Seattle City Council 5/17/22

Thank you, son.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is Tuesday, May 17th.

This is the meeting of the Seattle City Council.

It is 2-0-1.

I'm Deborah Juarez.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Councilmember Solange?

Councilmember Strauss?

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council President Juarez.

I'm here.

Six present.

Moving along in the agenda to presentations.

We have no presentations today.

Moving along to approval of the introduction and referral calendar.

I move to adopt the introduction and referral calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded for adoption of the introduction of referral calendar.

Are there any comments?

Council Member Morales.

Yes, thank you.

I move to amend the introduction referral calendar to introduce a bill entitled an ordinance relating to the just cause eviction, changing the terms of certain eviction defenses and amending section 22.205.090 and 22.205.100 of the Seattle Municipal Code and referring it to the Sustainability and Renters Rights Committee.

Thank you, well done.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded to amend the introduction referral calendar by adding a bill as described by Councilmember Morales, and by referring it to the Sustainability and Renters Rights Committee, which I believe is this Friday.

Councilmember Morales, do you have any other comments before I go to a vote?

Yes.

So this is a bill, as we said, that would amend the six-month eviction defense ordinance.

And the reason that we are...

Council Member Sawant is not able to be here today, so I'm doing this on her behalf.

And we are trying to walk the bill onto today's IRC calendar rather than wait for next week, mostly because of the need to have The council bill required 30 days after signature by the mayor to go into effect.

And this would avoid an overlap with the June 30th deadline that currently exists in this bill.

Oh, I need a second.

I'm sorry on the second.

Thank you.

So you spoke to it and we have a second.

Let me say a few things before we move to the vote.

I apologize.

Jumped a little quick.

Normally, I do not like and discourage walk-ons.

However, we know that this case started out in King County Superior Court, went to the Court of Appeals.

We had some legal opinions a couple of weeks ago.

And then we had, there was a few disruptions, not council member Sawant's fault without, you know, I don't want to, I want to respect her privacy.

So that's kind of, we had some, some extenuating circumstances.

So I will be voting to support, to amend the introduction of full calendar to refer this to committee.

So that's why normally I'm a stickler about rules and deadlines.

They're there for a reason.

but I'm certainly amenable when there's unforeseen circumstances that come up, particularly with any individual council member and their scheduling and their calendaring.

But also we have the timeline because this is in the court of appeals and we've had legal, we've had some legal analysis.

And I want to thank Asha for getting us the information and the chronology of why we're moving this forward to get it into Council Member Sawant's committee on Friday.

I don't want to thank Councilor Morales for moving this forward on her behalf.

Is there any other comments before we go to a vote?

Okay, not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the amendment of the introduction and referral calendar as presented by Council Member Morales?

Council Member Strauss?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Nielsen.

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis.

Yes.

Councilmember Morales.

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries.

And let me put my glasses on for this.

Council Bill is, I forgot the number again.

What is the number on that?

I don't have it written in here.

Excuse me, Council President.

We've just assigned it as it was walked on.

It will be Council Bill 120330.

Thank you.

And thank you, Madam Clerk, for being so quick on the draw.

I was down here looking for the number.

I just saw a bunch of question marks.

Thank you.

So Council Bill 120330 is added to the introduction referral calendar and referred to the Sustainability and Renters Rights Committee.

Are there any further comments on the amended introduction of the referral calendar?

Councilor Peterson.

I appreciate the intent of the sponsor to want to refine that legislation based on the court case that is in play.

I will be requesting an executive session to discuss this because of the legal risks involved for the city.

It's happening very quickly, so I just want to hope that we can meet with our attorneys about it and discuss.

Thank you.

Councilman Pearson, I know that you're doing that, so thank you.

I didn't know that you're going to do that on the record and on TV, but thank you for letting us know that we're getting the paperwork in to do an executive session to be advised by legal counsel on Monday before it goes to full counsel.

So thank you for that.

And as I shared again, I just want to in defense of Councilmember Sawant, There is just some things that came up that I don't think that she could have anticipated.

Otherwise, as you know, I do not like to walk things on.

I think when people have enough time to get the notice in, they should.

However, I understand the exception here.

Anything else?

Not seeing any.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the amended?

Is that how we do it?

