here.

Kira Roslin is not here.

David Flatterstein is not here.

Austin Moorman is not here.

Maria Buchanan is not here.

And Laura Keel is not here.

OK, perfect.

But everybody else is.

Annie's not here.

OK, awesome.

So Annie is looking to be appointed to the Community Technology Advisory Board.

Annie, would you like to introduce yourself?

Yes, yeah, I'm Annie Shaw, pronoun are she, hers.

And as you mentioned, I'm hoping to be appointed to the Community Technology Advisory Board.

I currently work at Amazon and kind of serve on all the affinity groups where I'm kind of promoting community outreach and working on these initiatives to kind of extend and kind of like leverage these relationships so that we can like do some good in our community.

And so something that I'm also really passionate about is digital equity, especially for underserved communities and for people whose first language isn't English and trying to get technology to be more accessible to them and to be more understandable in like their own context.

So that's kind of why I'm hoping to serve on that board and why I'm really excited to be part of the program.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Annie.

Next, we have, I will introduce Charlotte Heavily.

Charlotte is hoping to be appointed to the Design Review Board.

Charlotte uses she, her programs.

So Charlotte will be attending the University of Washington for her master's in urban planning.

And after graduating, Charlotte hopes to work in the field of planning and historic preservation.

As a member of the Design Review Board, Charlotte would familiarize herself with Seattle's design guidelines and how they work in practice, while also learning about urban design policy in the classroom.

Having worked with the Village Review Board and Planning Board in I know that issues of equity and social justice can sometimes be forgotten in historic preservation and urban design.

Charlotte also knows that her coursework at University of Washington will be deeply rooted in these issues, and so she would like to tie that learning together with practical application and contribute a perspective based on that learning while serving on a board that impacts Seattle's built environment.

Next, we have Mark Schmidt.

Mark.

available.

Hi Mark, and we will be introducing you for the Landmarks Preservation Board.

My name is Mark Schmidt.

I use he him, and I'm hoping to be confirmed as a commissioner on the Landmarks Preservation Board.

I have lived in Seattle for the last four years after graduating with an undergrad in computer science and political science.

Since moving here, I have really been inspired by our citizens' sense of stewardship and participation in the civil process.

I'm eager to join this process as a commissioner on the Board of Landmarks Preservation, and I look forward to balancing the needs of a rapidly growing city while preserving our shared history and cultural identity.

Wonderful, thank you so much, Mark.

All right, I am going to, so next we have, I'm gonna skip around.

I had some notes prepared for those that I thought weren't gonna be here, so I will come back to them later.

But next we have Jessica Cottle.

Jessica, are you on the call?

Looks like you are.

Hi, Jessica.

We'd love to introduce you for the Seattle Arts Commission.

Yes, hello, I'm Jessica Cottle, I use she and they pronouns, seeking appointment to the Seattle Arts Commission.

I'm a social worker by trade, but a patron of the arts, absolutely.

I'm interested to see the intersection of like arts and government and how decisions are made at the city level.

I've done a lot on my college campuses and smaller nonprofits, but sort of seeing how those processes go in this different sort of political landscape, I think is really interesting.

So excited to be here.

Thanks for the opportunity.

Excellent.

Thank you Jessica.

Next we have Darcy O'Connor.

Hi Darcy O'Connor.

I use she her pronouns.

I'm hoping to be appointed to the Seattle Center Advisory Commission.

I'm a nonprofit professional and I live in the First Hill neighborhood.

I'm interested in being appointed to the or excited for the opportunity to be appointed to the Seattle Center Advisory Commission because I know we're all eager to come together more in the coming months.

And Seattle Center is an important landmark for that for us to gather learn together and celebrate as well.

And as Seattle Center continues to grow with new opportunities I want to make sure that it is an inclusive environment.

for that community togetherness.

Thanks.

Awesome.

Thank you, Darcy.

OK, next we have Molly Spatonic with the Seattle who's hoping to be appointed the Seattle Design Commission.

Hi, Molly.

Hi.

Thank you, Leslie.

And you did a great job with my last name.

So I'm Molly Spitalnik.

My pronouns are they, them, and she, her.

And I'm interested in being confirmed to the Seattle Design Commission, as Leslie mentioned.

And so I have a Master of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin, and I did research throughout my time in grad school in urban design in Berlin, Spain, and Mexico City, focusing primarily on transit-oriented development, and then came to Seattle.

and have since been an urban designer at ZGF Architects, where I focus on transit-oriented development, affordable housing, community-oriented programming, really prioritizing opportunities for community engagement like through the Youth Achievement Center in South Seattle and Columbia City, and also focus on equitable access for bicycles and pedestrians across our city.

And I'm really excited about the opportunity to be appointed to the Seattle Design Commission, particularly because I've presented to them in the past for the Pike Pines Streetscape and Bicycle Improvements Project.

and got to see through that process how much they were able to impact, how much equitable outreach happened in that specific project, as well as the positive collaboration between agencies that the Seattle Design Commission was able to encourage.

And so I'm excited to work alongside those who encourage the things that I really believe should exist within our public space projects.

Awesome.

Thank you, Molly.

All right.

Next, we have Taylor Ladd.

Taylor.

Hi, I'm Taylor.

I use she her pronouns and I'm hoping to be appointed to the Seattle Disability Commission.

Most of my background has been in youth work.

I worked as a preschool teacher and in camps for years and I'm now a summer camp director.

I also studied therapeutic recreation at Western Washington with pretty heavy focus on youth with disabilities.

Both my degree and my career, I think, have influenced my interest in this commission a lot.

I really believe in being an advocate for youth with disabilities and in spaces and experiences that are created for people with disabilities, not just accommodated for people with disabilities.

And I really think that my passion for youth advocacy can be a really, yeah, can hopefully be a benefit to this commission and I really look forward to being able to work with them and really bring my youth-focused lens to this work as well.

Wonderful, thank you.

All right, so next is The representative that we are hoping to appoint to the Seattle Human Rights Commission, and that is Kira Rosenblatt.

Kira uses she her pronouns.

I grew up on the stories of my father, who moved to the United States at the age of six, and my grandfather, who was forced to flee this country at 12. Oh, excuse me, he was forced to flee his country at 12. Because of this, I want to help.

I was a part of the Riverways program as a mentor and a math tutor for low-income refugee and immigrant students in Seattle Public Schools.

So I was able to see firsthand the importance of creating an environment where immigrant and refugee students feel welcome.

If I am accepted into the board I will use my experiences to make Seattle feel a bit more like home.

Next we have the Seattle Immigrant and Refugee Commission and we are going to hear from Afra Mahmood.

Hi Afra.

Hi, thank you Leslie.

My name is Afra.

I use she her pronouns and I, like Leslie mentioned, am hoping to join the Immigrant and Refugee Commission.

I grew up in North Carolina and actually moved to Seattle a couple years ago.

And in North Carolina, working with immigrants and refugees was, you know, a hallmark of my undergraduate experience.

My background is in public health and in Spanish, but throughout college, I had a the opportunity and privilege, honestly, to develop a culturally relevant STEM curriculum for an after school program in my area.

And that experience has, you know, it showed me so much on how important it is to walk with and learn with communities, especially communities of, you know, diverse, of diverse nature.

And in moving to Seattle, that's one of the first things I wanted to do was to really understand my local landscape and And in doing that, I started to see that I could have a bigger impact than I traditionally thought I could in joining the local government and using my voice in that way.

So I'm really excited and hoping to join the commission.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

All right.

Next, we'll be hearing from Lillian Williamson.

as a potential representative for the Seattle LGBTQ Commission.

Thank you so much.

Yes, my name is Lillian Williamson.

I use she her pronouns.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here today.

I'm applying for the appointment to the LGBTQ Commission.

I'm a student at the University of Washington studying political science and environmental sciences, where I also direct the Queer Student Commission.

I also serve as a board member and student organizing chair at the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network of Washington.

