Seattle City Council Sustainability & Transportation Committee: 9/7/2018

Good afternoon, everybody.

Welcome to the Sustainability and Transportation Committee.

Today is Friday, September 7th, 2018. It's 2 p.m.

My name is Mike O'Brien.

I am chair of this committee, joined by my colleague, Councilmember Rob Johnson.

Thanks for being here.

Staffed by Suzy Levy and Lakeisha Farmer.

Thank you both for helping out today.

We have a special meeting time because of the Monday holiday pushed the full council meeting to Tuesday, and our standard Tuesday meeting gets pushed back to Friday.

Thanks for being here on a Friday afternoon.

We have a pretty full agenda.

We're going to start by taking up a number of appointments and reappointments to the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee.

We will then take up appointments to the Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee.

We'll move into a presentation from the Community Advisory Board for the Sugary Beverage Tax.

And then a discussion presentation on the food access pilot statement of legislative intent response.

This was a request from the council last budget session.

Then we'll take up an ordinance related to, sorry, we're not going to take it up, but we will be discussing an ordinance related to pre-tax benefits for transit passes for employees and employers in Seattle.

A resolution granting conceptual approval for a below-grade private utility.

And then finally, a resolution expressing the City of Seattle's opposition to offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration activities, including seismic airgun blasting.

So we'll jump in and start with public comment.

There is about, I don't know, a dozen or so folks signed up.

Matthew Lang is first.

Thanks for being here.

And followed by Alex Zimmerman and then Kevin Porter.

Hi there, my name is Matthew Lang, I'm the lead organizer at the Transit Riders Union.

The Transit Riders Union strongly supports the Transit Benefits Ordinance proposed by Councilmember O'Brien.

This is a win-win policy.

By allowing employees to purchase transit passes with pre-tax dollars, it will give them a discount on public transit.

Employers will also save on payroll taxes to the tune of 7.5 to 9%, which will more than offset the private administrative costs of implementing this system.

The whole public will benefit from this commuter benefit legislation because the program encourages transit use, which helps to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions.

Currently, most employees who receive commuter benefits through their employers tend to be high-wage or salaried workers.

Low-wage workers get left out.

This legislation will make it easier for many thousands of low-wage workers to obtain commuter benefits through their employer.

It may also open the door for more employers to provide a full, or partial transit pass subsidy for their workers.

This is a policy that has already proven to be successful in a number of other U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. We urge the Council's support of this important, common-sense legislation.

Thank you.

Thanks, Pat.

Alex?

Thank you, sir.

Sieg Heil, my sweet Fuhrer.

Brown, yeah, because not always brown.

Yep, nothing changed.

Oh, antisemite, tuxucker, killer, and criminal.

My name is Alex Zimmerman.

So I want to speak about sugar.

Sugar is very good for human beings.

Yep.

But we have right now problem, what we have is sugar with beverage.

So for my understanding, it's $10 million for last six months.

And who pay for this?

Only poor people pay.

I drink Sprite with sugar every day.

Every day I kill myself because Sprite without sugar is 100 times more dangerous than Sprite with sugar.

And you can find this in all information.

So why one kill people without sugar when sugar good for people?

It's only problem how many sugar we have.

It's a problem.

Guys, you, by definition, A cretina, a natural born degenerate idiot, five cent for package, sugar.

Give me another two minute and I will find you another dozen.

Idiotic decision, what is you can make?

How is this possible?

When beverage without sugar more dangerous than beverage with sugar and you don't protect people and who buys the sugar suck from $10 million from who?

From poor people like me, senior citizen who possibly have little bit sweet life buying a sugar with my sugar cake.

See hi, my Nazi pig, a killer is exactly who you are.

We need clean this Dory chamber from this cretina, a Nazi killer pig.

Thank you very much.

Kevin, you're next.

Kevin, you're going to be followed by Simone Adler and then Val Thomas-Matson.

Good afternoon, my name is Kevin Porter and I'm with the I'm a member of the food access team with got green.

I just want to thank Councilmember O'Brien for your continued support to close the food security gap with the sugary beverage tax, because the revenue from this tax has gone towards the continuation of the fresh bucks program and creation of expansion programs families like mine.

will have access to healthy, affordable food, and I'm concerned that the Yes to Affordable Groceries campaign will prevent other cities in Washington State from meeting their community's needs by preventing them from implementing a sugary beverage tax.

I just want to point out that the ABA claims threat of grocery tax when it's truly about sugary beverages.

I would also like to ask the council to recommend that the $2.8 million in revenue from the tax be allocated to food security programs so that the Fresh Bucks program and others are enough to fill the needs of the families in Seattle who are a portion of the 122,000 families in King County who are part of the food security gap.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kevin.

Simone?

Hello, my name is Simone Adler and I'm the organizing director with Community Alliance for Global Justice and a member here representing Got Green's Coalition for Food Access.

So I also want to thank you, Councilmember O'Brien, for your continued support of closing the food security gap.

And I wanted to talk about the ordinance, sugary beverage tax ordinance, stating that the majority of revenue go toward closing the food security gap.

So I wanted to emphasize that the $2.8 million go directly to food security programs, including community-based initiatives.

And I'm also concerned that residents in Washington are being amped up to fight a tax that has not actually been proposed, the quote, grocery tax, because of the misguided language in that measure.

So I say this because it makes it ever more important for there to be community education to let people know the positive benefits of the sugary beverage tax and how it can support them and support our communities and our neighbors.

Thank you.

Thank you, Simone.

Val?

Val, you're going to be followed by Marguerite Richard and then Megan Murphy.

Great.

Good afternoon.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Again, my name is Val Thomas-Matson, and I'm here on behalf of the Healthy King County Coalition, which mobilizes community for health equity.

And we are mutual members with Gott Green's coalition.

And one of the reasons that I wanted to speak today was just to share my voice in the support of what good work is beginning to happen because of the SSB tax and we are in contact with people who are seeing the benefits and it's a wonderful thing, so some good news.

But also want to know that I would ask that we continue to make sure that the $2.8 million is going to the food access gap to block that gap and to make sure that that continues to happen.

The other concern that I wanted to share is that the coalition is also very much aware of the 1634 initiative And the coalition and myself have lent our name to the no voter pamphlet guide statement that will be coming out.

And just continue to look for ways to provide more education about the misguidedness of this particular statement.

So, thank you again and good afternoon.

Marguerite?

Yes, good day everyone.

Well, I'm still in mourning over Aretha Franklin's death.

And then I wanted to also take note of fascism and all these fascist pigs that seem to think that they're going to continue to oppress us, repress us, depress us, and suppress us just for being here.

I'm very fortunate to be alive on today.

And I wanted to tell you about a little story, hear how it go.

I was on the D line and I talked with a Metro Transit driver today, he walked with me and he said, do you think the driver was going too fast or what do you think on First Avenue going towards, go past Broad and you go to Denny?

And he said, do you think the driver?

I said, I don't know what he was doing.

All I know is that the bus went, boom, just like that.

And I said, wait a minute.

And I mean, all my head and my whole body and my limbs and everything was just like a doggone scarecrow on the Wizard of Oz.

So I said, look at how they're trying to arrest people for riding the bus.

But you can't.

I done paid them, and I can't even get a decent ride.

So I said, well, what am I going to do?

Go get me a sugar high.

Maybe they can get some money from the Washington State, oh, oh, insurance authority.

I said, we?

Because they just paid a whole lot of money to a black man they killed, OK?

And you're not going to keep on doing this to me, too, and think that it's funny.

And it's a game when I tell you that something is crooked going on.

And like I said, if you act like a criminal, I'm going to treat you like one.

From here on out, I'm going to treat you just like a criminal.

You hear what I said?

Thank you, Marguerite.

Megan, you're next, and you're going to be followed by Jonathan Hopkins.

Jonathan's the last person to sign up.

If there's anyone else who would like to speak, you can line up behind Jonathan.

Go ahead, Megan.

Well, I'm reading this book about the transition from Kennedy to Johnson.

And it went from Camelot to the Great Society.

So I'm thinking, in the Great Society, if we re-envisioned it today, we would use tax money for the most public good.

So I was at King County.

And we had some major wins to the Transit Riders Union because they're going to be using tourist money for housing.

And then here today we're having, because we're always addressing housing here too, and we're having the people that have a hard time getting food with a lot of nutrition are going to have farm to table and fresh bucks to go.

And we had that story in the Seattle Times about the orca and its baby, and everyone was so attached, like, what's going to happen next?

So no, we aren't going to drill in the oceans because we actually, in the great society, we're not going to use the environment as a way to gain money by plowing into it and depleting it, just like Patagonia talks about.

So and then what's even really cool is all the public transportation going on because people, I mean, it's OK to be lower income.

I mean, I don't know.

As long as everybody has a good way to work on public transportation so we don't overuse fossil fuels and housing that we don't have to worry about being ripped away from us.

Also, in the Great Society, if there's going to be homeless sweeps, it moved, I got an email from Matthew, and it moved, they don't, it moved from the FAS, the Finance and Administration, to the Human Service Board, so people don't get notified on sweeps, and that is so not Grand Society, so thank you.

Thank you, Megan.

Jonathan.

Good afternoon.

I'm Jonathan Hopkins, the ED of Commute Seattle, a mobility organization founded by our region's transit and transportation agencies.

I wanted to thank everybody for giving me a chance to chat today on the topic of pre-tax legislation and policy that helps workers out, not having to pay federal income tax on the money used for transit and transportation.

Use of pre-tax money, as we know, is authorized by federal tax codes, saves employees hundreds of dollars a year, and even saves businesses money by averting some federal payroll taxes.

So we think in a costly city, every dollar helps.

This is why this best practice is already implemented successfully in SF, DC, and New York.

It's not onerous on employers.

That's why there's no major business organizations that have come out in opposition to this.

Furthermore, if a company is not compliant, the cure is simply that a nonprofit goes and helps them get compliant and helps them implement a fix.

Why is this needed?

It's because it's currently up to businesses to allow their employees access to this federal tax benefit.