On the amended?

Are we done?

Yes, we can call the roll on adopting the Introduction Referral Calendar as amended.

Okay, so the Introduction Referral Calendar as amended.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Yes.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Moving on to our agenda, let's move on to the approval of the consent calendar.

The consent calendar, as you all have in front of you, are there any items that any council member would like to remove from today's consent calendar?

Hearing or seeing none, I move to adopt the consent calendar.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to adopt the consent calendar.

Excuse me.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The consent calendar is hereby adopted and will the clerk please affix my signature to that consent calendar.

Moving on to public comment.

Madam Clerk, how many people do we have signed up today?

Excuse me.

I might have missed it.

Council President, did we adopt the agenda?

Oh, did not.

Thank you.

Good catch.

I am sorry.

I did not see that after my consent calendar notes.

So hearing that I move that we adopt the calendar.

Today's today's calendar.

Is that correct?

Agenda?

I'm sorry.

Have a second.

Yes.

Yes.

If there's no objection, we can just adopt it.

Okay.

Then the agenda is indeed adopted.

And then now do we ask for the signature?

Nope.

No signature.

Got it.

I apologize.

We have a little jumbled notes here between the consent calendar and the agenda.

And then when we did the amended introduction and referral calendar.

So I apologize.

Okay, I think we're back on track with the agenda.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Moving to public comment.

Madam Clerk, how many people do we have signed up for public comment?

We have five people signed up.

Okay, great.

I'm going to read the introduction of the directions and then I'm going to hand it over to you, Madam Clerk, and then we'll go to the five folks that have signed up for public comment.

Not testimony, it's comment.

Okay, colleagues, at this time, we will open the remote public comment period for items on the city council agenda, introduction referral calendar, and the council's work program.

It remains a strong intent of the city council to have remote public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, as a reminder, the city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is no longer suitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently, effectively.

And with that, I'm going to hand it over to you, Madam Clerk.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they are registered to provide public comment on the Council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number used for this registration and using the meeting phone number ID and passcode that was emailed to them upon confirmation.

This is different than the general meeting listen line.

that you call in for information.

Again, each speaker will be called upon by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you have not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public comment by going to the council's website at seattle.gov backslash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once the speaker's name is called, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone, and an automatic prompt if you have been unmuted will be your cue that it's your turn to speak, and then you must press star six before speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

And as a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda, the introduction and referral calendar, or the council's work program.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comment at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you have completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The public comment is now open, and we will begin with the first speakers on the list.

And please remember, the speaker must also touch star six on their phone to unmute themselves.

Our first two speakers are Howard Gale, followed by Cynthia Spies.

Howard.

Good afternoon, Howard Gale with seattlestop.org, commenting on our failed police accountability system.

Five years ago this week Seattle passed what was then considered historic police accountability legislation.

Then one month later the Seattle Police murdered Charlena Lyles a pregnant mother of four experiencing a mental health crisis and brandishing a knife.

Despite the public outrage and the promises from the city council to ensure justice and accountability the SPD then went on to murder Danny Rodriguez Ryan Smith Sean Lee Furr Terry Caver, murdered just six days before George Floyd, Derek Hayden, and the still unnamed person killed in Beacon Hill on January 5th.

All seven of these people were experiencing a severe mental health crisis and displaying a knife or no weapon at all.

All were murdered within seconds of police arriving.

All these murders, despite the egregious failures of police to follow SPD's policies of de-escalation, redeemed, quote, lawful and proper, unquote, by our supposedly historic, but clearly failed police accountability system.

Two years after George Floyd's murder, the council remains wedded to a system that serves no one's needs.

When the Seattle Human Rights Commission now tries to address these failings, they are silenced by the city with not a single council member expressing outrage or concern.

The same council members that seemingly find it acceptable that the SPD can summarily end the life of a member of our community and then follow that with erasing their memory by allowing that person to remain unnamed for over four months now.

We need to build through a city initiative a police accountability system that provides full civilian community control over police misconduct investigations and discipline.

Go to SeattleStop.org to find out how.

That's SeattleStop.org.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Cynthia Spees, and she will be followed by David Haynes.

Cynthia?

Hi, I'm Cynthia Spees, an independent security researcher and District 6 resident.