And I work developing policy around school safety and behavioral health care with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Health Care Authority.

I am a passionate and experienced LGBTQ community activist dedicated to upholding values and equity.

And if appointed I hope to focus much of my work on the specific needs of LGBTQ plus young people housing justice and health care for the community.

I want to serve on this commission to advocate for the needs of LGBTQ plus young people and continue my work as an advocate for Seattle's queer community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lillian.

All right.

Next, we'll move to the Seattle Renters Commission with Dan Godfrey.

Hi, my name's Dan.

My pronouns are he, him, his.

So I'm interested in working on the Seattle Renters Commission for a few reasons.

I'm a six-year Seattle renter.

I went to UW, studied public health and human rights.

Went on a travel fellowship and came back, started working as a social worker with the LEAD program, which works with homeless folks in Capitol Hill and downtown.

But I think the pandemic made it very apparent.

The rental experience and the opportunity to rent in Seattle was very dynamic and largely affected by gentrification in the city, the changing economy.

And I think it's important to preserve the positive elements of that experience, make it accessible to all.

And I'm interested in learning more about policy associated with that.

Great, thank you so much.

All right.

Now we'll move to Maria Buchanan, who is hoping to be appointed to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board.

And I will read Maria's bio.

Maria, uses she, her pronouns.

Maria says, I have a strong background in Seattle and greater Puget Sound region transportation and infrastructure.

I've worked in community engagement and communications on technical transportation projects for the last two years, and I feel impassioned about local governments and agencies' ability to enact positive change through the built environment.

I feel that my job as a community engagement practitioner is to amplify the voices of the communities I serve and act as a conduit of knowledge and ideas between community members and technical project staff.

I see city planning and transportation planning as a way to continue to use my knowledge of and passion for equity in the built environment while moving into the technical design work that I have developed an interest in.

And next, we have Sarah Liu.

Is that correctly, Sarah?

And Sarah is with the Seattle Women's Commission, or looking to be appointed to the Seattle Women's Commission.

Welcome, Sarah.

Thanks, Leslie.

Hello, my name is Sarah Liu.

My pronouns are she, her.

And as Leslie had stated, I'm seeking appointment to the Seattle Women's Commission.

And to provide a bit more background about myself, I'm currently a product manager at Microsoft.

And throughout my career, I've been heavily involved in efforts to support women and local communities, including creating large scale female focused summits, mentoring younger females and driving projects for a civic tech organization called CDP.

And I'm really interested in serving on this commission because gender equality is a cause that's very important to me and I'm very interested in having a deeper understanding of the issues that women in our community face and to also be involved in efforts to support them and create a more equitable society.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Awesome.

Thank you, Sarah.

All right.

Next, we'll move to Laura Keel.

Laura utilizes she, her pronouns, and is hoping to be appointed to the Urban Forestry Commission.

Sarah says, during my internship with SDOT's urban forestry team, I gained a keen interest in environmental justice and grassroots fieldwork.

Speaking with Seattle residents on a daily basis about their experience with trees along the public right-of-way provided inspiration during my time at the University of Washington.

During my capstone course, I designed and built a contemplative public garden in partnership with Plant Amnesty, a local volunteer-run nonprofit.

I led a team of four students in producing a whimsical flower-like sculpture in honor of local activist Cass Turnbull, a former parks and recreation employee who devoted her life to teaching city officials and the public about the importance of preserving and fostering the health of urban tree canopy.

The living laboratory we built celebrates her lasting influence on Seattle's horticultural community and I am eager to continue engaging with the urban forestry scene as an emerging professional.

Laura Keel.

Now I'm going to circle back to a few folks here.

So next we have David Falasterstein.

And David has interviewed with the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board.

David says, oops.

David uses he him pronouns and he has worked as a legislative assistant in Washington State House and as a software engineer at Amazon and did some work on accessibility projects.

David would like to join the pedestrian board to make sure that the needs of our disabled communities are heard and we have safe walkable and pleasant sidewalks.

Thank you.

And let's see.

So Council President, that reaches the end.

So there are a couple of outstanding ones that I didn't mention.

I thought they were going to be here today, and I don't have all their bios.

It might take me just a moment to grab them, but I can.

So let's see.

So if you want to, yes, Oxana.

So here we go.

So Oxana Riva.

has been appointed to the Community Involvement Commission and Oksana says that her parents, Oksana says, my parents immigrated to Bellingham, Washington from the Ukraine three months before I am the second oldest of six kids.

I worked hard in middle school and high school and got myself into the University of Washington as a first-generation university student where I studied political science, law, and diversity.

I love helping people, and I hope I can spend my life creating opportunities for others to do the same.

That is Oxana Reba.

And then I believe we have Austin Moorman is coming back to Austin.

Just a second.

Okay, Austin Moorman is hoping to be appointed to the Seattle Planning Commission.

Austin says, Austin is originally from San Francisco and is relatively new to Seattle, but has spent much of their life navigating and noticing what it means to live in a city.

Austin says, to me, city life means being forced to think about the lives of the people all around you.

I graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2019 with a degree in politics and decided to turn my interest into the well-being of others, decided to turn my interest in the well-being of others into a career.

First as an intern for the then Senator Kamala Harris, then as an AmeriCorps service member for a nonprofit cooking, his other passion, school.

I am now the executive administrator of Path with Art, an organization that seeks to heal individuals from the effects of trauma through the arts.

Going for walks, listening to podcasts, cooking, and clothes make me happy.

I bring a sense of curiosity and willingness to learn to my role on the planning commission.

I care deeply about equity and creating opportunity for others, but I also recognize that often having the humility to get out of others' way and truly listening.

I hope to learn how the planning commission seeks to strike this balance and how a bureaucratic body can work for its community.

I love learning from others, and I am excited to meet my fellow commissioners, hear their paths to the commission, and what motivates them.

Okay.

And then I've got...

All right.

Yaakov Tarko is hoping to be appointed to the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board.

Yaakov says, I'm a Seattle renter and a bus and bike commuter.

I'm new to transportation planning, but I'm used to systems thinking in my day job as a software engineer, and I hope to apply it here.

I'm proud of the progress that the Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle are making already, and I look forward to helping the city do even better in the future.

And I think with that, did I get everybody?

I think my list looks checked off.

I think I have everyone.

Yeah.

Good job, Leslie.

I know you had to jump in there.

I know, girl.

You had to jump in there.

So thank you.

But before I don't do anything yet, Chase, are you with us?

I think you still, yeah.

I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Yeah, let me go there.

But before I do that, I'll end the discussion.

But I want to reach out because I know some of my colleagues will want to have a few comments.

So colleagues, I'm going to open up the floor if there's anything that you'd like to share regarding the 19 appointments.

Councilor Mosqueda, I'm surprised.

OK.

So let's see.

I do not.

Oh, I see one hand.

Thank you.

Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Council President.

I'll take the bait just because I think I'm going to say what all of us are thinking.

You know, the Zoom worlds are a little bit more awkward, where usually we'd be sitting around a table congratulating each of you personally.

And here we are, where you have to unmute, raise your hand, and then get a little bit awkward just to say thank you.

Thank you for participating.

We all recognize that you're volunteers and this is you're spending your time to better our city with a volunteer position.

And I think just being able to listen to all of your backgrounds, we are going to benefit immensely from you joining up with the city.

So just taking this awkward moment to say, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Keep up the great work and we're looking forward to hearing from you more.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Nelson?

Well, I'll pile on to the awkwardness here and basically just say thank you all so very much.

You know, I mean, I I love the Get Engaged program and I thank Leslie for taking the lead on this.

You know, It's a great way to get involved in local policy and potentially enter local politics yourself.

So I just want to say thank you very much.

And it's really exciting for you as well.

So thanks.

All right.

With that, first of all, again, Chase, thank you for being here, though we did not hear you.

I know you're there.

And Leslie for jumping right in there and going through all 19 of the names.