And so I think this is actually the most important point here.

We know that businesses throughout our community, probably everybody, but businesses will spend a lot of time and money to make sure they do not overpay their own federal taxes.

So we also think it's important that they make it possible for their employees to also not overpay theirs.

It's simple fairness.

It lives up to our values.

It's the right thing for workers in our city.

So, you know, I've always been proud of Seattle, and we've been a leader in implementing mobility best practices, and this is one of those best practices.

It helps workers, helps mobility, and does no harm to businesses.

So please support it because it's smart policy for a smart city.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Is there anyone else who would like to provide a public comment today?

Seeing no one else, we'll close public comment.

And Susie, would you mind reading in the first three agenda items?

And I'll invite presenters and appointees forward.

Appointment 01080, appointment of Lisa Bogardas as member of Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2018. Agenda item two, appointment 01081, appointment of Hester Serebrin as member of the Levy to Move Seattle Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2018. And appointment 01106, the reappointment of Betty Spielkroll as member of Levy to move Seattle Oversight Committee for a term to December 31st, 2021.

Thank you.

Welcome, everyone.

Why don't we start with quick introductions?

Hester, if you want to just name and...

Is this automatically on?

Yep.

Hi, my name is Hester Sarabin.

I'm the Policy Director at Transportation Choices Coalition.

Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Lisa Bogardas.

I'm the Assistant Executive Secretary for the Seattle-King County Building Construction Trades Labor Council.

And I'm Elliot Helmbrecht with SDOT.

Great.

Elliot, do you want to give us a little bit of an overview of what the Oversight Committee does?

Of course.

So the Oversight Committee is an advisory body that monitors levy revenue, expenditures, and spending, and project and program implementation on levy projects that are funded by the Department of Transportation.

It's made up of Seattle residents, and they receive quarterly updates from the department on our spending and performance measures.

In addition to getting those updates and reviewing program and project implementation, they can also provide recommendations to the mayor, city council, and the department, both on projects or priorities.

So they're an important committee.

They meet, like I said, they get quarterly updates and then meet six times a year to hear program and project updates.

And I will put a plug in for our next meeting.

It's on October 4th at 530 here at City Hall.

If folks want to come, they're all open to the public.

And our information is up online.

And so I'm going to turn to you, Lisa and Hester, and let you speak a little bit.

I'll warn you, though, in advance that what Elliot just said is not totally true, because it seems like you met about six times this summer alone.

So occasionally things happen, and there's more meetings.

And it's been a busy six months, frankly, on some of the work about Move Seattle.

You probably both tracked that a little bit, but it's really been invaluable to me as a policymaker to have a group of volunteers providing oversight.

I'm part of that committee too, but hearing from advocates on the outside to help inform decisions we make as we move forward is really important.

So, Esther, I'll start with you.

You want to tell us a little bit about your interest in this role and any plans you have?

Sure.

So I am a lifelong resident of Seattle, and I'm privileged enough to live close enough to where I work such that I enjoy a nice walk or a transit trip as a commute.

And so I'm very aware of the sidewalk level infrastructure improvements that make my day great.

So I have that personal interest.

I've also been with Transportation Choices for about five years.

We focus on sustainable.

Is that right, Rob?

sustainable, healthy, and equitable transportation.

And I think the projects laid out in the levy have the potential to make great strides in that area.

And so I think it's that much more important that we do it well.

Great.

Lisa.

Okay, I have not a lifelong resident, but about 20 years now.

I can't believe it's been that long.

And I have used to be a bike commuter for about six years.

I biked everywhere.

I didn't have a car.

Unfortunately, I work in Tukwila now, but I still live in the city.

So I've seen a lot of changes in the city over the last, I would say, five years, most significantly.

I did vote for the levy and most people I know did.

And I know there's a lot of public concern about the direction and the projects and the delivery.

And so as working with the Building Trades Labor Council, we have a vested interest in ensuring that construction projects in the city are delivered on time, on budget, and that people get the product that they're expecting because we want continued investment in the future.

We want to continue job growth.

We want the city to be somewhere that businesses can thrive and people can get around and congestion is reduced.

We have that one hat is an interest of the Labor Council in mind personally and then also being a resident of the city and the congestion that has significantly increased any projects that can move forward to making the city safer for bikers, making it more accessible for folks to get around and be able to utilize activities and do things in the city that aren't just in their area because they, you know, very often now I notice that we don't go and do things because we can't get there.

So it's exciting to see this levy go forward and the projects be able to ensure that people can actually live in a city and enjoy the city they live in.

and that I think I'm thankful that you want to keep a labor voice.

Dustin Lambrow moved out of the city, so he couldn't maintain his seat.

So I was thankful and honored that I was considered to be appointed and that you wanted to continue to have that voice at the table.

great.

Councilmember Johnson, do you have any questions or comments?

Just a thank you.

I know how hard these jobs are, and they're volunteer jobs, despite what we may receive in terms of requests for hourly recompensation for your time and energy on this.

So big-body work.

I'm excited that you are both interested in serving.

And Betty, we're reappointing today as well, correct?

Correct.

Betty, if I'm not mistaken, is one of the co-chairs?

She's one of the co-chairs.

Yeah.

Grateful to you two and Betty in absentia for the work that you're willing to put in on this effort.

Yeah, and Betty served on the oversight committee for the bridging the gap levy too, so some continuity there.

Great.

Anything else you want to add, either of you?

Well, thank you.

Go ahead.

I just was going to say, I'm really excited for being able to bridge the kind of efficiency and equity conversations.

I think the work that we can do to prioritize projects to kind of have the greatest positive impact in the communities that need it most will be really critical.

And so I'm also interested to see how the oversight committee can work with the transportation equity program to make sure we're using the right lens in how we deliver those projects.

That's great.

I appreciate that.

It's a great idea.

Well, thank you all for your willingness to serve.

I really appreciate it.

And I'll go ahead and move Agenda Items 1, 2, and 3. All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

You'll be on the full council a week from Monday.

And I hopefully pencil in October 4th.

I have a sense things will go well at full council in a week and a half.

Thanks for your willingness to serve.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Susie, do you mind reading in agenda items four and five, and I'll go ahead and invite presenters forward on that one.

Appointment 01082, appointment of Leland Brunch as member of the Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee for a term to March 31st, 2020, and the appointment of Marilyn K. Furman as member of the Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee for a term also to March 31st, 2021. Welcome, everyone.

Why don't we start with introductions?

Sure.

I'm Mitchell Lord with the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I'm Lee Brush.

Marilyn Furman.

Thank you all for being here.

Mitchell, do you want to give a quick overview of the role the School Traffic Safety Committee plays?

Sure.

So the mission of the School Traffic Safety Committee is to make routes safer for students to get to and from school.

The collection of people that make up the committee are the Seattle Department of Transportation, the Seattle Police Department, Seattle Public Schools, and King County Metro, along with interested parents from all over the city.

We try to get real representation from all sectors of the cities because we recognize that different schools face different barriers to walking and bicycling to school.

So we want to have good conversation around how we can help.

lower those barriers and make sure every kid in Seattle Public Schools can walk safely to and from school and ride their bikes.

So some of the topics that we discussed are adult crossing guard placements close to schools, also the walk boundary associated with elementary schools and middle schools.

We also reviewed some of the data related to the automatic school zone cameras.

And also, we invite parents into the committee to give presentation about their local school, any issues that they recognize they want to share and get some feedback on.

Well, I appreciate that overview, and I appreciate the work that the committee does.

And so, I'll turn to you, Lee and Marilyn.

Maybe you can give me a sense of why you're interested in this.

Lee, I think I first met you, well, probably not first met you, but worked with you on a project exactly up this alley, up to the west of Aurora, the east of Aurora.

I'm a retired architect and major project manager for medical institutions.

I started getting interested in transportation way back in the 70s, when I was coordinating architect for the first phase of False Creek up in Vancouver.

And at that time, we looked to Seattle as the leader, by far, in transportation.

It's changed since.

I moved up here, or down here, to Vancouver, or Seattle, about 32 years ago, and have been working with a lot of community groups up in the North End dealing with transportation issues.

Some new schools got built near our house, so I got involved in safe routes to schools, and I did a lot of work on that.

And now I'm interested in learning more about safe routes to schools throughout Seattle as opposed to just in the North End.

Great.

Thank you, Lee.

Marilyn, tell us about your background.

I see you've been in schools for a while.

Well, my expertise, unfortunately, is not in transportation.

It's in children.

I'm a retired school counselor, and I'm coming at the opposite end of wanting children to be safe and wanting it well, have safe ways to school and really believing that it's much better for children to be able to walk to school than to have to be bused or driven or that sort of thing.

I volunteered for this committee on the challenge of my son-in-law.

I had been trying to get children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces and so forth to be more active politically.

I've just moved over here four years ago to be their grandchild.

My son-in-law said, well, I don't have time, but you do.

So he sent me a list of all these committees that had empty spaces in.

So that is actually why I'm here.

It's exciting to get to know more about Seattle, to go down to the South Seattle and see schools down there and see what's going on.

But really, I'm probably much less informed than you are, but would like to dive in and find out what's going on and be a no-acts-to-grind interested person.

That's great.

Well, I think you did a good job of highlighting a couple different avenues that are really important for this committee.

And so expertise in children and expertise in transportation.

And there's a whole host of experts we'll need on this, but I really appreciate your willingness to serve.

Councilmember Johnson, do you have any questions or comments?

You know just come in and so far as you know as somebody with little kids in the city's public school system I can't say enough great work about the work that the parent-teacher student associations do so in the work that Mitchell mentioned I'd love to hear what what are some of the things that you're hoping to work on with those PTSA's that would help dovetail their interest in making sure that their kids are safely getting to and from school and some of the interests of yourselves as committee members.

Is it better data?

Is it more walking school buses?

Is it better information?

Is it better coordination?

What are some of the things that you think would be good topics for you to work with PTSAs on?

As far as I'm concerned, it's really important for kids to be able to walk to school, and a lot of ADHD kids wouldn't be if they had physical exercise before school.

