Seattle City Council Land Use Committee 7/13/22

July 13th, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It is 2.01 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Morales?

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Peterson?

Present.

and Chair Strauss.

Present.

Thank you.

We have six items on the agenda today.

An appointment to the Seattle Planning Commission, a reappointment to the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board, a briefing on comprehensive plan scoping, a briefing and discussion and possible vote on the council's intent to address climate change as part of the comprehensive plan, a discussion and possible vote on CB120313, allowing the addition of some residential development to be considered a minor amendment to the major institution master plan and My favorite, the delivery of the quarterly tree report.

Before we begin, if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will begin remote public, or hybrid public comment period, and do you have, clerk, do you have the recording available, or should I read the script?

You have the recording available.

Yeah, if you could play the recording, and then we'll move forward.

Hello, Seattle.

We are the Emerald City, the city of flowers and the city of goodwill, built on indigenous land, the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

The Seattle City Council welcomes remote public comment and is eager to hear from residents of our city.

If you would like to be a speaker and provide a verbal public comment, you may register two hours prior to the meeting via the Seattle City Council website.

Here's some information about the public comment proceedings.

Speakers are called upon in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

Each speaker must call in from the phone number provided when they registered online and use the meeting ID and passcode that was emailed upon confirmation.

If you did not receive an email confirmation, please check your spam or junk mail folders.

A reminder, the speaker meeting ID is different from the general listen line meeting ID provided on the agenda.

Once a speaker's name is called, the speaker's microphone will be unmuted and an automatic prompt will say, the host would like you to unmute your microphone.

That is your cue that it's your turn to speak.

At that time, you must press star six.

You will then hear a prompt of, you are unmuted.

Be sure your phone is unmuted on your end so that you will be heard.

As a speaker, you should begin by stating your name and the item that you are addressing.

A chime will sound when 10 seconds are left in your allotted time as a gentle reminder to wrap up your public comments.

At the end of the allotted time, your microphone will be muted and the next speaker registered will be called.

Once speakers have completed providing public comment, please disconnect from the public comment line and join us by following the meeting via Seattle Channel broadcast or through the listening line option listed on the agenda.

The council reserves the right to eliminate public comment if the system is being abused or if the process impedes the council's ability to conduct its business on behalf of residents of the city.

Any offensive language that is disruptive to these proceedings or that is not focused on an appropriate topic as specified in Council rules may lead to the speaker being muted by the presiding officer.

Our hope is to provide an opportunity for productive discussions that will assist our orderly consideration of issues before the Council.

The public comment period is now open.

and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six after you hear the prompt of, you have been unmuted.

Thank you, Seattle.

Well, thank you.

Clerk, can you check to see how many people are signed up in person?

Anthony.

And today we will be doing remote commenters before people who are in person.

And we have former council president, Jim Street with us.

So Jim Street, former council president, Jim Street will go first, followed by Laura Lowe, Robin Briggs, and then Tiernan Martin.

Council President, welcome.

And my apologies, we're gonna give up to 25 minutes with one minute per person.

Okay, well, my name is Jim Street, and I appreciate being here today, and I will cut my speech in half.

I'm here to talk about Resolution 32059. I think it deserves council approval because a comprehensive plan should be comprehensive, and therefore climate should be part of it.

However, I also think that the resolution does a good job of providing some useful guidance on the incorporation of resiliency in the plan.

However, I and other climate advocates are very concerned about the possibility that the comprehensive climate action plan might not be completed until the end of 2024, the due date under the Growth Management Act for the comprehensive plan.

Given our intention to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030, the timeline and scope of a comprehensive action plan for climate should have happened two years ago.

Uh, at the current rate, we will not meet our 2030 goals.

We cannot wait until 2024 to complete the climate plan.

We believe that given its unique time urgency, uh, the climate component of the plan, comprehensive plan could and must be completed much sooner.

A second resolution is needed, uh, with the joint support of mayor and council, which would include the process, the schedule, the intended scope and the staffing and funds needed for the planning activity.

I particularly emphasize the schedule because I think it is a place where citizens can hold the government accountable, where council can hold the executive accountable.

It's about accountability and transparency and a very important priority.

Finally, we need for each of you on the council to be climate champions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

If we can reset these clocks for one minute, we're going to have 25 minutes for public speech.

Thank you, former Council President, for keeping that one minute.

Up next, we have Laura Lowe followed by Robin Briggs and then Tiernan Martin.

Laura, welcome.

Hello, my name is Laura Lowe, a renter in 98119, and I organize to fight against climate change with Share the City's Action Fund.

We would like to share our support for Council Member Mosqueda's Climate Change Resolution 32059. Addressing the impacts of climate change must be a top priority for our city's comprehensive plan update.

We want to see land use patterns that take advantage of a transit network that makes it possible for people to drive less and for non-drivers who can't make a choice and to have abundant housing and transit options.

This resolution will make sure the next comprehensive plan adds the goals and policies needed to make these changes possible.

It was crushing to watch Representative Dewar's House Bill 1099 fail to pass in Olympia this winter.

There was a tremendous and beautiful coalition supporting that bill.

Folks from all across the state led by FutureWise.

In the meantime we ask each of you here in Seattle today to demonstrate clear leadership on addressing climate change.

Please support the Climate Change Resolution 32059. Thank you to Chair Strauss and committee members for your service to our city.

Thank you.

And Linda, is there a way to turn the volume up in here in chambers?

That would be helpful.

Thank you.

Up next is Robin Briggs, followed by Tiernan Martin, and then Alice Lockhart.

Welcome, Robin.

Hi, my name is Robin Briggs.

I'm here to ask you to vote for the climate planning resolution.

Planning for the future involves a lot of uncertainties, but I think one thing we know and have come to know better and better in the last few years is that climate change affects all of us and no one is immune.

And we know that its effects can upend our way of life.

This resolution is important because when we get another heat dome event, maybe next time we will have planned for cooling centers and fewer people will die.

Maybe we'll have planted trees which cool our neighborhoods.

Maybe we will have reduced traffic and people in the most polluted neighborhoods now will have lower rates of respiratory disease and longer lifespans.

Perhaps most importantly, we will have taken steps to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. And other cities will take note and do the same and we will be able to avoid some of the most severe impacts of climate change.

We've had a foretaste of what will come if we don't act.

Let's make Seattle a city that inspires other cities and let's avoid looking back in 10 years on missed opportunities.

vote yes for the Climate Planning Resolution.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Up next is Tiernan Martin, followed by Alice Lockhart and Ryan Packer.

And everyone's done a good job so far, just recognizing that public comment during committee must relate to a item on the agenda.

Welcome, Tiernan.

I see you're off mute.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thanks to the members of the Land Use Committee.

My name is Tiernan Martin.

I work for FutureWise, and I'm here today to share our support for the Resolution 32059. Our organization works closely with Representative Dewar and a statewide coalition of supporters around House Bill 1099, a campaign that would have added a climate element to the GMA.

Unfortunately, that bill did not become a law, but the framework it created nevertheless is influencing comprehensive plan updates across the Puget Sound region.

And the city of Seattle has before it a resolution that would do just that.

It would direct the city to prioritize environmental justice, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and plan for climate resilience and adaptation.

That's something that we need to see in the one Seattle comp plan update.

I think it's super critical that the city take this on because we already are seeing wildfire smoke and dangerous heat waves that are indicative of climate change impacts.

of ecosystems in our region are getting pushed towards dangerous tipping points, and if we don't act now, the pressure to develop land outside of cities is going to rise, and we're going to see a real lock-in of carbon-intensive automobile-oriented sprawl.

Thank you, Tiernan.

Sorry, I didn't realize time has expired there.

Alice Lockhart, you're up next, followed by Ryan Packer and then Steve Zemke.

Alice, welcome.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, committee members, and thanks for this opportunity to speak.

I'm Alice Lockhart, speaking for 350 Seattle.

We wholeheartedly support Resolution 32059, which seeks to ensure that the new Seattle Comprehensive Plan adequately addresses greenhouse gas emissions and environmental justice.

We need a comp plan that allows for and encourages climate-friendly neighborhoods everywhere in the city, and at the same time undoes the harm of redlining and exclusionary zoning.

The comp plan can create a city of walkable neighborhoods where everyone can bike and walk to work, to shopping and to childcare.

A city where expanded tree cover shades everyone during heated events.

A city where the tide of displacement to long and climate polluting commutes is stemmed by creation of deeply affordable and missing middle housing everywhere.

We all deserve a green and thriving Seattle and this plan is our opportunity to build it.

Council members, please support the resolution.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Alice.

Perfect timing.

Up next is Ryan Packer, followed by Steve Zemke and then Colleen McAleer.

Ryan, welcome.

Good afternoon, council members.

This June marks the ninth anniversary of Seattle's Climate Action Plan.

I'm calling in support of the proposed I want to highlight the recent comments made by as not being quite in line with the proposed scoping of the comprehensive plan in terms of reducing vehicle miles traveled, not simply counting on electrification.

I fully support this amendment and I also second basically everything that everyone else has said previously in the public comments.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Up next is Steve Zemke followed by Colleen McAleer and then Megan Cruz.

Welcome, Steve.

My name is Steve Zemke.

I'm speaking today for four groups TreePak Friends of Seattle's Urban Forest Don't Clear Cut Seattle and Seattle Green Spaces.

The climate crisis is real.

As we saw last summer we can have deadly impacts.

In fact they're worse than even noted by the by the region.

The New York Times in an article entitled Hidden Toll of the Northwest Heat Wave Hundreds of Extra Deaths on August the 2021 noted the deadly heat wave that Blanketed Oregon and Washington in late June.

About 600 more people died than would have been typical based on that time period.

The number is three times as high as the state's official heat-related goal.

Deaths as stated.

This is due not just to looking at heat stroke but also cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Trees in our urban forests are a critical component of climate resiliency.

They need to be identified in this COMP plan.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Up next is Colleen McClure, followed by Megan Cruz, and then Lincoln Ferris.

Welcome, Colleen.

I see you there, Colleen.

Press star six, not pound six.

There you are.

Hello.

Welcome.

Good afternoon, Council, and thank you I'm representing Laura community club and today, I urge you to vote no on Council bill one, two, three, one, three.

This is not just a code update as it's been characterized, but it actually allows residential square footages to be built for major institutions and not counted in their publicly approved.

The existing regulations already include the major amendment process, which allows these changes heartily and something as simple as one parcel should not take two to four years, but maybe under a year.

This bill also does not require compliance with existing zoning which again creates another loophole without public scrutiny for developers in the institution.

It's also unclear in this bill whether the private developers will be building these residences and they're benefiting from these loophole changes as well without a public benefit.

So we ask that amendments number one and number two be approved but also overall to deny this bill.

These residences can be built as a conditional use instead, instead of changing the fixed land use codes.

LCC also enthusiastically supports 32059. Thank you, Colleen.

Thank you.

Up next is Megan Cruz, followed by Lincoln Ferris and then Jeffrey Berner.

Welcome, Megan.

I see you there and off you.

Welcome.

Hi, I'm Megan Cruz calling to support Resolution 32059 that requires city planning to address greenhouse gas emissions.

We especially need this in Seattle's commercial transportation policies.

Car trips in Seattle are under 25% of the traffic, but the EPA says commercial vehicles nationwide make up 80% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

However, Seattle is not counting commercial vehicles in its mode shares for transportation planning.

The UW said two years ago that without any increase in population, urban truck deliveries would double by next year, and a recent study shows trucks circling blocks for 18 minutes in search of parking.

A national study shows that we rank 13th in excess CO2 from congestion.

Despite this, the transportation plan and comp plan documents are not focused on movement of goods, but just people.

We need both.

We must understand commercial vehicle volumes and create policies to accommodate them on the street or require off-street parking for trucks and vans in new buildings.

There are no other options.

Thanks.

Thank you, Megan.

Up next is Lincoln Ferris followed by Jeffrey Berner and then, and Aria, I always say it wrong, but Aria Morris.