I thank you for the 10 of you that showed up that I know some people just couldn't make it and I had an opportunity to welcome you before we went live on the camera.

Some of you on some of the commissions and boards like the Seattle Art Commission, the people who are interested in the Seattle Center, the Disability Commission, the Women's Commission, the Renters Design, the LGBTQ, The Human Rights Commission, all the issues that have to do with bicycle pedestrian and transit.

All of you will be informing us all of those committees report or all those commissions give all their information lived experience social or their professional expertise to all of the nine.

committees that we each chair.

So we will be looking to you for all that information.

Some of you I recognize from the design review board and the renters commission and some other issues.

But since I've been on council, there's been three new commissions that have been developed.

I think the LGBTQ came on when I had been on council.

The renters I know is new.

We're going to have the indigenous advisory council coming up.

So yours truly many, many, many years ago served on a couple of these commissions when I was still legal counsel to a lot of nonprofit organizations.

So what you do and also the information you give us, not only to our committees, but our standing committees, but also the committees that we serve on for King County, the Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority.

I have to, I'm on Sound Transit.

All of that stuff is important.

I can't, and I know you're all volunteers.

So thank you all so much, not only for volunteering, and all these commissions are not easy, not only your time and your expertise, but your commitment to our great city.

And I just wanted to thank you personally as well.

All right, thank you, Leslie.

Chase, we'll see you again someday.

Thank you, Leslie.

Bye, everybody.

Thank you.

Bye-bye, everyone.

All right.

You're right, Council Member Strauss.

Usually when we do these, the commissions, it takes like an hour and a half when we're out in chambers.

So it is kind of awkward to try to catch up with the tiles.

But anyway, we got that done, so thank you.

Let's move on in our agenda to the signing of letters and proclamations.

Starting with Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold has a proclamation for signatures proclaiming April 27th to be Seattle Denim Day.

And Council Member Herbold, can you please go ahead and lead the discussion?

Happy to do so.

Thank you so much.

Madam Chair, so the first of two proclamations, the first is for Denim Day.

That is officially on April 27th.

This is a day that was called to bring attention to misconceptions about race and sexual assault.

If you wonder why it was called Venom Day, it was created after the Italian Supreme Court overturned a rape conviction because the justices felt that since the victim was wearing tight jeans, she must have helped her rapist remove her jeans, thereby implying consent.

Members of the Seattle Women's Commission will join the full council meeting tomorrow to accept the proclamation and offer their remarks for both the proclamation and the next.

My office circulated the proclamation to all council offices last Tuesday, and the mayor is concurring for both this and the following proclamation as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Are there any other comments, questions, or concerns for Councilmember Herbold before we ask the clerk to take the roll?

Not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, can you please call the roll?

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council Member Morales.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

And I understand you have another proclamation for us, Council Member Herbold.

I do.

The second proclamation is to recognize Older Americans Month, which is coming up in May.

This is a nationally recognized time to acknowledge the contributions of past and current older people to our country.

This year's theme is Age My Way.

provides an opportunity to explore the many ways our elders can remain in and be involved with their communities.

I will be presenting this proclamation at a meeting of the King County Advisory Council on Aging and Disability Services on behalf of the city later in May.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

And with that, are there any questions or concerns for Councilmember Herbold?

Not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Yes.

Council Member Herbold.

Yes.

Council Member Lewis.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

And Councilmember Herbold, you also have another matter, the letter of support for including the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act.

Go ahead, Councilmember Herbold.

Indeed, thank you so much.

This letter calls on the United States Senate to pass the SAFE Banking Act.

SAFE Banking Act will allow cannabis businesses to access normal banking services and shift away from the cash-only model that they're currently forced to use under antiquated federal laws.

Keeping cannabis business cash-only makes them targets for thefts and endangers the life of workers.

In the state's three I'm missing my point here.

We know that there have been multiple local robberies of cannabis stores, including deaths of cannabis store employees.

There have been more robberies in cannabis stores so far in 2022 than in both 2020 and 2021 combined.

The most recent just a couple days ago in Skyway in addition to as mentioned Three cannabis store employees were murdered last month.

I want to thank mayor Harrell for co-signing this letter this past February the house added the Safe Banking Act as part of a the America Competes Act.

However, the Senate version of the Competes Act does not include the Safe Banking Act.

And so this letter calls on senators to include the Safe Banking Act as part of the final Competes Act that goes to President Biden's desk.

And so, again, this particular letter will go to the conference committee who's making that decision about whether or not to add the SAFE Act to the Compete Act.

Thank you.

I have a couple questions I want to ask you.

I agree with your letter, obviously, you've been following the SAFE Banking Act for cannabis stores to have access to banking, obviously.

So was it Senator Cantwell or Murray recently that was promoting it in the news?

So this is, my understanding is everybody from our delegation is supportive of this.

This is, the letter as it is focused now is really about the process and adding a legislative proposal that our entire delegation supports, but adding it to be included as part of the Federal Competes Act, because otherwise it won't get heard.

Okay, because it's failed.

It's gone, got through the House twice and failed in the Senate.

So that's why I'm making another run at it.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Herbold, and thank you for doing this, because this has been an issue for me way back in the day when yours truly used to own hemp stores.

That's a whole other story.

So, yeah.

I had no idea.

Yeah, in the day, you would be surprised the things I used to do 30 years ago.

Thank God there was not social media then.

Is there anybody else?

Does anyone else have anything to say for Council Herbold's letter?

All right, not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Councilmember Herbold's letter?

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Councilmember Peterson?

Aye.

Councilmember Nelson?

Aye.

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Council President Ores?

Aye.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the letter.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

And thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

So moving on into our agenda, let's hear from our colleagues on the preview of City Council Actions, Council, and Regional Committees.

And the roll call this week, the rotation, will start with Councilmember Mosqueda, then Councilmember Nelson, Peterson, Strauss, Herbold, Lewis, and then myself.

Councilmember Mosqueda, you're first.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you, Council President.

Okay.

The next Finance and Housing Committee meeting that we have is going to be on May 4th at 9.30 a.m.

We will have the Office of Housing Staffing Legislation for discussion and possible vote.

We'll have a briefing on the General Fund Balancing Analysis.

This is our six-year financial plan.

and a briefing on the Seattle Rescue Plan quarterly updates.

For folks who are following along and are members of the Finance and Housing Committee, we did not get a chance to get to the ARPA spending quarterly updates, so that is what we will start with at our next meeting.

And then we have the much-anticipated six-year financial plan that I mentioned.

This is, if you will, part two of the conversation that we started in our committee meeting last week.

Again, last week we had the opportunity to hear from the CBO director, Julie Dingley, and separately we heard from Ben Noble, who's the director of the economic and revenue forecast.

Those two presentations present part one of the analysis in terms of the revenue that's coming into the city, and then really the second and probably more interesting for us in terms of our budget planning is going to be part two and that will be presented by central staff and will provide the full outlook for the remainder of 2022 and then at the six year financial plan going forward.

In council, in full council coming up tomorrow, I'm gonna be sponsoring a resolution to stop the privatization of Medicare system.

This is a resolution that many other jurisdictions are including around our country as well, and I was requested to put this resolution forward by our friends from the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action.

The current co-president is my former mentor and boss, Jeff Johnson, who is now working at PASARA, who's working on this issue.

This will be up for our consideration tomorrow afternoon, and my staff did circulate this resolution as well last week to the floor.

Just very briefly, the resolution calls out the concerns around the privatization of the Medicare system and favors the termination of the Accountable Care Organizations Realizing Equity Access in Community Health, which is a mouthful, and the acronym for that is ACO REACH.

The ACO REACH program is a program that is currently being considered by the federal delegation and the federal administration.

The Biden administration ended the direct contracting pilot and rebranded it as the ACO REACH pilot beginning in January, 2023. The concern, however, comes from public health advocates and those who are concerned about access to health insurance across our country.

And folks really see little difference between the ACO REACH program and the direct contracting pilot from the previous Trump administration.

