Seattle City Council Briefing 4/4/22

We are recording.

Good afternoon.

The April 4, 2022 Council Brief Meeting will come to order.

The time is 2.02 PM.

And I'm Alex Peterson, serving as President Pro Tem.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Mosqueda?

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council President Pro Tem Peterson.

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

If there's no objection, the minutes of March 28, 2022 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

President's Report.

Again, Council President Juarez could not be here today, so I'm serving as pro tem for the month of April.

On today's agenda, we have one proclamation recognizing the month of Ramadan, which began on April 2nd.

We will then hear reports from each council member.

Tomorrow, on the full city council agenda, the consent agenda will include the minutes, the introduction referral calendar, and the payment of bills.

As a reminder, any council member may request that an item be removed from the consent agenda.

Tomorrow's agenda also includes one item that came directly to council without referral to committee.

That will be up for a vote.

I'll summarize it briefly here, and central staff analyst Karina Bull may be available to answer questions.

So summary of Council 120292, it's the first quarter 2022 employment ordinance.

As is standard practice, the council authorizes certain city personnel actions through quarterly employment ordinances.

The 2022 first quarter employment ordinance before us tomorrow would authorize the director of the Seattle Department of Human Resources to return nine positions to civil service system, adjust the pay zones for four discretionary pay programs in the legislative department and office of city auditor, and update code provisions on bereavement leave to reflect agreements with city unions.

Okay.

And then please know that central staff analyst Karina Bull prepared a memo which was included in the agenda for your review.

It's also available on our online Legistar system.

And so feel free to ask Karina Bull questions between now and tomorrow's full city council.

And we can move on to the signing of letters and proclamations.

We have a proclamation for signature recognizing April 2nd to May 2nd as the month of Ramadan.

This was circulated previously.

Are there any comments on the proclamation before requesting signatures to be affixed to the proclamation?

Okay, well let's go ahead and call the roll to affix your signatures to this proclamation.

Go ahead and, the clerk is on the line, go ahead and call the roll for affixing your names to the proclamation.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Councilmember Lewis?

Yes.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Councilmember Mosqueda?

Aye.

Councilmember Nielsen?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council President Pro Tem Peterson?

Yes.

Seven signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you.

So council members, we'll begin our next discussion on the preview of city council actions, council and regional committees, and the order of discussion is established by the rotated roll call for city council meetings, which is designated alphabetically by last name, with the president pro tem called last.

This week's roll call rotation begins with Council Member Herbold, and Council Member Herbold, you may please begin your remarks and then hand it over to Council Member Lewis.

Very good.

Thank you so much.

So this week, there are no items on the full council agenda tomorrow afternoon originating from the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

Public Safety and Human Services Committee is not meeting this week.

We will be meeting next week on Tuesday the 12th at 9.30 a.m.

for public awareness.

This week is National Public Health Week.

It's a time to celebrate the dedicated people working to improve public health across the country here in King County.

We're all familiar with the incredibly difficult, life-saving work that public health employees have been doing to combat COVID-19 over the past two years.

Because of those efforts, Seattle and King County have led the nation in reducing both caseloads and deaths.

Here in King County, they've also continued ongoing work to improve health and wellness, leaving varied efforts ranging from equitable wastewater planning, reducing tuberculosis, identifying latent infections, current child health programs to ensure healthy pregnancies and babies, improving access to healthy food, improving medications to suppress HIV, batting overdose death by lowering the barriers to medication-assisted treatment.

For all this, they have earned our very deep gratitude.

I send my personal thanks to our tireless public health workers, and please, everybody, if you have a chance to this week, and every week um please express your appreciation to public health workers every opportunity you have uh just a few items on public safety last week the mayor announced that he is beginning the process for appointing a permanent police chief the position of police chief is one of the most important in city government it's underscored by the unique requirement of the city charter that the chief be chosen from among the three highest-ranking candidates in a competitive exam.

I thank the mayor for committing to public outreach to help inform his decision on making this very important appointment and for noting the requirement in his announcement as well.

I want to note that this weekend, two individuals died from gun violence, one in Pioneer Square and another in the Chinatown ID neighborhood.

On Saturday night, I joined the weekly public safety walk in the Chinatown International District CID community watch.

This is an effort that was started in 2020 by Matthew Coles shortly after vandals smashed their way through several businesses in the CID.

Volunteers from that group started patrolling the neighborhood hoping that their visibility will make the neighborhood less of a target for crime and unsafe behavior.

We recently received a grant to teach self-defense workshops for seniors and situational awareness.

That workshop will be beginning this month.

The volunteers involved in the CD Community Watch are really excited about having the opportunity to share public safety tips and defense strategies with their elders in this neighborhood.

And I really appreciated having the opportunity to spend time with them on Saturday night.

And just really many thanks go to them for their work every Saturday night between eight and 10 being a positive focus in that neighborhood.

I also want to mention that on tomorrow's IRC production and referral calendar, we will have Councilmember Nelson's resolution supporting a Seattle Police Department hiring and incentives effort.