Welcome Lincoln.

I see you're off mute Lincoln.

Anytime you're ready, maybe your phone is on.

Hi, this is Lincoln Ferris.

I apologize.

This is Lincoln Ferris and I am recently retired as the Vice President of Administrative Services for Seattle Central.

We are the originators of the request for a minor amendment to the current major institution master plan ordinance that would allow for student housing on our campus.

This would leverage the public's investment in transit on Capitol Hill and support the city's sustainability goals by allowing hundreds of our students to live car-free on Capitol Free without having to compete for scarce housing that for many of them is unaffordable.

We appreciate all the hard work that's been done by both your staff members and central staff And we want to thank everybody for helping us refine the language here to be as very narrowly focused as we could make it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Lincoln.

Up next is Jeffrey Berner, followed by Arvian Morris and Iris Antman.

Jeffrey.

Do we have Jeffrey?

Jeffrey is not present at the moment.

Am I on?

Oh, there we are.

Jeffrey, you are live and with us.

Welcome.

I'm sorry.

All right.

All right.

Thank you.

My name is Jeff Berner.

Resolution 32059 built upon the past aspirational resolutions taken by the council.

In April 2000, on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, the Seattle City Council adopted Resolution 3144. The resolution committed the city to a long range goal of meeting electric energy needs of Seattle with no net greenhouse gas emissions.

Also noted was a commitment to build 60,000 homes under the Growth Management Act.

So greenhouse gas emissions and growth management are both combined in that resolution from 2000. Now 20 years later, what is different and which demands action is that climate change is no longer hypothetical.

We all share the experience of harmful heat waves and forest fire smoke in the air, which harm our lower income and disadvantaged neighbors.

The Seattle City Council should continue its leadership begun 20 years ago by adopting this resolution in absence of state legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next is Aria Morris followed by Iris Antman.

Ron Davis, you're not present, so we'll move on to Yale Lewis.

Ron, do call in on the phone number provided in your email.

And Arvia, please tell me how to say your name because I feel like I'm saying it wrong still.

Oh, you got it perfectly.

You just said Arvia because you weren't thinking about it.

Hi, this is Arvia.

I'll start.

I'm speaking to support Resolution 32059 Seattle's Comprehensive Plan must include GHG considerations.

75 percent of all emissions come from cities.

As the as Seattle is the largest city in the state Seattle is obliged to be a leader with emissions reduction.

This planning cannot start soon enough and needs to be an integral part of the current zoning and transportation One Seattle planning process.

City planners need to be optimizing everything to maximize equity and reduce GHG in a fully integrated way.

The 2023 budget needs to reflect this type of thinking even before the comp plan is due in 2024. All city departments need to have the resources needed to meet our 2030 climate goals equitably.

This is the way to ensure a secure future for our city.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Up next is Iris Antman, followed by Yale Lewis and Pat Chaney.

Ron Davis, if you're listening, you need to call in because you're not currently present.

Welcome Iris.

Thank you.

Good afternoon committee members.

My name is Iris Antman and I'm here today to comment in support for resolution 32059. In light of the fact that House Bill 1099 did not pass in the legislature this year, I think it's critical that we I will not repeat all of the reasons others have stated for the importance of doing this, but will repeat the seriousness of the climate crisis.

And we must take every opportunity to address all aspects of the crisis and the measures that the city can.

trying to incorporate climate actions even sooner than the comp plan is due in 2024. But all of the measures in this resolution will help Seattle meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 58% by 2030, only a mere eight years away.

I want to thank you all for your hard work, and I want you to know that I'm counting on you to help Seattle be a leader on climate action.

Thank you.

Thank you, Iris.

Ron Davis, you're still not present.

Please do call in if you're listening.

Yale Lewis followed by Pat Chaney and then Richard Ellison.

Yale, welcome.

I see you're here.

There you are.

Take it away.

Good afternoon.

My name is Yale Lewis.

I urge you to support resolution 32059. I've got three no brainers and three big fat tax increases.

No brainer number one, climate change.

Climate change is an existential threat.

Everyone, including me, including the council members, have been dithering.

It's an existential threat.

No-brainer number two.

Tax the bad stuff to fund and promote the good stuff.

No-brainer number three.

Goals are meaningless without action.

Big fat tax increase number one.

Fossil gas.

Triple the tax on fossil gas Half the money goes to the general fund, half the money goes to subsidize people so they can buy heat pumps and other electric appliances.

Big fat tax number two.

Tax the single ride hail and, tax single ride, ride hails and taxi, send the money to subsidize electric charging stations.

Big fat tax increase number three, infrastructure.

To all the brave- Thank you, Yale.

And Andrew.

Thank you, Yale.

Please feel free to send me any further comments.

I do see Ron Davis has become present, so we're gonna go Ron Davis, Pat Chaney, Richard Ellison.

Ron, I see you're here, press star six.

You gotta press star six, Ron, if you're here with us.

Let's bring Pat Chaney up and we'll come back to Ron.

Pat, welcome.

Hi, this is Pat Chaney.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here.

I urge you to vote no on CB120313 regarding potential land use changes in six sections of the major institutions Seattle Municipal Code This proposal shouldn't be taken lightly.

I think one of the greatest things about Seattle government is that our regulations and policies allow for important time for analysis and scrutiny along with open and fair public input.

And I believe this proposal goes against those values.

Also the proposal states it is only for Seattle Central Community College one time for now.

It could be used in the future as an example for other institutions to allow construction of new buildings outside of the MIPS protections.

A better, more measured approach is for Seattle Central to use the existing code, which has a pathway for major changes outside of their MIPS through major amendment process.

There's lots of answers.

Okay, thank you.

Feel free to send in any more comments.

We're going to go to Richard Ellison, Steve Gillespie, and then we'll come back to Ron Davis.

Richard, welcome.

Hello.

Thank you.

My name is Richard Ellison and I am like a talk in support of resolution 32059. Climate resiliency is something we need to plan for.

Unfortunately, all of the new electric cars and shiny new housing buildings and all the new transportation plan to building with recycled materials, is not going to provide resiliency to climate change.

We need to protect ourselves from the heat effects and from the massive storm water effects.

Everything seems to come more and more as extremes.

And the urban island heat effect can be mitigated through the planting of new trees and protection of existing trees.

We must find a way to plan for climate resiliency means that we need to shade, we need more open space, we need to shade open space, We need to plan for more people in denser housing, means we need to provide more greenery, not have less.

We need to go out of the way to find ways to support planting and retention of trees.

Thank you.

Thank you, Richard.

Appreciate that.

Up next is Steve Gillespie, followed by Ron Davis.

Steve, welcome.

Thank you.

Steve Gillespie Foster Garvey and I'm proud to represent the Seattle College District and support Council Bill 120313. I echo Lincoln Ferris' comments and I respectfully disagree with the early earlier comments in opposition.

This bill opens the door to student housing at Seattle Central without the need for a major amendment which is substantially the same years-long process as the new MIM.

But approval of this bill does not cut off any public process.

The college would have to request a minor amendment, then a robust public process would follow through the Citizens Advisory Committee staffed by the Department of Neighborhoods.

And such an amendment, by definition, could not alter the height, bulk, or scale allowed under the development standards of the MIM.

Then a master youth permit application and process would follow with FDCI.

This is a good bill, council members.

It serves city policy goals, including climate, traffic, and housing.

We appreciate your support.

This is not a camel's nose under the tent.

This is an opportunity to provide an important need at Seattle Central.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ron, we'll give you another shot right now if you're with us.

There you are, Ron.

Welcome.

Ah, finally came through.

Is it two minutes?

One minute.

Ah, okay.

I'm Ron Davis.

I'm speaking in support of Resolution 32059. I'm on the boards of the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, the YMCA, Seattle Subway, and FutureWise.

My family is deeply committed to Seattle and its future, but we are worried.

We're worried when we look at a future of rising waters, scorching summers, and smoky skies, especially when one of our children's an asthmatic.

We're worried about raising our kids in a city where so many neighborhoods are designed to encourage more driving, and roads are encouraged, are engineered for vehicular violence.

where our neighborhoods are built to keep us separate and unequal, and we're disheartened that our city, which is known for so much ambition on so many fronts, has failed to be a climate leader.

But Council Member Mosqueda's resolution is a real courageous step forward, and I fully support it.

I fully support it because I want my kids to live in a world where cities like ours have paved the path to zero emissions so we can show the world how to avert the worst.

I want them to live in a place where everyone has access to trees and parks and cool spaces when the heat does come, and I want them to be able to afford to live there and thrive there.

And I want people of all backgrounds to be able to do so as well.

We don't have to live in an apocalyptic world where only the rich can thrive, but we do have to do the hard work to get there.

My question to you is, if not now, when?

Thank you, Ron.

Feel free to send in any more comments.

Appreciate it.

you're coming to us today.

We have two additional public commenters here in chambers, Steve Rubstello and Alex Zimmerman.

Steve, I think the last time you came to committee, I made the point you gotta be speaking to an item.

So I know we had that conversation last time.

So I'll just remind you at the outset when you're ready, Steve.

Okay.

We should be taking a look very seriously about the change calling something minor for major institutions.

And I do think the process is something that you will say this is not a precedent, but it is, and people will come.

You know, it's not just the Supreme Court of the United States that throws out precedent, that decides to do things because they like them or they think that it's good for them or their supporters at this time.

I think it's important that we go through the full process because this is a major change.

Well, the thing I noted that I'm concerned about is trees.

And I hope your report will here will not be too bad upon the stock that's there because we have had an emergency on trees longer than we have had on homelessness in Seattle.

And it's about time that we actually did something trees, not shrubs or

Thank you, Steve.

Well-timed.

Mr. Zimmerman, your time.

I'll just press go.

Sieg Heil, my dirty, damn Nazi, fascist, mass bandit and psychopath.

My name is Alex Zimmerman, and I want to speak about something that I see here every day for the last three months.

Councilor, remember you asked me for your endorsement and I did this because I think you will be different.

I want right now my endorsement take back.

But as I see right now, you same crook like everybody, you never show people faces.

What is your goal right now?

Neutralize everybody.

Because people who speak from sky, you know what it means?

Nobody knows them.

Nobody knows it, but they know you.

It is exactly what is good for another election.

So I right now demand my endorsement for you back because you're acting like a crook, Nazi, Gestapo, bandito, psychopath.

Thank you for the record.

I have never asked you for your endorsement and that's it.

That is your first warning for speaking in the committee and not to a topic on the agenda.

First warning.

Thank you.

Um, IT, can you confirm we have no further public comment registrants present?

That's correct, sir.

Thank you.

Seeing as we have no additional speakers remotely or physically present, we will move on to the next agenda item.

And I will say, moving on to items of business, this is our first meeting without Mr. Ahn as our city clerk, so there's a couple things that might feel a little rusty today.

We're missing him dearly.

And I think Council Member Mosqueda, I had, I believe that I had, co-signed your resolution but maybe that got either lost in the transfer with with NOAA or with somewhere with the clerks and also Anthony you can stop sharing screen if you'd like.

Mr. Chair, that's my understanding as well that we were doing this together.

So I would be very happy to make sure that the record reflects this as a joint effort.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And there we are.

We are all set now.

Moving on to our items of business today.

First item is appointment 02244 for briefing discussion and possible vote with a clerk.

This is an appointment to the Seattle Planning Commission.

Anthony, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Yeah.

Appointment 02244. Appointment of Caleb Tewaldi as a member of Seattle Planning Commission for a term to April 15th, 2025. For briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And we're joined for this appointment by Caleb.

I see Caleb is online.

And Vanessa Murdock from the Planning Commission.

Vanessa, will you please share a brief overview of the role of the Planning Commission?

And then, yeah.

That's for sure.

Mister chair.

You're not hearing it.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, it's on now.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

My name is Vanessa Murdock.

I'm an executive director to the Seattle Planning Commission.

The Seattle Planning Commission is a 16-member volunteer body that is appointed by the council and by the mayor, half and half, and all appointments are subject to full city council approval.

