Transportation & Utilities Committee 1/20/21

meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee will come to order.

The time is 2 p.m.

I'm Alex Peterson, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Council Member Herbold?

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Chair Peterson?

Present.

Thank you.

If there's no objection, today's proposed agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

chair's report.

On today's agenda, we have 17 appointments to six different boards.

We will also have an overview of Seattle's existing surveillance ordinance from our information technology department, followed by a presentation from our city auditor's office on their recent audit of SDOT's license plate reader technology.

I hope everyone had the opportunity to witness the swearing in of our new president of the United States, Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris.

At this time, we will open the general public comment period.

I understand we did not have anybody signed up yet.

I'll just check one more time with our information technology team.

Is it accurate to say no one has signed up as of now?

That is accurate.

Thank you.

Okay.

So no one has signed up for public comment.

If you're watching and want to send public comment in, you can just email us.

I'll close this public comment period, and we will go right into the first items of business.

Will the clerk please read the first set of six appointments into the record?

Agenda items one through six.

appointments 1749 through 1751 and 1764 through 1766. The appointment of Nicole Joy Espey as member Community Technology Advisory Board for a term to December 31st, 2021. And the appointments of Femi Adebayo and Leah Shin and reappointments of Brandon Lindsay, Lasana Magasa and Renee J. Peters Jr. as members Community Technology Advisory Board for terms to December 31st 2022 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

And we have with us Tracy Cantrell, Executive Advisor at the Information Technology Department.

So we're excited to have all these candidates with us today.

And Tracy, if you don't mind telling us a little bit about the Technology Board, and then we can hear from those applicants that want to speak and tell us about why they want to serve, tell us a little bit about their backgrounds, and then we can have a discussion.

Go ahead, Tracy.

Thank you.

So yes, we are pleased to present six appointments for the Community Technology and Advisory Board.

And just for a little recap, as the name sounds, the Community Technology Advisory Board helps guide city strategies and investment information and information and community technologies.

So this is a range of issues that help support mayor and city council.

It could include digital equity, understanding community engagement.

There are many topics that this group takes on as the year progresses.

And so we're very pleased that this will be a full appointment for the Community Technology Advisory Board.

We did do a competitive process to select these candidates.

And so we're happy these six are the ones moving forward.

So looking forward to having them join and looking forward to hearing them discuss why they chose to participate in this manner.

Thank you.

And Tracy, uh, uh, council president Lorena Gonzalez is here with us.

And so welcome council president.

And, uh, we just get, we just got started and, uh, Tracy, please introduce, um, the applicants.

So I see today that we have Leah Shin joining us.

And so, um, Leah, why don't you say a few words?

Thank you.

Great.

Um, hi everyone.

My name is Leah Shin pronounced she, her, hers.

I actually am pretty much a lifelong Washingtonian.

Grew up in the greater Seattle area and actually went to undergrad at University of Washington Bothell.

So as local as you can get, I did study interactive media design and minored in business.

And I actually began my full-time career last September at Microsoft.

So I've been here about a year or two now.

I'm doing product marketing research and product marketing management for M365, Microsoft 365 and Windows.

So it's great to be here to kind of talk a little bit about my interest in technology and why I'm so passionate to join this Community Technology Advisory Board.

So a huge reason why is I definitely want to inspire more students, recent grads, young professionals to join in these conversations, especially pertaining digital equity and inclusion.

That's something I'm really passionate about.

So looking forward to kind of bringing my tech perspective as a you know, lifelong Washingtonian, even being a student here and kind of motivating and kind of hearing more from the local community members to get them involved in our community innovation as well.

excellent.

Thank you so much.

And Council Member Herbold is with us as well.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I saw you join several minutes ago.

And Leah, thank you for that.

And Tracy, is there anybody else that you want us to talk to now?

I also see that Nicole is here on the participant list, and she may want to say a few words.

Hi, can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Hi, yes, my name is Nicole Espy.

I'm a resident of Seattle for the past three years.

I've been very grateful for all of the things that the City Council has done in this community, and I wanted to be more involved.

I got involved with CTAB this past summer because I wanted to be able to understand more how privacy and cybersecurity affect our community, particularly the technologies that are used by the city to engage and protect, engage citizens and protect citizens.

So I'm participating in a privacy and cybersecurity subcommittee of CTAB.

And one of the things that I really want to do this year is to help more Seattle citizens be aware of what the city is doing, as well as to provide opportunities for citizens to be involved in the process and to be more familiar with what CTAB is able to do and what the city is able to do as well.

So thank you so much for letting me comment.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole.

And you probably noticed at the end of this agenda today, we do have an overview of the surveillance ordinance.

So I know that'll be of particular interest to a lot of folks.

So thank you to both you and Leah.

And Tracy, is there anybody else before we ask any questions?

I do not see anyone else on the call that we should be hearing from.

But again, looking forward to this.

And it's so important in this current stage that we have a community technology advisory board.

So thank you for everybody's help here.

Thank you, Tracy.

Council members, I know you've already read their application packets, but if you have any questions or comments now, otherwise we can move to a vote.

Council member Strauss.

There are no questions, just wanted to say thank you for everyone for serving on this board.

Thank you.

So, Council Members, as is typical, I give you an opportunity if one or more of you wish to separate out any applicants for a separate vote, we can do that.

Otherwise, we can vote on all six Technology Advisory Board appointments together.

Do any of you wish to have a separate vote on anybody?

Okay.

Hearing no wish to do that, I now move that the committee recommend approval of appointments 01749 through 01751 and appointments 01764 through 01766. These are items 1 through 6 on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of these appointments.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation, six appointments be approved for forwarding to the full city council.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor?

≫ Excellent.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the appointments will be sent for approval to the January 25 city council meeting.

Congratulations, Leah and Nicole.

Thank you again, Tracy, to you and your team.

And we will move on to the next items.

≫ Thank you.

≫ Thank you.

Will the clerk please read the next set of appointments into the record?

appointments of Sandra R. Pawney and Emily Walton Percival, and reappointment of Andrew P. Martin as members, Seattle Transit Advisory Board for terms to August 2, 2022, for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

And I believe we have Nico here from SDOT.

Hi.

I see you there.

Hey, Councilor Peterson.

Great, so remind us for the viewing audience a little bit about the Transit Advisory Board, and then we can have the applicants who are able to join us at this meeting.

Let us know why they want to serve and how their background might help with their service.

But go ahead, Nico, please.

Fantastic.

Yes, thank you for having us all here today.

My name is Nico Martinucci, and I am the staff liaison for the Transit Advisory Board.

By way of background, the Transit Advisory Board was created back in 2015 by the City Council.

So it's one of our newer advisory boards, modal advisory boards.

The board has two main charges.

The first is advising the city and our partners on transit and transit-related issues within the region.

And then second, more specifically, the board provides oversight of the voter-approved Seattle Transportation Benefit District Proposition 1, initially passed by voters back in 2014 and then very recently reapproved by voters just this last November.

The board is made up of 12 members, six mayoral appointees, five council appointees, and one get engaged member.

We have in front of the committee today one reappointment and two new appointments, all of which are council positions on the board.

Andrew is up for reappointment.

He is one of our current co-chairs on the board and he was not able to join us here today.

But Sandro and Emily are here as new appointments to the board filling currently vacant positions.

Thank you.

And traditionally we'll hear just from new appointees and so we're really happy that both of them were able to to join and love to hear from them if they want to say a few words.

Fantastic.

Why don't we start with Sandro since he's first up on the agenda?

Hello, everyone.

Thank you.

Sandro Pani.

I'm excited to join the board.

My background is in transit design.

I've spent 10 years designing different transit systems, more specifically rail.

but I have been involved in BRT projects.

I'm newer to Seattle area, but I've been visiting for 10 years since my brothers made this a home.

So it's my second home and I'm really excited to bring my background, my experience to provide advice and improve transit within Seattle and greater region.

So I'm looking forward to supporting our council members.

Thank you, Sandra.

Now we'll hear from Emily.

Hi, thanks for having me today.

So I'm from Portland, Oregon, originally, and I moved to Seattle for graduate school, where I got an MPA from the Evans School and have been working in public finance since I graduated from there, and now in transit public finance.

And really, my interest in serving on the Transit Advisory Board was around the Transportation Benefit District.

It's a unique opportunity to fund transit that many jurisdictions, I think, would like to take advantage of, but not everyone has been successful.

but Seattle has, and I'm just really interested in that process and bringing my public finance background to bear and understanding the trade-offs involved in making certain service decisions backed by those funds.

And in general, I'm a transit user.

Transit was certainly my access to opportunity growing up as a kid and throughout my early career.

And to this day, or I guess, you know, if we ever go back to the office, it certainly will be how I get there again.

bike to work, I've taken buses, I've taken rail.

So I'm a multimodal transit user.

And beyond that, you know, I really want to see Seattle move toward transit as supporting everyday life, and not just as a way to get to and from work.

So I'm really invested and interested in thinking about how we can create a system that really supports the discretionary trips that we're all making every day in our lives.

And, and really integrating it not just into our work life, but into the kind of holistic lives we all lead in Seattle.

Thank you for that, Emily.

I appreciate you going into your background like that.

It's going to be a really important addition to the board.

And then Sandro, the fact that you're an experienced transit system engineer is going to be a great addition, too.

So it's great to see this diversity of experience bring into the board.

And Andrew has been great to work with, who's now the co-chair, who's going to be reappointed, hopefully, here shortly.