And the legislation also includes a reference to council support for lifting the Salary Savings Proviso to fund this effort.

This, we'll be looking at having this legislation in our committee, not our next committee meeting, because I understand that Council Member Nelson is not going to be with us on the 12th, but we'll be scheduling it on the 26th.

Moving on to other items this week, a couple things I forgot to mention in last week's briefing meeting.

Last week on Wednesday, I attended Sound Transit West Seattle focused virtual public hearing focused on the draft EIS for light rail.

I also met with the new lead program manager in the southwest precinct.

discussed his graphic focus in the Southwest Precinct, as well as LEAD's hope to schedule some roll call trainings for Southwest Precinct officers to increase collaboration between LEAD police officers in the Southwest Precinct, as well as community members that often serve as the eyes and ears for LEAD in making referrals.

Coming up this week, I'm really glad to have the opportunity to join on this evening's Mayor's Concert for Ukraine and Refugees Worldwide.

I'm sure I'll see many of you there.

On Friday, I will be representing the Council on the Domestic Violence Prevention Council.

And then on Thursday afternoon, Senator Lewis and I will join Working Washington and Seattle Restaurants United at a press conference for rolling out the first bill that's being introduced in the pay up policy package.

The first bill being introduced tomorrow covers the topic of minimum compensation, transparency in employment terms, and flexibility in employment issues.

We started the stakeholder conversations last June.

We've had 13 large-format stakeholder meetings and three committee meetings on draft versions of the this bill.

Meetings, stakeholder meetings typically have upwards of 30 people in attendance.

Good participation not only from Working Washington and the workers that they represent, but from the platforms as well.

Really appreciate that.

And then next Tuesday will be the first time that this bill as introduced will be heard.

This bill is also on introduction and referral calendar that we'll be hearing tomorrow.

That's all I've got.

Do any of my colleagues have questions or comments?

Seeing, oh, I see one.

Council Member Nelson.

Thank you for providing the date when this resolution stating support for the development of an SPV staffing incentive program and stating intent to lift the budget proviso to pay for it will be in your committee on April 26th.

It will not be obviously voted out on the same day because this will require a second, at least, discussion.

So just working with your calendar, Council Member Herbold, that looks like it will be on the 10th of May, if I'm not mistaken.

Is that correct?

I don't have my calendar open right now, but if you say that that's the next committee meeting, I'll take your word for it.

That sounds about right.

Thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Seeing none, I will pass it on to Council Member Lewis.

Thank you councilmember Herbold and it is good to be back.

I want to start by thanking my friend colleague and vice chair of the public assets and homelessness committee councilmember Mosqueda for I would like to start by sharing updates from the committee in my absence.

Jumping into the committee itself, there are no items on this afternoon's agenda from the public assets and homelessness committee.

I will preview the committee Regarding a presentation about the possible transfer of City Hall Park and in return the acquisition of several park parcels owned by King County.

that had been discussed extensively last fall, and I believe action has been taken at King County Council to queue this discussion up for us at the city in terms of the potential transfer of the parcel at City Hall Park.

This is going to be a preliminary briefing on this topic.

There's not going to be any action or vote taken.

We'll be hearing from representatives from King County.

We'll also be hearing from the Alliance Pioneer Square and the Parks Foundation regarding the possibility of a potential transfer.

We'll also hear a little bit about where things are procedurally in terms of SEPA review and analysis, and we'll be joined by representatives from the mayor's office as well.

So it should be a good, productive discussion about the possibility of engaging in partnership with King County and I'm looking forward to that discussion.

Moving on to department reports, clean city update for March 21st to March 25th.

I'm pleased to announce that we are preparing For the reinstallation of the soul pole at the Douglas truth branch of the Seattle Public Library on Tuesday, April 5, the Seattle Public Library is going to be holding an event on Tuesday, marking the reinstallation and unveiling a plaque.

to display along the original location of the Pulse Base, detailing the conservation process and the artwork's history.

The Board of Trustees, in another item from the Seattle Public Library, received a presentation on the circulation trends throughout 2021. And I wanted to take this opportunity to share a couple of the key insights regarding 2021 Seattle Public Library circulation trends that I found interesting.

The pandemic hastened the move, as we would imagine, to using digital collections and digital formats, and the data bears that out.

The digital collection remains constrained due to restrictive and costly licensing terms from many of the digital vendors and publishers.

So that's something that on an ongoing basis will require some of our attention.

Print books continue to rebound as the hours of the library are recovering, particularly in the wake of the Delta and Omicron variants continuing to burn off.

And physical media continues its downward trend in the past decade, but is coming back a little bit as the pandemic has increased demand.

I know Councilmember Peterson will be speaking in depth on this in his report.

I do want to take this moment to I would like to make a comment on the press release that has been shared with us and I believe with members of the general public regarding the administration's decision to not pursue the Council of responding authority to pursue urgent and immediate repairs to several bridges throughout the city.

I appreciate Councilmember And with SDOT on a plan to put forward a bonding proposal with clearly delineated items, including some very significant and necessary maintenance measures for the Magnolia Bridge in particular, which is an incredibly important project in District 7. I do just want to associate myself with the disappointment in that statement that SDOT will not be pursuing that bonding authority in those necessary projects.