My comments are regarding both SPD surveillance technologies.

The city is not engaged in honest dialogue with the public on these surveillance technologies.

The vast majority of the public's questions are still unanswered.

This is largely due to SPD not answering questions by saying, we have to get back to you on that, but then never doing so.

This implies either that SPD doesn't understand the tools or is willfully hiding information.

Regardless, the result is the same.

Neither an incompetent nor malicious city department like SPD should be trusted to operate surveillance technologies.

Given the lack of honest commitment to the surveillance ordinance process, neither of these two technologies should be approved by city council.

Council members should require that the public comment period deadline for any surveillance technology automatically extends until at least one week after all the public's questions have been answered, either on the Seattle IT Privacy Department's or SPD's website.

SPD is dodging one of the key purposes of surveillance ordinance which is to provide transparency and accountability.

In order to address this problem the public comment period should be tied to SPD providing answers to the public's questions as an official deliverable instead of tying the public comment period purely to a calendar date.

This is critically important given that Group 4B surveillance technologies are currently going through their public comment period and thus far SPD's behavior hasn't changed.

So it's up to council members to ensure the process doesn't continue while leaving community members' questions unaccounted for.

Lastly, I've emailed you ways to fix the three amendments that were tabled in committee, so as to address both the feedback from SPD and still meet the needs and intent from community members.

I've also emailed you precise recommendations to add safeguards spanning security, bystander protections, data sources, tool functionality, contractual auditing, scoping, transparency, data sharing, validation, and privacy.

If the responsibility of City Council to heed the concerns from the public can add official guardrails.

As such, please see my emails to you for detailed recommendations you should take on these surveillance technologies.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Haynes, and he will be followed by Jennifer Lee.

David, go ahead.

Hi, thank you.

David Haynes, District 7. Extremism is fueled by skin color judgment.

Instead of judging a person's content of character, extremists judge skin color.

Does that make a race and social justice lens extremist?

What about prioritizing repeat offenders for services and housing instead of improved jailhouse by a just care public defender and lead that run interference for criminals while forsaking innocent homeless?

Is that extremist?

Is city council familiar with the news report about the two homeless women who were raped at the same encampment by the same low-level drug pusher exempted from jail by the cops, the prosecutor, and the judge.

One of those women was a Native American who was eight months pregnant, yet they were never outreached.

Only certain bothersome encampments where city council plays politics with community are prioritized for help.

Perhaps this can be a sobering wake-up call for council's investments within the homeless crisis, and there are policies that seize most money for homeless used to prioritize repeat offending BIPOC criminals in certain locations and encampments, fulfilling George Soros-funded extreme data policies and agenda with politically connected nonprofits collecting most homeless money, while innocent forsaking houseless unnecessarily suffering, being victimized and denied by radical, racist, woke, extreme agenda to upend a civilized society, helping the wrong people in the wrong location to appease the extremely upset business community, still dealing with the side effects of counsel, police chief, the mayor and the prosecutor's office, still exempting low-level drug pushers from jail, committing crimes against humanity, destroying lives daily, imploding society, listed nonviolent misdemeanor, the epitome of an extremist policy of which this council represents and needs to stop now.

You've destroyed normalcy with racist, treasonous...

Our next speaker is Jennifer Lee, and she will be followed by Bill James, who is currently listed as not present.

Jennifer?

Hello, my name is Jennifer Lee of the ACLU of Washington, and I am a member of the Community Surveillance Working Group commenting on Agenda Items CB-120-307 and 309 regarding SPD's use of audio recording systems and IBM i2iBase.

For SPD's use of audio recording systems, we appreciate the amendment passed that would require the disclosure of the manufacturer.

However, we are still very concerned that the SIR does not specify the model names and numbers of the audio recording devices, which limits the ability of the public, as well as council members, to meaningfully review and approve this technology.

Without public disclosure of the manufacturers, model names, and numbers of the audio recording devices, it's impossible for there to be meaningful review as the purpose of the Seattle Surveillance Ordinance is to create transparency and accountability around the use of these technologies.

SPD should also be required to disclose for how many incidents per year they use audio recording systems.