Council members, I know you've read the application packets, but are there any additional questions or comments for these folks?

Okay, well, oh, please, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

This is both a question for Emily and Sandra regarding bus rapid transit.

I know Portland and Eugene and Oregon have very good bus rapid transit programs.

And Sandro, you worked on bus rapid transit in Pierce County.

Understanding that we are further behind than where we want to be with bus rapid transit here in the city, what are the things that we need to focus on first to either improve the service that we have or expand it as quickly as possible?

Thank you.

Very complicated question.

But I think more importantly is understanding the communities that need and prioritizing those, I think.

There are already plenty of BRT projects in the works.

We have Roosevelt Line, we have 405 with Sound Transit.

So understanding and prioritizing those based on funds.

I know this past year is going to be very difficult and working with the different agencies to make sure We look at what communities have been hit harder that will need better access in the next five years, 10 years to make sure, because we know transit projects take a while to be constructed.

So I think that is going to be most important to make sure we keep our people moving.

And I would just add to that, that you sort of echoing what I had said before, you know, in order for people to make really good use of those systems, they need to know that it's 24 seven service, that they, if they need to take a sick kid to the hospital, they don't have to check the schedule and make sure that they are going to be done with that appointment in time to come home using that system.

And so I would just say that focusing on integrated and holistic service provided across those patterns where we've identified communities most need transit access, can support making really good use of that system, regardless of the purpose of the trip.

Thank you.

That's very helpful.

And Chair Peterson, reviewing Emily's resume, she worked on the tree program in Portland.

So we may have follow-up questions for a different committee at a later date.

Excellent.

Those are my questions.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you for those answers, too.

And hopefully SDOT or Office of Sustainability and Environment won't hire you away before you're able to serve out your terms here.

So, Nico, is there anything to add before we take a vote?

Nothing to add.

Thank you.

Okay.

So, council members, again, you know, traditionally we try to vote on everything at once, but I want to offer any opportunity to separate out a candidate if you want a separate vote.

I don't see any indication for that here, so we will go ahead and vote.

I now move that the committee recommend approval of appointments 01722 through 01724, which are items 7 through 9 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of the appointments.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the three appointments be approved for forwarding to the full council.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Morales?

Aye.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor?

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation is that the appointments be sent for approval to the January 25 City Council meeting.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Sandra and Emily and Nico.

Will the clerk please read the next set of appointments into the record?

Agenda items 10 and 11, appointments 1728 and 1729, appointments of Jennifer Lehman and Emily A. Manetti as members, Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board, for terms to March 31st, 2022 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Another important transportation advisory board, um, for pedestrians in this case.

And so Polly from Estada is here.

So Polly, please, uh, tell us a little bit about the advisory board and, um, and then if any candidates are here, we might want to hear a little bit about their background and why they want to serve.

Go ahead, Polly.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

So the Pedestrian Advisory Board was made permanent in 1997. It is 12 members, including our Get Engaged young adult member.

The board oversees the pedestrian master plan and also advises council and SDOT and the mayor on different pedestrian projects and programs and policies.

And joined with me today are Jennifer Lehman and Emily Manetti, who both have been attending the past several months of meetings and are very excited to be involved at the board.

And I'll add also that if confirmed, Jennifer Lehman also has the endorsement for the vice chair role on the board during her tenure.

So it looks like both of them are on the call, and I'll let each of them introduce themselves.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please, Jennifer or Emily.

Hi, my name's Jennifer Lehman.

My pronouns are she, her.

Over the years, I've invested my time personally and professionally to making walking, rolling, and biking easier and safer for all ages and abilities throughout the region.

I am a South End resident living uphill from the Rainier Beach light rail station.

Before the pandemic struck, I would enjoy the half mile walk between my home and the light rail station each day to get to and from work.

I applied for the Seattle Head Board as another way I could contribute to my community and making Seattle accessible for all of its users.

By day, I work on an array of financial planning and strategic issues for King County Parks.

And I think this work for the Seattle Pedestrian Advisory Board advances the vision of a transportation system that offers more travel choices while preserving environmental quality in Queensborough.

Thank you.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Welcome, Emily.

Hi, everyone.

As noted, I'm Emily Manetti, and since moving to Seattle in 2007, I have basically dedicated my career to transportation projects through a variety of employers and then also my free time.

You know, I've spent a lot of time working on transit and highway projects, and it wasn't until I worked for a previous employer, the Downtown Seattle Association, that I really began to see the way pedestrian connections make our city thrive, but also how we connect to these multibillion dollar investments being made throughout our city through other organizations.

So I live in the Roosevelt neighborhood.

I have the future pleasure of walking to a light rail station very close by.

So I'm really looking forward to that.

But, you know, There's just been a variety of ways that moving through the city on foot has changed throughout the course of time in Seattle and being a parent of young kids and having a stroller, I got just a glimpse into the inside of what it would be like to have limited mobility.

And yeah, there's just, I'm a passionate pedestrian and I think through COVID, I've learned to appreciate all of our pedestrian assets even more because that's really the only way I'm moving anymore because I'm not going anywhere.

You know, keeping an eye towards those sorts of investments throughout the city and making sure that people have equal access and investment to good pedestrian networks is what I care the most about.

Thank you, Emily.

Council members, I know you've all read the application packets, but if you have any questions or comments about the applicants or the board.

Yes, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I also just want to thank everybody for your willingness, your eagerness to serve, particularly on the pedestrian advisory board.

I think it's really important, as you've all said, that we are very deliberate in making sure that people who can't drive or choose not to drive can still move around the city in a way that is safe and gets them to the places they need to be.

So I really appreciate your commitment to making sure and holding us to our commitments to invest in the kind of infrastructure that allows people to walk and roll and bike to the places they need to get for their families.

So thank you for your work and you're interested in serving on this board.

Thank you Councilmember Morales.

I remember one of the first times we met we got excited talking about pedestrian safety and the common ground we have on that so thank you for recognizing the importance of this board and the volunteers on it and thank you Jennifer and Emily and Polly for being here and Councilmembers any other questions?

Yes, Vice Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

Emily, it's always, we have had so many walks downtown looking for quick wins and how we can improve the pedestrian experience.

And Jennifer, it's great to have you here.

I guess for Jennifer, since you're in strategic initiatives and project management, could you share with us what you think has gone well during COVID to pedestrianize the city and what we need to do next?

And then Emily, if you could share What are the quick wins that we need to accomplish in and around the Roosevelt Station before it opens?

Sure.

This is actually a topic of conversation at our retreat last week as well as over the last few meetings.

I think I'm impressed with the swiftness that the city has taken in implementing these stay healthy streets, the keep moving streets, stay healthy blocks, just the wide array of options and choices that are made towards the communities and different avenues for communities to then be involved and reach out to the city to get more infrastructure or tools and options for them to have that pedestrian infrastructure in their neighborhoods.

Some areas to go next, I think that we've been grappling with how to make sure these pedestrian products aren't having to always be in competition with each other.

And we were very favorable and fans of the stay healthy streets.

And there's been a lot of conversation about how do we keep them permanent while also still expanding our network throughout the city.

As for investments in Roosevelt, I have to admit that I feel very fortunate because there's been some really large investments that have happened in the neighborhood and then are currently underway.

For example, 65th that, you know, goes right in front of the light rail station and is a main east-west thoroughfare in Roosevelt.

I don't know if it's part of the safety program, but they added bike lanes, but then also narrowed the streets and added parkings so that traffic basically just slowed down.

We did have a pedestrian fatality at 20th and 65th a couple of years ago.

There was another pedestrian fatality, I think at 12th and 65th.

So those improvements have made a major change for the better.

I know traffic backs up back pre-COVID, but just the fact that cars are moving slower, people are running for the bus.

and then ultimately running for light rail, I think is really important.

I'm going to give you just more benefits because I'm really happy with all of them.

But then they also added turn signals on the 65th and 15th signal, which is wonderful.

That's a really scary intersection.

And with all the TOD that's going in, which is also great, there's just going to be a lot more movement of pedestrians and cars as well.

So I, you know, those intersection improvements are huge.

they're making, they being SDOT, doing all of this.

SDOT also has a project underway on 15th Avenue to restripe, add bike lanes, add 24-hour parking, which again narrows the street from sort of this free-for-all four-lane chaos into a one-lane-each-direction street, which is again a beautiful thing.

There'll be a rapid flashing beacon that connects the Greenway on 62nd and also connects people from Cowan Park to Ravenna Park.

So I'm I'm very pleased with what I've seen happen in anticipation, I think, of light rail and because of these fatalities that happened.

It'll be interesting when all the TOD is built and the light rail station is up and running and to see how car pedestrian bus interactions happen at 12th and Roosevelt.

But I'll keep my eye on it and we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

But so far, I've been thrilled with some of the changes that have come to Roosevelt.

Thank you, Emily and Jennifer.

Any more questions, council members?

Okay, well, we can vote on all these together unless anybody wants to separate one out.

Okay, so we'll go ahead and vote on all them together.

And I would like to move that the committee recommend approval of appointments 01728 and 01729, which are items 10 and 11 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

I move to approve the two appointments.

Second.

Moved and seconded to recommend passage of these appointments.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the two appointments be approved for forwarding to the full Council.

Yes.

Five in favor.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the appointments be sent for approval to the January 25th City Council meeting.

Will the clerk please read the next appointment into the record?