I know that that's going to be incredibly disheartening for a lot of constituents who worked on shaping those proposals, particularly relating to the Magnolia Bridge over the course of last year.

And I do just want to thank Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Mosqueda for her leadership in the budget process and helping put that bondable list together.

And I do hope it's something that we can revisit in the future and that the door is not completely closed.

So just wanted to express my support for Chair Peterson and his statement.

Finally, as Councilmember Herbold indicated, I will be joining Councilmember Herbold and Work in Washington on Thursday for a press conference to announce some initial legislation regarding work in labor standards for workers typically known as gig economy workers and look forward to making some statements with Councilmember Herbold at that time and kick off that big body of legislation that has been a lot of work and a long time coming.

So looking forward to taking that to the next level and looking forward to committee this coming Wednesday.

So I'll see everybody there, if not sooner.

So in keeping with the thread here, I'm going to ask if there's any comments on my presentation.

Seeing no comments, I will pass the mic on to Councilmember Morales.

Thank you Councilmember Lewis.

Welcome back.

Good afternoon colleagues.

We have no items on tomorrow's agenda from the Neighborhoods, Education, Arts, and Rights Committee.

The next committee meeting is this coming Friday, April 8th at 9.30.

We will be hearing presentations from Arts and the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs that were meant for my last committee.

They'll both be presenting their 2022 work plans.

We'll also have three landmarks ordinances up for discussion and possible vote.

And we'll discuss and vote on an appointment to the Seattle Arts Commission.

Last week, I met with Councilmember Strauss and with the Office of Planning and Community Development and with STCI in our capacities as chair and vice chair of the Land Use Committee to discuss the process for engagement on maritime and industrial lands, EIS, and also the other plans that will be part of the comprehensive planning discussion.

I also met with our city auditor's office and wanted to share with my colleagues that I have requested an audit of our city department's systems of kind of the life cycle of employee hiring, promotion, and evaluation.

You'll recall that last summer we had seven city workers, black women, who were alleging discrimination in promotion practices in the city.

These are serious allegations.

This was not a new allegation in the city.

And so I have asked the auditor's office for assistance in understanding how women of color are treated in the city.

They've agreed to begin work and will come back with a timeline and a scope of work probably in September.

They are quite busy right now and are undergoing a lot of work.

So once they've completed some of that work, they will come back to talk about what their action plan is.

If anybody's interested in learning more, please do contact my office and let me know.

Last week, on to district updates, I do want to start with some great news.

Tent City 3 did find a temporary home on city property while they await a new longer-term home that would start in June.

As I mentioned in previous briefings, their agreement ended on Saturday and so they had asked my office for help to look for a temporary solution while they find a new home.

So during March, my office spoke with the mayor's office on the situation there and proposed situating the encampment on city land.

The mayor's office was able to identify a parcel and neighbors at Tent City three were able to move over the weekend.

So I do want to thank Deputy Mayor Washington and Director Michael Bailey at HSD who were very involved in helping address this issue and were able to find a temporary place for our neighbors.

Last week, I met with the new Port Commissioner, Toshiko Hosokawa, who I share a district with, very excited, to learn about her priorities and share some of the work that my office has been doing with the port, particularly around economic development and youth apprenticeship opportunities.

I look forward to continuing to work with the port and to work with her in particular.

I also had the first in a series of panel discussions that we're calling Seattle Within Reach on community development and really how we can assure that Seattleites live in well-connected, well-resourced, equitable neighborhoods.

We heard from the Seattle Planning Commission, from AIA Seattle, and from Puget Sound SAGE, so I want to thank all of them for participating in the panel with us.

If you're interested, you can watch that discussion on the Seattle Channel website, on YouTube, or on my council website.

My staff and I also met last week with Sound Transit and SDOT to continue advocating for safety improvements along the MLK corridor.

We know that everyone understands that there are safety issues along that corridor for people who are walking and biking and rolling and there really hasn't been a whole lot of action in the in the time that at least that we've been asking for some support.

Both SDOT and Sound Transit have been studying the corridors need for safety improvements.

And I know that we will be getting the reports itself later this year, but honestly, those improvements can't come fast enough.

And I'm really hoping that we can make some changes and ensure that we don't lose another person to that corridor.

My staff continued meeting with a community group that is looking to buy a property on Rainier in order to take it off the speculative market and put it into community control.

There's a real interest in preserving affordability of the apartments that are on site there.

So we met with them, with OPCD, Portero was also there, and also connected the group with the Office of Housing.

And so my hope is that there's some positive movement on that project and that we can get that land into community control before it is put on the speculative market.

I will be updating as we learn more there.

This week, my staff and I are planning our next Seattle Within Reach discussion.

So that will take place next Thursday, April 14th at 9.30.

That panel will be about social housing, about equitable neighborhood development, and really how to turn neighborhoods into spaces that aren't just housing or just commercial, but really, you know, neighborhoods that people can access the array of things that they need within a five-minute walk of their home.