The Planning Commission advises city elected officials as well as department staff on planning goals and policies and related policies such as land use, transportation, housing, climate, livability, neighborhoods, pretty much everything.

I can provide more or we can hand it over to Caleb.

One second, scholars.

Hi, everyone.

Am I supposed to give myself an intro?

Yeah, sorry if you can hear some mumbling noise in the background.

I am teaching a history class right now with the Rainier Scholars Program, which is where I currently work.

So we've got some young scholars that are rising fifth graders learning about history and segregation right now.

I've got them off camera.

Yeah, but I work at Rainier Scholars.

I work typically with our leadership development program.

And so I am working to create future leaders.

And one way I wanna do that is by being an example for our scholars and by getting involved in our planning commission to help build a city that is one for our future, that is built in a safe and equitable way for all of our citizens and all of our constituents in the greater Seattle area.

I hope that's helpful.

And you answered my question already, which was about your work at Reindeer Scholars.

And it seems that we were both interns for Senator Patty Murray.

So I can tell that you are already on a strong path, my friend.

Thank you.

Is it OK if they all say hi?

If the students just give a big hi.

You don't have to see them on camera.

Yeah, as long as we're off camera.

I mean, and if there's questions that they want to ask us, anything.

So y'all can't be on camera just because I don't have photo releases.

But if you wanted to just give a yell One, two, three, and then say hello.

Okay.

One, two, three.

Hello, scholars.

They all say hello.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

If y'all have any other questions, let me know.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Seeing that, I think we're all going to let you get back to class, Caleb.

This is amazing.

All right.

Thank you so much.

We're so excited to have you.

Thank you, have a great afternoon.

Yeah, so I move to recommend confirmation of appointment 2244. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of appointment 2244. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Yes.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

That is five in affirmative.

The motion passes.

Appointment 2244 passes.

Thank you for your willingness to serve on the Planning Commission, Caleb.

Thank you, Vanessa, for being here.

Sorry, I didn't pass the mic back to you.

Any further comments from you?

I mean, I think Caleb just stunned us all.

I think he nailed it.

I would just like to note that Caleb was a Planning Commissioner through the Get Engaged program about two years ago.

and that's a program that we definitely, the city supports.

The Planning Commission has really benefited from that program and currently have another commissioner who was a former Get Engaged member, Lauren Squires.

So we appreciate the program.

You're doing great work, Vanessa.

Well, thank you, Vanessa, and thank you, Caleb, for your willingness to serve on the commission.

The appointment will be back before the full city council for a vote on Tuesday.

Caleb does not need to attend.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all, good to see you.

Great to see you.

We're gonna move on to our next item, item number two.

Our next is a reappointment to the Equitable Development Advisory Board.

Anthony, if you could read the abbreviated title into the record.

Appointment 02274, reappointment of Cesar A. Garcia as a member of the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board for a term to February 28th, 2025 for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

We are joined for this appointment by Patrice Thomas from the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Patrice, would you like to share a brief overview of the role of the Equitable Development Advisory Board?

And I thought I saw Patrice.

Is she not with us?

I'm not seeing her at this time.

Director Quirendongo, would you like to pinch hit?

You're both welcome to come to the committee table.

This is the reappointment of Cesar Garcia.

Garcia is a member of the Equitable Development Advisory Board.

And Ian, do you see Cesar in the waiting room or whoever's managing the- I do not, sir.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

So, I mean, I have no cheat sheet, no notes, but Cesar has been great on the Equal Development Initiative Board, the advisory board thus far, and it'd be great to have him continue on.

As I think the council knows, The Equal Development Advisory Board was convened, it's been a year now.

We have a total of 13 seats.

We will have, I believe, 10 of them that will be new people by the end of the year.

And so having Cesar continue on in his role to be part of that continuity is gonna be really important for us.

And he has been a great leader in the community and a great voice on the board.

Wonderful.

And looking at his, thank you.

exactly what we were looking for.

And with no notes that shows the impact that he's having.

Just looking at his appointment packet, I can see that he has been a representative and ambassador to the Lake, co-founder of Lake City Collective, certified Spanish interpreter and ambassador to South Park Action Agenda, and many other things.

So I'm excited to reappoint him.

Colleagues, are there any questions?

Seeing none, thank you, Director Kirendongo.

I am going to move to recommend confirmation of Appointment 2274. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of Appointment 2274. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

That's five in the affirmative.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

Appointment 2274 passes.

And thank you for Director Caran Dago for jumping in there.

And there's your Cesar for your willingness to serve on the ERAI advisory board.

This appointment will be back before full city council for a vote on Tuesday.

And Cesar, I need not attend.

Let's move on to the third item.

I'm glad to see Director Karen Balga and Michael at the table already.

Our next agenda item is a briefing by the Office of Planning and Community Development on scoping for the environmental impact statement for the seven-year comprehensive plan update.

Anthony, will you please read the next agenda item into the record?

The comprehensive plan environmental impact statement scoping for briefing.

Thank you.

We are joined by Director Kirandongo and Michael Hubner of OPCD and Lish Whitson of Council Central Staff.

Lish, if you wouldn't mind kicking us off and then we'll hand it over to Director Kirandongo and to Michael.

Sure, I'll keep this very short.

As you know, the comprehensive plan is a 20-year planning document that sets the groundwork for the city's housing, transportation, land use, environment strategies.

We are required under state law to update the plan approximately every 10 years.

And the scoping process for the environmental impact statement is one of the first and ground setting steps in that process.

So this is an important step in the process.

and an important process and I think OPCD has done a great job in sort of teeing up a range of options that reflect Council's prior direction and yeah, interested in your feedback.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Mr. Whitson.

Director Kierendonko, Michael, take it away.

All right, I'm gonna say a few opening words here, and then I'm gonna pass over to my colleague, Michael Hubner, and then I'm gonna join you by phone, if you guys let me in so I can add additional comment.

So as you know, we've kicked off our scoping phase for the comp plan major updates.

What we're going to talk you through today is what the alternatives are as we are framing for input from the community.

We've been in a robust community engagement process now for a couple of months.

I would keep in mind as we look at the alternatives that what we're trying to frame is what the boundaries are that we're considering from least amount of change from the comp plan that we have in place now to the greatest amount of change that we think makes sense within the framework of what we're looking at.

huge focus on equity, huge focus on leaning into, as the city continues to grow, how do we accommodate that growth equitably across all of our neighborhoods.

And with that, I will pass to Mr. Buckner.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rico.

Is my microphone on?

It is.

I have to look closer though.

Yes, indeed.

There you go.

It's been quite a while since I've been here in person in Council Chambers.

Hang on real quick.

I just want to make sure that whoever's managing the Zoom is able to let Director Curandongo in.

Are you in?

I can't hear you.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Here we are.

Michael, take it away.

Very good.

I did provide a set of slides, slide deck to central staff.

Will they be showing and advancing the slides?

Alish, is that possible?

I think that's usually coordinated ahead of the meeting.

They did reach out to me.

Let me pull that up and I can do that.

Just one minute.

If you can start talking, Michael, we can.

I can't.

Thank you very much.

Sorry.

Sorry for the interruption.

So, as I think between Lish Whitson and Rico Quirendongo, I think teed this up quite quite nicely.

We are at a really important first milestone.

a phase of both community engagement and work of our office to get information out there into the public to react to, to think about, provide comment.

And this is with regards to scoping for the environmental impact statement for the comprehensive plan update.

The timeline for the update, just to ground us all here in that is under state.

Thank you very much for the slides.

And you can go to the slide two, please.

under the Growth Management Act, the city has to adopt an updated plan by the end of 2024. This is a process that happens about once a decade.

The last update process happened in the middle of the last decade.

And each time we update a comprehensive plan, we're looking out to a new 20-year planning period and anticipating the kind of growth that we expect over that time.

Just to ground us all in the challenge here is that the city, we expect that the city will grow to nearly a million people by the final year of this 20 year planning period in the mid 2040s.

What is an environmental impact statement?

So the EIS is a document that is required under state law, the Environmental Policy Act, and it provides information to you, to the mayor's office, to make key decisions about, in this case, the future of the city and how and where we grow.

The EIS describes existing conditions, what proposed actions or alternatives we are seeking to study.

what potential impacts and potential benefits may result from any of those choices or alternatives, and potential mitigation measures to reduce the impacts or eliminate any adverse results of any of the choices that you may make as policymakers.

Next slide, please.

So with regard to this project, just to ground us in, the EIS proceeds in a couple of phases.

It starts with scoping, as was noted.

This is an opportunity for the public to review what we think this analysis will entail, to comment on the alternatives, and to let us know what we should be studying and focusing on in the EIS.

We initially announced a 30-day comment period during the scoping period, and we've received a lot of interest in this EIS and requests to extend to 60 days, and we have done so.

We have extended to a 60-day comment period, and that ends at 5 p.m.

on August 22nd.

So we look forward to that extended period to interact with the public.

Following scoping, we will prepare with our consultant support a draft EIS, which will be released in spring of 2023. There'll be an extensive public comment period after that draft EIS is released.

And then we will go back and study, do additional analysis, create a preferred alternative, and release a final EIS in spring of 2024. Very briefly, we propose that this EIS will cover all of the areas in the environment that are required under state law.

And you see those listed on this slide.

I won't go into any detail on those, but I do want to highlight that we are specifically proposing to go into much greater depth in the areas of race and equity.

and climate, and have published a set of metrics with this scoping that are intended to tell us a lot more about the trade-offs, the pros and cons of different approaches to managing growth with respect to becoming a more equitable, climate-friendly, and resilient city.

Next slide, please.

Alternatives for a comprehensive plan are, in this case, the growth strategy, the locations, the type of development that will accommodate population, households, and jobs into the future.

The alternatives are designed explicitly to be distinct, to show a range of reasonable options, and to create bookends, essentially the range of different ways the city might change in the future as we grow.

We've also designed them to be responsive to the requirements in the council's proviso that funded this work, specifically to study at least one option where new housing types are envisioned in neighborhood residential areas and neighborhoods citywide, support for 15-minute neighborhoods, and anti-displacement tools and strategies.

Next slide.

Our starting point for this work is the existing growth strategy, which is predicated on urban centers and villages.

This has been the city's growth strategy for almost 30 years since the original comprehensive plan under the GMA was adopted in that year.

The intent has been to concentrate new housing and jobs in compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods that are linked by transit.

It also focuses industrial development and manufacturing centers.

We've been very successful in doing just that, focusing growth in those centers.

That's something we've come and certainly talked to the committee about in the past.

We are also aware from community comment, from our own data, that there are growing concerns about this strategy with respect to equity.

housing supply and diversity and affordability and displacement.

Next slide, please.

Yes.

Michael, before we move on, this is off script, and so if we don't wanna go here, we don't have to, but Council President Street, was it under your tenor of land use that we developed these strategies?

Would you like to join us at the committee table and share any comments, or you don't have to, but I figured if we have this opportunity.

of the growth, the comprehensive plan in 93, 94, 95. And in the course of that, we did adopt the urban village strategy and the urban center strategy and countywide growth management policies and regional policies that were designed to deal more effectively with growth.

We did not have a climate element, but when you look at the kind of things we did, they clearly had climate impacts, including some of the things you just up here.

So there's a lot to be done still.

And I wish you good luck.

Thank you.

I mean, anytime.

I mean, any lessons learned or, you know, so many years later, anything you would have done differently here?

Well, I would say that, and this is not a very happy thought.

I never felt that we had a process that really worked as well as I would like it to in terms of public engagement, because when people did not get what they wanted, they felt we basically said, well, it was a lousy process.

And so the perfect process is one in which people did not get what they want, but still thought it was a good process, that they were heard and people listened to them.

And that's a tough thing to do.

I mean, in terms of process, but I wish you good luck in doing that.

And it's, you know, incredibly important, but 20 years is a long way down.

And just, you know, going back to my previous remarks, climate is seven years out.

It's five years out.

It's two years out.