Both the pilot programs allow for third party private entities to wedge themselves between patients and their healthcare providers, and to draw down the Medicare trust by making huge profits in several ways, including weakening services for Medicare beneficiaries.

If folks have had the chance to work with members of PSARA in the past, the Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action, you'll know that these are folks who have continually expressed the need to strengthen Medicare services, especially for our elderly population, and to strengthen things like Social Security.

So this is very much in line with some of the previous efforts that they brought forward and here that they would especially call out that there's no clear plan for the ACO REACH pilot to address the fundamental inequities suffered by especially BIPOC communities and BIPOC communities due to historic under-resourcing.

Again, the resolution was sent around last Friday and I hope you do have a chance to review the language that's in the resolution.

Look forward to answering any questions that you might have tomorrow.

And again, the importance of Medicare, especially for our elderly community, but also for folks of the disabled community is so important for us to continue to protect.

So thanks again to PSARA members and Jeff Johnson for the work that they're doing to bring this to our attention.

I will also have resolution 32049 on tomorrow's full council agenda.

This updates the template for regular payment of claims, this resolution and the attached template that goes with resolution 32049. update the payment of claims document that we have been using on council for the last 20 years.

It has not been updated for the last two years and so it's an important opportunity for us now to make sure that we take the opportunity as we think about budget transparency and accountability and make necessary updates.

For example, the current template that we use references a now defunct audit committee that had reviewed the payment of claims previously.

We've had many iterations of various committees on council since the creation of this document 20 years ago.

And so the resolution and the attached template provide greater transparency to the public on our finances and I think will offer us on council a better understanding of what's normally included in those payment of claims documents.

Thanks to the committee members for your unanimous support of that resolution as well in our committee.

A brief update on some highlights from last week.

Last week I attended the North community supporting, excuse me, I was out in the North and shout out to both District 6 and 5 for the work that the many workers were doing on 420, supported cannabis workers by going to some of the stores and thanking them for the hard work they're doing.

and really sort of refocusing the celebration that day on the workers, especially given both the need for greater economic stability and safety, as Council Member Herbold noted, in this industry, was very thankful for the opportunity to partner with them and to be out in community and thank them for their work.

I was also a panelist on the town hall discussion with St. Louis County, Missouri, to talk about the use of democracy vouchers and how those have been a great tool for increasing public participation and have the chance to really applaud our Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission who does have a new report.

We've been waiting for that new report and I got a chance to tell our friend Wayne Barnett that they needed to update the link and so folks you'll be able to see that link as well to the new report here soon.

On Thursday, I spoke at the Hill Talks event, which is hosted by the Capitol Hill Business Alliance.

This is an event focused on Capitol Hill small businesses with members of GSBA.

And we spoke a lot about ways that we could not only support our smallest businesses, but make sure that we were promoting things like super blocks, which they're really excited that the Department of Transportation has the funding this year.

to do outreach and engagement with both residents and business owners in the neighborhood to see how we can advance that thanks to a budget item that we included in last year's budget that I was supportive of along with Council President Gonzalez at the time.

And this week all, excuse me, I also attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Copper Pines Habitat for Humanity Home Dedication.

This was, Council President, is this your district on 80th there?

or is that um councilmember strouse yes okay you said 80th yeah north from 85th on up councilmember strouse was in the house and present there representing in district six so um i won't spend too much time talking about it if he is as well but i had the opportunity to be welcome to councilmember strouse's home and to talk about the homes that were opening up for seven more uh small families uh on a plot that was previously owned by city light and Folks might remember in 2018, we updated the land disposition bills that made it so that any parcel of public property, including from our public utilities, was able to be preserved in public hands and used to build affordable housing through the Office of Housing and our partners.

And this partner specifically was Habitat for Humanity.

So congratulations as well on that.

This week, I'll be attending another ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Village Gardens.

This is affordable housing and home ownership.

Again, home ownership opportunities for folks in the Central District.

So I think I look forward to the Homestead, excuse me, celebrating what Homestead did.

They developed each home in partnership with Edge Developers and conducted contractor and home buying outreach with folks from Africatown CLT.

So I'm looking forward to celebrating.

the homeownership opportunities there.

And my staff will be attending the CIFF opening night to attend some pre-red carpet events and look forward to celebrating the arts and culture that CIFF brings to our city every year through this event.

Colleagues, just a few updates, excuse me, just a few public service announcements.

This Thursday is Workers Memorial Day.

This is a day commemorating the lives lost on work sites throughout Washington state.

More than 50 years ago on April 28th, In 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Act went into effect, promising every worker the right to a safe job, which is a fundamental human right.

The law was won because of the tireless efforts of the labor movement, which organized for safer working conditions and demanded action from governments, both local and national.

Since then, unions and allies have fought to make that promise a reality.

and winning protections that have made jobs safer and saving lives is a really important component, but that work is not done.

Each year, thousands of workers are killed and millions more suffer injuries and illnesses because of dangerous working conditions that are preventable.

According to The Stand, which is a daily publication from the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, last year there were over 5,300 workers who were killed on the job, and then another 900 died from occupational diseases.

This means that on average, 275 workers in this country lose their life every day from hazardous working conditions.

If you're interested in learning more about the Workers Memorial Day events on Thursday, you can join in on these with folks from the University of Washington Department of Educational, excuse me, Department of Environmental and Occupational Safety on Wednesday, the 27th at 11.30 a.m.

There is a Zoom that we will make sure to publish on our social media as well as events throughout the day on Thursday.

I look forward to not only honoring the lives lost, but continuing to call for safer working conditions for all workers.

Keeping with the labor theme, congratulations to the Office of Labor Standards.

They had their seventh year anniversary this month, and under the leadership of then Patricia Lee, then Karina Bull, Dylan Orr, Marty Garfinkel, Janae John, and now Steve Marchese, OLS has become a nationally recognized leader on labor standards, enforcing both labor standards and doing education and outreach to business and workers.

This has been an important model across the country for looking at community and business strategies to make sure that we have safe working places and also that workers are getting access to the rights and responsibilities that are codified in statute.

very much appreciate the work that OLS has done with directed investigations and much more.

And in their seven years of being in existence, first within the Office of Civil Rights and now into their own independent division, the Office of Labor Standards has resolved close to 1,000 cases, awarding $25 million to over 40,000 workers and has accomplished this work with highly skilled staff that have grown from seven people to now 34 and strong partnership with both community and business.

I look forward to continuing to celebrate their work and lift up more of their important accomplishments over the next few weeks as well and to further strengthening the economic recovery by lifting up these workers in the moments as we're trying to recover from the pandemic.

And two more congratulations, Madam President.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Marilyn Watkins for her service to the city, state, and county.

Most of you probably received a notification that Marilyn is retiring from not only the Labor Standards Advisory Commission, which is why we got notification, but also retiring from her position at the Economic Opportunity Institute.

She has been a pivotal policy maker with us in partnership with the city and state lawmakers as we look at expanding worker protections.

She spearheaded Seattle's paid sick and safe leave in her tenure.

She fought for gender pay equity in Seattle and sat on the Pay Equity Task Force, and recently, as I noted, served on the Labor Standards Advisory Commission.

I had the chance to work with Marilyn Watkins after coming to the Children's Alliance in 2018 when, excuse me, in 2008. In 2008, she passed the first iteration of paid family leave and then never gave up.

Nine years later, we got that puppy funded and is now a leading example across the country for paid family leave, but Maryland has just been a gem to work with both from a policy perspective and also as a wonderful individual.

So congratulations to her.

And a note of congratulations to the new Association of Washington City's Executive Director.

The Board of Directors for AWC announced last Friday that Deanna Dawson has been selected to serve as the Chief Executive Officer from the board.

Council Member Strauss and I serve on the AWC boards.

I'm happy to welcome Dina Dawson, who is now the sixth CEO and first woman in this position in the Association of Washington City's 89 year history.