So, I'm excited that we will have panelists, including two deputy mayors from Nantes.

There is a whole delegation coming, more on that in a moment.

But we will have Deputy Mayor Pierre-Emmanuel Marais and Deputy Mayor Maho Berthoud from Nantes, as well as Alderman Carlos Ramirez Rosa from Chicago.

So stay tuned for that.

We'll talk more about that next week as well.

We will be taking part in our quarterly strategic planning meeting in my office this Thursday.

It's something we've been doing since taking office.

So just want to give everybody a heads up that if you don't hear back from us quickly on Thursday, we will get back to you as soon as possible.

My staff and I will meet with the Seattle Within Reach Coalition, which is the group of 30 or so organizations that I've mentioned before, specializing in anti-displacement, community planning, healthcare, housing, small business, mobility, a bunch of other fields that we have been working with to help develop our policy portfolio this year.

So that work continues.

And then lastly, next week, as I mentioned, a delegation of 50 leaders from our French sister city, Nantes, will be here.

And they're interested in talking about a variety of things, including equity, urban agriculture, sustainability, arts, On Tuesday, the 12th, I'll be leading a portion of that delegation through a tour of District 2. We'll be visiting the Beacon Hill Food Forest, Rainier Beach Action Coalition, El Centro de la Raza.

And then on Wednesday, I'll join the delegation to visit the Seattle Arts Museum and the Office of Arts and Culture space at King Street Station.

And then, as I mentioned, next Thursday, they will be joining us for the Seattle Within Reach panel on community development and social housing.

and look forward to telling you about that once that happens.

That is all I have this afternoon.

Does anybody have questions or comments?

I am not seeing any, so I will pass it to Council Member Mosqueda.

Good morning, colleagues.

The next Finance and Housing Committee meeting will be this week on April 6th at 9.30 a.m.

We have a packed agenda.

This includes five new appointments to the Housing Levy Oversight Committee and six reappointments.

There will be two new appointments to the Sugary Sweetened Beverage Tax Community Advisory Board and two reappointments.

We also have an exciting panel presentation that starts at approximately 10 a.m.

on our calendar.

So if you'd like to tune in and listen to the panel presentation.

We're going to have a presentation focused on hearing from businesses who currently work in jurisdictions that have cannabis businesses and licensing equity policies already in place.

We're going to hear from Javier Hernandez and Chris Thao from the CEO of Humble Roots Cannabis in Sacramento.

And these are individuals who are members of the core program that was presented in our first committee meeting from the City of Sacramento on how they are addressing equity and cannabis industry.

We'll also have a presentation from Norbert Pickett, who is the Provider President and CEO of Cannibalist in D.C.

And then we welcome to the table a panel presentation from the Washington Liquor Control Board.

including a board member and member of the Social Equity and Cannabis Task Force, Ollie Garrett, and Becky Smith, Director of the Washington State Licensing Division.

Again, all of this is done in the effort to make sure that we're having a robust presentation on the ways in which other jurisdictions have engaged in developing cannabis equity licensing and fund sources, and also hearing directly from our own state about the process that's currently in place.

that, we will be taking a vote on the capital projects watch list as in, excuse me, and any of the introduced amendments.

I'm aware of three amendments so far, and we'll be bringing one forward on behalf of a council member who's not part of our committee, but obviously happy to do that and welcome amendments as the authors have requested.

We will then also have a briefing and potential vote on the payment of claims resolution and the updated template that will be used by the city budget's office.

And by way of reminder, we are currently accepting weekly payment of claims items on our agendas.

This is an item that our council routinely takes up every week.

but it's a template that has not been updated in 20 years.

We have worked with central staff, the finance and administrative services department, the city budget office to update the template and remove antiquated references to an existing code and to provide greater transparency to the public.

We have a lot of work to do.

Please feel free to follow up.

There are no items from the Finance and Housing Committee on this week's full council agenda.

I did want to report out that this last week I did have the opportunity to participate on a panel to discuss democracy vouchers again with the Marshall Fellows presentation.

I was joined by Estevan Munoz Howard from the Casey Family Foundation.

along with others to discuss the application of our democracy vouchers.

In meeting with folks from all across Europe, we talked about how democracy vouchers are helping to provide another tool to help level the playing field and encourage participation in local civic democracy.

And I also have to say, it was interesting though, right, presenting to other countries, to other folks representing other countries who have really more powerful tools to get money out of politics.

And so it was interesting to compare our system to theirs.

I appreciate all of the work that the Seattle Ethics and Election Commission is doing, and I wanted to put a plug in for their report.

They have a report that will be forthcoming that will look back at last year's use of the democracy vouchers and a quick preview of what to expect.

In 2013, there was approximately 8,000 individuals who engaged in local elections via donations.

Flash forward to 2017, when democracy vouchers became available, The number increased to about 24,000 individuals.

And then this last election, it increased again to about 48,000 individuals.

So it's really great that Seattle Ethics and Election Commission is providing these regular reports and look forward to continuing to partner with them to get the word out about the good public policies that we have in place, but always looking forward to continuing to improve and enhance anything that's in statute.