And I wouldn't mind hearing how we address that fact in terms of a climate component to the plan and the possibility of having that climate component finished before the plan as a whole is finished.

We cannot wait until 2024 to have a climate action plan.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Council President Street and your comments speak to exactly why Michael and I were on the phone earlier this week, extending that the public comment period, because we want to give as much opportunity for folks to engage early so that it's not a one directional conversation.

Wonderful.

And we will, uh, come to the climate resolution just a moment.

Sorry for interrupting Michael, please continue.

Nope, no problem whatsoever.

It's actually an honor to be here talking about this today with former council president street.

And we are absolutely very cognizant of the history on this issue is a lot of good work.

The city has done and seek to learn from that and evolve into the future.

So it's great to hear from.

Um, I'm quickly going to just review the alternatives that we've released to the public and answer any questions that you may have, um, from there and let you know how the process will play out.

So any EIS starts with a no action alternative.

Essentially, the urban villages and centers strategy I just described for you is our no action alternative.

New housing would continue to, and I'm gonna speak mostly about housing, by the way, as I run through the alternatives.

We expect the jobs, if I may note up front, will, across the alternatives, will largely look the same, largely concentrated in our urban centers, in our hub urban villages.

into the future.

We're not expecting big policy choices around the location of jobs.

So these alternatives vary mostly around housing, and it starts with the no-action alternative.

New housing would continue to be primarily in the urban centers and villages.

Most land outside of those villages would be primarily higher-cost, detached housing.

And there are no new strategies in this alternative to increase housing supply or address exclusivity of zoning, each of the alternatives also will vary in the amount of growth.

This alternative will have the lowest amount of growth, which is the minimum under the Growth Management Act and our countywide planning policies, which we anticipate will be 80,000 new homes and 130,000 new jobs during that 20 year planning period for this plan.

Next slide.

So again, Michael, as you're presenting these options, these alternatives, these are bookends And then within this, once you bring this to policy for us to consider, we can mix and match.

So I just want, as the general public is watching this presentation, to understand that these, we're not looking at silos and we're not choosing one alternative.

These are the alternatives that we are studying during scoping.

Is that a correct understanding?

That's exactly right, and it's a very intentional strategy when you're doing an EIS to, in a sense, oversimplify the alternatives so that we can analyze the pros and cons of, in this case, doing nothing, and as you'll see in the other alternatives, doing distinct approaches, and then you take that information and devise a preferred alternative that takes in the results of that analysis and learns from it.

Next slide, please.

Wonderful.

And you'll see on each of these, we've gone from a real map of Seattle to a very idealized map that has blobs and lines that represent transportation corridors in the city.

And that's because we're starting with concepts, seeking public comment, and then we'll be developing actual maps of the city that represent these concepts in actual places that we will study in the EIS.

But we're starting with concepts.

The first concept is focused.

And essentially, that's taking our urban builder strategy and growing it.

new or expanded urban villages in appropriate locations.

Smaller places, we're calling them nodes for now, but think of those as mini urban villages with businesses, services, and new housing opportunities around largely some of our existing neighborhood commercial centers across the city.

And the idea here too is to bring that walkable, complete 15-minute experience opportunity to more people across the city.

Next slide, please.

And before we move on, thank you for staying, folks.

KUOW, Joshua McNichols just had a wonderful little series on KUOW where he described these in phrases regarding cookies.

And so this was, if I'm correct, this was the chocolate chip cookie where you've got.

The no action was the chocolate chip cookie.

This is the chocolate chip cookie with more chips.

With more chips.

So this is your extra chipped chocolate chip cookie.

Seeing as it's the chair's interest in that, I'll carry forward the cookie metaphor throughout.

The others remind us.

And I'm happy to carry the cookie.

Just for the viewing public, the idea that if you have a chocolate chip cookie, the dough is where the majority of the land mass is and the chocolate chips are the majority of where you have density of housing and jobs.

And so with no action, we would retain the, the chocolate chip cookie with not a lot of chocolate chips, which I think is called a cookie.

And this is a chocolate chip cookie with a little bit of extra chips, and we'll keep this going.

I'll take this part.

No, that's fantastic.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

Oh, I see, sorry.

Thank you, Anthony.

Council Member Mosqueda, your hand's raised.

I got so engaged here.

Yes, please.

Go for it, Council Member Mosqueda.

Okay, thank you Mister chair, I'm I'm debating whether or not I should be weighing in right now but since we're talking chocolate chips.

And the analogy which I really appreciated to use coverage as well.

Sometimes in land use and housing we tend to get into alphabet soup and it makes it hard for others who are living this on a daily basis to really follow along so I like the analogy.

Mister chair, I just want to also offer though that I think that the first concept that was put forward, the sort of do nothing strategy is actually taking away someone's cookie.

It leaves us with crumbs.

And I just wanted to make sure to point that out because as the department's own analysis shows that if we continued with the status quo, we would actually be losing ground.

And so I don't want anybody to take away from this.

You know, you have the choice of this.

average chocolate chip compared to some of the other better options on the on the table.

And I know Mister chair, you agree that being left with crumbs and having no opportunities to really build for and plan for the needs in our community would not be an option anyone would choose.

So for the purposes of analogy, I would say that concept number one is really taking that chocolate chip away that was offered years ago and leaving us with the that are left on the table, so that's why I'm so excited to focus on the concepts going forward.

For anybody who's not yet paying attention, I hope that that puts into context what concept number one would be.

It would be a real scaling back.

Well said.

I love the metaphor.

Before leaving this slide, I will briefly say that this option would add more rental housing opportunities, primarily, that look kind of like what you see in urban villages, but just in more places.

councilmember nelson sorry i had my back so would the smaller loads have a completely different well

Would they have a different regulatory environment for things like corner stores, or even maybe an in-between height between low-rise and seventh street?

Okay, so it's brand new.

They could very well, and one thing to keep in mind is this is a step-wide process, and this plays out over a year and a half, couple of years, is this first step is to establish the concepts, then a slightly more detailed version is analyzed in the IS, we come back with the results of the EIS and then develop potential zoning code that would implement and would speak to exactly those choices around in the micro scale, corner stores, building height, that kind of thing.

That would be later in the process.

Thank you.

I feel like I'm going way off script.

Yes, but I don't, Okay.

There we go.

Well, several points.

One is when I was on the council, we had 290,000 people and we now we have 740,000.

We did not come close obviously to meeting today's housing needs.

And it takes a radically, it takes a dramatically different approach to accommodate the range of that stuff.

I believe that the council today has a much more difficult job than I had when I was on the council.

not only because of the housing affordability issue, which was not as big an issue, but the homelessness issue and the climate issue.

I mean, you have a tougher job.

But one thing I haven't heard, and I guess you started to get on it, was this question of urban design, which is vital.

And when we did the urban village strategy, we definitely were very much focused on the character of the stores and adjacency to other types of zones and so forth and scale.

But we cannot, in this case, use all of that to diminish our capacity to create affordable housing.

I'm finished now.

Good luck.

Very well said.

Good context.

I appreciate you noting that, and I think if I saw this, I'll summarize correctly, that when you were doing this plan however many years ago, you had no idea that we would be experiencing so much growth and therefore could not plan for the explosion that we've experienced.

And now we are exploding, which is why we have to take, a tough look at what we've got going on and kind of to what Council, former Vice Chair of the Committee, Council Member Mosqueda was saying, which is if that we just stay at status quo, we're actually losing cookie.

Yep.

So thank you, former Council President Jim Street.

I'm gonna pass it back to Michael Hubbard.

strayed in our past.

We've gone deeper.

I don't see it as straying at all.

Thank you very much.

It's a great conversation.

I do want to make sure that we allow time for me to get through all of the alternatives, of course.

I do want, on the point of the challenges, I do want to tell the council that there are two bodies of work that we're layering onto this EIS, one of which is in the area of urban design and seeking some analysis of and work to develop design concepts for new infill housing of various types and different types of locations.

The other is economic analysis of feasibility of new development because we don't want to plan for housing that nobody is going to want to build because it's not profitable.

So I just wanted to share that a little bit with you as well.

Thank you.

Next slide, please.

This next alternative we're calling Broad, or to borrow from Joshua McNichols, the reporter at KOW, he called this the brownie with chocolate chips alternative, I think.

What's going on here is this is responsive to the request of council that we study at least one alternative that represents a change across all of our neighborhood residential.

Think of those what formerly were the single family zones in the city and envisions new types of housing and somewhat more growth at a very dispersed and lower level than you would see certainly in an urban village.

but with housing types like triplexes and fourplexes, townhomes, that sort of thing in all areas of the city and trying that on for size.

What would that look like?

What would be the implications of that?

You see here that's overlaid on their existing centers and villages.

It's not tossing out the centers and villages.

It's a new feature.

This would expand housing choices that provide more ownership opportunities in many different neighborhoods, address exclusionary nature of current zoning and access to neighborhoods of opportunity, such as new housing options near existing large parks or other neighborhood amenities, and probably a slight increase of in-home or neighborhood-based businesses.

So I might say this isn't a brownie.

We're gonna stick with the cookie metaphor.

This is a chocolate chocolate chip cookie.

I like it.

There we go.

Next slide, please.

The next alternative is called corridors or what KUW has called.

a marbled cookie, if you will.

Essentially, this is the same kind of concept as in the last alternative, where more areas of the city allowing what some people refer to as missing middle housing, somewhere between larger apartments that you see in urban villages and the single-family homes and ADUs that we currently see predominantly in the rest of the city, but along our major transit corridors and around some of our major amenities in the city, some of those large parks or other community centers or existing commercial retail areas that would be an area around those places that would allow not only triplexes and fourplexes, but also sixplexes or small apartment buildings or new forms of townhomes.

Essentially the same amount of housing that would be spread across the city in alternative three, but more concentrated with a greater array of housing types in these places I just described.

And that clearly expands our diversity of housing specifically that has high accessibility to transit and amenities.

And why don't we go to the last slide and culminating with what we call combined, and what Joshua McNichols called the all of the above cookie.

If you're on a diet, you probably don't want that one, but it sounds delicious to a lot of people.

And this is all the above in this respect.

All of the strategies I just described to you in alternatives two, three, and four are combined in this alternative.

We have more expanded villages.

We have new villages.

We have new smaller nodes.

We have the corridors and we have some degree of change in single family or neighborhood residential areas citywide.

This alternative is specifically designed to promote abundant rental and ownership housing.

primarily in areas served by transit, but not exclusively, to address past underproduction of housing and rising housing costs in the most effective way that we think, and we'll learn through the EIS how effective and how this compares with other alternatives by planning for a greater diversity of housing, but also more housing.

This alternative will have the highest amount of anticipated housing.

We haven't determined what that number is yet.

We're seeking input from the public and we're doing our own analysis to ground that in trends that we understand and be responsive to those trends.

And before you move on to the next slide, just to bring us back to where we started, where the no change, the status quo, the crumbs of the cookie is one end of the bookend, and this, all of the above cookie, is the other end.

It's the most change.

And so what we're actually going to do is somewhere in between.

And that's what the public comment scoping is all about at this very moment, is to understand What are people's thoughts, feelings?

And Michael, if I could ask you with this one, this one, in some ways, provides us different level of options.

If we were to say duplexes could be allowed throughout the city, but then quads could only be allowed within the transit corridors, and then within the smaller nodes, we could get up to seven stories, or four stories, and then within the bigger nodes, we could go up to seven or eight stories.

Is that kind of how this one is framed?

Essentially, and what we're doing, these are building blocks for the options that we will be looking in a deeper, more specific way later in this process.

You will be looking at when you take up the plan, when the mayor's plan is transmitted to council in 2024. And this provides an array of geographies.

nodes, villages, centers, corridors, and neighborhood residential areas.

And the intent here is to study the most change in this alternative so that there's a full menu of options as we work toward a final adopted plan and exactly the kinds of options you just described.

Great.

Vice Chairman Morales.

Thank you.

Um, I, I'm wondering if you, I'm interested in the economic development piece of this.