You all might know her because she served on the Edmond City Council in 2001 and was reelected in 2005. She served as the executive director for Sound Cities Association.

and she comes to us with great representation from these 38 cities that she currently represents and has also statewide reach, born in Spokane.

So congratulations to Ms. Dawson, look forward to having more conversations with you all about the AWC's role in representing Seattle, along with the other jurisdictions that Deanna will represent.

That is my full report, Council President.

I'm not seeing any hands.

I'm gonna turn it over to Council Member Nelson.

I got my hand up.

Hello, everybody.

Um, Councilmember Muscade, I did have a, uh, a question about the, uh, a CEO reach resolution because it basically accuses the Biden administration of privatizing Medicare and by rebranding a Trump program.

And I did.

You know, it doesn't I haven't had besides what you just said and what it says in the recitals.

information to substantiate if that's a fair claim, and I'm a little bit concerned because that's a pretty strong word.

So is there any – it calls on us – the resolution basically calls on the termination of a pilot program, and without knowing how it's different from the Trump administration's or how it will negatively or positively impact constituents here, what happens if that program doesn't exist?

Are there other better ones out there that would be better for our constituents?

And so do you have that information or does central staff?

I don't really have the time to do a bunch of research because it's, and also healthcare is really complicated.

So.

Okay.

Councilor Mosqueda, before you answer, let me, let me again, refocus us.

This is, This is our council meeting to preview city council actions, council and regional committees.

And while I appreciate your question, Council Member Nelson, I want to note that Council Member Mosqueda, I'm guessing tomorrow when she introduces the resolution, we will have these policy discussions and debates, issues, questions raised.

So I don't want to get too deep in the weeds here because I want to give Council Member Mosqueda and the rest of us an opportunity to still go through the memo or the resolution.

The questions that we raised to her just picking up the phone and giving her a call.

So I don't want to turn this into a committee meeting on Councilor Mosqueda's resolution.

So with that, I'm going to hand it over to Councilor Mosqueda and then make sure that we have a full briefing and discussion about some of the issues that you raised, Council Member Nelson, regarding Councilor Mosqueda's resolution.

Thank you, Council President.

And why don't I share with the floor a one-page summary that might be helpful.

I know we don't anticipate folks doing a ton of research on these things, but happy to share that one-page summary and look forward to answering any additional questions you might have.

And we'll circulate that right now.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson, do you want to give us your briefing?

Sure.

Let me take down my hand.

So thank you very much.

The Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee does not have any items on tomorrow's agenda, but this week, Resolution 32050 will be discussed in the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on Tuesday, April 26th at 9.30.

And this resolution states Council's support for the reinstatement of an SPD hiring or staffing incentive program, and to pay for it, it states Council's intent to lift a budget proviso that was imposed last year restricting the use of unspent salary and benefits funds for any other purpose.

And to me, this is a worthy or an absolutely imperative purpose.

According to SPD's shots fired report from last week, homicide events are up 70% with 17 incidents year to date compared to 10 last year.

And this is the slow season.

Shootings are up 138% with 62 year to date incidents compared to 26 the previous year.

We know overdoses are skyrocketing and then there are all the other crimes that we hear about.

The woman that was at the bus stop and got her teeth knocked out, the armed robberies at cannabis shops that Council Member Herbold just mentioned and on and on and on.

So I haven't heard of any other city in our region that does not employ some sort of staffing or hiring incentive program for recruitment purposes.

So I have to assume that these programs are effective and I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary.

So again, I'll say that in order to compete for a limited pool of applicants, we should, Seattle should employ this staffing incentive program as well.

Because in my mind, what else are we going to do?

You know, we're dealing with the perfect storm of escalating crime and a historic staffing shortage at SPD.

And according to central staff's new projection, SPD will be sitting on $4.1 million unspent dollars by the end of this year.

So I think this is a worthy and lively discussion and very, very important discussion to be having right now.

And I thank very much Council Member Herbold for hearing this in her committee.

So that's that.

Getting to my committee, the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee on Wednesday, April 27th.

We will have three items on the agenda for discussion from group 4A of surveillance impacts reports on surveillance technologies that are already in use by Seattle Police Department.

Council Bills 120307, 120308, and 120309 would approve the Seattle Police Department's continued use of those technologies and accept the surveillance impact reports and an executive overview for each technology.

And so per the 2017 surveillance ordinance, city departments are required to obtain advance council approval for the acquisition of surveillance technology and to request retroactive approval if those technologies have already been in use.

So those ordinances refer to those technologies.

So that's it for the committee meeting, and I'll just provide a brief staff report of activities that happened last week.

Well, starting Saturday, I participated in the celebration of the first day of the Alaska cruise season.

It was hosted by the port and Norwegian cruise lines and we really focused on the economic benefit of cruises for our local economy.

The president of NCL spoke and provided some remarks, and I learned that Norwegian Cruise Lines has a fleet of 17 ships worldwide, and five of them leave from our port and go up to Alaska.

So that's an indication of how popular that trip is nationwide.

And of those trips, bring 300,000 passengers to our region, and they all spend money and enjoy our city.

And Port Commissioner Calkins and also Mayor Harrell spoke about the economic impact.

These cruises generate $894 million to our local economy and provide 5,500 local jobs every season.

But that's a lot of numbers.

So to get a sense of really how big of a deal cruises are to the waterfront businesses, I called up my friend who owns Rachel's Ginger Beer in Pike Place Market.

And I said, so what's it really like?

And she said, oh my gosh, it's life altering.

And she went on to say that pretty much all the businesses around Pike Place Market pretty much live for the opening of cruise season.

And not only is it good for business, it's actually really fun to meet people from around the world, these passengers that frequent these businesses.

That was a fun event to participate in.

And other things from last week, I participated in a meeting with the Crescent Collaborative where the Office of Economic Development Interim Director McIntyre joined and gave an update on how OED is doing and what their priorities are this year.

And then my Chief of Staff attended the AAPI Strong Small Business Roundtable event hosted by National ACE which is National Asian Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce in Entrepreneurship.

So that is the staff report from last week just giving you the highlights and if there aren't any other any questions I will pass it on to Councilmember Peterson.

Seeing none, Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you, Council President Juarez.

Good afternoon, colleagues.

On tomorrow afternoon's full City Council agenda, there are two items from our Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities.

Council Bill 120303 is authorizing the Seattle Department of Transportation to accept grant funds from non-city sources for two projects, multimodal improvements to East Marginal Way and sidewalk improvements along 4th Avenue South near I-90.

Then there's Council Bill 120304, which would grant final approval of the vacation of a portion of 39th Avenue South near the Othello Light Rail Station, which facilitated the development of the 211-unit low-income apartment project called Willow Crossing, for which the council granted conditional approval back in November of 2019. Both council bills were recommended unanimously by our committee.

If you have any questions about that legislation, please feel free to reach out to our City Council Central staff before tomorrow afternoon's vote.

Our next Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities is scheduled for Tuesday, May 17 at 9.30 a.m.

The May 3rd Committee date falls on a religious holiday, so we're canceling our May 3rd Committee.

At our May 17 committee, we are likely to consider six items, which will include the renewal of term permits for two existing pedestrian tunnels and one existing skybridge downtown.

The Seattle Department of Transportation's RSGI report, the annual audit of Seattle Public Utilities, their financial audit, which, as we know, is a $1 billion enterprise with four lines of business.

And as a follow-up to our April 19 committee meeting, when we heard from Sound Transit staff, our city council central staff, SDOT, and our city's designated staff representative for Sound Transit 3 expansion, we'll consider a joint mayor-council resolution.

The resolution will be a vehicle, no pun intended, to try to forge City Council consensus on some options for the new light rail routes and station locations.

As we know, this Sound Transit 3 expansion in Seattle is referred to as the West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions, and will also impact the International District, Soto, South Lake Union, Interbay, and much of downtown.

We'll discuss such a resolution both at the May 17 committee and at the June 7 committee.

all council members are invited to attend for that resolution.