So just safe neighborhoods where kids can walk to school is really important.

Well, I'm new and I'm just starting to find out, but I've done some traffic safety walk-arounds in several schools with the committee that's researching that.

And it is really interesting.

I think we will have a harder time in the South End.

I noticed that very few parents or school professionals came out when we did our inventories walking around those schools as opposed to the North End.

But the other thing that I've just found out, and coming from another city, a lot of parents are afraid of the homeless people.

And I don't know if even if we get the traffic safe, if they will let their kids walk to school.

So there's a lot to learn for me, a lot to learn.

One of the things that I'm interested in is finding out ways Seattle School District and the SDOT and other departments in the city can work proactively.

Because one of the things that I've noticed on the committee is that we end up being reactive.

Problems are brought to us and we try to deal with them post the problem.

And it's better to get up ahead.

It takes a different concept of how you arrange that, and that remains to be seen.

But that's the thing that I'm most concerned about.

In addition, the more that the school district and the city can support PTSAs as they do things, the better.

The schools near us, the kids have to walk to a middle school a long way across four or five major arterials.

A lot of the parents say, hey, we need more walking school buses and we need more bike trains.

But the PTSD, and there are two people in that particular PTSD who say, yeah, we do.

Can anyone help?

And then it goes quiet.

And that's a really difficult human nature thing, but we have to figure out ways to deal with that.

Well, I just, I want to echo both of those comments.

I think the intersectionality here is really critical.

The school district, as we know, spends upwards of almost $35 million a year in school busing.

And while most of that is reimbursed by the state, the more that we can get our kids physically fit, the healthier they are, right, the more ready they are to learn.

The more we can do that, the better our greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Not only that, but it just really helps to create more of a sense of community.

So continuing to work with all of those differentiated parties is a really hard thing.

I don't want to say that it's easy, but continuing to be in that work, I'm really grateful to you both for your willingness to do so.

I was really impressed with the committee and the variety of experts are there.

One situation we're talking about on Aurora, we have police, bus person, a police person, SDOT, and to have all that very, and school professional people, all those people plus some of us, but especially those people all discussing the problem, bringing things they know that the rest of the people don't know is really a useful and I think does some prevention too of problems coming up, especially as like this next meeting we'll be going to in school that's opening next year and trying to plan what's the safest way to have the, you know, proactively plan their traffic situation.

Great.

Well, I really appreciate your willingness to serve and I look forward to continuing to learn from the committee as we make investments to make schools safer for not just kids and faculty, but those improvements also benefit everyone in the neighborhood as we know it.

So thank you all.

I'll go ahead and move agenda items number four and five.

All in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Okay, that passes out of committee with a recommend pass vote and they'll go to the full council a week from Monday.

And at that point, you'll be officially members of the committee, Your work can begin as soon as you're ready.

Thank you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you very much.

Suzy, you want to read agenda item number six in, and I'll invite presenters forward for that item?

Yeah.

Sugar, beverage, tax, community advisory board briefing.

You can put it on the screen.

Hello, everyone.

As you get settled, why don't we go ahead and start with a quick introduction, and then we'll jump into the presentation.

Great.

Thank you.

You want to come on this side?

I can do that.

You want to sit here?

OK.

OK.

Well, thank you.

Good afternoon.

I'm Bridget Igoe.

I work for the Office of Sustainability and Environment, and I'm here to introduce your main presenters today.

I staff the Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board, and I also work closely with staff in HSD, DEAL, and additional staff in OSC to support the board.

And so it's my pleasure today to introduce to you Christina Wong and Lika Suzumura, who are here on behalf of the board.

Both Christina and Lika provide leadership to the board.

Christina is a co-chair and Lika is a member at large of their executive committee.

And today they're going to present to you the board's 2018 and 2019 budget recommendations for the sweetened beverage tax revenues.

They'll also walk you through the board's process and highlight some of the programs that are currently supported with the beverage tax revenues.

They've distilled their presentation down to just about 15 minutes.

But make no mistake, it reflects months of time and effort on behalf of this board.

And I just want to recognize all the great service that this board has done in giving to Seattle and its residents.

So with that, I would like to just turn it over to them.

Great.

Thank you.

I'll go ahead and start with the CAB process that we went through.

So thank you again so much for the time to be able to share our recommendations.

So go ahead and go to the next slide.

And so the CAB process, this has happened over the last nine months or so, eight, nine months.

And it was in three different phases.

So we started out with some foundational work within the board, and then we moved on to gathering information.

And then that led us to be able to prioritize and develop the letters that we have submitted in July.

Go ahead.

Other SSB boards?

I'm pretty good on acronyms, but I don't know SSB.

Sugary sweetened beverage.

Oh, so other cities that have sugar sweetened beverage boards?

Correct.

Yeah.

So I'll walk through each of those a little bit more as we go through.

Sorry.

No problem.

So in looking at the foundational work, we started with the board developing our vision and values.

And that included the different ways that we wanted to approach this work.

And I want to acknowledge that we've really had an emphasis on racial justice and social equity, as you can see in our values.

And that was unanimously voted for our number one priority in our values.

And that's through creating these visions and values has become the foundation for our decision making.

and how we've moved through this process of making the budget recommendations.

Go ahead.

So our budget principles are really revolving around these five areas.

So we've identified our priority populations as communities of color.

immigrant and refugee communities, low-income communities, and within that, all the youth that are also within those communities.

And then with that, the place-based focus areas would then be anywhere where those communities live, work, or play.

And by community-driven, we mean that we want this work to be led and guided by the community, specifically those that are most impacted by sugary beverages and the impacts of it.

And that means that we want to work closely with community leaders and community-based organizations who have authentic connections on the ground to these communities.

Culturally responsive, meaning that we want it to be relevant and meaningful work, anything that we put into practice through these funds.

And prevention-oriented is really about lowering sugary beverage consumption and also preventing the chronic diseases that we know are associated with it, specifically obesity and diabetes.

Go ahead.

So in the process of gathering information, we went through a lot of different data sets to be able to look specifically at how health and education disparities were happening in Seattle and what were some of the numbers associated with that.

And through this process, I think it really highlighted within the CAB how drastic some of these disparities are within health and education, and really seeing that some of these inequities are deeply rooted in race, place, and also income.

Then through March and through May, we did a community input phase where we worked one-on-one with community leaders and different experts in the field that CAB members were associated with.

We also did online surveys, two online surveys that got over 160 respondents.

And through this process, we were able to really gain information directly from the community about what were the key strategies they wanted to see used, what were the focus areas they wanted to see, and the activities that were prioritized for them that was meaningful with these funds.

And through that process, we were then able to inform our recommendations.

Through this process of gathering information, we also had different department briefings with work that's been currently happening with the funds, like in the early learning in DEL, some of the food and nutrition programs with HSD, and also OSC with the FreshBooks and food access programs.

And the budget office has also given us up-to-date information about the revenue and how the process of getting this money out into the communities will happen.

And then in regards to the National Community Advisory Boards, if you can go to the next one, we've had a really great opportunity to have monthly meetings with the national CABs around the country.

And through this process, we've been able to really share different challenges that we share in common and the lessons learned that we've gotten through this process.

And in particular for me, as somebody that was on the subcommittee for community engagement, I was able to gain a lot of valuable resources and strategies that they used for community engagement, because several of the cities are a few steps ahead of us as far as implementing all of this in their cities.

Go ahead.

And then lastly, our final step was then putting all of this information and prioritizing our focus areas and the activities.

And that's what developed into the different recommendation letters that Christina will talk a little bit more about.

And through this process, we've always gone back and made sure that we aligned with our core values and made sure that especially the social justice and equity was a top priority and that all of these things continue to align and address those issues.

Then the last slide here for the process is outlining in priority order the focus areas that we then came through and again reiterating that this came from internally from the cab expertise but also information coming from the community input phase that we did and input from the national cabs around the city.

And then I'm going to hand it off to Christina to talk more in depth about our actual recommendations.

Thank you, Lika.

I know that this is what everybody's excited to learn more information about.

So we wanted to start off with just doing a refresher for you about what happened in 2018. As you'll see on this table, the top two categories here are essentially the administrative evaluation and one-time investments for the first five years of the ordinance.

And then this section here are the programming that was funded in the city's 2018 budget.

There was proviso language that held release of these funds until after the CAB was in place and could review and authorize release of it.

And then this last section here is the $2.8 million, which we heard some people in public comment referring to.

This was held in reserve for the CAB's recommendations.

So the focus areas that Lika just did a quick highlight of, they're highlighted in blue here.

And I just wanted to quickly explain how closely the CAB really tried to follow the language of the ordinance in order to formulate these.

We saw prioritization for addressing health and education inequities.

through reducing food insecurity, increasing access to healthy food and beverages, and birth to three and kindergarten readiness on that early end of the spectrum.

We also read in the language around intent to help raise awareness and education about the health effects of sugary beverages and to provide support for people living with obesity and diabetes.

This category here, we can't really address obesity and diabetes on healthy food and beverage access alone.

That also kind of requires investments in nutrition programs and physical activity supports.

Then this last category here, this goes to how we are leading our work with equity.

We wanted to make sure that programs and services that are funded by the tax are really helping small community-based organizations who often don't have the supports that they need to do a full evaluation of their services.

So this is separate from the evaluation of the tax, but really of the program that's funded.

We wanted to make sure that it was understood that the CAB unanimously adopted these priorities and that the percentages are our recommended earmarks for the total set-aside funds.

We also had strong support from our community engagement survey that Lika mentioned for both the priorities and the percentages.

So under each of these priority categories, you'll see suggested activities.

These were developed both by the CAB with involvement from the community through that survey process.

They're listed in order of priority of our recommendations.

And then we recently followed up with a supplemental letter to provide more information about these two suggested activities, healthy food vouchers for people in the food security gap and subsidies to schools to provide more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Specifically, we got this additional information about costs with help from OSC and Seattle Public Schools.

For the 2019 recommendations, they were crafted with the CAB's unanimous agreement that the ordinance's description of the CAB's role calls for more input than was provided in 2018. 2018 was more of a limited opportunity for input, but that was a necessary product of the process.