Agenda item 12, appointment 1730, appointment of Peaches Thomas as a member, Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee for a term to March 31st, 2023 for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Thank you, and I see Peaches is here, hi.

And then we've got Jennifer from SDOT.

Jennifer, do you wanna introduce this board and talk a little bit about it?

And we'll hear from our applicant.

Hi, yes, thank you.

The Seattle School Traffic Safety Committee was created in 1975 to bring together Seattle Public Schools, the city, and parents to improve safe routes to schools.

It's a volunteer board of 11 members that represents Seattle Public Schools Seattle Department of Transportation Seattle Police Department King County Metro and pedestrian bicycle and parent advocates.

The community responds to new school crosswalk locations crossing guard assignments criteria for placement of crossing guards and traffic circulation plans for schools.

And we do have Peaches on today so I'd like to give her a minute to introduce herself as our new appointee.

Good afternoon everyone.

My name is Peaches Thomas.

She her pronouns.

First I would like to say that I appreciate the School Traffic Safety Committee's dedication to safety even in this face of a global pandemic budgetary crisis and uncertainty.

As the mother of three Seattle Public Schools students I really believe that every student deserves a safe and accessible connection to get to and from school.

I've seen just how dangerous it can be for staff students and families.

As a former SPS crossing guard, I served at Concord for three years, and often families will come to me with concerns about crosswalks, traffic lights, and sidewalks, and searching for those answers led me to become involved with pedestrian and cyclist advocacy.

Some of the most notable projects that I've been involved with are the Georgetown and South Park Trail.

Then last year, I co-led outreach for SDOT's Home Zone Pilot Project in South Park, And it was being involved with these projects that gave me a new perspective and caused me to notice some of the inequities that exist in capital investment.

Currently, I'm the lead community organizer at Duwamish Valley Safe Streets.

And I really want to use my voice to advocate for those that are often underrepresented in these conversations.

If selected to be on this committee, I would bring a unique background and experience as a mother, transportation advocate, community organizer, and former crossing guard.

I'm really passionate about seeing safer routes to school and traffic circulation plans that are better accessible and equitable for all.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Thank you both.

Council members, any questions?

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Not a question, but just really wanting to recognize and honor and thank Peaches for her wonderful work in District 1, particularly as it relates to organizing and leading the home zone outreach in South Park, as well as getting folks together around the South Park Georgetown Trail.

I love your story of being a parent, being a crossing guard, and now being a transportation policy expert.

And I just know from the work that you've done and from the folks that you've helped bring to City Council to advocate how inspired people are by your leadership.

So really, really glad that you're finding another way to give back to your community.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Harbough, for saying that.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Council members, any other?

Yes, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Peterson, and thank you, colleagues, for allowing me to ask so many questions.

Peaches, you have just such great direct experience.

I'm wondering, can you share with us any, same question that I asked Emily Manetti, which is, are there any quick wins or long-term investments in capital projects that we need to get done before schools reopen?

I would say, I don't know this is necessarily a capital investment per se, but having a safe routes coordinator is really important.

I think as a parent and also a crossing guard and transportation advocate, not having someone to bring together all those different pieces makes it very difficult for families to know who to contact or to even know what to tell students or families that are wondering how to get their kids to school.

And for a lot of folks who don't own vehicles, which is a reality for a lot of people living in Seattle, It's a missing piece of a conversation that needs to happen.

And then also it's really essential if we're going to continue to see, if we want to see progress in seeing people walking and biking and seeing students do that, we need to have someone who can coordinate all those things so that it doesn't fall on the shoulders of someone who's not really involved in this and the burden falls in other places that it really shouldn't.

So I would think I would add that.

And then also I think having this committee at all is really important.

Having something like this where there's all this different coordination and interjects, my apologies.

Having all these people that have come from different backgrounds and different departments involved in this and having that coordination, I think is really important.

I would like to see better transparency, obviously, for parents, and then better educational resources for folks.

I think that's missing.

We have these committees, we have these boards, but I think what's missing is maybe sometimes the families are not really informed of what's going on.

and that leaves them out, and there's really not the ability to have those voices heard.

So I hope that answers your question.

It absolutely does.

Thank you so much.

You're very welcome.

We're really excited to have you.

Thank you.

Council members, any more comments or questions before we vote?

Excellent.

Well, thank you again, Peaches, and thank you, Jennifer, for coming here as well.

So council members, I'd like to move that the committee recommend approval of appointment 01730. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this appointment.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that the appointment be approved for forwarding to the full council?

Gonzalez?

Absolutely, yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫ Yes.

≫

Agenda items 13 through 15, appointments 1725 through 1727, reappointments of Kashina Groves, Meredith Hall, and Patrick W. Taylor as members, Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board for terms to March 31st, 2022 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

And we have Simon with us.

From SDOT, thank you for being here with us.

Tell us a little bit about the Bike Advisory Board and we'll hear from some of the appointments.

Or actually, I think these are all reappointments today.

So tell us a little bit about the Bike Advisory Board for the public mainly, and then we'll talk about the appointments.

Correct.

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Chair Peterson.

My name is Simon Blonsky.

I'm the SDOT staff liaison for the Bicycle Advisory Board.

The Bike Board has a vision to make Seattle a world-class city for biking and make biking a viable transportation choice by encouraging active participation in policy and planning efforts throughout all levels of government.

and to build a more inclusive bicycling community by representing the needs of the diverse population of bicyclists in the city.

The board is composed of 11 Seattle residents that serve up to two two-year terms.

And we also have one get engaged position as well.

I'm here today recommending three reappointments.

These are all council reappointments or council appointed positions.

The names are read off.

But again, the Kushina Groves, Meredith Hall, and Patrick Taylor, they're all have all been very active members on the board currently and are all residents of the South End too and are have definitely elevated and prioritized those projects in the board's work.

Thank you, Simon.

And as we know, we typically hear just from new appointees at this committee, these are three reappointments.

So but counselors, I know you've read the packets, but if you have any questions for Simon before we take a vote.

Councilmember Strauss.

You know, I'll hold my questions.

Thank you, council.

Thank you, chair.

OK.

Sure, of course.

Council members, just an opportunity if you want to pull out any particular item to vote separately.

Otherwise, we'll vote on all three reappointments together.

OK.

So I'd like now to have the committee recommend approval of appointments 01725 through 01727, items 13 through 15 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of these appointments.

Any final comments?

OK.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that these appointments be approved for forwarding to the full council?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor?

excellent.

The motion carries and the recommendation will move forward to the full council to vote on these on January 25. We're moving right along, folks.

Will the clerk please read the next set of appointments into the record?

Agenda items 16 and 17. Appointments 1720 and 1721. Appointment of Ann Eyre and reappointment of John Putz as members City Light Review Panel for terms to September 30th, 2022 for briefing, discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Folks, we're switching gears here now.

We're at Seattle City Light Review Panel and we've got Lee from City Light here.

Thank you.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about the review panel and then we will hear from the new appointment.

Yes, thank you.

Again, I'm Lee Barreca.

manage the strategic planning and performance team at City Light, and I also am the administrator for the review panel.

So just a little bit of background, the City Light review panel was established in 2010 through City Ordinance 123256. At the time, the panel combined the duties of two former groups, the City Light Advisory Board and the Rate Advisory Committee.

The role of the current panel is to provide input to City Light on the development of our strategic plan as well as the accompanying rate path.

The panel consists of nine members representing our diverse stakeholder community.

We have an economist, financial analyst, a non-profit representative, non-profit energy efficiency, I should say, representative, a commercial customer representative, residential representative, industrial customer representative, a low income customer representative, a suburban franchise city representative, and a member at large.

Four of these positions are appointed by the council, five by the mayor.

Today we bring forward two appointments, both of which are council appointments.

One is for reappointment and the other is a new appointment.

First, we're submitting Dr. John Putz for consideration to the member at large position.

This will be John's second term on the panel.

John's a 15-year veteran of the energy, software, and trading industry.

He received his PhD in experimental particle physics from the University of Washington.

And in his first term with the panel, he was a very engaged and valuable member to the group.

Our second nomination for a new panel member is to represent our industrial customers.

And now I'd like to introduce Anne Eyre.

Good afternoon.

As we said, my name is Anne Eyre.

I grew up in Montana and went to undergrad at a small school there.

I went to grad school at Indiana University and at both places I studied geology.

Prior to moving to Seattle, I worked as a mining geologist, came to Seattle, did a short stint in environmental consulting.

And for the last three and a half years, I've been the environmental manager with Cal Portland, a Seattle City Light industrial customer.

On a personal level, I'm also a City Light, I'm a Seattle resident and a City Light residential customer as well.

I, if appointed, I very much look forward to working with the panel on what I see as an incredibly set of complex problems facing public utilities at this time.

And I believe that a collaborative effort is going to be the only way that these utilities are going to be able to balance diverse stakeholders they need to serve.

So on a personal level, I'm a strong advocate for industry, but I also strongly believe in environmental conscientiousness.

And while I look forward to the possibility of learning a lot from the panel, I also look forward to the possibility of contributing my perspective as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Annie.

Council members, any questions for our applicant?

And council members, the Seattle City Light review panel is a really strong panel.

Lots of deep experience in the utility world.

And it's a $1 billion enterprise, as we know.

And they're working hard to keep rates low since everybody has to pay them.

And it's an amazing operation the more I learn about it.

We have another item on the agenda today showing the vast realm of Seattle City Light that we'll get to vote on later today.