So in one of the earlier slides, you talked about, you know, it assumes 80,000, maintaining the existing strategy assumes the need to add 80,000.

We've talked about our history of underproduction, particularly given the growth, the population growth and the real need for substantially more housing in the city.

When we're talking about economic development, though, what metrics, I guess, do you look at if part of the goal is to anticipate 132,000 new jobs over 20 years?

If part of the goal here is to allow for more at-home businesses, more neighborhood commercial businesses, how do you How do you measure or plan for that as part of this conversation?

That's a great question.

And I do feel in describing these alternatives, they're really giving short shrift in some ways to the economic development, the job piece of this, because this is a very housing focused set of alternatives.

What I can say is the alternatives themselves, I think, get a part of the picture.

And I briefly alluded to As we envision change in different parts of the city, and you see that different variations of that across these alternatives.

There are opportunities in doing that to describe in the comprehensive plan, provide policy guidance for code that could allow neighborhood based businesses, more at home, more corner stores or other forms of goods and services and jobs in the city.

We don't think that that's going to lead to a big difference in the number of jobs, more about the distribution, a little bit about the number.

All of that said, there's a lot of work to do around our economic development element, which is a chapter of the comp plan that really will be looking at the economic health of the city and what changes we may need in policies to help the city be really thriving, inclusive, a place where that's an inclusive economy, that the kind of jobs we're getting in the 132,000 or 142, maybe that might be the difference between the two sets of bookends, we don't know the exact number yet, but it's that we ensure the economic vibrancy, health, and equity of the city.

And that's where the economic development or policies come in.

You won't see that reflected in these growth strategy alternatives.

Thank you.

Director Koundonga, I see you over your hand.

Yeah, this is anecdotal, but just as a point of reference, I think it's also important to state that OPCD is working very closely with OED as we look at both growth of the city and as we look at recovery.

So I was just in a OECD OED meeting earlier today where we were talking about the sub area plan work that we're going to need to lead into next, which will run parallel with our comp plan major update work and some of those things inform each other.

If you think about the sub area plan work for our six sub areas, that will lend itself more directly toward implementation nested within the comp plan And so what we are looking at is, and I'm thinking about this related to downtown sub area, for example, if there are less people working in the downtown day-to-day, does that open up an opportunity for more housing in the core?

What does that look like?

How does that relate to activity and eyes on the streets and public safety?

We're trying to, as we approach a comp plan discussion.

We're trying to look at it holistically, if that makes sense.

Thank you.

Michael.

If this is a good time, I could wrap it up and just a couple of points to close out and talk about engagement.

Next steps.

Next slide, please.

Oh, and one other, I forgot, and one other additional element in the EIS, this is worth noting, we have folded into this EIS the environmental analysis for our station area planning and implementation at the one.

130th Street Light Rail Station, an article in Seattle Times today, I'm sure it posted as some of you may have noticed, and it refers to this work.

We are essentially using this as an opportunity to leverage the larger EIS to advance this work to study several alternatives for zoning or changes around the station to accommodate new housing and non-residential uses.

Thank you.

yeah once you're done i'll say something yes to align with concepts you just heard about citywide so one would be a no action because that's we just do that always with an eis that's our comparison point the second one is nodes and corridors so different smaller areas of higher density along some of the major corridors and some of the little central places building them up a little bit and the third would be an entire new urban village around the 130th street station at a scale and density that matches some of our other urban villages in the city.

So we're going to study those three options for 130th as part of this larger EIS and there'll be detail on that available to the public and we're doing unique scoping, targeting, and community engagement in that community around those options.

Thank you.

Before we move on, I did want to address that Mike Lindblom's article today about the 130th Street Sound Transit Station.

A friend Councilmember Kenmore, Councilmember David Baker had some kind of harsh remarks for us in this article calling the 130th station useless because Seattle has not up-zoned.

I'm now reading from the article they've not up-zoned, they've not done anything to increase the density to support it.

And what I find to be very difficult with those comments is the fact that council member baker knows good and well that it takes there's a lot of process involved in making this level of a zoning change and i don't i guess it's just coincidence that here we are the day the article comes out and it is on the screen, it is on the record.

We are here to make the changes to make our transit ridership work through the spine of our light rail network.

There's no question here, Michael.

I just needed to address my good friend David, Council Member Baker from Kenmore.

He's a friend and somebody who I really like, but hopeful comments to read today.

And what I could say to that too is, and this is an important part of the story for you to be aware of as well, is this is not a project we're picking up today.

The Office of Planning and Community Development has been working with this community over several years to develop a stationary plan with community engagement, to develop a set of concepts in that in that neighborhood community-based plan for increasing density and housing opportunities and taking advantage of the station going forward.

So we're building on that work in developing these alternatives and studying them in the EIS.

This is not new, this is something we've been working on for several years.

The other thing to note is that this will be a big change for this area.

This is a largely single-family area.

It has a lot of test challenges.

It, nearby parks and environmental, that we want to be very deliberate and thoughtful and working closely with the community.

So it does take time, and this is a step in that process, and hopefully we'll learn a lot through the EIS so that you can make a good decision about the future of the station area going forward.

And with all the uncertainty about the light rail investment and the timing of the station opening, this is actually not a bad time for us to be doing this, because the station's not going to open until 2026. So we feel like we're on a good track.

on track to have the appropriate zoning for a light rail station.

You bet.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Next slide, please.

Uh, very quickly on displacement.

I know this is super important to the council.

It is certainly a central, uh, uh, uh, value and goal for the office of planning and community development.

And in everything we do, we seek to reduce and if possible, eliminate the displacement impacts of the decisions we make around land use and other policies.

ComPlan's gonna be, it's gonna be a huge question.

We have a lot of analysis.

You see on this screen a draft of our updated displacement risk map for the city.

That's something we continue to work on.

We had one for the last ComPlan update.

We're gonna use a similar analysis with this update to do three things.

One is design all of the alternatives I talked about to focus more growth in areas of low risk of displacement.

and less growth in areas of high risk, but still advance, expand housing opportunities where there is displacement risk because communities will need that housing.

The second is evaluate all of the alternatives we talked about for comparatively what impact in terms of increasing or decreasing displacement pressures they may result in.

And then the third is we know that this work, the growth strategies alone, even though we need more housing to address displacement risk in the city, that they're not gonna be sufficient, not gonna be sufficient just to do that, but the balance of the plan, the goals and policies and the actions we adopt to implement those goals and policies need to expand and scale up our anti-displacement tools just because we're a growing city regardless of how we grow.

Thank you, and before we move on, I see Council Member Peterson has his hand.

I will probably also, I'd like to make just some remarks here.

Looking at this map, what stands out to me is that the Preliminary Displacement Risk Index for District Six is very low, the district that I represent.

There is some yellow, and what this represents to me is watching so many friends and family members of friends leaving District Six over the last 20 years because they can't afford it anymore.

And while this is a displacement risk for the future, it is not backwards looking.

And what I know is that the people I grew up with can't afford to live in District Six.

And I think, and this is no, I'm not trying to say anything mean here, but I think, you know, former Council President Jim Street brought this up a minute ago, which was that we didn't plan for enough growth in the past.

And that's not, there's no slight here.

It was just, it's kind of how it is.

And, um, while there's not a high risk for displacement any longer in District Six, it's because it's already occurred.

And what I see is a high risk of displacement in many other areas of our city, most prominently in District Two.

And that's one of the reasons why it's important for me that Vice Chair Morales is our Vice Chair, because these, I don't want, what happened to Ballard to happen to District 2. I'll kind of leave it at that.

I don't need anyone to respond.

Director Quindana, is this in response?

I was gonna call on Council Member Peterson first.

I see it's in response and then I'll call on you, Council Member Peterson.

Just a quick comment that I do understand that while we are looking at anti-displacement strategies moving forward, and we've talked about this in areas like the Central District where, you know, a 75% of population of African American families, what lived in the Central District 20 years ago, and it's now that those numbers have dwindled to 20%.

We are interested in not only halting displacement, but also creating opportunities for people to come back to the city.

So I am hopeful that as we lean into both the comp plan and our missing middle discussion through the housing stuff that we actually do provide opportunities for people to find affordable first-time home ownership and actually move back into the city.

I know a lot of people that would love to move back to Ballard.

So we'll talk later.

Thank you, Director Kirendongo.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thank you, Director Caranago, for saying that.

I know that in the university district, there was a lot of naturally occurring affordable housing that was demolished during the past up zone, and so it would be ideal to create opportunities to have people come back.

Similar to how we hope to reduce homelessness, I think the first goal of preventing displacement should be to keep people housed in their housing, in their affordable housing currently, if it's affordable now.

what I'm concerned about is if city policy encourages development, we're not sure where that affordable housing exists right now.

I'm concerned if you were to zoom down into that map, at what level of granularity do you have?

Is it project by project?

Or are you just using criteria to then create a map instead of knowing where the actual affordable housing is.

Because I know there's a lot of, even in the blue areas, there is housing interspersed that's older without fancy amenities.

It could be even single-family homes that are rented to families.

It could be seniors who are on fixed incomes, struggling to stay in their homes.

I just want to make sure that when we're talking about anti-displacement strategies, we have the level of granularity, so you actually know project by project, so we don't inadvertently have city policy lead to a demolition of affordable housing, and that we have any strategies put in place before any future up zones occur.

Because what we've had in the past is maybe a companion resolution talking about anti-displacement, but there wasn't actually a policy in place that actually prevented it.

So can you talk about the granularity of this map, like the level of data you have, and then confirming the goal is to put the strategies in place before we actually have the land use up zone changes?

I will say that I think that this topic of displacement and anti-displacement is a very rich and detailed one.

We could probably spend an entire session getting going really deep on that.

So I'll take on just a couple of parts that I think are most relevant to this presentation.

First off, Council Member, I will say off the top of my head and my fingertips, I can't tell you specifically the data and there is housing market data, as you can imagine, worked into this index that helped to create this map.

We have a lot of very rich data about average ran said fairly small areas from a number of different sources.

It's correct, it doesn't go down to individual projects at that scale.

But for the purposes of what we're doing here, neither does the comprehensive plan in terms of where we're setting policy broadly around our land use alternatives.

And this really is just a step in that process.

And that said, You are very correct.

You would not interpret this map that the blue areas have no displacement risk.

Displacement is a citywide threat to people individually in their homes, in their apartments, in all areas of the city where they're residing now if market forces are making housing more expensive.

So the policies and the tools that our plan will support will address displacement in that citywide perspective in a variety of contexts where it occurs.

Um, I will also say that we are talking about accompanying the plan.

Um, and this is just a concept at this point, but developing an anti-displacement strategy that is, uh, not in the plan itself, cause it's more of an action plan that's shorter term, but something that we could develop in tandem with the comp plan going forward.

Thank you.

Oh, next slide, please.

Yes, I'm sidetracked myself here.

I'm just about done.

Timeline, just ground us all, and this is, as I said, this is part of the process.

We released these concepts and started our scoping on June 23rd.

We extended the comment period to August 22nd, and really look forward to hearing from people during that time, and we are having meetings, public meetings, where we're hearing from the community.

In September, we will take in that information, we'll refine the alternatives, we'll design the EIS analysis responsive to what we've heard from people, and we will release a scoping report in October with final alternatives that are mapped with real maps of the city, and that we will start the draft EIS process.

We'll come back with a draft EIS in spring of 2023, public comment, more information about implementing zoning during the subsequent year, and then a final EIS will be published in spring of 2024, and the mayor's plan will be transmitted to council at that point, and then you'll have the balance of that year to talk about it and adopt a new plan by the end of the year.

Thank you.

And there is one more slide for the public, especially just who to contact and where to go.

So if you can go to the last slide, this is information on where to send your comments.

If you're listening in or you're sharing these slides out with the public, this is how you get comments to us about scoping.

Wonderful, Michael.

Vice Chair Morales, I can't tell if you're talking to, do you have something to share?

Nope, great.

Colleagues, any final questions?