So look forward to having that conversation with Seattle Ethics and Election Commission and all of our community partners who continue to have interest in sharing out with other members across the country the good work that Seattle is doing.

I attended a presentation from folks from the labor movement talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including presentations from Sarah Nelson, Tafaria Ray, and a number of other folks who were part of the presentation.

We are looking forward to talking about the items on the agenda.

following up on those conversations.

This Friday, I'll be doing a tour of the Northgate Project with Rod Brandon, our executive director of the Seattle Housing Authority, and look forward to hearing more from folks about how Seattle Housing Authority is working to not only create affordable housing options across our city, but also first-time home ownership options, and in doing so, in partnership with community organizations that are led by those who are from communities most affected by displacement.

I also want to remind folks that we will have our Economic Revenue Forecast Council Committee meeting on Friday, April 8th.

You can tune into that meeting starting at 1230 p.m.

We anticipate concluding that meeting around 2 p.m.

These are meetings that are going to be hosted on a almost quarterly basis.

There is a published agenda, excuse me, there is a published calendar on their website and the published agenda will be up there at the latest on Thursday midday.

Colleagues, this is an opportunity for us to hear in real time the report out from the economic and revenue forecast department as they present to the council on the various strategies and recommended actions, and it will be the opportunity for the council to take its first action, either accepting or amending the proposal in front of us.

We will then have a follow-up in our committee on April 20th to have a presentation, a report out on any actions that the council takes.

So you'll have two opportunities to really hear in depth the presentation on the revenue forecast.

Again, the revenue forecast will be shared publicly broadcast on Seattle Channel at 1230 PM on April 8th.

In other news, I want to congratulate our new Deputy Director for the Office of Labor Standards.

This is Janae John.

She has been selected to be the department's first permanent deputy director.

She has just initiated her parental leave and we want to send her off on parental leave with a huge note of congratulations on this new appointment.

She has been at the Office of Labor Standards for a long time and had been acting as interim director before the current director was appointed.

And she has a wealth of knowledge, experience, relationships, and I think a lot of trust in the community, both from employers and from workers in the work that she's brought to this position in the past.

So looking forward to continuing to work with her.

As of March 30th, she will begin her duties when she returns later this summer.

Lastly, I want to congratulate the Amazon workers.

If you haven't already seen the incredible news that came from New York over the weekend, a huge note of congratulations to the Amazon workers from Staten Island for their recent unionization vote.

This is the first vote and the inaugural convening, I guess, of the Amazon Labor Union, marking the first time U.S. workers have formed a union within Amazon.

They received praise and congratulations from folks in Bassemir and across the country who are looking at similar unionizing efforts within Amazon.

And with the rise of unionization in places that we don't expect to normally see unions lately, notably within Starbucks and Amazon, I think that folks are really celebrating and rightly so.

And I think that there's a lot of opining happening as well among labor analysts who are looking at this as really a historic indication of the next iterations of union organizing in this country.

This union was formed by Christian Smalls, a former and fired Amazon employee who was fired after walking out for protesting pandemic conditions at the warehouse two years ago.

A Amazon executive tried to tap down his participation by using incredibly demeaning language, that I'm not gonna repeat, but this is a really great show of strength and solidarity that two years later, Christian Smalls is now the president of the Amazon Labor Union.

He and his coworkers have formed the first Amazon union in the country and have really been an incredible voice to stand up, not just for the health and safety of workers in that location, but across the country.

I am excited about the opportunity to celebrate them and wish them luck in their speedy contract negotiations in Staten Island from coast to coast.

I think we're interested in continuing to see how workers can collectively bargain for stronger wages and benefits and look forward to continuing to celebrate once that contract is finally negotiated.

I am going to give a quick brief update from FAS.

FAS continues to engage in logistics and emergency management for distributing now over 265,000 masks across the city.

As a reminder, FAS is also engaged in the Payroll Progressive Revenue Jumpstart Tax Administration.

They are mailing payroll tax filing reminder postcards this upcoming week, and the reminder is being mailed to all taxpayers who filed in the 2021 payroll tax form with the city.

They're reminding these taxpayers that the payroll expenses for 2022 are due on a quarterly basis upcoming.

And finally, the employee trip communication discount program.

FAS's facility operations department is scheduled to reinstate the employee trip discount program when the existing parking discount ends on May 31st, 2022. FAS has scheduled ongoing meetings with SDOT and vendors to go live for planning.

FAS is helping SDOT focus efforts on marketing, communication, and the rollout of the new access agreement, and the sign-up period begins for mid-April through mid-May.

Is there any question?

Hearing none, I'll hand it off to Councilmember Nelson.

Thanks so much.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate that.

So there is nothing from the Economic Development Technology and City Light Committee on the agenda for tomorrow's full council meeting.

Reporting out from last week, last Wednesday, my staff and I attended the launch of the King County Metro Battery Electric Bus Charging Base in Tukwila.

The first three buses went into service that very afternoon, so it was an exciting event.