Yeah, Councilmember Strauss.

Thanks, Chair Peterson.

Again, thank you, colleagues, for allowing me to ask so many questions.

Annie, from your perspective, are there any improvements that need to be made immediately from your perspective?

Or are there things that are going particularly well as the industrial customer service representative?

Sure, I would say first and foremost, all things considered, things are going very well for industrial customers.

We all know that this has been an incredibly challenging year, and we are still all receiving service without delay.

So in short, that's been excellent.

And I definitely think that that's an achievement, considering the state of all things.

As far as quick fixes, I don't necessarily see anything quick because quite frankly, with my limited toe dipping in right now, I see the problems facing Seattle City Light as incredibly complex.

They need to update and maintain infrastructure.

They have to provide reliable service.

They can't sacrifice customer service.

Try not to sacrifice affordability.

So I don't know that I can speak to a quick fix, but certainly a challenging set of circumstances worth looking into for the long term.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Your feedback clearly demonstrates your ability to understand the complex variables that City Light engages with.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Members.

Any other questions for our applicant?

Great, so we'll go ahead and vote now.

Council Members, if you want to have two separate votes, we'll just normally vote both of them together, if you don't mind.

Okay.

So I'd like to move that the committee recommend approval of appointments 01720 and 01721, items 16 and 17 on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of these two appointments.

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that these two appointments be approved for forwarding to the full city council?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the appointments be sent for approval to the January 25 City Council meeting.

Thank you, Annie.

Thank you, Lee.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record, item 18.

Agenda item 18, Council Bill 119980, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department authorizing the acceptance of the statutory warranty deed for the Glacier View Ranch property in Skagit County, Washington for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

Okay, we are happy to see our general manager, Jepper Smith, and other folks from Seattle City Light.

I'd like to start off, though, and welcome Eric McConaughey from our City Council Central staff to offer him, if he wants to say anything.

I understand he's probably fine not to, but Eric just wanted to say hi, and thanks for your support on these City Light matters.

Anything to introduce this item?

Not much.

I think I'll let folks jump in.

Thank you for acknowledging me.

I'm happy to be here.

I've had a couple of opportunities to hear about these items, and they're familiar with some things we've seen before.

I'll just frame up.

This particular item is before the committee.

The decision for you today is to recommend or not.

I hope you do recommend, because I think it's a good idea.

Me.

Recommend the acceptance of this deed.

The city's charter requires that city council um, accepts property, accepted deeds, um, uh, but this property has already been purchased by City Light through, uh, the authority granted them by a previous ordinance.

So, um, without much further ado, I think I'll get out of the way and let folks take it from here.

Thank you, Eric.

And yes, I'm supportive of this item as well.

And let's hear from Deborah Smith.

I don't really have anything to add.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Just wanted to stop in and say hello.

And I always love to see our city council chairs, beautiful little girls.

So it was worth stopping in just so that I could enjoy the baby time.

So with that, I'm just going to go straight to Tom DeBoer, who is our environmental, our officer in charge of environmental lands and licensing.

So Tom.

Good afternoon, Chair Peterson and council members.

Happy to be here.

I'm Tom DeBoer, chief environmental officer.

I've got a short presentation.

If it's all right, I'll share my screen and just walk through it.

Yes, please.

So hopefully people can see that now.

Yes.

Great.

Go ahead.

Well, this is a approval of a deed of a property that we purchased under a wildlife management program.

This is a view of the property.

It's up along the Skagit River.

Looking up the river, the property, you can see two-thirds of the property in the foreground and the transmission towers coming down from the Skagit hydro projects in the background there.

But this is a property that we purchased pursuant to a wildlife management plan that was part of the last license, the current license, which was approved by PERC back in 1996. And there are multiple pieces to that license, one of which is the wildlife protection and land management plan.

that was agreed to by all the parties to the proceeding, and it was implemented by a settlement agreement that was approved by FERC, and then it's one of our license requirements of the FERC license.

It requires us, this particular one requires us to spend $17 million in 1990 dollars to acquire and maintain wildlife habitat for the benefit of the project.

We have currently spent, with this acquisition, $16.9 million of that $17 million.

So this will be our last acquisition under this program for the wildlife.

There are other programs that we'll talk about here in a minute.

And to date, under this agreement, we've purchased over 10,000 acres.

So the property, we've been negotiating and looking for property for quite some time.

We actually completed it back in 2019. The total cost of the property for 140 acres was just over half a million dollars.

And the property purchase is complete.

As Eric noted, the settlement agreement and the management plan was approved by city council back in 1996, which allowed us to purchase the property but required us to come to city council to accept the deed after the fact.

So that's what we're doing here today.

This is a map of the location and there's a couple things going on here.

I'll just point out the property.

We're talking about the glacier view ranches is under the star there.

The green parcels are the properties that we've acquired under this wildlife programs, the over just over 10,000 acres.

You can see they run up and down the schedule river as well as cross over a little bit into the Nooksack River Basin.

We also have two other programs that are managed by one by a separate settlement agreement under the license and another one that is pursuant to ordinance by the city council, both related to fish.

One is a fish habitat acquisition, and that's in the blue parcels.

They're a little difficult to see because they're smaller and they're located along the river, but we have a number of parcels along the Skagit and Sauk rivers.

And then a ESA, uh, program where we could proactively go out and acquire habitat to help endangered species.

So we look at this particular piece of property.

This is a narrow photo.

You'll see the outline there.

Um, it includes the, uh, the tree area that runs across the Western or left-hand one third of the property is Corkendale Creek, which is a salmon bearing Creek that runs into the Skagit river.

So we have a little bit of salmon habitat on this, although the program is primarily designed to benefit wildlife and birds.

But we always look for ancillary benefits to benefit fish whenever we can.

It's bounded by, we look for properties in this program.

The settlement and management plan lays out the criteria.

We're looking for large parcels, upland from the river.

We like to have them adjacent to other other of our own properties, or in this case, on the top side of this picture is U.S.

Forest Service land, and on the left side of the picture is U.S.

Department of, or Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife lands.

So we like, the whole point is to improve habitat, so if we can connect them to existing habitat, that really helps here.

Again, just the picture down below shows looking across to the east, across the property, currently being used as both pasture on the western one-third and as hay fields on the eastern two-thirds.

For the time being, we'll continue to allow those to operate until we decide what else to do with the property sometime in the near future.

The picture on the right there is just a picture of the Corkendale Creek as it runs through the property.

It does run adjacent to the transmission line, which is this diagonal line that runs across this piece of the property or just off the edge of the property.

And that, again, is the transmission line coming from the Skagit projects.

So with that, again, we're here just seeking approval, council approval, to accept the deed.

And I'll answer any questions if I can.

Tom, thank you very much for that presentation.

I do have a few questions.

And Chair Peterson, please interrupt me if maybe I see you now.

Please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Tom, this is very helpful information.

Understanding that this is the last project as part of the 10,000 acres and $17 million of 1990 dollar figures that we're going to be using.

As we renew the licensure in 2025, do you foresee us engaging in a process similar to this, where we're purchasing land for environmental benefit?

Yes, and you know, obviously, the properties we purchase will continue on, we'll continue to maintain those and manage them for wildlife protection going forward.

We have already begun the process of the new license that will start in 2025. And a lot of those discussions, lots of pieces to it, obviously, but wildlife management and protection are already big pieces of it that we anticipate there will be, at a minimum, a wildlife protection and management plan, whether we accomplish it by settlement or by FERC order, we will have some new projects going forward under the new license, undoubtedly.

Wonderful, thank you.

And you mentioned what you do to the land, what developments for either the terrestrial animals, the birds, or the salmon.

Can you give us a preview, if you have one, of what you will physically alter, how you will physically alter this land?

The management plan actually, the whole purpose of the plan is to manage for wildlife habitat.

So it actually lays out that we aren't supposed to do much of anything with the land except to make measures to improve wildlife habitat.

So on this particular property, we may, depending on, we'll do some more work on Corkendale Creek to see if we can improve it for salmon habitat.

It does cross to the south private property before it joins the Skagit River, so we may have to work with that private landowner, if need be, to get access across there to improve that habitat.

Normally, we would spend the maintenance just to keep, you know, they're public lands, so they're open to the public, but we want to keep, you know, any trespassers that are there for other activities that aren't allowed or, you know, we've had problems with, you know, trash and that kind of stuff, so we clean that up.

The parcel of land, I'll just pull this map up, just to the south of this, that big green blob there, is one of our bigger parcels.

That's at Illabok Creek.

And we have done a lot of work on Illabok Creek, improving the salmon habitat in Illabok Creek as it flows into the Skagit River as part of this program.

So it just depends on the parcel and what, and that's also a big bald eagle nesting area.

So we've done some snags and other habitat improvement for bald eagles on that parcel.

So it depends on the parcel, the wildlife that are there, particular needs of the property.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Tom.

And congratulations, Tom, Lee, Maura, and General Manager Smith for completing this aspect of the previous licensure.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Tom, are there any more comments that you want to make?

No.

No, thank you.

OK, great.

Committee members, any more questions about this council bill?

Okay.

Well, I'd like to move approval of Council Bill 119980. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend approval of this Council Bill 119980. Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to approve Council Bill 119980?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation is that this council bill be sent for approval to the January 25 City Council meeting.

Thanks to our presenters.

Good to see you all.

Folks, we've just got a couple more items here.