Much of the programming decisions for 2018 were made in 2017 as part of the city's regular budget process, and that was done before the CAB was actually formed.

So the 2019 recommendations should apply to all of the 2019 revenues, excluding the set-asides for the administrative evaluation and one-time investments for the first five years of revenue collections.

We really appreciated the city's work in developing the 2018 budget.

We found it informative but not determinative for 2019. We decided to stick with our 2018 funding priorities and then looked at all the 2018 funded activities to see how they fit within that framework.

Can I ask a quick question about this?

So the way that I read this chart, and by the way, holy moly, I mean, just in terms of the amount of person power that it took to get to this level of detail, a consensus-based approach in priority order, I don't want to lose sight of the mountain of work that that must have been.

Thank you.

That notwithstanding, the way that I read this chart is that the, Projects that the council had determined for funding before the CAB came along officially are reflected in this chart in the bold categories, i.e., you took into consideration the projects that we had prioritized as part of our 2017 budgeting process for 2018 and folded that into 2019's recommendations from the CAB and then rank order prioritized those based on what the CAB felt would be the best use of resources.

Do I have that right?

Absolutely, that's correct.

And also I would say that what went into our decisions about prioritization, what programs might be more impactful than others, it was using the criteria that the CAB had agreed upon with input from evaluations and other research into the effectiveness of those activities.

So in this instance, we separated out the work that we've been doing on FreshBooks from FreshBooks To Go, and you guys kept that separated out.

So you thought about that as two totally different programs, even though they're linked, but not necessarily the same.

I think that's very interesting.

Correct.

I think we particularly saw the value of the Fresh Bucks in terms of helping to address the food gap by helping to make food more affordable.

And Fresh Bucks and Fresh Bucks to Go are fairly separate.

They have similar aims, but Fresh Bucks to Go, as you'll actually hear about in some program highlights, is managed by HSD and implemented in preschool programs.

So it's a little bit different than Fresh Bucks.

So you'll notice the difference between these recommendations and for 2018, despite looking similar, is that we explicitly did not assume that the percentages, that our recommended percentages needed to be the same as the previous year.

We used a facilitated discussion of what adjustments needed to be made to percentages, again, with the understanding that all the 2019 revenue collected will, that those percentages apply to all the collected revenues during 2019. One other quick note I wanted to mention with both regards to 2018 and 2019, the CAB included in our recommendation letter that 100% of the funding be going to communities that are most impacted, those targeted communities that Lika was mentioning from our research process.

What we also thought it was important to note because there's been a widely publicized news that revenues collected in 2018 are anticipated to exceed the estimated 14.8 million on which the 2018 budget was based.

Specifically, news reports have been announcing that the city has collected $10 million in just the first six months of 2018. We wanted to point out that this is not actually extra funds.

Instead, it reflects that the city was wise in using a very conservative model to estimate revenues.

That was done so as to not earmark more than what might actually be collected.

which is especially important when we're funding programs and services that are providing critically needed healthy food and early education access.

So if you look at this revenue calculator from the Red Center in New Jersey, the estimate for Seattle is that it will actually be $25 million.

But when you take into account noncompliance and variance across all jurisdictions, it's a more accurate estimate that Seattle's 2018 SBT revenues is between $21 to $22 million.

And we wanted to reiterate that the CAS recommendation is to spend any additional 2018 funds in accordance with the percentages and activities recommended for the reserve 2018 funds.

And our 2019 recommendations apply to the entire revenue package.

Now I'm going to turn it back to Lika to go over our RFP recommendations.

Thank you.

So as part of the different letters that we have submitted, one of them was specifically in regards to the RFP process because while we acknowledge that what is funded and what the priority areas is extremely important, But how that money is distributed out to the community can equally be effective in how we address racial equity.

And so it's been pointed out that sometimes these processes can actually reinforce and perpetuate racial inequities.

And so we specifically thought it would be important to outline what we wanted to see in that RFP process.

So the letter outlines a couple different areas, including size and scale, and also the duration of the community grants.

And again, I want to point out that many of these recommendations we also got directly from the community.

So for example, duration is a minimum of two years, because we've definitely heard that one-year grants don't allow enough time to really get settled, do the work, and feel like you've done it effectively.

And in fact, for new grantees or for small organizations, we've recommended a two and a half year grant, where six months would be allotted specifically for capacity building, because we heard that over and over and over again in the community, that capacity building was one of the most important things for them to feel effective in making impacts in their community.

We have different guiding principles for designing the RFP process as well as things like the application materials and that process specifically making it accessible and something that can be doable for communities where English is a second language.

And we outline what our role as the CAB members would be in the selection process and priority applicants.

So, for example, organizations that are led and run by communities of color, again, those or the focal communities that I mentioned earlier.

And then there's a whole outline of selection criteria that we've outlined that looks at things like equity and eligibility, the different impacts that we would like to see.

And then the learning and evaluation kind of goes back to that last line item in the budget that Christina was referring to.

Again, we heard from a lot of organizations saying that evaluation of their specific programs, excuse me, was often a place where they didn't feel as skilled but didn't want other people outside of the organization to determine what was a successful program and how to collect and create that evaluation process.

So that's something that we wanna be real explicit about in being intentional to create more equity through that process rather than it sometimes inevitably makes it harder and creates more disparities.

So that is our RFPs recommendations.

And so we wanted to close out with a couple of quick highlights about some of the great work that the SBT funds are already doing.

We wanted to start off with highlighting FreshBucks.

FreshBucks, as you know, helps make healthy food more affordable to low income Seattle residents.

It provides cash value vouchers to help eligible customers supplement their purchases of fruits and vegetables.

FreshBucks can be used to buy qualifying fruits and vegetables at participating farmers markets and neighborhood brochures.

But this program has historically been only available to those who use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also called SNAP or food stamps colloquially.

With new support from the SBT, Freshbucks will be expanding eligibility for the program to include people who are in the food security gap.

This means people who are not eligible for SNAP but still struggle to afford healthy food.

And that can include residents who aren't eligible because they earn too much to qualify yet still can't make basic needs meet at the end of the day.

Residents who due to eligibility restrictions on immigration still be able to participate in this.

And residents who might just not be participating because of the stigma that's attached to it or feel that it's too much of a burden to go through the paperwork for filing for it.

So the CAT's recommendations is to affirm OSCE's eligibility expansion efforts.

We also want to make FreshBooks accessible in more year-round retail settings with a balance between major grocery stores and supermarkets, ethnically owned neighborhood stores and produce markets.

And we also want to expand the Freshbox Rx program by partnering with additional community-based organizations and community-based health clinics to serve vulnerable residents who are experiencing food and nutrition insecurity or living with nutrition-related chronic diseases of obesity and diabetes.

We also, with the emphasis on community, would like to see FreshBooks programming tailored to reach communities of color, immigrants, refugees, those target populations that Lika mentioned before, and that to contract with community-based organizations in order to really deliver information about the program in a culturally and linguistically responsive way.

Fresh Bucks to Go delivers local fruits and vegetables to preschool programs serving low-income families.

And in 2018, support from the SBT allowed the program to move from pilot to full implementation.

It expanded to year-round programming.

It will reach approximately 1,400 children ages 2 to 6, which is doubling its reach from the previous year.

And it will increase the number of sites, adding more preschools and more community-based locations, specifically family resource centers, community centers, and meal programs.

The farm to table program.

provides food stipends and nutrition education to children in child care and community-based programs.

This program hinges on strong community partnerships and is guided by food justice principles and a desire to support strong local food systems while increasing access to healthy food for all and reducing health disparities among Seattle's youth and children.

And thanks to SBT funds, the program will reach 2,850 children in 2018, which is 1,050 more children than the previous year.

The program is also expanding to new Seattle preschool programs and was able to take other programs off the wait list.

With birth to three services, SBT Revenues are providing opportunities for the Department of Education and Early Learning and its planning partners to expand existing services and program and offer new services.

And those new services include coaching and professional development for child care providers who care for babies and very young children from birth to three.

Also, it's allowing the city to partner with King County to develop a new developmental bridge program that will work with early intervention service providers to reach and serve infants and toddlers and their families who have concerns about developmental delays or disabilities, but who are not currently found to be eligible for early intervention services.

The program is in the development process this fall and policies will be finalized after the city and county engage in a racial equity toolkit process.

We wanted to close with acknowledging the hard work of our fellow SBT advisory board members.

As you can see, the CAB consists of a broad and diverse range of subject matter experts, stakeholder representatives, and community leaders who are committed to advancing health equity, healthy food access, and child well-being.

And we wanted to thank you for giving us this time.

Just kind of second what my colleague said.

It's an amazing body of work that you all have done in a relatively short period of time.

So impressed with both the whole presentation, the outreach work you've all done.

I mean, just the commitment of all the individuals on the board and the communities you all represent.

And then the work done to outreach more broadly within the community and looking across the country where we learn from other folks is just really impressive.

And I can just tell you, as a policymaker, I feel so lucky to have the set of recommendations that is so kind of well-researched and well-thought out with so much good input.

to really guide us on this next phase.

And then looking at, you know, hearing the stories and seeing the photos and the numbers of who's already being served by some of these programs, it's just, it's amazing.

You know, right now it's, I know it's tough to survive in a city like Seattle that's constantly getting more expensive.

And we have a long ways to go for sure.

But it's great to see a series of programs that have We've had lots of success already in them, and if only we had more resources, we could reach more people, and now we have a vehicle to get some more resources, which is great.

So this is outstanding, and it's gonna be really important.

We have a city budget process that's gonna start in a little over two weeks.

We'll be getting the budget from the mayor's office, and I appreciate that you all have done this with advance notice recommendations can help inform the mayor's budget.

And then, of course, once it comes to city council, we're going to spend, you know, a month and a half, two months in our whole legislative process in evaluating that.

And so this is a great guideline, and I'm going to be really interested in hearing your feedback when you see that budget and, you know, things we can do to improve upon great work that's already going on, so.