Mayor Harrell, Executive Constantine, Tequila Council member.

Hogarty and also Metro and City Light leadership all spoke about the rather Herculean task to coordinate all these different jurisdictions to make this a reality.

And this is the first step toward 100% electrification of the fleet by 2035. So it was an exciting It was an exciting event.

I didn't get to ride on the bus, though.

That would have been fun.

But anyway, more to come in our streets in the coming months as this program, as this base is tested.

You know, different technologies will be tested and metrics will be taken to figure out how best to expand this technology throughout the fleet.

On Thursday, Jeremy and I attended Visit Seattle's Outlook 2022, which is Visit Seattle's annual membership meeting where they talk about the current and future state of tourism in Seattle.

It was a big event, about 600 people.

And one takeaway is that there's reason to be optimistic.

The 2021 report shows that the that visitation and and spending is at about is about 65 to 70% of pre pandemic levels and last year.

saw an increase from 2020. So there is reason to be optimistic for Seattle.

And nationally, there was a keynote speaker who spoke of national trends.

It is clear that about 81% of people, business travelers, have confidence in traveling to in-person meetings.

And this is important because we're investing in our expanded convention center.

So it's good to be able to see these travelers feeling confident to come here and spend money in Seattle.

Now, this year's event was extra special because they were also celebrating the passage of the Seattle Tourism Improvement Areas rate change and so I want to first of all thank all of you for unanimously passing this rate change and that is very much appreciated on behalf of the membership.

The event began with Mayor Harrell signing the actual legislation into law which was a gratifying sort of symbolic gesture at the beginning of this meeting and I realized going through this event that I often think of my best talking points the day after I should have delivered them on Tuesday when this vote came to full council.

And I just wanted to say that Seattle has some gorgeous downtown hotels.

And there are about 67 hotels in the Seattle Tourism Improvement Area boundaries.

And I just want to thank them for pushing for and advancing their ability to actually charge their customers $2 and now $4 a night spent in their hotel rooms.

I mean, these hotels are taking on the responsibility of explaining this charge.

And I'm really proud of the work that Visit Seattle has done to pull this money to better promote Seattle and especially our arts and culture venues and small businesses.

I've already covered that in my talking points on this, but I've left out mention of the actual hotels that are making all of this possible.

So I thank them and Visit Seattle for doing such an effective job in shepherding those funds, because we wouldn't have become a world-class city for travel without a lot of this work that they're doing behind the scenes.

So just wanted to add that And then finally, this event ended with basically a tremendously moving sendoff to Tom Norwalk, who is going into retirement.

He's leaving Visit Seattle's helm.

And I just have to say that I didn't know that everybody else felt the same way that I did about him.

Words like grace and kindness and hardworking and smart just kept coming up in conversation.

To me, he's always represented the epitome of welcoming, which is what you want in somebody who's in the tourism business.

So I just, it was a great send off and I will miss him, but he's left Visit Seattle in very strong, incapable hands and ready to go in the future.

All right, last week, I also went on a ride along with an officer in the West Precinct.

And it was my first time on a ride along.

And it was really interesting to actually see how officers do their work during patrol, the computer interface and all the information that's coming at them as calls are being dispatched, et cetera.

It's very interesting.

I encourage everybody to take advantage of that because it helps me understand kind of what it's like to be in their position.

driving around Seattle.

I also met the officers of the first and second roll calls.

So that was a it was in just had a conversation with what what what they're seeing on the streets and also wanting to know.

Sort of what is what?

What is the big picture on public safety in Seattle?

So anyway, that was a great experience and Also last week, I met with Deputy Mayor Yamaguchi and OED Interim Director Markham McIntyre to again discuss how to strengthen the film industry.

And this was prompted by, oh my gosh, celebrating the fact that the Washington State's incentives were expanded from $3 to $15 million and wanting to position Seattle well to take advantage of that to support the whole industry and all the disciplines that contribute to our film economy here.

So that was last week.

This week, I will, first of all, yes, I will be joining other council members tonight at the Mayor's Concert for Ukraine and Refugees Worldwide.

That's tonight at the symphony.

So that will be a moving experience, I'm sure.

I will also meet with leadership and tour El Corazon and talk with them about, because they are involved in the film commission and the nightlife industry, talk about how what this and other venues are meeting right now from Seattle and city council to improve and strengthen nightlife in Seattle.

And then finally, the last thing I'll talk about is that this week, my staff and I are going on our first retreat to talk about our first hundred days.

How did we get here?

How can we improve internal processes?

What are our priorities are going forward?

So that will be on Thursday.

So we'll be kind of offline for a bit on Thursday.

So that's all I've got.

If there are any questions.

And if not, I will pass it on to council member Peterson.

Okay, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

If it's okay, we'll have Council Member Strauss go next.

Okay, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Here in District 6 last week, last Thursday, March 31st, I hosted a town hall with about 80 residents where I answered 68 out of 95 direct questions about public safety, homelessness, crime, small business support, the tree ordinances, and many more topics from District 6 residents.