I know Director Carrondonga has to step out now.

Former Vice Chair Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks again to the folks at OPCD.

I really appreciate that the timeline has been extended.

I know that that was a call that you heard from a number of folks in the community as we look to try to make sure that everybody is actively engaged in this.

I am hoping that the racial equity toolkit and the analysis that you all did helped to really inform what we're starting.

And I think that extending the timeline is also in line with that racial equity toolkit analysis, which is how do we bring more people into the fold to undo past harms.

And I think that the extra 30 days is going to really allow for that meaningful engagement.

It's all very wonky, but I think that the way that you've broken it down helps folks get a baseline understanding and folks have actually been living this for decades.

So they, in many ways, are already the experts in this area, but making sure that they have the tools and encouragement to engage in our city's comprehensive plan and future planning is really important.

So thank you for helping to provide additional time and then also for breaking this down so that we can get the feedback from those who have lived experience on how we can create a comprehensive plan that really weaves together the intersectionality of housing and justice, climate and justice, homelessness, displacement, and crises that our city is facing.

and the growing population's needs that the chair and the former council member were discussing earlier.

I'm also excited, again, going back to the racial equity toolkit, the report that we commissioned in 2019, and the hard work that you all had done, especially during the pandemic, to make sure that we can keep going back to that document.

I know that we're not going to have a ton of time to do that today, but in future meetings and probably in conjunction with the land use chair and the housing committee, I think we'd love to keep doing a touch point back to the racial equity toolkit and the analysis for how that's informing the recommendations and next steps, especially as you seek community feedback to make sure racial equity is really being centered in the comprehensive plan next steps and as we engage deeper into the policy strategies to undo those past harmful effects of redlining and zoning practices of the past that are currently present in our zoning statute.

And I think that, you know, we have some really important communities.

We've talked a lot about the importance of having opportunities to advance racial equity in areas of housing supply and affordability.

Housing and neighborhood choice jobs and economy displacement and community engagement.

All of the things that we talk about that create not just units but places for people to live is really embedded in that racial equity lens that has been.

Thoroughly thought through next steps.

I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what community engagement you are doing to really ensure the voices of those most harmed by the past discriminatory policies are centered in this comment period, given that you've extended it.

That's a good, that's a really good step.

And then is there anything extra that you're trying to do in the next, now that we have 60 days trying to make sure that we're centering those voices?

Yes, very quickly.

Just, yes, this is an opportunity for us internally.

You know, summer is both a great time to reach people in community and a very difficult time.

People are out, they're out there talking to each other, but they're also, so we appreciate having this time.

We are, one of the things is we have, as we've reported to you in the past, working with community partners, five different community-based organizations, and they have their own meetings and events and conversations.

We are bringing the scoping information to those work plans in a more robust way we have more time to do that so talking with the communities they're reaching we're doing the same thing with our community liaisons who are setting up community conversations later this summer in various historically marginalized communities to talk about including language access about these ideas and others related to housing and the comp plan.

We are also talking about ways to bring in key stakeholders, such as the CBOs we're working with or others, to come together and share their ideas as major stakeholders.

Lastly, I will say, and I'm probably forgetting a number of other, I'm just thinking of things off the top of my head as you're asking the question, is, and now I'm blanking on it for a second, I apologize.

Oh, now I recall.

One thing we're doing this week, this very week, is applying for a grant with the State Department of Commerce.

They're providing additional resources to local governments to advance middle housing options in jurisdictions statewide.

We're very hopeful we're going to get that grant that will help us deepen our economic analysis, our design analysis, and the state is actually requiring this, that we partner with additional CBOs and bring more people in to specifically talk about middle housing and sort of the future of neighborhood residential zones with respect to displacement risk, people's needs for affordability and to hear more from community.

So that will be part of this process as well with some additional resources to do that.

Well said, Council Member Mosqueda.

Did that sufficiently answer your question there?

Well, wonderful.

We're looking for more as it comes.

Thank you for taking my request to extend the scoping period for an extra 30 days.

We look forward to having you back, and maybe next time I'll bring some cookies.

Great.

Well, we're in person, so I look forward to that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, and we've got some great partners with us.

Representative Dorr is with us now.

So let's move on to the next agenda item.

We do have three agenda items left, and we've got about, Five, zero, 15 minutes.

So I recognize that last topic took a little bit longer than expected and understandably so.

So our next agenda item is resolution 32059 that states the council's intent to consider climate change and resiliency as part of the comprehensive plan update.

Anthony, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Resolution 32059, a resolution stating the City of Seattle's intent to address climate change and improve resiliency for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

We're joined by State Representative Dorr, Lish Whitson, and Yolanda Ho of Council Central staff.

Mr. Whitson, would you like to start us off, take us away, and then we'll pass it over to Sponsor, Council Member Mosqueda, and hopefully the clerks are listening, and Anthony, if you could take this back to the clerks to make sure that the record reflects myself as a co-sponsor.

Thank you.

Mr. Whitson, take it away.

Yeah, we thought it would be good to, as you heard in the public comment period, this resolution builds on the work of a representative during the state legislature.

We thought it would be good to have her kick it off and provide a little context and background on the work that she's been doing, and then we can talk about what this resolution does.

Representative Durr, would you like to mix?

Is that my cue?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and members of the Land Use Committee.

I'm so pleased to be here to talk to you about this resolution.

Thank you to Council Member Mosqueda for reaching out to discuss.

I think we heard in the comments that climate change is an existential threat and we need to use every tool In our toolbox, it's no longer a matter of piecemealing or one thing can solve the problem.

We have to throw everything at this problem.

And local governments have an outsized influence on land use and the supply of housing and how we do transportation and transit.

You know, I just recently read in the Seattle Times, shocker, homelessness is caused by a lack of affordable housing.

I think we already knew that, but nevertheless, there it is.

It's been studied.

And as our region's largest city, Seattle has an influence on the affordable housing in a way that the suburbs can't keep up with.

And the ripple effects of what Seattle chooses to do will impact how much sprawl cities throughout the region end up doing, and we know that sprawl is probably the single biggest threat to the natural environment as we creep into forests and farmlands.

Already, we have several other cities who have pledged to support in their comprehensive plans the goals of 1099, the climate change element in the GMA, Kirkland and Bothell and Kenmore, to name a few.

And, you know, in a sense, it's going to take all of us to make this change.

And so what 1099 aims to do is to take on climate change in our land use planning.

and to reduce greenhouse gases and vehicle miles traveled and also address resiliency.

We know that climate change is exacerbating certain things like flooding and landslides and other things, other natural disasters, which unfortunately means that we have to plan more smartly around where we grow and how we grow.

And then the final piece of course is environmental justice and looking at health disparities maps and making sure that certain communities that have been historically overburdened don't continue to bear the brunt of growth in themselves.

And so I would just close with saying that climate change and housing and equity are inextricably linked and that I think those are some of our highest priorities.

I know in Bothell, I'm a former council member, those are some of our highest priorities.

And to have a bill, a legislation that addresses all three and provides grants for cities that choose to adopt it voluntarily, I think is a really, really big step in fighting climate change.

And so I just want to thank you all so much for hearing this resolution for Council Member Mosqueda for putting it together.

And thank you for all of your efforts toward, you know, creating a better city, a better region, and good luck to you in this really, this year-long, years-long effort to update your comprehensive plans.

I know it's a lot of work, but it's really important work, and the decisions you make will last for years.

So thanks so much.

Thank you, Representative Doar.

Councilmember Mosqueda, do you have anything you'd like to kick us off with, and then we'll pass it back to Lish.

Great.

Well, I'm really excited to be here, and I want to thank again Representative Dorr for all of her leadership in the state legislature on a number of issues, including climate action and climate justice, and really excited that we're able to move forward on this piece of legislation here today to codify and signify our support for what the state legislature will be considering.

Again, I have no doubt that this will be coming back and that will be stronger and there will be continued growth in the coalition that is supporting it.

I want to thank Councilmember Strauss, our good chair of the committee here today, for the co-sponsorship of this legislation in front of us.

This is intended to address climate change and continue to state our commitment to improved resilience as part of the major comprehensive plan that the city is undertaking.

Representative Dewar, being here today, all of the work that you've done in the state legislature, your fight for a statewide approach to require all cities and counties to address climate change is so incredibly appreciated and needed.

As both a member of the Association of Washington City's board, along with Councilmember Strauss, and then as a board member of the National League of Cities, we often hear Hey, don't meddle in city politics or policies as it relates to land use and housing, but the National League of Cities own report notes that when it comes to housing and land use changes, we need state legislators.

choose to be partners with local jurisdictions to help raise the floor and set a higher bar so we can quite literally build on top of that state-level floor.

That's the floor preemption that we need so that no jurisdiction goes below criteria that states are setting, and you are truly leading the effort that the National League of Cities has called for.

So I want to underscore that importance, the important partnership that local jurisdictions can have with state legislators, as we've seen in California and in other states across the country and really emphasize our partnership as a local jurisdiction with you pushing for statewide change.

Colleagues again this resolution follows up on the House bill House 1099 sponsored by representative door.

And we will continue to call for state action that requires jurisdictions to incorporate climate change as part of comprehensive plans.

Again, it's state partnership, setting a higher floor, but allowing local jurisdictions to figure out how to deploy it in line with their comprehensive plan, which is very much embodied in what the resolution is doing here today, and ensuring cities and counties are planning for climate resilience and making sure that we're reducing our contribution to the climate crisis.

We are in Seattle, the third largest mega commuter city in the entire country, meaning that people who commute into the city for work or for study have to commute an hour, two hours each way.

That is bad for the health of the climate.

It is bad for the health of the individual and it's bad for our population health and our psyche as well.

It's bad for our local economies.

we can be doing a much better job together.

Then hearkening back to the racial justice element, we also know that the impact of climate change has disproportionately affected communities of color.

Extreme heat, wildfires, flooding happening across our region, but the folks who are feeling it the most are in frontline and fence line communities.

Frontline jobs and fence line communities.

Folks who are from communities of color and lower income neighborhoods who have done the least to contribute to climate change.

but are feeling the impacts of climate change the most.

That is why I think it's really important that we look at everything that the comprehensive plan will do through the lens of how we can improve and what it will do to impact our climate and do everything we can to mitigate the exacerbating situation of creating inequities across our communities, we create inequities across our communities by not looking at housing, by not addressing displacement, and by not looking through an intersectional lens.

So we're putting that, flipping that on its head, and this analysis, this resolution outlines areas where the city intends for us to use the comp plan to address greenhouse gas emissions, to address climate resiliency and adaptation, and to center environmental justice in our comp plan analysis.

This is our strongest climate plan.

This comprehensive plan is our city's strongest climate plan and the most important tool that we have locally to reduce contributions to climate change and to create more affordable housing of all kinds, near transit and higher opportunity neighborhoods.

So yes, zoning reform is part of our climate response to enable people to be able to live in the cities they work, reduce reliance on car travel, and to make sure that we're promoting that 10 to 15 minute community connected neighborhoods so everybody has what they need right in their own 15 minute walkshin.

Really appreciative of all of the work that's been done in Olympia.

Again, this does not supplant what we know is needed in the halls of our state capitol, but more reinforcing and showing support across local jurisdictions for exactly the type of legislation that Representative Doar has championed.

And we are not alone.

We are joining a growing list of jurisdictions that are doing just this.

Resolutions just like the one in front of us from King County, Pierce County, Whatcom County, Bothell, Kirkland, Redmond, and we are standing together to show a proactive commitment to address climate change through our comprehensive plans.

King County recently adopted their climate planning framework and their comprehensive plan scoping motion, and this resolution will align the city's comprehensive plan with the county's policies, which is a requirement under the Growth Management Act.

So I want to thank again the leadership of Representative Dewar, our state legislators, For example, Representative Fitzgibbon, who I've worked with for a long time on these issues, we know that there's a whole host of strong electeds, progressive electeds in Olympia that will help to continue to pass this and will continue to send a strong message with these other jurisdictions that we support that statewide effort.