Will the clerk please read the title of item 19 into the record?

Agenda item 19, information technology department overview of surveillance ordinance for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

So council members, the, um, this is an overview of the surveillance ordinance for the committee members, which is going to help set the table and context for the final item on the agenda.

Um, the current form of the Seattle surveillance ordinance is the 2018 ordinance 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, which amended the original 2017 ordinance 1, 2, 5, 3, 7, 6, which was sponsored by our very own council president Gonzalez.

And it's codified in Seattle Municipal Code Chapter 14.18.

It's in part designed to provide greater transparency to the city council and the public when the city government acquires technology that meets the city's definition of surveillance.

Leaders from our Information Technology Department are here to provide an overview of the ordinance.

This overview, it's a complex section of the municipal code on surveillance technology.

And again, we just wanted to have a refresher on this for the public, for us, set the table because we have an item coming, an audit of a surveillance technology that SDOT uses and our city auditor is here for the next item.

And this will just show the full scope of this ordinance and where the next item falls into that.

that scope.

So let's welcome our presenters here today.

We have from our City Council Central staff, we have Lisa Kay, and then from Information Technology, we've got Ginger Armbruster, and I believe Saab Bashir, our Chief Technology Officer, might be joining as well.

So please, Lisa, did you want to say anything to start us off as our Council Central staffer?

Thank you.

No, actually, I was just letting you know.

In fact, I am here.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

So, Ginger, please.

get us started here.

Thank you.

Happy to.

Thank you for the time.

I am Ginger Armbruster, the Chief Privacy Officer reporting to Saad Bashir.

Also, I think somewhere in this crowd is Omari Stringer, who is a member of my team who works diligently on these projects as well.

So there's Omari.

I'm going to share my screen.

Please let me know when this is visible to you.

Hopefully you're seeing surveillance ordinance SMC 1418. Is that correct?

OK, good.

I love it when technology does what it's supposed to.

I'm going to take you through a high-level view of this law so that we are setting the table for the conversation with the auditor next.

And so here, I'll get started.

We thought we'd start off with just a history.

How did we get where we are and where we've been?

There was a law previously to this one that got amended that spoke about some specific technologies, drones being one of them.

And what it was trying to get to is let's have some breaks and some oversight over technologies that are used for surveillance.

And while that law was in place, some additional technologies became on the forefront.

One of them was called Geophedia.

This is a media analysis, social media analysis and tracking tool, and it became clear we really need to expand, and that's what Council President Gonzales was leading.

expand what this ordinance was intended to do.

So in 2017, the surveillance ordinance took effect and it looked to revise the law to address the intended use of technologies, not just call out certain technologies.

That's kind of like playing whack-a-mole.

There's always going to be something new.

Really get at what is the intended purpose of technology so that we can put some brakes and oversight and really look at what the impact could be on civil liberties.

So that year we identified through a self audit process and it's role in this is as project manager reporting out on behalf of the executive, a self audit process that identified 29 technologies throughout the city in four departments.

Later reduced that down to 26. Three of them ended up not really being used and or were really owned by King County or other entities.

And so we had no real oversight over how they were being used.

So 26 technologies remained on what we call the master list.

The ordinance was amended to add an external surveillance advisory working group.

composed or comprised of nominees from council and from the mayor's office to provide a citizen's look from a disparately impacted group and individuals involved in civil liberties perspective on surveillance.

So the technologies, commenting on those, and looking at the policies that oversee them, and also advising on public engagement, which is part of the requirement here.

In 2019, so that was amended in 2019, two serves from SDOT were approved.

One of those will be discussed a little bit later today, right after me.

And then we've had a couple of extensions on the deadline for when these were supposed to be completed.

We were supposed to be done with these in 2020, right when COVID hit, had an extension to September.

We realized in September, because we had been out of commission for several months, we needed to extend again to March of this year.

That's a very high level of where we are with the ordinance.

And I'm going to tell you a little bit about what is this ordinance all about.

I got it on one slide.

I was feeling kind of proud of myself.

We wanted to be able to represent a part of our Seattle Municipal Code.

It's a lot longer than this, obviously.

But the definition speaks to technologies, as I'll read this, through whose primary purpose is to observe or analyze the movement's behavior or actions of identifiable individuals in a manner that is reasonably likely to raise concerns about civil liberties freedom of speech or association, racial equity, or social justice.

It also expands the definition of identifiable individuals to license plate data, which can be combined with other records to identify people.

So working with that as the definition, there are a set of exclusions.

If consent or opt-out are available, then that does not count as surveillance.

Body-worn cameras and police vehicle cameras are run under different code and under different policies.

So are cameras that are used for state law to record traffic violations.

So red light cameras, those kinds of things are also excluded.

Security cameras that are on buildings or inside buildings clearly signed there for security purposes and any city infrastructure protection cameras.

So our friends from Seattle City Light, anything we have on dams or critical infrastructure to act as a security camera.

And finally, any technology that monitors only city employees.

So if you'll imagine anyone at a till with a camera over them watching their movements, that's something that's not included.

The inclusions speak to the civil liberties.

I won't read all of these, but these are inclusions that include things like disparate impact on disadvantaged groups, PII that is shared outside of the city, data that is collected in its intact form, whether it is de-identified or anonymized afterwards.

and the listing of concerns about civil liberty impacts.

So that is what this is.

So if you meet the definition, there are no exclusions and there are any inclusions, that's surveillance.

And those are the technologies we identified that landed on the master list.

Yes.

Just a quick question, and you may have covered it and I may have dismissed it.

The bullet that says security cameras, the one above the city infrastructure cameras, what do you mean by security cameras?

Are you talking about private security cameras?

Cameras that are on city premises, we have them in City Hall, we have them in our buildings to act as security cameras when individuals are not there to watch the property, or they may be outside the property but aimed in to watch who is going in and out.

They're signed primarily, we say security camera on premise, and is different than the infrastructure protection cameras that are often in places where there is nobody at all, but they are looking at dams, underside of bridges, those kinds of things.

Okay, thank you very much.

Tease that out a little bit, okay.

I'll move along.

If there's any other questions, please let me know.

The surveillance impact reports are comprised of six, but I'm going to call it seven because we have public engagement that I'm calling out separately.

These are what a SIR looks like, a surveillance impact report.

They are submitted for all currently used, everything on the master list that are currently used, retroactive technologies, or anything that is newly proposed to be acquired in advance of being able to acquire that technology needs to go through this review process.

The privacy impact assessment asks somewhere upwards of 50 questions about data use and sharing and collection and management and security.

Financial information is more or less a business case, why you use this and what does it cost us to run this technology.

A racial equity toolkit that tries to take advantage of our RSGI initiative to look at racial impacts, disparity impacts.

A public engagement portion where comments and analysis are included for you all to take a consideration of where the public is concerned.

Privacy and civil liberties impact assessment is the piece that comes from the surveillance working group.

So these are the questions, concerns that they may raise as a group about the technologies, the policies, and how it works.

And then the CTO has an opportunity to respond to any of those, whether there are changes proposed to policy or we feel that those concerns are already addressed by the other parts of the surveillance impact report.

And then the appendices and supporting documentation, usually those are things like, here's the policy that governs what we talk about in section 4.3, and here's the detailed policy.

So all of that gets bundled together.

The departments are the subject matter experts for what is primarily operational technology, and we project manage this.

So IT, my job is, with Omari, to work with the folks from the department to make sure these are readable, English, answer the questions appropriately, package them up in a template, and are ready to present.

And we also lead the public engagement piece.

So any questions on any of that?

Yes.

Again, just a little bit more detail about the difference between 1 and 5, the Privacy Impact Statement and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Impact.

The Privacy Impact Assessment is what we do when we look at anything with a high privacy risk.

And what we did is looked at all of the questions that were in the law.

There's a couple pages that speak to all these questions need to be answered.

It really outlines everything to do with data collection, everything to do with how the technology is operationalized.

how it's used, what policies direct it.

So it's a here's everything we know about how this technology is used.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Impact Assessment takes a look at all that information and sees if there are any concerns by that group, by the working group, about any civil liberties impacts that may be highlighted.

where there may be policy that they feel needs to be beefed up or other issues that they are raising about how the technology may be used.

So those are different for each one of these depending on their assessment of where there may be civil liberties impacts.

So two different ways to look at it.

One is here it is and the other is here's what we may be concerned about that we would like to raise your attention and maybe ask questions about.

Does that answer that for you?

Okay, good.

These take some time, as you can imagine.

So eight to nine months, a little bit longer, depending on public engagement and how that goes and any other reviews or concerns or questions that may come up along the way.

So we draft these with the departments.

They're the ones that say, I have four or five or 10 or 15 technologies, and we need to start drafting our responses to the questions in this.

We schedule a public comment period.

We have been running those for 30 days.

And depending on how many technologies running public engagement so that people have an opportunity to be introduced to the technology members of the community.

When we were in person we did these in the community now we're doing these online.

So that's what those are we then take the public comment.

And it's full form, which is required to be turned in by law, but we do an analysis on it, raise up any issues, any themes that we want to make sure everyone is aware of if there's any consistent theme that comes out.

We then turn this over for six to eight weeks.

They have an eight week period if they want a couple of extra weeks for the working group to review and come up with their civil liberties impact assessment.

Then the CTO takes a couple of weeks to look at that and see if there's any response back, any ideas, any concerns that they may raise back about anything that was brought up by the working group.