We followed up with resources that were discussed in the town hall via email, and I'll be sending out a newsletter this week with both the town hall recording and those follow-up resources.

I did not hold official office hours last week due to the town hall.

They were happening at the exact same time.

And I still was able to meet with two Green Lake residents separately.

One had concerns about public safety and homelessness, and the other had concerns about traffic safety in and around Green Lake.

Last week, I also joined Ballard First Lutheran Church.

for the 94th annual blessing of the fleet at Fisherman's Terminal yesterday.

Representative Frame, Representative Berry, Commissioner Mohamed, Port Executive Director Stephen Metrick also provided remarks during the blessing.

the fishing vessel Ultimo, owned by Dave Franklin and captained by Allison Demert.

Allison is also a graduate of the Seattle Maritime Academy.

It's great to have locals pipeline from school straight onto boats because we need more folks working on our boats as we see with the ferries.

I want to take a special thank you to Pastor Eric Wilson-Weiberg, Pastor Lee Scott, and Bishop Shelly Brian Wee for your words, prayer, and for your congregation hosting this blessing for 94 years.

We are home to the closest freshwater port to the Gulf of Alaska in the Bering Sea, and we've always had a strong economy because of this economic engine in our maritime sector, as each fishing vessel is a small business directly employing hundreds and indirectly employing thousands.

And we know that the sea can be rough and in an isolating place and requires our men and women to leave home for many months of the year.

This time at sea takes a toll at home on land, too.

And we depend on our men and women of the fishing industry for our strong economy, for dinner on our table, and for the national and international recognition of our home port having the best seafood in the world.

And it's because we have the strongest, toughest men and women in the industry.

So I want to share with you what I said to them.

May God bless each of them on this year's journey, and may God bless our fleet.

Last Friday, I also met with seven residents from the Sunrise Manor at Seattle Housing Authority building in Ballard to hear about their concerns about noise pollution and air quality due to construction.

I will be following up with Seattle Housing Authority, and they've already been proactive in their work.

So I want to take the time to thank both the residents and the provider there.

I also met with Mike Stewart of the Ballard Alliance, Aaron Goodman, Don Blakeney, and others regarding public safety in neighborhood commercial areas that was discussed in Councilmember Nelson's committee.

I really like many of their ideas, and I think that they're forward-looking.

This week in District 6, I continue, last week and this week, I continue to hold my weekly operations meetings, coordinating with community leaders, governmental entities, and non-governmental entities to make meaningful interventions to address homelessness in specific places in District 6. To expand on this just a little bit, this includes our draw.

So these meetings, there's a number of meetings that come on.

One is including our draw down work at Woodland Park.

This includes my case conferencing with King County Prosecutor, City Attorney, and SPD.

And we are now focused on the Ballard Industrial District as well.

This was all discussed at the town hall.

Feel free to take a look there.

Just to kind of highlight this, as we implemented the plan at Ballard Commons, we created the plan for Woodland Park.

And as we are implementing the work at Woodland Park, we have created the plan for the industrial area, which will begin implementation now.

For us to be successful, we must focus intently on one place at a time to resolve the issues before moving on to the next location.

We began with Ballard Commons in the west.

We've moved on to Woodland Park in the east.

And now we're coming from the north and the south, focusing on the industrial area, 85th and Mary and 65th and 8th.

This work will not be completed overnight, and we will work as quickly as possible to address each place with the care that it needs and the attention that it needs, with the correct services and departments coming together.

And the reason that these are weekly coordination, I start here by saying I host my weekly coordination operations meetings because these are not meetings where we talk about policies and ideas.

We talk about what work has been accomplished, what work is underway, and what work needs to be done.

So as this work continues, I will continue to provide you updates.

If you are ever interested in hearing more, please do sign up on my website.

I'm happy to chat.

Sign up for office hours on my website.

I'm happy to chat.

I will also be hosting the small business public safety meeting this week.

This is a follow-up to our meeting in February and includes the King County Prosecutor's Office, City Attorney's Office, SPD Investigations Captain, SPD North Precinct Captain, SPD Crime Prevention Coordinators, Seattle Restaurant Association and members, Finney Neighborhood Association and members, Ballard Alliance and members.

And we have and continue to provide resources on how to target harden, capture important evidence, and keep investigations active as well.

So this is the meeting that my case conferencing has stemmed from.

So every week meet with SPD, King County prosecutors and city attorney as an action item from this larger group.

Looking forward to that meeting, everyone.

My staff will be attending the Fenny Ridge Neighborhood Council meeting.

On Wednesday, I will be attending the Wallingford Community Council meeting for a Q&A, and I will host my weekly office hours with D6 residents on Thursday from 2 to 6.30 p.m.

As well, my staff and I will meet with Ballard FC leadership, Omar Nagel, Chris Kamer, Sam Zazette, to discuss their needs.

from the city for their upcoming season.

This is their inaugural season, and their home field is interbay stadium, technically D7.

However, it is a parks department facility, and I'm happy and honored to facilitate getting their inaugural season off to a great start.