If you have any questions about that, please reach out to our city council central staff lead on this, Calvin Chow, and or to the city's designated representative, Marshall Foster.

The city of Seattle is, of course, ably represented on our Sound Transit's 19-member board by our own Council President Juarez and Mayor Bruce Harrell, and that board will make the ultimate decisions.

District 4, in District 4 this past weekend, I participated in the Earth Day community cleanup in Wallingford.

I joined over 20 other volunteers to clean up Wallingford's business district, focusing on North 45th Street.

With a robust turnout of volunteers, the community organizer who initiated the cleanup was inspired to make this a quarterly event going forward.

There was also a well-attended Earth Day cleanup in the East Lake neighborhood in District 4. I appreciate our own Seattle Public Utilities providing the Adopt-A-Street trash bags, trash grabbers, gloves, and orange vests.

To get Adopt-A-Street supplies for your community, you can visit their website at Seattle.gov forward slash utilities or email Adopt-A-Street at Seattle.gov.

As with the community cleanup in Roosevelt that I attended a few weeks ago, neighbors can organize Adopt-A-Street events anytime during the year, not just on Earth Day.

And that concludes my report.

Any questions before we hear from Council Member Sawant?

Council Member Sawant is not here today.

Or the next Council Member.

Strauss.

Council Member Strauss.

No questions, so we'll turn it over to Councilmember Strauss.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Council President, colleagues.

Great to see you this Tuesday, Monday afternoon.

This last week in District 6, I was able to attend the Copper Pines Habitat for Humanity Home Dedication that Councilmember Mosqueda talked about just a moment ago.

This was a city partnership with the legislature where we were able to provide this land for free.

It was city light land and Habitat for Humanity has come in and built these affordable units for home ownership.

So 80th and 28th Northwest, I used to walk past this intersection in middle school coming home.

And at that time, the most expensive home in Ballard was $200,000.

And we now see the cheapest home being listed for $850,000.

And so I think what I really want to highlight for our neighbors and for colleagues for you is that this project is bringing the type of neighbors that I grew up with back into Ballard and it's just amazing to get to watch an opportunity to build generational wealth for people to have a safe place to lay their head and to be able to use unused city property to build the housing that we need in our community and so I'm just very excited to welcome our new neighbors The food was delicious afterwards that was homemade food and just can't thank you enough to the Habitat for Humanity and City Light and all of the state legislators that made the bill possible in 2018. This last week I also met with staff to discuss sound transit expansion into Ballard.

And we had the presentation at the Transportation Committee last week.

I encourage friends, colleagues, D6 residents, watch the committee meeting.

It's very important to understand the impacts of Sound Transit's analysis at this time because they are going to be landing 100-year infrastructure in our communities sooner than later.

I'd like it even sooner.

There we are.

I was also able to meet with the Seattle Public Libraries to discuss community ideas about using the public spaces in and around the library, such as skate parks, Seafood Fest, and other events.

They were very excited to have this conversation.

We'll be continuing it next week.

I also attended a meeting with SDOT regarding the implementation timeline of improvements to the Street Cafe pilot on Ballard Avenue.

We should be seeing these improvements coming this spring or summer.

I'm very excited for them because once we have those improvements in place, we'll be able to begin the second design charette the second step in the process to understand how this pilot can work for all of our city.

I also hosted my weekly office hours with the six residents on Thursday from 2pm to 630pm.

I met with four residents from Ballard, two from East Ballard, one from Upper Fremont, one from Greenwood, and one from Finney.

We discussed homelessness, public safety, the drawdown at the Willam Park encampment, quality of ball fields at the Ballard Community Center, cycling safety from Upper Fremont to Light Rail, redesigning streets that were built for streetcars, and Greg's Garden Pea Patch.

I also had an unscheduled office hour visit with a young D6 resident who stopped by my office while I was working from the district six office.

He inquired about having his class visit city hall and I told him absolutely per public health standards.

So we're excited to have these person to person interactions and I really do love working in the district office that's down at the customer service center next to the Ballard library.

I also continue to hold my weekly operations meetings last week and this week coordinated with community leaders governmental entities and non governmental entities to make meaningful interventions to address homelessness in specific places in District six, specifically regarding Woodland Park.

As everyone knows, in January, the mayor's office and I convened and coordinated an effort to address the homeless encampment in Woodland Park, bringing together first-time King County Regional Homelessness Authority, REACH, Evergreen Treatment Services REACH, the Finney Neighborhood Association, the City's Unified Care Team, the HOPE Team, and Parks and Recreation.

Through this collaboration, outreach efforts in Woodland Park intensified to address the ongoing public health and safety concerns and restore community access to the park.

These efforts are now transitioning into the third and final phase of three phases, where a lot of the shelter and housing placements will be happening.

The hope team system navigators reach and other provider partners are actively making connections to services and shelter which include 24 seven enhanced shelter.

non-congregate options such as tiny homes, permanent supportive housing, and housing vouchers.

These efforts will continue over the coming weeks with the goal of resolving the encampment through outreach strategies, and following the removal of the encampment, the Seattle Parks and Recreation will begin work to make repairs and restore the park to the general public.

In addition to this, I also continue to hold my weekly public safety conferencing with King County prosecutors, city attorney and SPD to address public safety.

We are changing gears.

We're now engaged with the mayor's office to bring in more partners to be able to I have more people at the table to do this case conferencing.

And what I mean by case conferencing is all entities that might touch a specific person, place, or event, we have at the table so that we can all look at, convene together, and understand what outcomes need to be created through mutual collaboration.

This coming week in District 6, I'll be attending the meeting with North Seattle Industrial Association, where we'll be discussing the future of the Seattle Maritime Academy, which is part of the Seattle Central College and Seattle College system.

I'll be speaking at the Green Lake Chamber of Commerce monthly meeting.

I'll be attending the Finney Neighborhood Association Spring Fundraiser, and myself and my staff will be attending the Greenwood Public Safety meeting coming tomorrow.

Last week at City Hall, I got to meet with the Office of Economic Development, Mark McIntyre, with great ideas about how to support our smallest businesses, how to increase the productivity of our farmers markets, and how do we just are able, how are we able to just support the businesses that continue to have their windows broken because we know that we need to serve them so that they don't continue putting in insurance claims.

I also heard from the Office of Planning and Community Development's Acting Director Rico Quirindongo about OPCD's 2022 work plan, which will be presented at committee.

And I met with Seattle City Light's leadership about residential solar opportunities and electrification.

This coming week at City Hall, I'll be meeting with the Mayor's Office and Director of Planning and Community Development to discuss the Maritime Industrial Strategy.

I'll be attending the King County Growth Management Planning Council.

and I'll be attending the Puget Sound Regional Council's Executive Board meeting.

Tomorrow at full council, I'm excited to be bringing forward Council Bill 120305, which ensures that tenants with unpaid rental debt from the COVID-19 civil emergency have a reasonable amount of time to pay back the debt and are not, and are required to pay that in installments that meets a reasonable schedule to repay the debt.

The things to take away from this is, In May of 2020, the council passed a bill at a time that we thought the pandemic might last two weeks or two months.

We are now two years into it and the state legislature passed a very similar bill during their first legislative session after the pandemic, which was April of 2021. The state legislature passed a bill that requires a reasonable payment plan.

It also requires that any payment is not more than one-third of a renter's rent for that month.

This modest bill is essentially a technical correction as it is mirroring the language from the state bill.

My bill before you tomorrow brings our city code in line with our state law to diminish confusion and ensure the city law and state law are the same.

Happy to take any questions on that.

But lastly here in the Land Use Committee, the next meeting of the Land Use Committee is this Wednesday, April 27th.

There will be two items on the agenda.

The annual RSJI presentation from both SDCI and OPCD and a public hearing and briefing on Council Bill 120287, which changes allowances for rooftop features and equipment.

So with that, thank you, Council President, colleagues.