And that helps, I think, this body, the council, see what are the issues that may be raised that we want to look at and what were the responses back from the technology folks, or the people in the departments that are using the technology.

We then create what used to be called a condenser we're now calling it an executive overview to give you a shorter version of what's all in this package because as you can imagine.

And maybe you remember seeing some of these, they can be quite thick.

We can talk about hundreds of pages when we get policy involved and all the detail and public comment and everything that may be involved.

So we've done a condensed version to try to get it into a dull roar so you have a couple pages to read that help you get to the important bits so that you can drill down into what you find interesting or what we're on.

And then we go through the council review process.

That's when we hand it over.

It's an active or a request for legislation to pass.

and to allow that technology to continue to be used, or if it's new technology and we haven't done those yet, but new technology to allow it to be acquired and used.

Any questions about that?

Okay.

And the surveillance impact report is not all that is required by this law.

So this is what leads us into the next part of the conversation, which David Jones and his team will be speaking about, is the audit that was conducted on one of the technologies for SDOT.

So all the SIRs are designed to be completed by March 1 of this year.

We may have an extension request.

We'll have to talk about this because of COVID.

You know we had one in place.

We're going to table that for now, but I'm just going A little marker there to say that's what we're looking at right now.

But all new technologies must be reviewed and approved prior to acquisition.

Quarterly CTO reports are required of all technologies that we review.

So I'm the privacy officer.

I do a lot more than surveillance.

I spend my time with my team looking at all the technologies we acquire and do a privacy review on them.

including questions about surveillance.

That quarterly report that bundles up here's all the things that were required, why it was not considered to be surveillance or if it was considered to be surveillance, all that is handed in quarterly report to the council as well as the working group.

And then there's an annual CTO equity report speaking to how are we doing against our commitments and against this law, are we meeting the goals of this law from the CTO's perspective as we work with the technologies in the departments.

And the final bit, this is me teeing up the next group, the annual audit report of approved technologies, of which there are two, CCTV and license plate reader technology for managing or understanding traffic travel times.

And that is the piece that has been conducted on one of these technologies, the LPR, the license plate reader, that are some suggestions are coming from the auditor.

And that's what I had prepared for you today.

Excellent.

Thank you for that overview of the surveillance ordinance and what's in the Seattle Municipal Code and setting the table for our next item on the agenda.

Council members, any questions for information technology experts?

Yeah.

Council Member Herbold.

I just want to thank you for continuing to move towards the deadline under your current extension, despite the recognition that, you know, we may not quite get there, but I really appreciate the effort to stick to that March 2021 deadline, and maybe we'll get there.

We will get there.

Thank you for your support on that.

This continues to be something we work very vigorously on, and it is Omari's primary responsibility.

So he is our hero here, keeping this flag moving forward.

Are there any other questions from anyone here?

No pressure, Omari.

We're glad he's so excellent.

He keeps us moving.

Thank you both.

Really appreciate this overview.

And I think it's useful for the public and for us to reference it later and to be able to call both of you with questions as we get these reports and try to dig into them and protect people's privacy and also move forward with some important technological advancements.

So thank you.

Certainly.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you.

Council members, we're on our last item.

And so will the clerk please read the title of item 20 into the record.

Agenda item 20, City Auditor's Office presentation of license plate readers audit for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And we are going to introduce David G. Jones and Mugumi Sumitani.

Thank you for being here.

I just want to give a quick overview before we launch into your audit, just to provide some context.

So the auditor is here.

I'm going to turn it over to the city auditor to explain the results of this audit.

And these audits typically have recommendations, and as I understand it, Seattle Department of Transportation is in agreement with the auditor's recommendations.

There's some additional information contacts that the auditor will provide about that.

This audit was required by the original 2017 surveillance ordinance, ordinance 125376, which requires a city auditor to conduct an annual review of the city's use of city council-approved nonpolice surveillance technologies.

And it's also required by ordinance 125936, which approved the use of SDOT's license plate readers technology.

SDOT's License Plate Readers, LPR, technology is used for capturing license plate information to calculate the average travel time between two locations on Seattle streets.

LPR cameras are high-definition cameras specifically designed to capture images of license plates as they move into view.

The LPR data are processed by software that reports the license plate number to the Washington State Department of Transportation, WSDOT.

And WSDOT processes the travel time between the two locations and sends the travel time information back to SDOT.

So SDOT can post the travel time information to the public on its various, through various means such as roadside signs, travel information web map for the public to use in making informed trip decisions.

with the hope of reducing traffic congestion and helping people get to work, school, or other destinations on time.

So we'll turn this over to the auditor's office.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Chair Peterson for inviting us here today to talk about our report on the Seattle Department of Transportation's License Plate Readers Camera Surveillance Technology.

And we're going to be referring to this throughout the presentation, referring to the Seattle Department of Transportation as SDOT.

That's how we in the city like to refer to them.

For members of the public who are watching this presentation, our report is available on the Office of City Auditor website, which is www.seattle.gov slash cityauditor.

And our report on license plate reader cameras, which I'm going to refer to in Megumi Sumitani, we'll refer to this throughout the presentation as LPRs.

Now, this report that we're talking about today is the first in a series of reports that the Surveillance Technology Ordinance requires our office, as well as the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety, to produce on the use of surveillance technologies.

Now our office is charged with handling the non-police surveillance technologies, while the Office of Inspector General will handle the Seattle Police Department's surveillance technologies.

And before I hand it over to Megumi Sumitani, who's the auditor in charge of this project, I'd like to make three quick points.

First, after we had provided SDOT with a draft of our report to review, and this is a step we always do, we always want to make sure we get things right so we share it with whomever we're auditing.

After we had done this and shared a draft, SDOT informed us that they had decided to expedite the replacement of their license plate reader cameras with another technology known as a cyclica, so that all the LPR cameras would be replaced or will be replaced by the end of 2021. Now, SDOT, as Council Chair Peterson said, agreed with all of our recommendations, all the logic behind them.

However, because they're deciding to move away from the LPR technology by the end of this year, This means it may not make sense, and they may not fully implement all of our recommendations because the technology is going away.

However, rest assured, we're going to be following up on their implementation of our recommendations, and we'll report back to you, the city council, and the public about this.

Second point I want to make is our office is currently scheduled to review the replacement technology, the acyclica technology, The current plan calls for us to review this technology after the city council, in accordance with the process defined in the surveillance technology ordinance, reviews it.

My third and final point, I just want to mention that when we started this audit, we had funding to contract with an experienced information technology security firm to help us with some of the more technical aspects of the LPR technology.

However, unfortunately, due to the budget crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to close this contract before the consultant could complete their work.

Because of that, you'll note that we have a recommendation in the report that calls for some entity with IT security expertise to evaluate the technical risks.

The technical risks that the data could be lost or inadvertently accessed.

So we have a recommendation calling for that.

Good news is that we've heard so far as SDOT told us, they're working with city IT security staff to evaluate and address these risks.

So now what I'd like to do is turn it over to Megumi Sumitani, who will take you through the details of our report.

Megumi?

Okay.

Thank you, David.

So let's see.

This is the second slide.

Is that what is showing right now?

I'm assuming.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

So we're here to present to you highlights from our first usage review of the Seattle Department of Transportation License Plate Readers Technology as required by the 2017 Surveillance Technology Ordinance.

The Surveillance Technology Ordinance specifies that at a minimum that the annual usage reports report on these six areas.

And I know there's a lot of text on the slide, but we wanted to put the actual text from the ordinance here so the public can see it.

But very briefly stated, what we were asked to report on are A, the technology's use, frequency, and patterns.

B, sharing of the technology or its data.

C, data management protocols.

D, the technology's impact on civil liberties.

E, a summary of complaints, concerns, and other assessments.

and F, costs for the technology.

Oops.

And our report is set up so that it responds to these questions in this sequence.

And we will make our presentation following that sequence.

I'm sorry, I went on to the other slide a little too quickly.

So on this slide, before we get into each of the ordinance questions, I wanted to provide you a very brief overview of the technology and then an overview of the four key takeaways.

from the audit.

First, a brief overview of the technology.

This is a very basic diagram showing the data flowing from SDOT through the Washington State Department of Transportation, and I'll refer to it as WSDOT from now on.

And then back to SDOT to show how the license plate reader system is used to derive travel time information.

There's a more detailed diagram of the data flow in Appendix F of the report.

So basically, the technology is used to take a picture of the traffic going through one point and measuring how long it takes to get to another point.

There's WashDOT software that matches the license plates and returns the average travel time between license plate readings.

So very briefly, starting from the lower left corner of the slide, the LPR cameras and software are used to capture the images of the license plates as they move into view.

And these images are converted into raw data, such as the license plate letters and numbers, time and location, which are then sent to WSDOT to produce the travel times.

So it's the raw data, not the images, which are transmitted through a dedicated fiber optic network between SDOT and WSDOT.

WSDOT processes the travel time between intersections and sends the information back to SDOT which then shares the travel time information with the public through its dynamic message signs and traveler information map website.

And although SDOT uses travel time information for some of its own internal purposes, such as traffic engineering and planning studies, the technology is primarily used by SDOT to share this information with the public so the public can make informed trip decisions.

And as of June, 2020, there were 100 LPR cameras operating in the city.

SDOT's been using the technology for about 10 years and does not plan to acquire any new LPR cameras for calculating travel times.