As well, this Friday, my staff and I will tour the ship canal water quality project At City Hall last week, I had my first standing meeting of the year with STCI Director Nathan Torgelson, OPC Director Rico looking forward to all of the work ahead.

I also attended a special transportation policy board meeting where we passed amendments to the regional transportation plan, including an amendment to recognize the findings of the Ballard-Interbay Regional Transportation System Corridor Report in the plan.

This is work that I've led on since my time working for Councilmember Bagshaw.

This is the work that packages all of the transportation projects in the Interbay Corridor.

from sound transit to buses to freight to bikes to basically every way that we get around to prioritize these projects as a package so that they can be more attractive to federal funding because we know as projects stand alone it is harder to get them recognized than when we package them together and with limited right-of-way in this corridor Continuing to see growth, we need to be very strategic with how we move the freight of people, the freight of goods, and everyone else in between, as this is the third most used north-south corridor in the city behind SR 99 and I-5.

This week at City Hall, I'll be attending the Growth Management Policy Board meeting on Thursday and in the Land Use Committee.

There are no items from the Land Use Committee on this week's full council agenda or introduction or referral calendar.

Next week's meeting of the Land Use Committee is canceled, so our next meeting will be on Wednesday, April 27, starting at 2 p.m.

Thank you, Council President Pro Tem.

Colleagues, that is my report.

And Council President Pro Tem, colleagues, are there any questions?

Seeing none, I am honored to pass it on to Council President Pro Tem Peterson.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss and colleagues.

Good afternoon again.

In case I had not mentioned it earlier, both Council President Juarez and Councilmember Sawant are excused from today's Council briefing.

On tomorrow afternoon's full City Council agenda, there are no items related to our Committee on Transportation and Seattle Public Utilities.

Our next Committee on Transportation Seattle Public Utilities will be tomorrow, Tuesday, April 5, at 930 a.m.

We have four items on the Committee agenda.

Final approval of the alley vacation at 2nd Avenue and University Street downtown.

Final approval of the term permit for the East Howell Street Plaza and related improvements.

A renewal of a permit for existing pedestrian tunnels near Boeing Field.

and a minor technical amendment to reconcile Seattle Public Utilities drinking water rate classifications for Burien.

Regarding transportation, we learned recently that the Harrell administration has unfortunately declined to move ahead with the bridge safety bonds we authorized last November.

In the wake of the hard lessons learned from the West Seattle bridge closure, the disturbing results from our 2020 audit of Seattle's bridges, and the periodic malfunctioning of other bridges, I'm disappointed by this decision.

The City Council's proactive authorization of up to $100 million for bridge safety was supported not only by any residents and businesses, but also by construction labor unions who communicated their readiness to create jobs and address the backlog of Seattle's bridge maintenance needs.

In a city carved by waterways and ravines within a hazardous earthquake zone, we rely on our bridges to connect every community, enable all modes of transportation, and sustain our economy.

residents, businesses, and workers expect and deserve to have their bridges open and safe, so it's important to accelerate needed repairs and upgrades to the extent we can for Seattle's bridges.

Regardless of whether the Harrell administration reconsiders their decision, I look forward to continued collaboration with Mayor Harrell and his strong team on several priorities impacting our city.

In District 4 last week, I participated in a panel discussion on addressing homelessness that was requested by community leaders at the Sandpoint United Methodist Church.

I want to thank Malik Davis on my staff for working with the community to organize the panel.

I was joined on stage by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, the nonprofit Low Income Housing Institute, the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, and an important voice of a neighbor with lived experience with homelessness.

We discussed the transition to the King County Regional Authority, behavioral health challenges, and the need for more low-income housing.

That concludes my report.

Are there any questions before we adjourn our council briefing?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to say a few words around the report from the executive on the Council's efforts led by Councilmember Peterson on securing a bridge bond to work on bridge maintenance.

First of all, I want to thank member for his leadership in this really important area.

And just seeing the response to the council budget action made me reflect on the fact that I experienced very similar and public opposition to what was a very modest 29 million dollar housing bond several years ago and at that time Each the city budget director the office of housing director the mayor and the council finance committee chair all wrote separate in very public letters Opposing a housing bond and of the same types of reasons that I'm hearing as it relates to the bridge bond from the executive.

Reflecting on what happened after that opposition is that a majority of councilmembers supporting the effort ended up prevailing.

And I really encourage Councilmember Peterson to continue his efforts given that this is something that the council has expressed its support for, and hopefully continues to do so, and just really hope that he continues his work with the Harrell administration to promote the council's support of the initiative.

I do appreciate that the levy oversight committee in their 2021 report called thoughts on a future levy.

recognizes the need, and I quote from that report, though we have not finalized our recommendations on a future levy, bridge maintenance appears to be a priority for both our committee and the city as a whole.

But I also want to mention, as Councilmember Peterson has mentioned, a future levy would not be operating until 2025, and we need to prioritize bridge maintenance work now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Any other comments or questions before we adjourn today's council briefing?

Colleagues, thank you.

This concludes the items of business on today's council briefing agenda.

Our next regularly scheduled council briefing meeting is April 11 at 2 p.m.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.