Councilmember any other just two brief statements if if I may you know the first of which is you know I'm constantly impressed by folks that we work with all the time, but I don't think I've ever been in a 15-minute discussion where I learned more and felt more confident about the way we spent our city dollars than the last 15 minutes.

So kudos all the way around.

Secondly, you know, as somebody who used to run a nonprofit that was a pretty shoestring budget and spent a lot of time thinking about how you could fund capacity building, The commitment of the board to recognize that work and how hard it is to try to find the right people who can be authentic community voices to expand things like the Fresh Bucks program to communities that are just outside the SNAP eligibility, but definitely have food insecurity, I think is a critical recognition of how important it is for us to have partnerships with the nonprofit community to really go out there and do a lot of the hard work that Many folks may think government can do, but we aren't always a trusted voice within community in the ways that nonprofits are.

So, that is not lost on me that you're dedicating 3% of your revenues in 2019 towards those expenditures.

And some may question the value of that, but not me.

And I think that that's some of the best money that we can spend in order to really make sure that our dollars are getting the best bang for our buck out the door.

So, nice work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's great.

Well, thanks again, and look forward to what's next.

And this work will inform the next agenda item.

We're going to hear back from the Department on food access, too.

And I know this work is helping with that program, too.

So thanks so much, and we'll talk soon.

Thank you.

Susie, do you want to read agenda item 7 in and I'll invite presenters forward for that?

Agenda item 7, food access pilot statement of legislative intent response.

Thank you.

We will start with introductions.

Hi, I'm Naomi Dorner with the Seattle Department of Transportation.

I manage the transportation equity program.

And I'm Sharon Lerman with the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

I manage our food policy and programs.

I know it's going to be hard to follow a presentation.

That presentation, which Councilmember Johnson, I think appropriately said, was the most informative 15 minutes he's had at a committee meeting.

But let's see how you do.

It's a high bar.

Well, so we are here to report back on the food access slide that asked OSC and SDOT to identify how it would implement a transportation voucher pilot program to provide residents living in low-income housing located in food deserts.

with free rideshare vouchers to get to and from locations providing healthy food options, like grocery stores accepting Fresh Bucks and farmers markets, noting that a major barrier to accessing healthy food and participation in the Fresh Bucks program is a user's ability to get to and from grocery stores and farmers markets.

the direction we were given in the slide.

So I'm going to start with an overview of the city's food access framework, and then SDOT will provide an overview of the transportation equity program, and then we'll dive into the mapping and the analysis that we did for the slide.

Oh, so OSU's role in this work is both the food access programming that you heard about previously, including the Fresh Bucks program, and also coordinating food policy across city departments and developing the food action plan.

which has goals of increasing access to healthy food, supporting food production in the local economy, and preventing food waste.

So with these, today I'm going to focus on access to healthy food, which is a critical factor, as we know, and as the members of the CAB so eloquently really described the issues that address communities of color and low-income communities particularly.

in a critical issue in our city where 8% of households reported food insecurity in 2010, and that number rose to 14% in 2013. We don't have more recent citywide data, but a Best Starts for Kids survey found that 30% of King County kids lived in families that had found it difficult to afford healthy food at least once since their child was born, which is a huge number.

So I'm going to describe our framework, which is based on research and community input that indicate that most people consider three factors when they decide where to shop for food.

They consider, can I afford it?

Do they have what I want?

And how easy is it to get there?

And the first one really takes into account household income, the price of food, and other household financial circumstances.

So each household determines what constitutes affordable differently.

But we know that many, many households with limited resources to travel further to get to a store with lower prices.

We also know that for many households with limited incomes, affordability is their most pressing concern.

And we've heard that from community reports from Got Green, a project the Women's Commission did in partnership with your office, Council Member O'Brien, a couple years ago, and our own community outreach.

Second, people shop at stores that have what they want.

So we can talk about this as preference or selection.

And that includes whether a store has culturally specific foods that the household wants.

And then these both intersect with the last factor of accessibility, which is the component of food access that the slide really focused on.

And this includes how close the store is located to home, to work, or other daily commute patterns, like child care pickups, as we heard about with the Fresh Bucks to Go program.

This includes what transportation options are available, and also the idea of delivery that could remove the barrier of distance.

So knowing that households consider all three of these factors, one of the key ways this framework influenced our analysis of the slide is knowing that many households, including low-income households, travel past the closest store to their house to shop for groceries because of price and selection criteria.

So we wanted to look beyond.

Well, I'll get into this when we talk about the mapping, but that we wanted to go a little bit deeper than the food desert analysis in looking at food access, because it really doesn't take that into account.

So before I turn it over to Naomi, you guys actually got a taste of some of this in the last presentation, but I wanted to just note some of the food access programs that the city has that aim to address some of these barriers.

So Fresh Bucks and Fresh Bucks RX, which provide a match or cash value vouchers for fruits and vegetables.

Investments in food banks and meal programs, summer meals, and senior meals and produce delivery, many of which are administered by the Human Services Department, address the barrier of affordability.

And within many of these programs, the implementing departments, OSC and HSD primarily, are really working to improve accessibility and selection within those programs.

So for example, with Freshbox, we're working to expand the number of retail locations that are offering the service to make it easier for people to get there and increase the types of selections available.

Some strategies listed here aim to increase the availability of culturally relevant foods in the selection criteria.

And in terms of accessibility, you also heard a little bit about Fresh Bucks to Go, administered by HSD, which provides deliveries of fresh fruits and vegetables to child care and preschool programs and other sites that are convenient for low-income people.

Let's see.

I think I'm going to stop there and turn it over to Naomi to talk a little bit about the Transportation Equity Program.

Great, and before we get into the program itself, I'll just provide a little bit of the overview of just transportation equity and as SDOT and the city continue to grow, how we're addressing this.

So as the previous presenters indicated, we are the fastest growing large city in the U.S. and our growth has presented a number of opportunities, but it also presents a great number of challenges for communities, particularly low-income communities of color, and especially with regards to mobility and affordability in the city.

And so the response from our voters, from city council, from the city, and the Department of Transportation, as well as our partners and stakeholders, has been to make investments in transportation.

And the investments that we've made specifically with Seattle Transportation Benefits District funds in the bus service, while that has been, has really paid dividends in terms of I mean, we've seen ridership increase while other cities are declining in ridership.

We also know that there needs to be investment in people accessing the transportation investments that we're making.

And so in addition to the infrastructure as well as the service investments, we are also making investments in people so that they can access the services.

So that leads us to the transportation equity plan.

program which was established in 2017 with the overarching goals of creating safe, accessible, affordable, and environmentally sustainable options.

And we're doing this in three ways.

The first way, which is what I'll pretty much discuss today, has been through various programs creating access to low-income transit.

And we are also doing more work.

We've expanded our capacity recently.

We have our coordinator with us today, Anya Pintak, in the back.

But she recently joined us.

And so we're able to do a little bit more policy advisement throughout the department beyond just affordability in terms of transportation equity.

engagement, we do a lot of engagement in the work around affordability when we're talking with and working with communities.

But we are going to be expanding that engagement going forward.

So having a community-based group, and this is all outlined within Resolution 31773, which will We will have a group that will help us as we move forward in 2018 and 2019 with both our program as well as the transportation equity goals.

But in terms of the affordability programming, so the work that we are currently doing and have been doing to date that specifically benefit food access are outlined in the presentation and in the report, and those are the OrcaLift partnerships.

So through the Seattle Transportation Benefits District funds, we are currently working with the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, King County Metro, and Public Health of Seattle King County to deliver the preloaded OrcaLift cards that we have purchased.

to community-based organizations and communities themselves.

And we've been doing a lot of work with them.

They do the income qualification, that's Seattle King County Public Health.

We also provide transit vouchers, so TransBend transit vouchers to specifically folks who are seniors.

So there are a lot of seniors who are experiencing food insecurity, housing insecurity, and are also in need of mobility service or assistance.

So we've been delivering programs in a variety of ways, one of which that I'd like to highlight is we've been working closely with D.O.N. and D.O.N. identified the human, I'm sorry, HSD, so the Human Center, sorry, the Human Service Department, thank you, Human Service Department, and they have a program called Community Connectors, which are specifically a group of people who are hired and funded through a grant working at food banks.

So we have leveraged that and been able to provide at a variety of the food banks, the enrollment opportunities, which has been really popular.

And we hope to continue to do that, although we know that some of their funding is for 2019. We aren't sure.

But that's been successful.

We also have been working with a variety of community-based organizations identified, again, in partnership with Seattle Department of Neighborhoods.

And so we have four organizations we've been working with, Entre Hermanos, Southwest Youth Family Services, POCAN, which is People Against AIDS and Literacy Source, so specifically with groups that are working directly with community members who are low income, communities of color, refugee immigrants, seniors.

And so we work with them, provide some education and training to staff, and then also work to set up if they want enrollment opportunities and also other ways of providing education about mobility options.

And then finally, we also have a car tab rebate.

That is just, you know, through the Human Service Department, Department of Human Services, we've been working with them and they, provide a rebate of $20.

And so for people who drive, sometimes that is a way to get to access.

The other thing I want to know is that there are other ways in which that are not specifically SDOT or transportation equity related, but we wanted to highlight.

So there's the regional reduced fare permit.

We know that that is a really popular program and it's specifically for seniors.

and also people with disability.

So that's another option.

And then we know that a number of nonprofit providers are providing transit and mobility options and services, getting people to and from not only doctor's appointments, but sometimes locations such as healthy food locations.

And then we also know that Some people are utilizing some of the tech-enabled transportation options, so new mobility.

We understand there are some barriers associated with that as well, but it is increasingly an option that we see people using.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Sharon to talk about just how we arrived to our analysis in the composite.

All right.

The SLI asked us to look at transportation issues that were facing people living in affordable housing in food deserts.

And so we started with the USDA's Food Desert Framework, which was developed in 2008. But we determined that the definition in that framework didn't adequately represent the issues that the SLI wanted to address for a couple of reasons.

First, that the food desert definition only looks at census tract level poverty.