That is my report.

And Council President and colleagues, I'm happy to take any questions, any questions at this time.

Seeing no questions, I'm honored, humbled to pass it off to Councilmember Herbold.

Welcome, Councilmember Herbold from District 1.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate it.

So there are no items on the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, or from, I should say, the Public Safety and Human Services Committee on tomorrow's full council agenda, but the Public Safety and Human Services Committee is meeting tomorrow.

and on tomorrow morning's agenda we'll be having the following items first an appointment to the community police commission and uh this appointment has been referred to full council uh and has a vote scheduled for next week's meeting um because i have the unusual privilege of having a committee meeting that happens before full council um we'll It's accounting for this little difference in sequencing than you would normally see.

So this is a council appointment, but it is a council appointment that is recommended by the Community Police Commission.

Secondly, on the agenda, we'll be having a presentation from the city attorney's office on the criminal case backlog.

We will be having the regular quarterly update on Seattle Police Department staffing together with discussion of resolution 32050 sponsored by Councilmember Nelson and also a council bill that I will be introducing to request that the Seattle Department of Human Resources amend personnel rules to bring hiring authorities, including but not limited to SPD, presenting them with greater flexibility for moving expenses for new hires.

And this bill would also lift the SPD proviso by $650,000 only to allow for these moving expenses to be funded for police officers moving, lateral hires moving here from other locations, as well as to hire an additional recruiter.

Since there isn't agreement on passage of additional signing bonuses, the executive in their slide report did not recommend moving forward with a traditional hiring bonus.

And the executive has committed to bring us a comprehensive package to address SPD's vacancies in the future.

My hope is that in the spirit of Mayor Harrell's One Seattle, we can harness the agreement that many city departments, including SPD and the executive, the agreement that many of these departments are having challenges, filling positions critical to city business needs and challenging to fill in order to support this council bill.

Third on the – or fourth on the agenda, we'll be hearing from the Human Services Department on city gender-based violence investments.

And then lastly, we'll be having an issue identification briefing on the pay-up legislation.

Central staff will walk the committee through a memo, which includes amendments that are correspond to issues identified both by central staff as well as by many of the stakeholders.

This item is on the agenda for presentation only.

Discussion time will be limited and there is no vote planned to be taken at this meeting.

Moving on to some issue-based updates on the public health front.

You may have seen this morning, Public Health of Seattle King County announced that levels of COVID-19 are increasing in our community and have crossed the threshold into the Federal Centers for Disease Control's medium level.

Cases are ending up among all ages, but most cases are occurring in young adults aged 18 to 29. Because hospitalizations and deaths thankfully remain low, public health is not putting any mandates into place at this time.

But COVID risk is clearly increasing for individuals in our community.

And as always, we should use this information about case increases to lower our own risk.

And I am once again going to say what you've heard me say many times before, and I know many of us include in our comments.

Be up to date on your COVID-19 vaccine and all recommended booster doses.

This is the number one recommendation.

work to ensure that indoor air quality through ventilation, filtration, and other strategies is improved, used high quality and well-fitting face masks in indoor settings, tested and isolate if you have symptoms, and test before attending gatherings with high-risk people.

On the public safety front, just for folks' general awareness, you may have seen that the Seattle University released the 2021 Seattle Public Safety Survey, and announced the 2022 Seattle Police Department micro-community police dialogues.

And those dialogues, again, with community members and the police department, including police officers, occur from May 19th through August 25th, every Thursday night.

There will be three dialogues per precinct.

More information is available on the Seattle Police Department blotter, sent out on April 21st, and the Seattle Police Department micro-community police plans webpage, including links to the 2021 survey results.

Seattle University has conducted annual public safety surveys since 2015. As far as regional committee updates, I mentioned last week that we had an upcoming King County Regional Homelessness Authority Governing Committee.

Just an update from that meeting that happened last week.

Wanna let folks know that the committee approved a proposed special meeting in May so that governing committee members and the public have time to review the RHA's proposed 2023 budget before it is submitted to the city and county.

This is required by the interlocal agreement which establishes the authority.

And in order to both fulfill that obligation that the governing committee actually act on the proposed budget before it is proposed and do so in a timely fashion, we did need to have a special meeting.

As far as regional committees, I have coming up this week, the LINC advisory board is meeting.

I'd mentioned last week that there was a steering committee meeting that I attended.

The advisory board itself is meeting this week, and the LINC advisory board, for folks' awareness, is a coordinated team of service providers that is organized through the Center for Children and Youth Justice.

They work to reengage youth in secondary education, connecting them to counseling, treatment services, employment opportunities.

towards the goal of reducing gang and group involvement and involvement with the criminal legal system.

As far as other events that happened last week or coming up this week, one thing I forgot to mention in briefings last week was that I was going to join the mayor and the human services department in a meeting with many of the community safety and violence prevention providers This was an opportunity for providers to share their work with both the mayor and the human services department, as well as identify what they need from the city to be more effective.

Also, coming up this week, there will be a West Seattle Chamber of Commerce event.

I'll be visiting the chamber along with Southwest Precinct Captain Rivera and Councilmember Nelson to discuss public safety issues.

And then I think one last mentioned, this Friday I'll be participating in an office of police accountability search committee meeting, the first of our meetings to look at hiring a new director for that office.

That concludes my remarks.

Do any of my colleagues have questions or comments?

First of all, thank you, Council Member Herboldt, for allowing or putting into your committee the legislation or the resolution, I'm sorry, that Council Member Nelson was proposing, so we can have a healthy debate about that tomorrow.

But also, a big thank you to your staff, too, on the proposed pay of legislation, Council Bill 120294 for issue identification tomorrow.

I want to thank Amy and Karina and Jasmine.

Our office put five questions to them, which they answered immediately.

And I really want to thank your staff with working with our staff and central staff getting back to us, because the questions were kind of wonky and we got really good answers.

So thank you very much for your transparency.

And as you said earlier, in the spirit of One Seattle, us being collaborative and working together, because I think at the end of the day, we all want the same thing.

So thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Thanks for saying that.

We appreciate it.

Not seeing any other comments or questions, I'll pass it on to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

So just jumping into the updates for today, I want to reference an email that I sent to Council colleagues last week regarding the City Council slash Board of Park Commissioners.

consideration of the Metropolitan Park District spending plan and the timeline and council work schedule regarding that body of work.

Happy to make myself available to answer any follow-up questions about that proposed work plan for that body of work.

Eric McConaughey and Tracy Ratzliff are also able to make themselves available to answer questions regarding that memo.

As you will see, we're going to begin that work in the middle to the end of June, and it will culminate in mid-September.

So very much looking forward to jumping into the long overdue renewal of the Metropolitan Park District.

that has been delayed due to the impacts of COVID and look forward to digging into that work with all of my colleagues here in terms of how we might move forward with that important asset.

Moving on to the meeting of the Public Assets and Homelessness Committee on May 4th, so not this Wednesday but a week from Wednesday, the agenda items will be an update from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the Mayor's Office Regarding assets funded in the Seattle City Council budget that we passed in the fall, primarily the recent request for proposal that has been in the news, mostly due to the circumstances around disputes with the state legislature as to state funding in that RFP, but where awards were granted to Catholic Community Services, the Public Defender Association, and Chief Seattle Club, we did get assurances, Council Member Herbold, Mayor Harrell, and myself, during last week's King County Regional Homelessness Authority Governing Board meeting, that that RFP will be completely funded despite the circumstances around assumptions regarding $2 million of potential state support We will be getting a more full update on May 4th for committee members regarding that RFP, but I can share that information that Chief Seattle Club, the Public Defender Association, and Catholic Community Services are anticipated to get the full award that was indicated by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Other shelter updates we are expecting to hear from KCRHA and the mayor's office on include The council funded camp second chance tiny house expansion.

We're hoping to hear progress on an executive proposal to maintain the just care program.

An update on the Soto high acuity shelter partnership between King County and the city of Seattle, again, that this council funded in the fall.

