Libraries, Education & Neighborhoods Committee 4/11/2024

Good morning, everyone.

The April 11th, 2024 meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee will come to order.

It's 9.31 a.m.

I'm Maritza Rivera, Chair of the Committee.

Will the Clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Wu?

Present.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Councilmember Moore?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Chair Rivera?

Present.

Three Councilmembers are present.

Thank you.

We have a quorum, so we can continue.

There are just a few items on today's agenda.

Specifically, we'll learn about four pending appointments to the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authorities Governing Council.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now open the public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items within the purview of the committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

No speakers are signed up today.

Thank you, no speakers today.

The public comment period is therefore closed.

Will the clerk please read today's agenda items into the record?

Agenda items one through four, appointments 02750 through 02751, and appointments 02823 through 02824. The appointments of the following individuals to serve as members of the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council.

Taha Ibrahimi as a member for a term to November 30, 2024. Angela Michelle Fall as a member for a term to November 30, 2026. Katie Al-Khalidi as a member for a term to November 30, 2026. Caroline LeMay as a member for a term to 30, 2026.

Thank you.

All appointments have been read into the record.

We are joined this morning by Kai Kelly, the Executive Director of Historic Seattle, and also by Kenny Pittman, the Chair of the Historic Seattle Council.

Nice to see you again, Kenny.

Thank you both for being here this morning.

You can join us at the table.

We better perform, we're the headliners.

Please introduce yourselves for the record once you get settled, and then we can learn more about these four great nominees for the Historic Seattle Preservation and Development Authority.

Thank you, I'm Kai Kelly, Executive Director of Historic Seattle.

And for the record, I'm Kenny Pittman, Board Chair.

So I really appreciate the interest in time.

And I want to give us, before I start, a special shout out to Will.

Kenny and I have been doing this a long time.

I've been in Historic Seattle for almost 20 years.

And I don't think I've ever had such a thoughtful exchange with city staff as I have over the past few weeks with Will.

So I just want to thank him and congratulate you for having him on board.

Well, thank you.

I love to hear it.

That was an exception when I was doing it.

Oh, of course, Kenny, of course.

I've known Kenny for a few years now.

Kenny, you know Will's giving you a run for your money.

Okay.

We're very lucky to have Will in our office, and thank you for the accolades.

It's really appreciated.

So I'll give a quick little sort of elevator speech about Historic Seattle, and then we can go into quick bios of the candidates.

Historic Seattle saves meaningful places to foster lively communities.

We educate and we advocate and we preserve special, unique, meaningful, historic buildings that make Seattle, Seattle, right?

That makes Seattle unique.

We own, operate, steward 10 properties throughout the city.

To name a few, Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford, Cadillac Hotel in the Good Arts Building in Pioneer Square, the Garden House up on Beacon Hill, Washington Hall in the Central District.

For 50 years now, we've brought a very balanced and thoughtful approach when we do our preservation work here in the city.

If we were given the opportunity to...

stop all development and chain ourselves to the front of buildings before the track hoe came to tear the building down, I guarantee we would not have enough staff nor enough chain to actually do that.

So we're not an organization of no, but in fact, we're an organization of balance.

We believe as a group that really challenging issues that the city faces right now are not solved with binary either or type of scenarios.

They're more complicated than that.

And for a long, long time now, we've brought our education, our advocacy and our preservation work in a yes and type of approach.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Kenny to introduce the first candidate.

The first candidate we'd like to introduce is Angela Fall for a three-year term.

She's a governing council appointee.

One of the ways the board works is it operates as a mayoral appointee, as a constituency appointee, and as a governing council.

Our 11 members that we have right now are broke up into those categories.

And Angela is one of our governing council appointees for a three-year term ending on November 30th of 2026. She's an experienced practitioner in commercial real estate, has vast experience, and is a principal and consultant and designated broker for Fall, which is a local community-focused developer.

And she has vast experience in leasing, marketing, and managing commercial real estate.

Two of her projects that stand out to us was that her adaptive reuse of the Labor Temple in Belltown and the Queen Anne Exchange Building on Queen Anne.

And we feel that she will be a great addition to our board and ask for your confirmation.

Did you want to take one up at a time or just in group?

And run through all four.

Our second candidate is Caroline LeMay.