And it has the potential to hide low-income households that live in neighborhoods that have a higher income at the census tract level but have low-income people living there.

And those households may struggle to access food as much or even more than households that are in lower-income tract because of tracts.

potentially because of the types of stores that locate there that might be more expensive stores, or because they may be more car-dependent neighborhoods in general.

As mentioned earlier, many people also don't shop at the store closest to their home.

So the other thing, in the reverse direction, the USDA definition also may...

People may look on it like they have good access to a store, but it may be that they actually are close to a store that has food that they can't afford.

So it masks that selection and affordability piece that drives accessibility to people.

So for this reason, we did our own mapping.

And we focused our mapping on those populations that might be hidden by the food desert definition.

And we included in our mapping our definition of good access, being able to reach multiple food shopping destinations.

We don't have any way to really know which stores, which households would like to shop at.

But what we did is we said, to really have good access, we think that people need to have be within transit walking or biking distance of several stores as a proxy for having a store that meets their price and selection needs.

So in the map you see here, Each circle represents a rent and income restricted affordable housing location with 15 or more units.

So we really zoomed in on affordable housing locations rather than looking at census tract level poverty, which I think ideally one would look at both of those things, but for this we really focused on the affordable housing locations because of the intent of the slide.

For each of these housing locations, we looked at access to healthy food locations via the Frequent Transit Network, the All Ages and Abilities Bike Network, and the Quarter Mile Sidewalk Network.

and then developed a composite transportation index showing access to healthy food from each of those locations.

So the larger dark blue circles that stand out represent affordable housing locations that can't access any healthy food locations via those transportation networks.

Yellow circles represent locations that can access between one to three healthy food retailers via one of those modes, and smaller red circles represent locations with good access to healthy food, so they can access four or more locations via those three modal networks.

Looking at the map, you can see that there are locations where transportation to food access may be difficult if folks want to use transit or biking or walking or don't have access to a vehicle.

We don't have car ownership information specifically at this level, but I will note that one of the things that one also considers in the food access space is that many people do want to use a car to get to grocery shopping because you're carrying groceries.

It's kind of a lot to take on a bike, or there's a limitation to how much you can carry by bike or walking.

a little bit trickier.

So that's another just consideration.

But this map in general informed, we looked at this and we took it to really dig into the question that the slide asked us to around whether rideshare vouchers could be an option.

And I will turn it back over to Naomi.

Great, yeah, so we looked at one option specifically in terms of the feasibility, and that was the ride share voucher.

And essentially what we did was we looked at for an eight-month pilot that would include outreach, program administration, and evaluation, and a subsidy to reduce the average transportation network company trip, so a TNC trip, would be comparable to the bus fare twice a week.

So essentially what are all in cost for the 105 housing units, and that was specific to the Magnuson Park, the

Yeah, sorry, Butler Park location.

We arrived at a cost of $283,700, which is roughly $47.54 per trip.

And that is assuming a 75% voucher redemption, so people redeeming at that percentage.

So that is what we ended up assessing this option at.

And then we, you know, considered the benefits as well as some of the issues that would be related.

Benefits included, you know, it's convenient and it also is responsive to the preference that people had.

Sharon mentioned, you know, there is a real desire to have choice in how you want to select your food and also where you want to go and when you want to go.

And so that flexibility is offered by this option.

The other thing is in terms of The convenience, again, it allows for people to have reliable transportation that they can use, especially if they're going to have a high volume of groceries that they're picking up for the week, like any one of us that would go grocery shopping.

So that is another benefit.

But there are also other considerations.

And, you know, in terms of some of the equity challenges or issues that are related to this particular option, we know that technology remains a barrier for a number of low-income community members.

And we also know that there's increased wait times often associated where there isn't dense housing.

So that's another issue, especially if you're talking about an area that is considered like a transit desert.

The other thing is in terms of...

bank accounts, you know, whatever, you know, bank accounts that are associated with having to use this tech-enabled option, that is another technical technology barrier that we know that is pervasive in the world.

outreach that we've done, but then, and not associated with this, but in general.

And then we also know that cultural barriers in terms of maybe immigrant and refugee or just communities of color, so the distrust of authority, discomfort with shared mobility systems as a whole, there are just some additional cultural barriers to consider.

And then in terms of some of the accessibility and reliability challenges, we know that, again, the vehicle time or the wait times also tend to yield higher cancellation rates.

The availability of drivers is also price sensitive.

So, you know, depending on the time of day, it might cost a whole lot more than it would at other times of day.

And there's also the sort of like technical challenge of administering this kind of program.

So there's voucher rebate programs, as we know, can be really expensive from an enrollment perspective.

There's a lot of education, again, around some of the barriers that exist.

And also there's evaluation and how you manage reimbursements.

There's also, so that means the administrative costs are high.

And there's no mechanism, per se, that we would be able to utilize or have that would ensure that people would use this particular voucher to access healthy food from an evaluation standpoint.

So that said, it could potentially provide options and opportunity to do other things, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there isn't necessarily from an evaluation metric for the food access piece a way to do that.

And so, you know, and then I guess I've already mentioned the cost.

It is a really high cost per trip.

So, you know, we think that there are other alternatives that could potentially be And in terms of the cost itself, given how high it is, it seems that there could be other more effective or cost-efficient ways to go about addressing food access, including some of the options that were presented in the previous presentation.

And I would say that some of the examples, I don't know if that's, oh, thank you.

In terms of some of the other alternatives that we began to explore, we didn't obviously do full feasibility studies for all of these, but, you know, I mean, something to the effect of a multiple or multi-transportation voucher, something that people could use across.

options.

There's also microtransit, so just short route options that are on demand.

That could potentially be another option.

We know that there are some peer-to-peer options, so meaning if it's more like a matching, so if people are going to or have a ride that they can, you know, I guess, go in on with a community member and it's trusted, that could be another option and something to subsidize.

There's also direct delivery, so that's actually having food delivered to people, so that is, you know, addressing both the choice and the preference and then getting the food into the community.

And then there's food hubs, and this has been something that we just did a very cursory level, and we know that the CAB has done more work on this.

But food hubs are just a way to bring food to a centralized location within a community.

It does have a transportation aspect, but it's really centered on bringing the food into the neighborhood.

There are a couple of good examples.

We know that Baltimore, they have a virtual market, and that is a type of food hub.

And then we also know that there's some good local examples.

So OSC and HSD are kind of already working on this.

Yeah, the...

Through the Fresh Bucks to Go program, although it's limited to fruits and vegetables right now, so it's not the same as a full grocery delivery service.

And then, you know, last but not least, there's just continuing to address the need for service, transit service, so investing in service and route expansion.

So those are some of the alternative strategies that could be explored.

But we, I think we'll just end by saying the recommendation that we have in terms of whichever strategy is selected is that it really begins with community outreach and engagement to ensure that the selected pilot is the pilot that the community at large feels is going to address the food access issues that they're experiencing.

So a lot of this is where that got, a lot of those conversations is where this began, Naomi.

On behalf of some constituents, Council Member O'Brien supported, as did Council Member Juarez, my concept of the food share, ride share, voucher program.

And I agree with your assessment that the conclusion is that maybe this isn't the best way for us to spend our resources.

But the community had requested in and around Magnuson Park that one of the challenges that they have is that the closest available grocery store to them is a 7-Eleven, and then the next closest available grocery store to them is a Metropolitan Market.

which I took my kids to for the first time about a month ago, and they were like, is this a museum?

Do we buy things here?

It was an incredible experience.

And they're used to shopping at pretty nice grocery stores.

And so, you know, we had asked for the department to take a look at this as an option because getting folks, as you mentioned, in a car to a Safeway is probably going to be a lot easier for them to get groceries and then get them home take in the 65 or other bus routes that serve the neighborhood.

The thing that struck me a little bit about the evaluation that SDOT did on this project is just that how much of the dollars were actually going towards the project set up and evaluation versus actually out to community.

So I agree with you, 47 bucks a ride is a heck of a lot of money.

I would also point out that of those $47 a ride, 80% of it was going to go to things that were administrative, and $9 or so of that was going to actually go towards the ride itself.

So we're going to spend $285,000 on the pilot program, but we're only going to spend $55,000 of that on the actual rides themselves.

So we're going to spend a lot of money evaluating it, setting it up, hiring the people to do the work.

And I'm not saying that those aren't things that we should do, because I think that they are.

That was 80% of the project evaluation and 20% was actually the rides itself.

So we have had subsequently to the slide response a couple of community meetings Councilmember Bryan staff attended Councilmember Juarez and I.

facilitated with a lot of other folks, food banks, farmers markets, folks representing grocery stores.

The options that you outlined as alternative strategies came up, as you know, in some of those conversations, as did other things like expanding farmers markets to neighborhoods that don't exist today.

That's expensive and going to need subsidies.

Expanding food banks, expensive, going to need subsidies.

So, direct service models also interesting, going to need subsidies.

So, I think this is a great project for us to continue to talk about as part of our budget process and looking forward to seeing how many additional concepts we can either try to fund through a pilot through the budget process or maybe we pick one and say we're going to go all in on one idea.

in and around one particular food desert in one particular district and to see how that goes.

But generally, I think that this was a good place to start.

It was an interesting concept, clearly not the right pathway for right now, but I think it started a really good conversation about food access, and I'm hopeful that it's gonna germinate some additional ideas through the budget process this fall.

Yeah, I agree, Council Member.

And I really appreciate your collective work on this and helping us think through this, the map, Images are always really fascinating for me to look at.

But I really appreciate the framework you used in recognizing that it's often a little more complex than what we're talking about.

And even with that, the data is somewhat limited.

But things stand out.

Actually, it reinforces something that we know.

The Delridge corridor is a place where there's obviously a lot of affordable housing options that pop up and a lot of access problems to food.

And so, you know, perhaps, and it's, you know, we talk about that as our big food desert in the city.

And even with the kind of new framework, it still shows up that way.

And I think it'd be, I'd be really intrigued at some work with community members there to highlight something to pilot.