We see it as a good thing for local jurisdictions.

And our Office of Planning and Community Development, our Office of Housing, central staff, my staff, through Erin House, and councilmember Strauss is that thank you for all the work that you've done to make this piece of legislation in front of us possible this resolution is a very important element of our long effort to I should say, our effort that has multiple avenues to try to address climate change.

Obviously, there's not just one, but this is a critical element and one of our only climate plan tools.

So I want to thank the mayor.

The mayor has indicated his support for this and we'll be having mayoral concurrence on it as well.

And with that, I'm very excited about it, but I also have an amendment, Mr. Chair.

All right, well, we'll get to the amendment in just a moment.

I'll just bring us back to how confounded I am that this didn't pass at the state level, because this is not a conservative versus progressive issue.

This is an issue about our future.

And what former Council President Jim Street said earlier today is we have seven years to make these changes.

And our major update to the comprehensive plan is a much longer period of time to that.

And what I fear is that the people making the decisions in Olympia, whether to adopt something like this or not, are already of the awareness that they will not see the day where these plans are fully implemented.

And for those reasons, they don't have the same knowing impact of their life that the high school students of today or the high school students of four years ago that were marching in front of City Hall every Friday to make the point that climate crisis has to be addressed now.

And so as we make these plans, we have to incorporate how we address climate crisis and how we become more resilient with the changing climate and that we don't have time to waste.

And so for those reasons confounded that Olympia made the choices, maybe they'll have another opportunity next year.

And thank you very much Council Member Mosqueda for your leadership on this and letting me partner with you on this.

Mr. Woodson, any other comments?

Yeah, we have a very short presentation that describes the resolution.

Yeah, I guess we just got into it, didn't we?

That's great.

It's all great context setting and it means that I don't have to say very much.

Let's go to the next slide, Yolanda.

And I'm joined here by Yolanda Ho, who has helped out significantly with this resolution.

So the goal is to make sure that the comprehensive plan update is infused with responses to climate change, both actions the city can take to mitigate climate change and increase city resiliency and increase Sorry.

Yolanda, can you jump in at this point?

It's been a long day.

Yolanda Ho, Council Central staff.

So yeah, the resolution is about addressing climate change and improving resiliency as part of the major update to the comprehensive plans as we discussed.

And so I was, I think Lish can provide a little bit of background on the role of the comprehensive plan and just the Council Member Mosqueda made some points around this plan in particular and why it's important and as a regulatory document and then just kind of where we are in terms of climate change in the current comprehensive plan, then I will kind of discuss in more detail, the contents of the resolution.

So, climate change has been part of our comprehensive plan, since it was first adopted.

However, this resolution would indicate the city would go much further in terms of thinking about resiliency, thinking about ways to reduce climate change, particularly the interaction between our transportation network and climate change and housing development.

and look at environmental justice in a deeper way than has been included in the campus plan previously.

And those are all items that were part of the House Bill 1099.

And so just a quick overview of the contents of resolution 32059, which and I worked with staff in the mayor's office of the office of planning community development, Seattle Department of Transportation and offices stand ability impairment to develop this language.

and it represents the city's commitment to address climate impacts and improve resiliency.

And with looking at including new and revised goals and policies in the three key areas that were highlighted by Representative Dewar, specifically around emissions reductions, we'd look at reducing per capita vehicle miles traveled in Seattle, increasing and diversifying housing and providing amenities near housing to reduce reliance on cars, would believe planning for future multimodal transportation needs.

And the next large category is resilience and adaptation.

This would be looking at enhancing existing natural areas to serve as habitat to allow for species migration and safe passage, increasing the city's resilience against natural hazards caused by climate change, such as wildfire smoke and heat, leveraging investments in infrastructure to increase resiliency and providing co-benefits like stormwater management and ecosystem services, enhancing tree canopy to help reduce urban heat island effects, and stormwater runoff.

The third large category is environmental justice, which would be looking at reducing environmental health disparities, prioritizing work in communities that have suffered disproportionate environmental injustices and are most vulnerable to climate change-induced natural hazards, addressing displacement, including those who have been displaced and those who are at risk of displacement, and developing strategies to prevent displacement that could result from implementing measures that address climate change and resiliency.

The resolution also references information that should be used to inform the development of the new and revised goals and policies, including analysis of climate-related trends and anticipated impacts, identification of vulnerable populations, assets, natural areas, and infrastructure, inventories of transportation facilities.

If there are no questions, I will just Keep moving on to our next steps.

Should the committee vote to recommend adoption of the resolution, it will likely be considered at the city council meeting on July 19th.

And then OPCD and other departments will begin incorporating their priorities as described in this resolution.

Any questions?

Colleagues, any questions?

I think we had robust discussion ahead of the presentation, I think, because we all did our homework.

Colleagues, not seeing any questions.

Representative Dorr, any final remarks from yourself or Council Member Mosqueda, any final comments?

I know, and I see, thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Nelson.

Well, I don't know if, this is just a comment, and I don't know if it's best now or after the amendment.

I heard that there's amendments, so.

figure it out.

Thank you very much for bringing this forward.

Just reading the topics that the update should address for this resolution, I noticed that several have touched on infrastructure and capital facilities leveraging infrastructure, investments in infrastructure, et cetera.

So I reached out to, I shared it with the, you know, our partners at the Labor Council who build things and got the thumbs up that this is great.

So I think that it's really good to bring in the voices of folks that actually build our city.

So thank you.

Wonderful.

And Representative Dorr.

I just wanted to thank you for the time and also I wanted to mention Council Member Mosqueda made reference to, but this this legislation was done with a lot of stakeholdering with cities and we had a proviso that has commerce already beginning the work to provide different avenues for cities to meet their goals.

And so any city has an opportunity to really choose how to go about lowering their greenhouse gases.

And so that was part of the work that I did with the AWC was to provide, you know, different cities the opportunity to custom fit the solutions with their specific situations.

So just wanted to mention that briefly.

Thank you so much.

Well said.

And I want to also thank the clerks.

I just clicked on the bill on our legislator again, and I have been added as a co-sponsor.

So thank you to our fast acting clerks.

Council Member Muscata, you have an amendment you'd like to bring?

Yes, and again want to thank representative door and appreciate your generous time here today.

And you call on us and let us know what you need in the in the House will be as well.

Colleagues there.

Excuse me I should only move I'd like to move amendment number one to go in front of us.

Second.

Thank you Mister chair would you like to describe it.

Yes, please.

Okay, thanks.

I'll describe it and maybe then turn over to the central staff if that's appropriate.

The amendment makes a technical correction to clarify the resolution is intended to provide direction to city staff as they work on major update to the comprehensive plan and remove a duplicate reference to safe passage.

This is a technical amendment and I really appreciate that this technical amendment further aligns our approach with King County.

to strengthen our regional coordination by clarifying that we are asking city staff to study and develop new goals and policies that address greenhouse gas emission reductions, climate resilience and adaptation, and environmental justice during the development of the plan, which the council will be in the position to adopt when the comprehensive plan is considered in 2024, and as well as clarifying the duplicate of language inadvertently included.

I think that this just strengthens the resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

The amendment has been moved and seconded.

Mr. Chair, I'm just wondering if there's anything else central staff wanted to add.

No, you did a great job.

Point well taken.

The amendment has been moved and seconded.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the amendment one to resolution 32059.

Vice Chair Morales.

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Aye.

Council Member Nelson.

Aye.

Council Member Peterson.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

The amendment passes and we will now move on to the underlying resolution.

Colleagues, any final questions, comments, or concerns at this time?

I'm seeing none.

So I would like to move I would move to recommend adoption of Resolution 32059 as amended.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of Resolution 32059 as amended.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nielsen?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

That's five in favor.

Thank you.

Resolution 32059 passes, and the legislation will be back before full council on Tuesday, July 19th for a final vote.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you, Representative Dorff for joining us.

We will move on.

Great to see you.

We will move on to our next item.

We have two items and about 27 minutes to do this in.

I know that the major institution master plan has been before us once or twice before, We'll bring it forward, and then we do have a quarterly tree report in my pre-meeting, pre-committee meeting.

It's all good news, and a lot of it's pretty straightforward, so we may run through it quickly.

So our next agenda item is 120313, which defines some housing developments as minor amendments to the major institution master plans.

Anthony, will you please read the abbreviated title into the record?

Council Bill 120313, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, defining the addition of a single development that includes residential uses at a community or technical college located within an urban center for discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

We're joined again by Jordan Clowers of Seattle Department of Construction Inspection and Lish Whitson of Council Central Staff.

Gordon, Lish, which one wants to, I see Lish is off mute.

Lish, I'm gonna pass it off to you and then you can pass it to Gordon.

Great Thank you i'll just refresh your memories about this legislation and there are a couple of amendments and gardens available if you have any technical questions about the bill.

This bill would allow technical and Community colleges and urban centers to build a single development with housing serving students or employees.

That development would be considered a minor amendment to an existing campus master plan.

which means that the community advisory council would provide input, but it would not come to council.

The developments floor area would not count against the limits in the master plan.

This kind of minor amendment could be used once in a master plan's lifetime.

The legislation would also clarify that congregate housing affiliated with colleges and universities is permitted outright in multifamily and commercial districts.

Currently, only congregate housing owned by colleges and universities is allowed outright.

Any questions about what the bill does?

Colleagues, we've had this brief before us with a full presentation.

The presentation is attached to the clerk file in Registar, and I'm just now noticing we still have Monica Martinez-Simmons listed as City Clerk.

Monica, will you come back?

We miss you already.

So with that, colleagues, any questions on what WISH has to say?

Seeing none, Gordon, would you like to take it away?

I well just apply a couple things that wish talked about.

One is that we we were just making a few targeted changes to the chapter 2369 in the land use code which is all about major institutions and in order to consider the housing as a minor amendment we need to sort of allow for that to happen by opening the door a little bit on my amendment criteria And another one of those adjustments is that a new housing project that could come along would not be counted against any other previously approved major institution master plan square footage so that the community college would not be forced to pick amongst projects to do, you know, have the doing the housing project penalized doing another project that they already have anticipated doing in their current plan.

So, and then on the topic of affiliated, you know, a detail such as whether a housing project is owned by the college or, you know, has a slightly different ownership arrangement is something that we wanted to acknowledge by including the word affiliated where it was appropriate to do so, so that there isn't a technical detail down the line that would trip up a project.

So that gives some of the reasons why we're making those amendments, and I'd be happy to answer any other questions.

Thank you, Gordon.

And just for the public's edification, this has been discussed for possibly the last

I'm going to say four years, five years, somewhere four to five years.

A few years, we started looking into it and seeing how it could work.

And the mayor transmitted to council on April 6th.

On April 11th, the council president's office reviewed it.

On April 19th, it was referred to the city council and June 8th, we heard it in committee.

And so I'm feeling comfortable voting on it at this time.

And I know that we have two amendments, one technical in nature and one not technical and supported by council, by the chair.

So of the two amendments to consider today, both are on the agenda and were distributed to council members We vote on amendments.

I will place the bill before us.

And so I move to recommend passage of Council Bill 120313. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the bill.

I'll take up amendment one, amendment one.

I'm gonna just pull it up so that I've got it before me.

It's technical in nature.

retain some language and focuses by adding or affiliated with to this conversation rather than, it's a technical in nature.

Colleagues, any questions on this amendment that is attached to the agenda and distributed before council, before committee?

Seeing none, I am going to move to amend Council Bill 120313 as shown in amendment one, is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded to amend Council Bill 120313, as shown in amendment one.

This amendment makes technical corrections and, oh, this is where I ask Lish to address it rather than me trying to brief it on my own.

I do play Council Central staff on TV.

Lish, anything you'd like to share with us?

It's intended to remove a redundant phrase that could cause a little bit of confusion.

Great.

Any questions, colleagues?

Seeing none, no further discussion.

Will the clerk please call the roll on Amendment 1?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

The bill has been amended with amendment one.