So while SDOT's been maintaining and repairing the cameras, the department's been phasing them out because they are at their quote unquote end of life and no longer supported by the manufacturer.

So if an LPR camera needs to be replaced, SDOT's been replacing them with acyclica technology sensors, which SDOT also uses for obtaining travel times.

And as stated earlier by David, SDOT plans to replace all the LPR cameras with acyclica units by the end of this year.

I would now like to talk about our key takeaways from the audit, two key issues.

It's precisely because SDOT sends and relies on WSDOT to process its data that the lack of a written data sharing agreement with WSDOT is the first key finding in this audit.

And we recommended that SDOT develop and execute a written data sharing agreement with WSDOT.

However, because SDOT plans on phasing out the LPRs by the end of this year, they indicated that they may not implement this recommendation.

And the second key audit issue is that there could be cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the license plate reader system itself.

If certain data are inadvertently or improperly shared that have potential to affect civil liberties.

And because of this risk, and because we are not IT security experts, we recommended that SDOT engage cybersecurity experts, either in the city's information technology department or consultants to conduct regular security assessments of the system to address data security.

And there are other audit issues in two areas.

First, there's the need for policies to be updated or revised to reflect actual practices by SDOT and WSDOT.

And secondly, there's a need to resolve inconsistencies between the adopted policy documents, the SIR and the CSIR.

when policies from those two documents are not aligned.

And the CIR is the Surveillance Impact Report that provides detailed information about the technology's purpose, use, and policies.

And the CSIR, called the Condensed Surveillance Impact Report, is a condensed version of the CIR, which calls out the policies from it.

And as Ginger mentioned earlier, the CSER has recently been renamed as the Executive Overview Report.

And we make nine recommendations to address our findings.

I would now like to start taking you through the key takeaways from each of the six ordinance questions, starting with question A on the technology's use.

We have three key takeaways.

One, that the technology is appropriately being used in accordance with SDOT's permitted purposes.

Two, that the department is not using the technology for any enforcement purposes.

And we'd like to point out here that the recently installed cameras on the West Seattle Low Bridge are not SDOT's LPR cameras.

They are SPD, Seattle Police Department enforcement cameras, sort of like red light cameras.

and are out of scope for this review.

And thirdly, that the LPR cameras are in use 24 hours a day, every day, transmitting data to WSDOT.

Question B is about how often the technology or its data are being shared with other entities, in particular, other governments.

Overall, three key takeaways.

One, as mentioned earlier, SDOT is sharing its data with WSDOT continuously, however, As required, there's no written data sharing agreement between them.

Two, operational policies state that WSDOT immediately deletes LPR data when travel times are calculated, and that WSDOT never stores any data.

We learned, however, that although anonymized, WSDOT does hold the data in temporary files for seven days, and they do this for troubleshooting purposes.

And three, operational policies also state that raw data shall not be stored or used by SDOT or any other entity for any purpose other than for traffic management and travel time production purposes, and that only SDOT and WSDOT can access the data.

However, we were not able to verify or fully assess this due to the lack of technical expertise available to us during the audit.

So it is possible that data could be shared unintentionally or improperly with other parties.

And if SDOT implements the recommendation to engage cybersecurity experts to address data and system security issues, we believe that this would reduce the chance that these risks will occur.

Gumi, I'd just like to say, I'd like to make it clear to the committee members, we have no evidence.

We didn't learn anything during our audit that this has indeed happened.

What we're just trying to say is, you know, to really get even greater proof or evidence, better evidence, you know, you need to engage people who are IT security experts to really be able to do that, to make a more definitive statement.

But we did not uncover any evidence that any leakage has happened to date.

Go ahead, Megumi.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

So the next question, question C, is about how well data management protocols are safeguarding individual information.

And overall, five key takeaways.

One, because the system was installed about 10 years ago, and due to a lack of records, we were not able to determine if qualified personnel installed the system.

Two, that access to the system is properly limited to certain personnel for device configuration and troubleshooting purposes.

Three, that access to the system is protected according to policy with a username and password.

Four, that SDOT should define what it means by standard training for those who use the system and who is required to take that standard training.

And five, that no images of vehicles and occupants are supposed to be collected by SDOT.

And we saw that the cameras are appropriately directed to capture vehicle license plates.

However, we saw that in the process of capturing those license plate images, the cameras captured a sufficient amount of the body of the vehicles to be able to surmise the vehicle's color, make, and model.

And to this point, we made a recommendation to clarify what is meant by images of vehicles and to define the limits of what can be captured in the images.

And although these images are not transmitted to WSDOT, the images are held temporarily in the cameras before they're deleted, which poses a risk of their being inadvertently or improperly shared.

And here are some sample images from an SDOT LPR camera.

And the license plates were obscured by us.

So again, these images are not transmitted to WSDOT.

Only raw data such as the license plate number, time, and location data are transmitted.

Ordinance question D asks how deployment of LPRs could impact civil liberties or have disproportionate effects on disadvantaged populations.

And in terms of the use of the technology and whether it could impact civil liberties, As stated earlier, there is a risk that the system could result in data being shared with unauthorized parties and as a result affect civil liberties.

And as also mentioned earlier, we recommended that IT security experts be engaged to assess the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of the system.

And in terms of the locations of where the cameras were deployed and whether deployment in those locations could impact civil liberties, Policy state that the locations should be based on street transportation volumes and gaps in travel time coverage.

But because SDOT does not have any records showing why the cameras were placed where they were, we were not able to determine if the locations SDOT chose were according to policy.

Still, we wanted to see what we could learn about how the cameras are placed throughout the city.

So we work with the Department of Information Technology and the city demographer to map the camera locations to see if anything jumped out at us.

And we could, we should also point out that we mapped only the LPR cameras, which are just one piece of the larger network of surveillance technology, which includes the acyclica technology that SDOT uses for deriving travel time information.

So in terms of mapping of the LPR cameras, our two major observations are that one, over 40% of the cameras are located in two census tracts, tract 93, which includes Duwamish, Soto and parts of Piner Square and tract 109, which is Georgetown, both of which are in industrial areas where the population density is low.

And that too, they have a higher, Although the population density is low in those two census tracts, they have a higher proportion of disadvantaged residents compared to other Seattle census tracts.

Ordinance question ease about complaints, concerns and other assessments.

And we did not identify any privacy or civil liberties related complaints or concerns about the LPR system received by the department by SDOT.

or the city's customer service bureau between the period 2017 and June of 2020. And concerning other assessments, over the past five years, there was one in scope security assessment related to the LPR system done in 2015 by a consultant.

And as for costs for the technology, that was the last question we were asked to look at.

As you can see, it was a very small amount of money involved for this technology in 2019 and for the first half of 2020. So SDOT concurred with our findings and recommendations, but since SDOT has decided to terminate use of the LPR technology by the end of this year, this means that the department will need to determine the extent of resources that should be devoted to their implementation or whether to implement them at all.

However, until the technology is completely phased out, it's still important that SDOT and ITD ensure that the datum and system are appropriately protected.

And as part of our annual recommendation follow-up work, our office will follow up on the implementation status of each of the nine recommendations from this audit.

In closing, we'd like to thank the Seattle Department of Transportation for their cooperation and work with us on this audit.

And committee members, please let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Magui.

Thank you, Auditor Jones.

Council members, any questions about this report today?

Council Member Herbold and then Council Member Morales.

And we do have S.

here to answer questions as well.

So I appreciate outing memory here in Jason Cambridge.

But please, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you for filibustering as I got off the route.

Appreciate it.

I'm a little bit confused about the implications of phasing out from the LPR technology.

Does it mean that they're phasing out from the use of this technology or this function altogether, and they're just going to shift to a different technology to continue this function?

I believe the answer is, yeah, they're just switching.

So they're going to stop using LPR cameras, but they're going to replace them with a cyclica camera.

So the same function, if you will, you know, creating, deriving travel times and being able to post them and make them available to the public, they're going to continue to do that.

But I defer to Adyama if she wants to add a further comment or Jason.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, please.

I just wanted to add a little bit more.

Thank you.

My name is Adiem Emery.

I'm the division director for transportation operation in SDOT that manages this technology.

And I just want to kind of quickly highlight that the recommendation and items that are noted in this audit are primarily related to agreement and documentation and not necessarily any risk privacy data.

LPR is 10 years old, and it has been the life cycle for this technology is a seven year.

and we have been in the process of phasing it out.

We introduced a cyclical and new technology five years ago and transitioning to this new technology as the equipments fail.

But due to the recommendation through the audit office and not like in order to kind of establish the agreements with WSDOT, it would have required us a lot of investment to create a training program for WSDAT employees.

We decided instead of spending that money and developing that agreement and the training program for WSDAT to expedite the replacement of this equipment, which was planned.

We just wanted to take our time as equipment spilled and replacing it into the new technology.

We decided to just expedite that and make it to the end of this year.

And I thought I heard me say that as it related to the mapping exercise, SDOT was unable to provide information about how those locations were selected.

And so, the question I have is if you are going to replace the LPR technology with the acyclica technology, are you going to do so in the same locations, or are you going to go through a different process of identifying locations for the use of this technology and gathering this information?

So let me share a little bit of background.

A little bit of background in the technology 10 years ago, when we developed, this is the 1st in the nation actually to measure travel time on arterial streets.

We selected 5 of the major principle arterials where to put the LPR.

So we looked at Aurora, West Seattle Bridge and 15th Avenue Northwest, all those, you know, and then in the Duwamish East Marginal and First Avenue, the Fourth Avenue, where the principal arterials, which we selected to measure travel time, that was our first launch.