And there's, unfortunately, a concentration of problems there, but that can make a pilot maybe more cost effective to addressing more people with an investment than you may in other places.

And I appreciate a lot of the complexities you highlighted in teasing this out.

And I think, Naomi, you said at the end, the more transportation options we can give people, that helps with a lot of things.

And so, you know, that work will obviously continue to figure in how we make sure, you know, continue to move towards a city where everyone lives within, you know, walking distance of frequent reliable transit and safe sidewalks and safe bike lanes.

And at the same time, it's going to take a while to get there.

And that's just a piece of it.

And you look at a neighborhood like Delridge where there's, you know, even when we put, you know, if we put light rail right up that corridor, there's still not, great food options close by for folks that meet their needs and so I am interested council member to work with you on trying to identify pilots I appreciate your work on this and be great to have some kind of next level thinking as we get into the budget to the best we can do that to think about what might be a good next step to try to address this.

And I think it's also appropriate to have the Sugar Beverage Tax Citizens Advisory Board be thinking about that too.

I think they have a lot of expertise there too and may be able to find some synergy, so.

Can I add one thing?

Of course.

I will say that we didn't talk about this in the slide response, but we are internally within our programming also looking at ways, particularly in Delridge, that we might be able to address that through current programming.

So, for example, we're working with our community partners to look at, confusingly, OSC and HSD both offer fresh bucks to go in different types of locations, so we're working with our partners to identify whether there are some locations in the Delridge Corridor that might be able to offer a community drop site for Fresh Bucks to Go that wouldn't be restricted to preschool families or people who are already enrolled, but that would be available to all community members.

Again, the Fresh Bucks to Go isn't a full grocery delivery.

it's a place to start.

So it's something that we're definitely attuned to and thinking about even within our current scope of work, how can we better address some of the food access challenge areas that came up here.

And I think there's more ideas like that.

I think also we'll be starting to update the food action plan later this year.

So I think we'll be hearing a lot more from community and look forward to digging in on this issue with folks in the community as we do that outreach as well.

And will that update process likely take a year or so?

Is that the thinking on that?

We don't have a final timeline yet, but that would be my guess or my estimate.

And Naomi, from the transportation side of this, I really appreciate the work your team is doing, looking at equity within the department, and look forward to other ideas and solutions that we have from the transportation angle, too.

So thanks for your participation in this.

Yeah, exactly.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, thank you all.

We'll move on to the next agenda item.

Susie, would you mind reading agenda item number eight in?

Council Bill 119329, an ordinance relating to employment in Seattle requiring certain employers to offer employees the opportunity to use pre-tax earnings to purchase commuter benefits other than parking in accordance with federal law.

Hello, let's start with introductions Calvin Chow with council central staff location farm with councilmember Brian's office Welcome both of you.

Thanks for being here I'll just say some opening remarks.

We've I'm not sure I've counted the whole number of these I don't know if either of you know, but it's probably the third or fourth conversation We've had about pretext benefits at the committee over going back probably about a year now For folks that are just tuning in in last year's budget we put a couple hundred thousand dollars in the budget to fund outreach work to businesses, specifically small businesses, businesses with fewer than 100 employees who are not part of a state requirement to do commuter production work.

But to help start educating them on some federal tax benefits about this, we're considering legislation, which we can talk about in a minute.

Today, we're having just another discussion about this to update folks of where the legislation is.

This will be back in committee in a little under two weeks.

And we're still doing some outreach work, really trying to work closely with small business owners and organizations that work with small businesses to, we believe this is a win-win, certainly a really big win for employees at smaller businesses that currently rely on transit that are buying those transit passes on their own and cannot access the federal tax deduction without coordination from their employer, but also wins for employers in both the sense that they can recruit and retain employees by offering this benefit, And it's a win for them because there's actually a tax savings from the employer side, too.

But we want to make sure we can hear that from businesses saying that we think this is a win, too.

So we'll be doing more work in the next week or two.

But my goal would be to have legislation we could actually vote on and a committee in a couple weeks.

So with that, I want to turn it over to you all to jump in on the presentation.

Great.

So like Council Member O'Brien said, we will be going over the outreach phase of this legislative process.

But just as a refresher, community benefits are qualified transportation benefits that may be excluded from gross income subject to federal taxes for both the employer and employee.

And so as another refresher, the legislative proposal is to require specific types of businesses to provide notification of these affirmation benefits, such as allowing employees to allocate up to $255 per month for transit expenses.

So currently we're in September.

This is a timeline that was taken from the previous presentation back in August.

And so we are, as you can see, doing business outreach.

Our office is currently doing that.

And so the outreach that we have done includes meeting with Chinatown International District Chamber, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and Downtown Seattle Association.

Right now we are doing, right now we did outreach to the Mayor's Small Business Advisory Council.

They have 27 members and of those members, 17 responded during this past month.

So I'll be going over some of those results, but just generally 10 respondents didn't have a strong opinion of negative or positive impact.

Three respondents cited a negative impact and one respondent mentioned a positive impact.

So a part of this survey were perceived benefits that included healthier communities, happier employees, businesses wanting to provide holistic benefits, and improves employees' abilities to get to work.

So some common concerns from this survey included administrative burden compounding with other regulations.

So some folks mentioned the state paid family and medical leave.

Another concern is distressing the city's ability to conduct sufficient outreach and provide support.

Other concerns include unfair penalization of businesses that do not comply.

and potential to give large employers an advantage in hiring over the smaller employers.

Some suggestions that are kind of related to the concerns as well include creating incentives to participate rather than mandatory compliance, limit to businesses with over 50 employees, prioritize and fund technical and administrative assistance to businesses, engage a payroll service to weigh in on administrative expense to their small business clients, and allow more time for implementation.

And that is the conclusion of that survey and the small business outreach for now.

Okay, so do you mind going back two slides to common concerns because I want to just kind of highlight for those following this the One, I want to thank the members of the Small Business Advisory Council for participating in this, because their feedback is really helpful.

And it's really important that as we're designing this, that we can construct a program that actually works well for them, not just the employees that would benefit from the discount, but also for the employers.

And so I had a chance to sit down with a couple members of this and talk through this this week.

to the first point here about the administrative burden and compounding with other regulations.

We talked about, currently the legislation talks about one year lead time until it's implemented.

Well, it was July of next year, so it was a year when we were talking about this, a committee meeting ago, but a little less than a year.

And then the first year, will it be implemented It's a complaint-driven process for folks that are not in compliance.

There wouldn't be any enforcement other than just continued education.

So there'd really be two years to get up to and running.

Obviously, we hope people can implement this before it's even in place because it's a great benefit.

But we're talking about playing with a timeline and offering a little more flexibility.

We've been working closely, as I mentioned, with Commute Seattle as the nonprofit that's doing the business outreach.

They're pretty well known amongst the larger businesses, especially those downtown, just because they've been around town for a long time and the larger businesses have been required to do commute trip reduction.

But there's ongoing work to get out and make sure small businesses are aware of it.

The great thing is this is a free resource of folks that really understand business operations, they also understand and have connections with payroll operators.

They've created various templates.

They have the capacity to come and look at a business and make suggestions about what program may work best for that.

They also work closely with transit agencies, so they know what transit options are available.

And so we want to do a little more work to make sure that folks are aware of Commute Seattle, and that'll be ongoing work, obviously, for a couple of years.

We're continuing to look at some of the other concerns.

You know, one of the things about large employers, sensitive to the concerns folks raise, again, most large employers already provide this benefit and a lot of small employers struggle to compete because they don't provide it.

And this is a way that folks can provide at least some sort of transit benefit to their employees and help with their recruitment and retention too.

So, Council Member, I'm having some conversations with some of the small business leaders.

And I'm thinking of some kind of tweaks to the legislation.

And so, depending on how those conversations go, in a week and a half, we may have some amendments that we'll discuss at that point, hopefully ready to move forward and with this phase, but obviously ongoing work to do outreach work with that.

Any questions at this point?

I mean, just generally, I think, you know, I'm sensitive to the concept of an over-regulatory environment, but I think given the, a minimum financial, you know, wash of this program.

And in some cases, the financial benefit associated with it seems to me like a really good reason for businesses to adopt.

I wondered if you or Lakeisha might talk a little bit about the suggestion to focus on businesses at over 50 employees.

We don't have, to the best of my knowledge, any regulatory environment that starts at 50, either at the local or at the state level.

Was that just sort of an arbitrary number that was chosen by a respondent or was there some rationale associated with that?

I think it was a suggestion that came from businesses.

I don't know where the suggestion particularly came from.

I know that in the survey of other jurisdictions that have done this, the Bay Area, the air quality group that has a similar program in the Bay Area has a 50 employee limit.

All the other local jurisdictions, San Francisco, New York City, Washington DC have a 20. So that may be part of the equation.

Staff did look into what the employment figures looked like and it looks like Basically, employees with 20 or more employees covers roughly 83% of the jobs that are out there.

And employment of 50 or more covers roughly 71, 72%.

So that's sort of the delta, if you will.

Yeah, I think the numbers, as I understand it, is about 65,000 jobs.

If we moved up to 50, there'd be 65,000 employees that would not have kind of a regulated access to this benefit.

So one of the concepts we talked about was maybe a phase in and, you know, start with the slightly larger employers and move down over time.

But I'm waiting to get some feedback from small businesses to see if that works.

You know, this, again, we really want this to work well for small businesses, which is why we're really grateful for the work Community Seattle's been doing on this.

But it's, you know, can be a really cost-effective way for us to deliver some transit benefits to employees.

You know, there's a subsidy, but that subsidy's coming largely from the federal government that's been out there, and other communities are taking advantage of it.

We think our communities should take advantage of it.

I want to show some flexibility in that, but also, you know, if there's a way for, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars in investment into the outreach work that Commute Seattle continues to do, that we can get tens of thousands of employees discounts on their bus passes, that seems like a really cost-effective way to help out some folks.

Yeah, and changing behaviors as well.

I mean, we're one of the few major cities in the country that's seeing an increase in transit ridership as opposed to other cities that are seeing a loss in transit ridership.

no small part that's because so many new folks are moving here.