On SPD's use of IBM i2iBase, we are concerned that the city's contract with IBM has not been publicly disclosed as is required by the surveillance ordinance.

i2iBase's automated relationship analyses are likely to generate data errors that compound existing biases.

While SPD has confirmed that false connections do occur, they have not shared how often they occur.

There are no limits on the kinds of data that may be inputted into I-2-I base, no limitations on employee access to records, no limits on usage of potentially erroneous I-2-I base data, and no prohibition on the use of this technology for predictive policing.

We ask that you require that SPD or the city make the contract with IBM publicly available, that SPD limits the kind of data that may be inputted both manually and automatically into I-2-I base, that the long data retention period is shortened, and the number of times that eye-to-eye-based is used per year is disclosed.

And finally, that predictive policing is banned.

We have many other concerns with these technologies, and we urge council members to pause on approving these technologies.

Thank you.

Our last speaker is not present, so that concludes our list of public commenters for today.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

So we have reached the end of our list of registered speakers for public comment.

So with that, I will now close public comment.

And we will move into the committee reports of our agenda.

And we have three items on today's agenda.

And I believe Council Member Nelson has the first two and I have the last one.

So let's start with item number one.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item one into the record?

The report of the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee, Council Bill, Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 120307, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2021 Surveillance Impact Report and 2021 Executive Overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of audio recording systems.

The committee recommends the bill pass as amended.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Nelson.

Yes, so the 2017 surveillance ordinance requires city departments to obtain advanced council approval for the acquisition of surveillance technologies and to request retroactive approval if those technologies have already been in use when that bill was passed.

So these bills refer to the letter, and they are two technologies that make up group 4A.

And I will just introduce how they've been dealt with in my committee and then also address each one in turn.

So Council Bill 120307 would approve the Seattle Police Department's continued use of audio recording systems and accept the surveillance impact report and an executive overview for that technology.

At our April 27th committee meeting, we had a joint presentation from the Seattle Information, from the Department of Seattle Information Technology and the Seattle Police Department, and they went over what these audio recordings were used for.

And we also had a presentation from central staff on some of the policy concerns or issues that were brought up in the public process.

And at our last committee meeting on May 11th, we discussed amendments and amended the Council Bill 120307, and pass it out of committee unanimously.

So I will open it up for questions on this bill and have at it.

And then we can move on to questions about the next bill, technology.

I actually will open it up for questions.

Oh, okay, sorry.

So thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Are there any questions that any of my colleagues have?

I see Council Member Herbold.

I just want to flag the amendments to the legislation, mostly based on recommendations of the working group, though I will acknowledge that there were some tabled amendments that I was interested in pursuing, but because of some I do want to thank councilmember making time in her committee for the discussion of these four amendments and appreciate the support of those committee members who were able to vote for them.

One was requesting a report to the clerk from SPD describing how SPD ensures the authenticity of recordings and accurate identifications of individuals in audio recordings.

through the use of covert audio recording systems.

SPD had said that they were already working on that and had no objections.

Another amendment was sort of what we refer to as a belt and suspender approach as it related to bio metric technology.

We all recognize that the addition of new surveillance technology would require a new SIR and council action, but this basically just sort of doubles down on that expectation and says that we require SPD to revise or conduct a new SIR before moving forward if it was intended to do so as it relates to using biometric technology.

The third amendment does not go as far, I think, as we heard in public comment, as the work group would like, but does require that SPD identify the manufacturers and vendors of the audio recording systems.

And lastly, I just want to make sure that we're not.

Replicating an amendment that.

Council member Peterson made us sort of a staple in his in as it relates to these sort of surveillance technologies.

There is an amendment that and to include it in their annual equity assessment, the identification of the equity metrics.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor Herbold.

Are there any other comments?

Okay, not seeing any.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Council President Ores?

Aye.

Can we loop back to Council Member Morales one more time?

I see she's on the screen.

Sure.

And Council Member Morales?

Okay.

Six in favor, none opposed.

Okay, great, thank you.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

And Madam Clerk, will you please affix my signature?

Let's move on to item number two.

Council Member Nelson, it's you again.

I'll read it into the record first.

Yep, yep.

Sorry about that.

Agenda item two, Council Bill 120309. an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting the 2021 surveillance impact report, and 2021 executive overview for the Seattle Police Department's use of IBM i2 iBase.