And the recently announced RV safe lot RFP that is currently still, I believe, requesting public bids.

So there's a lot going on at the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

A lot of great new places for people to go and have a roof over their head coming online and we are looking forward to getting those updates.

We are also going to have a presentation from the Seattle Parks Department regarding an update to their equity work plan.

Hopefully we'll be able to accommodate that.

I think we will, given that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority is the only other agenda item, albeit a very long agenda item.

So looking forward to seeing everybody there a week from Wednesday.

Clean City Update.

So between April 11th and April 15th, the Clean City Program was able to collect and recover 1,822 needles.

And 72,540 pounds of trash from 44 different trash pickup locations.

This included deep cleans at the Miller Community Center and Longfellow Creek locations.

So always good to report on the progress of the Clean City Initiative and appreciate the hard work those folks are doing out in our community.

Library items of interest.

The Seattle Public Library will reopen meeting rooms and study rooms to the public on Monday, May 2nd.

Our public communications and website updates will occur on May 2nd, outlining the process for reserving those spaces.

And I look forward to being able to report on the progress of people continuing to utilize those community spaces as we come out of COVID.

And this is a really great sign of another amenity from the Seattle Public Library coming back online as staffing and situation permits.

The Seattle Public Library is also going to celebrate Dia de los Ninos next Friday, and that's gonna involve presentations from award-winning artist and illustrator Rafael Lopez, taking part in a livestream event from 10 to 10.45 a.m.

on Friday, April 29th.

The library is going to be partnering with Seattle Public Schools to encourage participation from classrooms across the city for this event.

So really looking forward to recognizing and celebrating that day.

The library is also hosting a save the library escape room game in both English and Spanish.

And once people complete the escape room, They're able to stop by the South Park library branch to receive a free book.

So that sounds like a really fun event and looking forward to being able to report back on the results and attendance.

With that, council colleagues, I don't have any additional updates.

Happy to open it up to see if there are questions from anybody.

Don't see any questions, so I will turn it over to Council Member Morales.

Although, is she not here today?

Apologies.

So I believe I will hand it over to Council President.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Very good.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I have some prepared comments.

I'm usually much briefer, but I have a little bit more this week on the briefing.

There are no items from the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee on tomorrow's full council agenda.

Our next meeting is this Thursday, April 28th at 930. and our agenda is the following the appointment of gail tarlington as the new director of the office of intergovernmental relations thank you to council members who submitted written questions for interim director tarleton to answer ahead of the committee I understand that the committee clerk will be distributing her written answers tomorrow morning for your consideration, so if you have any follow-ups, you can have that ready to go on Thursday.

Thursday's committee will include a resolution sponsored by Councilmember Peterson, modifying council rules related to the consent calendar and voting abstentions.

In regards to Sound Transit, this week I will be joining other members of the Sound Transit Board of Directors CEO Search Committee.

I will also be attending a Sound Transit Board of Directors meeting to discuss the agency's first annual program review and consider final action on several policies regarding fares and fare compliance.

I'll also be joining Councilmember Peterson and Marshall Foster for a discussion on the city's locally preferred alternative for the West Seattle Ballard Link Extension.

More to come on that one.

Last week, last Friday, I had the honor and privilege to join President Joe Biden at Seward Park to celebrate Earth Day alongside Governor Jay Inslee, members of our congressional delegation, Mayor Harrell, and tribal leaders, including Chairwoman Terri Goulbin from Tulalip, Chairman Forsman from Suquamish, Chairman Elkins from Muckleshoot, Chairman Willie Frank Jr. from Nisqually, and Chairman Chris Peters from Squaxin Island, and Esther Lozada, who is the CEO of the Seattle Indian Health Board.

There are other tribal leaders there as well.

So the executive order, President Biden signed an executive order to lay the groundwork for protecting some of the biggest and oldest trees in America's forests.

This executive order directs the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to track mature forests nationwide and also identify threats to the critical carbon offsets.

It was wonderful to see the President and have him acknowledge the tribal leadership that was present.

The tribal leaders thanked him for the passage of the Violence Against Women Act, the protection of bear ears, and also appointing Deb Holland as the first Native American Secretary of Interior.

Also Friday, I spoke with 11 local indigenous women as part of the Native Action Network's Legacy of Leadership Series.

As you know, this has been going on for about 20 years.

This is their new cohort group.

The Native Action Network is an amazing organization that has been around, as I shared, for 20 years, empowering and developing young Native women to serve as leaders in their communities.

Earlier this week, the mayor and I met with the members of the Muckleshoot Tribal Council to discuss how we can work together.

And again, I'm going to raise this issue again.

I think Councilor Morales and I talked about this offline as well.

This is a true government to government relationship.

And one of the examples is, as you know, the Muckleshoot Tribe recently purchased for $16 million, 54 units, seven stories of housing in District 4. And so we are really pushing for the indigenous footprint.

So we are doing the whole campaign, which we will roll out, I think in the next week or two weeks, more than a land acknowledgement.

We talked about serious land policies that we can implement, including repatriation, consultation, and working with local tribes regarding land use, beyond land acknowledgement, changing of names.

So I'm excited.

A lot of this will go to our indigenous advisory, committee, council, was it a council?

Yeah, council.

So we're handling some of this on the front end, but I'm excited that the Indigenous Advisory Council will come around and handle these issues, tackle them, and then advise this council, as well as other, hopefully, leading governments.

So coming this week, I think that's it.

Oh, I know, one last thing.

We are officially welcoming back everyone on let's see April 27, which is Wednesday, you will be getting an email from me before the end of the day close of business welcoming everyone back on I think customer for herbal.

She gave me some wonderful suggestions and we made sure that we included that in the welcome back memo.

We are going to encourage everybody, though not a mandate, but I really, as someone who's recovered from COVID and got my booster Friday, it is no joke.

And if you could wear your mask in the common areas, the hallway, the restrooms, the kitchen, anywhere else.

That would be a lot of people have children under 12 that are not vaccinated.

A lot of people have babies under five.

And if you have children, you know that they bring home everything and germs, nothing against kids and grandkids, but we wanna keep everyone safe.

And I'm hoping, especially for the council members that were elected in the last two years, that they have an opportunity that we all get back on the same floor.

And we can kind of get back to some normalcy of talking to each other and seeing each other, getting to know each other and just doing the city's business.

And with that, are there any questions from my colleagues about my report?

All right, not seeing any.

This concludes our next, our council briefing.

And the next council briefing is scheduled for May 2nd at two o'clock.

And we will see you tomorrow at two o'clock and we are, oh wait, Council Member Herbold, go ahead.

I just wanted to, I wanted to thank you for representing us last week with the president's visit to Seattle on Earth Day.

It was such a privilege for our city and such a privilege for you to be with him and really appreciate your being there.

Oh, thank you.

That was really kind of you, Council Member Herbold.

I do have to share a little side note.

It was kind of funny.

Chairwoman Terri Gobin of the Tulalip Tribe, which now has a majority of elected leaders on their council for the first time in their history, was amazing.

And you probably saw the pictures of Chairwoman Gobin.

She had her cedar hat on and the president came.

That came up because all the tribal leaders were thanking the president, just kind of shouting out and thanking him for the things that he had done.

So he had met Chairwoman Gobin before at a few other White House events.

So he came over and he gave her the pen.

And then he asked us what if this was a city or a state park.

And I don't know if the media picked it up, but I hollered at it.

a tribal park and all the tribal leaders hollered, it's indigenous land.

And he appreciated that and gave us all a thumbs up.

So, and thank you.

It was an honor to represent Seattle City Council.

And it was an honor to also sit with all those tribal leaders who work really hard and this is their city, obviously.

And so, yeah, I didn't try to like weasel my way in there and get right up in the president's business.

I just was kind of there trying to just hold my own.

So thank you.

Anything else?

All right.

We stand adjourned, everybody.

See you tomorrow.