And when you're moving somewhere new, it's the most likely you are to change up your commutes and think about something different.

And so because we require this kind of benefit for employers who employ 200 or more people, I love the idea of going down to what has been a similar threshold of other cities of our size at 20. But I think being sensitive to the implementation timeline and the administrative costs as well as the outreach makes a lot of sense.

So I look forward to hearing what continued conversations go on over the next 10 days before we come back and talk about it, yeah.

Yeah, thanks.

And I think, you know, a lot of the concerns I hear, you know, again, there's a lot of folks out there that see the benefits that I'm talking about.

When their concerns do arise, it's not so much what's in the legislation, but concerns about, so there's a regulatory agency, how are they going to treat me?

I point to New York City.

I think the statistics we had from there was, you know, obviously a much larger city than us.

And in the first 18 months where their program was implemented, They had eight complaints that triggered some sort of response.

There was no need to do any enforcement, because once they responded, businesses were able to comply once they were given the right tools.

But there's a fear that Seattle's different, and how are they going to respond to us?

And so trying to make some assurances and making sure that as we implement, we live up to the expectations that I'm hoping to set in this legislation.

And that may be some language in the legislation.

A lot of times, that's going to be just more, how do we handle it?

So, working closely with departments, SDOT and the Office of Labor Standards to be really clear on what those expectations are and how we respond.

So.

Yeah.

I think it'd be helpful to have OLS at the table for our next discussion so that they could talk about how they might respond in a regulatory environment too.

Great.

That's a good point.

I'll do that.

Okay.

Thank you both for being here.

I really appreciate it.

I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next agenda item, invite folks forward.

LaKeisha, switching roles.

Yes.

Resolution 31835, a resolution granting conceptual approval to instruct, maintain, and operate below-grade private utility lines under and across South Holgate Street, east of Occidental Avenue South, and west of Third Avenue South.

Briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Welcome, everyone.

Quick round of introductions, and then we'll jump in.

Amy Gray, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Good afternoon, Rob Eaton, Government Affairs and State Supported Business for Amtrak.

I'm going to change chairs, so do you want to change chairs and operate that?

Sure.

That'd be great.

So today we're here for a resolution for your consideration to provide conceptual approval for some utility lines for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, otherwise known as Amtrak.

We're informal here.

And we invited Rob here because we thought you might have some more questions about the broader project that these utility lines would serve.

And so he's here to address questions related to that.

Great.

So before you is a resolution for utility lines that would go underneath South Holgate Street at 187 South Holgate.

And they would separate the waste systems from the existing combined sewer, direct industrial waste generated by locomotive maintenance activities to an existing waste treatment plant, and provide power to idling trains during layovers that would reduce power consumption, fuel emissions, and diesel pollution.

And SDOT today is here recommending approval.

There's a very small map that shows locations of the lines in which each one is related to.

Rob could probably answer those better.

On the next page of the slide shows the location.

It's in the Soto neighborhood in the industrial area.

Amtrak's offices are right there as well.

There's a lot of things going on there.

We did confirm with our construction department that the construction of these utility lines will not impede traffic operations in that area.

We're going to be doing boring.

We'll do boring, yep.

Boring, so it will not require the closing of South Holgate Street.

Since there's a lot of other transportation projects going on in that area, we wanted to be cognizant of that.

Great, good to hear that.

Next slide.

So as you know, term permits are a two-part process with City Council.

The first part is the introduction of a resolution to provide conceptual approval, which is where we're at today.

If you adopt the resolution, we will be back in a few months to discuss with you and present the term permit ordinance that has all the conditions and obligations on the applicant.

to maintain the right-of-way in a safe manner and insurance requirements and fee and all those sorts of things.

Thank you.

It all seems great.

I'm curious what's triggering this investment now.

Is there some regulatory thing or is it just going to make it easier for operations?

Actually, it's East for operations Amtrak is actually investing 100 million dollars in our facility here in Seattle So you probably know we've done our maintenance of equipment building already, which actually services the state supported trains We have our new crew base and the administration building Our third part of this facility is the locomotive shop, which were actually under construction.

So right now we're operating in a 1920s Great northern locomotive shop, which is quite outdated So we have in this project is a 50 million dollar investment that will service our locomotives for information for Council is that we actually provide turnaround long-distance service for our two long-distance trains the Coast Starlight that goes to Los Angeles and the Empire Builder that goes to Chicago and We also operate the state-supported trains for WSDOT, so Jam Track Cascades, which they have purchased through ARRA funding eight new locomotives.

So we'll be servicing them there.

And we actually have a 25-year agreement with Sound Transit.

So we actually maintain their locomotives and their cars.

Sounder Trains?

Yeah, Sounder Trains.

So it's a really comprehensive facility.

So this new facility here will take care of all of our power needs for all the trains.

So, as Amy was saying, utility lines will be able to separate stormwater versus, and our sewer water.

So, that's a really good improvement there.

Providing shore power for our locomotives.

So, we'll plug them in.

So, we'll reduce idling by about 60 hours a week for the locomotives.

It's a really improvement.

So, you know, noise air quality.

Yeah, switch from, you know, carbon polluting diesel to, 100% carbon neutral electricity.

Exactly.

So, you know, that's that's what we're really looking forward to improving the facility and then of course using we already have a Industrial waste treatment plant on our facility.

So this will connect the southern portion of our yard where the locomotive shop is pumping it through to the force main up to our treatment plant north of the Of the whole gate all a good thing.

Yeah great, I'll remember any

You know, Colgate's pretty far away from where people catch the train, so it's good to know that this is really about the maintenance of the fleet and how we are going to electrify the maintenance yard makes a lot of sense to me.

I imagine that there's all sorts of uncertainty with funding when various lines, but is there ideas of expanding these stuff, or is it just to bring the existing fleet up?

So what we're doing at our Amtrak facility, this is all Amtrak general capital funds that we're investing here, but we're meeting the needs of the state's growth plan for the round trips between Seattle and Portland.

So we have already built into our plans for our facility to meet the long-term range plans for WSDOT, but also, more importantly, equivalently, for sound transit.

So we're meeting their growth needs, and we're actually responding to what they're doing as well.

Excellent.

Well, thanks so much.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, I'll go ahead and move resolution 31835. Second.

All in favor, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

And our last agenda item.

Makisha, you want to read that into the record for us?

Sure.

Resolution 31834, a resolution expressing the city of Seattle's opposition to offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration activities, including seismic air gun blasting.

Briefing discussion and possible vote.

Welcome, Sandra.

Do you want to introduce yourself?

Yes, I'm Sandra Mallory from the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And we should have a PowerPoint popping up here.

We'll pull that up here in a second.

OK.

Thank you so much for being here.

And thanks for your work on this and Mayor Durkan's work on this.

In the work we do around climate, there's a whole host of angles to come at it from.

And certainly, extraction of resources from our sensitive areas is something that I haven't really thought a whole lot about in our state for a long time, but this year things kind of changed a bit, and so I appreciate the work you do.

So walk us through what we're talking about.

Okay, so first of all, on a Friday afternoon as the last presenter, I bring you a picture of the beach.

Yes, let's head there.

Councilman Johnson.

But also combined with the Trump administration text.

But so the context here is that the resolution is a response to President Trump's America First offshore energy strategy.

And as part of the strategy, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released a draft proposal for a new outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing program.

which would cover 2019 to 2024 and essentially would open up both the Atlantic and the Pacific coast to oil and gas drilling and exploration.

So previously under the Obama administration's five-year program, which would go through 2022, it only included a certain portion of the Gulf of Mexico and an inlet in Alaska.

Both the Atlantic and Pacific were both excluded.

So this next iteration of the program opens up 90% of U.S. waters.

So there's a little section in Alaska which would not be open.

And the process for this is that the next iteration of the proposal is expected in November.

And public comment and then a third iteration and then the final program would be expected in 2019. And then within that program, there would be a lease in Oregon, Washington, off the coast of Oregon, Washington, that would be implemented in 2021. So that's the context.

And the impacts, I think folks are fairly well aware of, but the potential environmental impacts would range from oil spills to water pollution from drilling mud, air pollution from the rigs themselves, not to mention climate change impacts from fossil fuels in general, habitat destruction to seafloors, beaches, wetlands, both from pipeline construction and related infrastructure.

And then all of these could negatively impact the coastal ecology of Washington.

And as we know, our maritime businesses depend on it.

It supports tourism, it supports recreational opportunities, and it supports our marine life, the fish and the orcas and the shellfish.

There have been over 75 communities in Washington, Oregon, and California that have already passed resolutions, including Ocean Shores and Holquarium.

So I think this resolution would put Seattle in the mix and on record as opposing opening coastal areas to offshore oil and gas drilling.

Well, I know that ever since the Trump administration announced they're kind of redirecting the federal government on offshore drilling, I've seen pretty vocal opposition from both Democrat and Republican communities up and down the East and West Coast.

And so it seems like one of those things that is not really a partisan issue and more just a I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I think we have a lot of work to do.

I'll go ahead and move resolution 31834. Second.

All in favor of it signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All right, Sandra, thanks for your work on this and it'll be at full council.

I think we're going to move this one to the full council.

Oh, I need to remember to do that.

Can we suspend the rules and have this go to full council?

And the reason I'm doing that, it's probably not a huge deal, but there's an international climate conference for subnational entities.

that Governor Jerry Brown, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and others are co-hosting in the San Francisco Bay Area starting next Wednesday.

And I thought it might be good for us to pass this out of full council.

In advance of that is another way that Seattle could signify that we care about our environment and climate pollution and keeping things in the ground.

So.

So, I'll move to suspend the rules.

I would second that.

Great.

So, all in favor of suspending rules to allow us to go to full council on Monday, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Lakeisha, I imagine you need to run to get this agenda because it's four o'clock on Friday and they want it there by Monday.

So, council member, I'm three minutes over, but I'm not a half an hour over.

With that, we're going to go ahead and adjourn for today.

Thanks.