Amendment two, Council Member Peterson is sponsoring amendment two, which would limit circumstances in which the proposed minor amendment would apply.

The chair supports this amendment.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to move your amendment?

Yes, Chair Strauss.

I'd like to move amendment two as indicated on the agenda.

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to amend the bill as shown in amendment two.

Before I recognize Council Member Peterson, I will ask Luis to provide a brief overview of this amendment.

And if I might, it just, the amendment limits the scope to community and technical colleges.

Did I get it right?

Yeah, it does.

It adds a statement in the whereas clauses that this bill is not intended to set a precedent for future actions, and in a number of places, it narrows the scope of the bill from colleges and universities to just apply to community and technical colleges.

And there are three of those in the city of Seattle, North Seattle, Central Seattle, and South Seattle College.

Thank you.

Next question.

Perfect.

Council Member Peterson, any thoughts?

Yes, thank you, Chair Strauss and thank you, Leshawn, our city council staff for drafting this amendment.

Colleagues, amendment two is needed to bring the content and subject of the bill back in alignment with the title of the bill to focus as intended on community colleges and technical colleges in an urban center.

I believe this bill originated with the executive to facilitate a real estate development in the urban center surrounding Seattle Central College, which I support, so just the amendment is bringing the body of the bill back in alignment with the title.

Thank you.

Wonderful, well said, Council Member Peterson.

Any other questions before we take the vote on the amendment?

Seeing none, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Did I understand you correctly, Mr. Chair, that there was one amendment that was technically supported and another one that wasn't technical that you are urging a no vote or?

I'm supporting both amendments today, and I'll, candidly, I checked in with the University of Washington, located in Councilmember Peterson's district, and no issues there.

Okay, I do have a comment, Mr. Chair.

Yes, take it away.

Okay, great.

Colleagues, I apologize, I didn't have the chance to ask that question.

in advance, and Mr. Councilmember Peterson, I usually try to make sure I fully understand the amendments that you and I bring forward that sometimes align, and sometimes we have differences of opinion.

I think that this is an area where we have a difference of opinion.

I will agree that As the chair noted in checking in with the institutions, we similarly heard that there is no institution that will be pursuing any similar modification in the future.

I think that this bill, as is, is appropriately scoped within the title.

I do think, though, that it is a good thing that these institutions are trying to look for building housing, building housing near educational centers and making sure that we're creating opportunities for folks to be able to have a walkable neighborhood that includes them being able to go to their institution of choice.

I ideally we would have this at more institutions ideally we'd have this in the South and out here on the West Seattle Peninsula where it's very hard to find housing and there's not a lot of bus lines to the South College so I just wanted to make sure that we are not inadvertently signaling that we're trying to not help those institution meet their housing needs yes, this is very much scoped and there is no institution interested in pursuing a similar modification.

I think I'm going to be a no on this amendment though.

Councilmember Peterson and Mr. Chair, just because I want to make sure that I continue to send a message to any of our institutions that are interested in creating more housing, that we are very much supportive of trying to create options for them to address the zoning needs in their area to make sure that there's a walkable opportunity for a student of any age or ability to be able to study and access their studies at that location, that institution.

And given our rental market, our housing market in Seattle, building, building, building, where we can to support opportunities around institutions like this is important.

That said, I recognize that there is no plan to do that.

It doesn't change what's currently in front of us.

I just don't wanna signal that we're trying to scope and limit where housing can be built.

Thank you, well said.

Colleagues, any other questions before we vote on amendment two as shown on the agenda and on Legistar?

Seeing none, real quick, please call the roll.

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

No.

Council Member Nielsen?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

That's four in favor, one opposed.

Thank you.

The motion passes amendment two to Council Bill...

Got a lot of text here.

Council Bill 120313 is passed.

Before we...

Vote on the underlying bill.

Are there any final comments, questions, concerns, colleagues?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the bill as amended?

Vice Chair Morales?

Yes.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Aye.

Council Member Nelson?

Aye.

Council Member Peterson?

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

That's five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

Council Bill 120313 as amended passes and will be before the full city council on Tuesday, July 19th for a final vote.

Moving on to our next agenda item.

Thank you, colleagues.

Our final agenda item is a quarterly briefing of the Office of Sustainability and Environment and the Office of Planning and Community Development on actions to protect and expand the tree canopy.

I recognize we have 15 minutes allotted left in our scheduled time.

We might run over a couple minutes, colleagues.

And in short, There's not a lot to update from the last time we had the two offices before us because a lot of the work has already been done and is sitting with the hearing examiner at the moment.

With that, sorry to steal your thunder, Patty and Shonda, if you wanna, we're joined by Shonda Emery of Seattle Department of Construction Inspections and Patty Baker of Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Do either of you have a preference with who starts?

I can go ahead and kick us off.

Take it away.

I believe I'm sharing screen now, so you should be seeing our slides.

All right.

So yeah, thank you, Chair Strauss, and good afternoon, council members.

SDCI and OSC are happy to provide you this quarterly briefing on the efforts to update the city's tree protections.

I am Patty Bacher, Interim Urban Forestry Policy Advisor in the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And as you mentioned, Shonda Emery, Senior Planner with SDCI, is here this afternoon as well.

I will cover a few updates on the urban forest management plan which we've been briefing you on and was finalized in 2021. Then Shonda will provide updates on the other tree protections work and then the next steps for this work.

So regarding the urban forest management plan we are now in the implementation phase for the plan as again it was finalized mid-year last year.

And to recap, the core of the plan is a set of outcomes, strategies, actions, and indicators that will support a healthy and sustainable forest across the cities publicly and privately owned lands.

And it's the actions of the plan that we're focused on now with the plan implementation.

So the actions are organized in an action agenda that outlines the steps that the city and community partners will take to implement the plan over the next five years and through which we aim to ensure that the urban forest is effectively managed.

So the urban forestry core team has incorporated most of the action agenda items into the 2022 annual work plan.

I highlighted several of those actions in our last briefing in March.

then there are some actions slated for work in future years.

And so we have incorporated also into the work plan a tracker for the full action agenda so that we can track progress on that as we incorporate tasks into our annual work plans.

So two of those ongoing actions are the tree protection ordinance update, which you'll hear more about shortly, and then the canopy cover assessment.

When we last briefed you in March, the estimate on timing for when we would have the canopy cover assessment report was mid-year of this year.

However, the consultant team has experienced some unexpected delays and setbacks, so that effort is not yet complete.

We now expect the assessment report in late summer for that.

We are actively working with that team on that effort and preparing for rolling out that report when it is ready.

And also as part of the city's holistic citywide urban forestry strategy, we are coordinating internally to identify opportunities to enhance equity and climate resilience through our citywide urban forestry efforts in alignment with the canopy cover data.

So these are concurrent efforts so that we can maximize our use of that data when it does come in.

In addition, since we last briefed you, we prepared our 2021 Urban Forestry Accomplishments Report, and just to share a few highlights from that report regarding community involvement and workforce opportunities, the Trees for Seattle program provided planting outreach to 1,500 residents in low canopy neighborhoods of South Park, Georgetown, Lake City, and New Holly.

And the green settle partnership supported 177 paid and stipend did positions providing on the ground restoration and community building work experience and in tree care and management, our city departments planted just over 1700 trees during the year.

And departments also maintained another almost 7,800 trees to keep them healthy.

And the Green Seattle Partnership conducted restoration activities on over 700 acres, including planting more than 10,500 tree seedlings.

So there's a lot of work going on as we implement the plan to develop and care for our urban forest.

And now I can pass it on to Shonda to cover details of the tree protections ordinance work, unless we want to pause here for some questions.

I don't have any questions, but that's possibly because I had the pre-meeting.

Colleagues, any questions on this section?

Seeing none.

Okay, you can move on.

You're good to go.

All right, thank you.

So Shonda, you want to take it away?

Thank you, Patty.

So tree penalties for illegal tree removal activities have remained steady on the fiscal quarters of Q1 and Q2 this year.

So one of the more recent penalties was $25,000, and generally penalties are around $3,000 for each illegal action.

The total tree penalty summary as of mid-May was $56,000.

We continue to be vigorous in our enforcement and SDCI has been working to offer new and better ways to connect people with SDCI expert staff using our new virtual online chat feature.

Right now you can reach a city arborist for tree related questions as well as connect with code compliance staff for enforcement related questions.

And then we're using that feedback to continually improve this virtual service based on what we hear.

SDCI continues to partner with the UFC and other stakeholders on the tree protection updates.

SDCI briefed the UFC on February 9th and on March 2nd as we were preparing to issue the draft legislation and shortly thereafter when we released the legislation on February 17th.

We had a brief pause in our meetings with the UFC during the SEPA appeal process and then we have plans to attend another UFC briefing in early August to continue our work together on the tree protection updates.

In addition to the UFC, other stakeholders have provided written comments to SDCI regarding the draft legislation.

All comments have been read and reviewed and are being considered.

Last month was the hearing on the seat appeal of the draft legislation, which ended on June 22nd.

We anticipate that the hearing examiner will issue his ruling by the end of the month.

So there are a number of possible outcomes regarding the CEPA appeal of the draft tree legislation.

Generally, it could be that the hearing examiner affirms the city's threshold determination, allowing the council to move forward with considering the proposed draft legislation.

Or it could be that the hearing examiner finds that the city's threshold determination should have been a determination of significant adverse environmental impacts and thus require the city to conduct a full environmental impact statement, or it could be that the hearing examiner finds that the city needs to do additional substantive or procedural work such as additional analysis.

On any of these possibilities, SDCI will work with the mayor and the council on the next steps.

Thank you, Sean.

Candidly, I would say that it has an immense impact on the environment, but that's personal opinion.

Thank you.

Sure.

So STCI is excited to have a new tree service provider registration in place and to be effective this fall.

The legislation will be as effective as early as this November.

And so legislation will set up a new registration system for tree service providers that are doing commercial tree work in the city, but also requires registered tree service providers to comply with best practices.

And so right now we're exploring options for implementing the new registry.

And they're also working towards launching comprehensive outreach materials to reach as many people as possible to make it clear what's in the legislation and what is required to be in compliance with these new regulations.

So as far as next steps in third quarter, our tree team is committed to working with our stakeholders, including the UFC on any potential revisions to the SEPA draft legislation.

And we will be identifying resources needed for implementation and enforcement as we do this.

And again, we will be working with the mayor and the city council on the next phase of this work.

So that concludes our brief presentation.

Patty and I are happy to answer any questions that you might have for us.

Thank you Shonda.

I know that from our pre-meeting I asked a lot of questions and there's nothing further I feel like I need to put on the record because right now we're just waiting.

for the hearing examiner to issue their determination and I appreciate you continuing to find different ways to fund the tree service provider registration because I know that funding wasn't identified at outset and I appreciate your work to locate that within the budget.

Colleagues, are there any questions?

I think this might be your first quarterly tree report without any questions, friends.

With that, I think that's the presentation.

We really appreciate you both sticking through with us this whole time.

Council Member Mosqueda, I see you came off mute.

Nope.

So with that, Patty, Shonda, thank you for coming to us.

Thank you for being with us.

And all of your hard work over so many years has paid off for today.

Thank you, council members.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

That 25 minute presentation was done in about 15 minutes.

I appreciate you all.

Colleagues, that brings us to section E of the agenda adjournment.

Before I adjourn, is there anything for the good of the order?

Mr. Chair.

I think we're 27 minutes delayed, but I just want to announce that my office is closed.

I'll consider this a walking out right now, walking out in solidarity with the bans off our bodies, protests across the country to support abortion access.

I wanted to be here, but I'll extend my walkout until the evening.

Just wanted to say thanks to everybody who showed solidarity in their walkout efforts across the nation today.

Sounds like it's time to walk out.

With that, this concludes the Wednesday, July 13th, 2022 meeting of the Land Use Committee.

If there's no further business, the meeting will be adjourned and we will walk out.

The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee is July 27th, starting at 2 p.m.

Thank you for attending.

No further business, we are walking out.