Caroline is a principal at Bassetti Architects.

Throughout her 30-year career, she's gained broad experience working on restoration projects of various scales and complexity.

Caroline's experience in preservation includes a wide variety of public-private partnerships, ranging from careful rehabilitations and additions to technically challenging structural, mechanical, and architectural retrofitting of historic structures.

Some notable projects locally that you may be aware of and know of, the Guggenheim Hall on the University of Washington campus, Roosevelt High School, as well as Trinity Parish Episcopal Church.

And our third candidate is Katie Howley, and she is a CPA and principal at Clark Neuber.

She has about 15 years' experience, and she leads the firm's audit and assurance services group.

In her experience, she does performing and supervising audits assisting clients in strengthening their internal controls, and providing consulting services to the real estate-focused clients utilizing both affordable housing tax credit as well as historic tax credits.

She will bring that experience and wealth of knowledge to our board, and we are asking for her to be appointed for a three-year term also ending in November 30th of 2026. And our fourth and final candidate.

We're a good team.

Yes, we are.

We partner back and forth.

Our fourth and final candidate is Taha Ibrahimi.

Taha is an award-winning communications and digital media leader.

As director of Tableau Public for six years, she's helped global organizations leverage the power of their stories to achieve high-impact strategic objectives.

In her spare time, she was a writer and researcher.

She just published a book, Street Trees of Seattle, an illustrated walking guide.

She used data visualization, illustrations, and maps, and she takes readers on a tour of existing street trees throughout Seattle's neighborhoods and iconic parks.

The most notable of each species are highlighted so urban adventurers can fully appreciate their surroundings or design their own walking routes to experience these natural wonders in their favorite areas of the city.

So I end on that book review, if you will, because each of the four candidates really, in my opinion, represent historic Seattle and what we've been doing for so long.

They care about something much larger than themselves.

And to be quite frank, they bring their head and their heart.

They bring technical expertise and years of experience as practitioners in this field.

And they also bring passion.

They bring passion about work that other people have done that they don't even know.

And I think that's at the heart of what Historic Seattle is, is to honoring the past for the present and for the future.

So we're happy to answer any questions.

Thank you both for being here, and thank you for giving the overview on Historic Seattle and for presenting these four candidates.

I know you mentioned Good Shepherd Center.

It is in District 4, the district I represent, and I've been holding in-district hours at Good Shepherd Center, so I'm very appreciative for your efforts in keeping that building going.

Colleagues, do you have any questions?

I have a comment.

So I just want to commend you on your work.

I've worked with Historic Seattle for a bit, with the Louisa Hotel, and have gone to many of your amazing events.

So thank you for the work that you do.

I also have served on a board with Caroline, the King County Landmarks Commission, and you have an amazing person there.

And looking at everyone's resumes, everyone's very accomplished and so very excited about the work that you will be completing in the next couple of years.

But I also want to say thank you to all those who choose to serve.

And it's a very accomplished group.

And I'm very excited that we have amazing stewards of our historic Seattle properties.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Wu.

Any other questions?

Then again, I just want to thank you for all the work that you do, and thank you to these candidates for their willingness to serve, actually.

We really appreciate that we have so many people in this city that care so much about these important issues, including the preservation of our historic buildings in the city.

We are just so fortunate that people will take on these roles.

And so let's move forward, seeing no other questions.

Sorry.

I move that the committee recommend confirmation of these appointments.

Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to confirm these appointments.

Are there any further comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the confirmation of appointment 02750 through 02751 and appointment 02823 through two, excuse me, 02824.

Council Member Wu.

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Chair Rivera.

Aye.

Three in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the recommendation that the appointments be confirmed will be sent to the full City Council.

Do any of my colleagues have any other comments or questions?

Okay, seeing no further questions, this concludes the April 11th, 2024 meeting of the Libraries Education and Neighborhoods Committee.

Our next committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 25th, 2024 at 9.30 a.m.

I will say I know this meeting was a little bit light.

And we are going to get started with our departments and really digging into their programs and hearing about outcomes as we get going.

So we do have a lot planned coming up.

So don't let today's meeting be indicative of what we're going to be doing in this committee.

Thank you both for being here again.

If there's no further business, this meeting will be adjourned.

Hearing no further business, it's 9.45 a.m., and this meeting is adjourned.