The committee recommends the bill passes amended.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you very much.

IBASE is a link analysis software program that SPD uses in the course of their investigations.

This bill was amended.

I will provide time for council members Strauss and Herbold to address those amendments.

And it was amended and passed out of committee unanimously.

Thank you.

Are any of my colleagues ready to comment or have any issues to raise with Council Member Nelson regarding this particular piece of legislation?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just flagging the amendments that passed out of committee per Council Member Nelson's prompt, we requested that SPD take a look at its retention policy that compliance with the minimum retention period allowed by state and federal law, but also defines a clear deletion oversight process.

We also amended the legislation to request SPD report on the employee access policies or guidelines for use.

And then again, we included the the equity metric that I mentioned in the last bill.

We also included that in this one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Is there any other comments for Councilmember Nelson?

Okay, not seeing any.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Councilmember Strauss?

Yes.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Nielsen.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Council President Juarez.

Aye.

Seven in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Madam Clerk, please affix my signature to the passage of the bill.

And moving on to item number three, Madam Clerk, will you please read item three into the record?

Report of the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee, Agenda Item 3, Resolution 32051, a resolution revising certain general rules and procedures of the Seattle City Council, amending Rules 3 and 5, and Attachment 1 of Resolution 32029. The committee recommends the resolution be adopted as amended.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

As a sponsor of this resolution, I will speak to it.

I did speak to it yesterday as well on some of the reasons of how we got here.

And then when I'm done, I'll open it up for comments.

On April 28th, the Governance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee recommended Resolution 32051 unanimously.

I spoke to this briefly in committee and, of course, yesterday.

The resolution amends the council rules to do the following.

Number one, make some technical clarifications.

Number two, adds guidance to the use of the consent calendar.

This amendment would allow the consent calendar to include administrative items where there is no debate.

It also allows for any item on the consent calendar to be removed by any particular council member that would like it removed for any further discussion.

Third, it clarifies the rule regarding abstentions.

This change would relieve the council president for making the determination on which resolutions to allow for abstentions.

Indeed, it would fall upon the individual council member to determine if something is directly related or material and either vote or abstain as as deemed fit.

So with that, as I did share and I believe Ali may be available, but I'm pretty sure you all had your questions answered.

Ali did a great analysis for us.

and a memo, and I want to thank Council Member Peterson, working with me on this, and some of you other folks that weighed in kind of offline about what some of the issues were.

As you know, we've been discussing this since January, actually December, January, and now we finally got it across the finish line.

So with that, are there any questions or concerns or anything that I can answer for any of my colleagues?

Okay, not seeing any, that was easy.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the resolution?

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Council Member Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Council President Ores?

Aye.

Seven in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The resolution is adopted.

The chair will sign it.

And Madam Clerk, will you please affix my signature to the legislation or the resolution on my behalf?

Moving on onto our agenda, let's say we have adoption of other resolutions.

I don't see any.

And other business.

Is there any other business that we need to be brought before council today?

OK, not seeing any.

Oh, sorry.

I think you can't present this one and with everyone a happy sitting in my, as we were mentioning before, Council got started today the ambassador from Norway is joining us here in Ballard today and read remarks from both the king of Norway and the Prime Minister of Norway.

Norwegian Constitution Day, which is the 17th of May, the 10th of May, Norway's constitution is the second oldest constitution in the world, only outlasted by the United States of America, and in this time in our world's history about where we're dealing with issues of freedom, democracy, and and quite frankly war.

Today is a special day to celebrate democracy, both here in the United States and in Norway, and especially here in Ballard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I did not know you were going to put Ballard on the world map, but thank you for doing that, Council Member Strauss.

Yes, ma'am.

It's the second oldest written constitution.

Some societies knew how to behave without a piece of paper.

That's what I thought of you in that very sentiment earlier today.

I will say, Ballard has been annexed now for 150 years.

Leave it at that.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Give our best to the king.

Yes, ma'am.

Okay.

So is there anything else from my colleagues before I go ahead and adjourn?

Okay, not seeing any.

Let's see.

That concludes our business for today, and I will see you all next Tuesday, May 24th, for council meeting, not briefing.

That will be Monday, as you all know.

So with that, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.