So we will be replacing them in those primary principal arterials as they has a significant return on measuring travel time on those primary corridors.

And the auditor can feel free to jump in at any time.

Magumi, go ahead if you have anything to add.

Actually, Adyem responded already, but I just wanted to state that it was our understanding that by phasing out the LPRs right now, that they're going to be replaced in their place, in their existing locations, as Adyem just responded.

with the acyclica technology.

But as far as any new acyclica technology, that's, you know, that's something for the future in terms of maybe something that we might be looking at.

Yeah.

What kinds of reasons that they will be placing them in new locations will be something that could be looked at at that time.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I'm just trying, again, I think through the mapping exercise, and I'll defer to Council Member Morales on this for more follow-up, but I guess the reason why I'm asking is it's noting that 40 percent of the of the locations are in two census tracts.

And I don't think our arterioles, 42% of our arterioles are located in those two census tracts.

So it might be worth a little bit more of an explanation about why the arterioles in those two census tracts.

But if I could, ask a couple other questions less about the actual locations.

I want to confirm that WSDOT uses acyclica.

Is that true?

I don't know if WSDOT uses acyclica.

Yeah.

Adyan, please.

They don't.

When we launched this 10 years ago, the vision was to create a regional transportation network.

And at that time, WSDOT used LPR and we wanted to kind of create a stream, like without creating city boundaries and having a stream that's like, you know, travel time being measured with our neighboring cities.

We partnered with WSDOT to launch this technology 10 years ago.

WSDOT currently does not use a Cyclica.

They are not doing any travel time measurement in Bothell and other areas where they had the LPR launched at that time.

They primarily focus on travel time methodology on the highway and maintain the highway travel time deployment and implementation instead of arterial streets.

So they are going to continue using LPR?

They're phasing it out.

In Bothell, they're kind of moving out of measuring travel time on arterial streets and just focusing on the highway.

I see.

Okay.

I have a couple of other questions, but I don't want to monopolize the time.

I'll defer to other folks here.

Yeah, we can go to Councilor Morales and then come back to you, Councilor Herbold and others.

Go ahead, Councilor Morales, please.

Thank you.

I have questions in kind of two buckets.

The first is about why we're doing this at all.

So I understand.

I mean, I understand it was to calculate travel times sounds like from the city's perspective on arterials.

WSDOT was taking advantage of that information also, but their focus is shifting only to doing highways.

So I think what you're saying, Adyam, is that it doesn't matter if our two technologies work together or not.

But my real question is, if we're using this technology for the purpose of calculating travel time, to what end?

So, what what do we do with that information is that to create recommendations for.

Changing infrastructure, or how do we use the information?

And then my 2nd question is getting back to more of the.

bigger questions.

Megumi, I think you said that SPD uses red light cameras.

SDOT is using other kinds of cameras.

But for me, it raises a bigger question about kind of bulk surveillance of our neighbors and who owns the equipment, who owns the data that's collected.

Are there problems with, you know, if we're using federal money, for example, for some of this equipment, I think there are pretty tight restrictions on how data can be used.

And I have heard from community that there's a fear that, you know, that SPD, for example, is collecting the data that is collected by the LPR.

So I think there's just a lot of concern about what happens to this information and who uses it and for what purposes?

Well, based on our work on this particular audit, I did want to make the clarification that the S.LPR technology is separate from the cameras that are being used, for example, on the West Seattle Low Bridge.

And with Our work with SDOT and with WSDOT on this particular technology, the data is just flowing through and then the average travel times are being posted for public consumption for the most part.

Something like 95% of the work that's related to LPR data is for public posting on the dynamic message signs and on the websites, SDOT does use it for some internal purposes, like for traffic studies and things like that.

But that is not the bulk of what they use that information for.

And it's data that has already been processed by WSDOT.

In other words, it's not raw data that's being collected and then being crunched by SDOT, but it's and they are coming back to SDOT and giving SDOT travel time information and they are using it for a variety of purposes, primarily for public posting of how long it takes to get from one place to another.

What is confusing to the public and I totally understand and there are concerns about what's done with the data who owns it, you know, at sort of adding to the confusion.

Are there there lots of different types of cameras being used in the city in a couple of.

by no later than the end of the next quarter, we have to do a report.

We're going to be coming back to you with a report on closed circuit TVs that are operated by SDOT.

And those are traffic cameras, you know, that serve a different purpose than these license plate reader cameras.

So I can understand community concerns about, you know, all these cameras out there.

WSDOT has cameras, you know, the police department has cameras.

S.

Dot has cameras, you know, and I think that's part of the whole point of the surveillance ordinance to make sure that there are adequate controls in place, you know, to make sure that data is protected.

But it is a policy question, you know, about that.

You asked to what end do we do we do this stuff?

And is it worth the risk?

And I should say one just adding one thing that further complicate things, but hopefully add some context, you know.

Just focusing on this particular technology, you know you always one thing that we did not address in this report, we had you know our.

Are there easier ways for someone to get this type of data?

You know, some of this data is for sale.

There are commercial firms that go around and sell license plate information that certain firms can buy about, you know, so who repossess cars, for example.

So we didn't try to answer that question in this report about You know, are there easier ways someone could could go get this data than trying to take it out of the system?

We were just purely looking at it.

Within the confines of the system, so.

And can I ask 1 more question?

Can we go back to the cost slide?

12. Yeah.

I can go there.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess, you know, for me, it does raise the questions again about, um, you know, to council member Herbold's point, um, was there any sort of racial equity analysis done in where these cameras are placed?

Um, and I understand that for this purpose, it's really just about determining travel time, but given the, the reality that there are lots of cameras and community feels like they are being surveilled, overly surveilled already, how do we make sure that we're keeping that in mind when we make decisions about where to put or even replace cameras and whether there are better ways to do that.

But the second question then is, how much are we spending on all these cameras and is there a better use of some of these resources We just heard from the Pedestrian Advisory Board and the Bicycle Advisory Board.

Are there investments in infrastructure that we could be making that make it safer for people who aren't necessarily in cars or that might make it faster for people to travel?

Because we're using our money in a way that supports a different kind of infrastructure, not just car infrastructure.

So those are bigger conversations for us to have, but it just for me is raising a lot of questions about whether this is the right investment for us to be making as a community.

I'd like to answer three of your questions.

Initially, let me just kind of address the automated enforcement.

Automated enforcement, Olympia gives us the state law giving us permission to do the enforcement and also the engineering process of the automated enforcement.

So that principle is run by SPD and they hire, it's a third party company that processes it.

It's not an LPR, it's a camera technology, as David stated, many, many different cameras.

And red light enforcement, the school speed zone, great safety issues that we launched for this thing.

And there's a pilot for a transit lane, and then also block the box for three years that the legislation has provided us a pilot project to roll those out, which the Lower Spokane Bridge, that is a technology that we're using to identify authorized users to cross that bridge and so forth that we just launched recently.

So that's the automated enforcement.

You asked about how data is being used.

And so I'm gonna use the recent West Seattle Bridge closure and how we've mitigated and come up with a mitigation plan to support businesses, to support freight, to support transit movement for the peninsula.

And we outfitted all the alternate route that were identified to get people in and out of this peninsula using travel time.

This is a measure that we use significantly to identify capacity analysis, who gets to use the lower Spokane Bridge.

All that policy that's been driven is using those data in calculating what the capacity analysis should be.

We have a task force set aside to kind of understand immediate business impact and maritime impact and businesses in West Seattle and who should be.

This is the data we utilize consistently to come up with data-driven policies to support impacted communities like South Park and Georgetown and so forth to give them access both to transit and freight and so forth.

So this is a very crucial thing.

It's not a car moving.

It is a data that we use to have a sustainable, reliable network for transit, freight, pedestrians, bike, and all modes.

And also, you know, place a planning trip and so forth.

And it helps us, you know, assess how we allocate the right-of-way, creating bike lanes and transit lanes, and all those factors are elements that are supported by this data.

You asked about whether, you know, it's a pivot, like, you know, if this investment is worthwhile.

The investment comes in when we manage the network in a more stable manner for of transit reliability, impacted industries such as the Merit Time and West Seattle businesses that we've been hearing continuously and making sure access is in an equity manner distributed to have access to the lower Spokane, which gives them a more closer touchpoint to their businesses and access.

So that's how I want to kind of, yeah, I just wanted to kind of share those elements that we use.

And I just want to also emphasize the license plate, which is the PII, the data is never kept.

So we are talking about rolled up data, which is the travel time that we utilize to service all those things.

As that takes privacy very, very seriously.

And being the leading department here and with the three technologists that have been identified to go through this process, We, you know, even 10 years ago, we thought about like, you know, privacy and figuring out that not to keep PII without the surveillance ordinance being present at that time.

So I just want to emphasize that data is crucial.

We make decision on safety, efficiency for all modes using this particular data.

Thank you for those.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Really good and important questions.

Really appreciate this and appreciate the thorough responses.

And it's nice that we, you know, if we do have follow-up questions, we know the auditor is going to be keeping track of this for us.

And then, and then it starts always available to us to answer questions as well.

Council members, any other questions?

Council member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Auditor Jones, Megumi.

Adiem, it's always great to see you.

Thank you for this report.

I guess just putting a finer tip on it, and you may have already addressed this, but I guess I wanted to pull this out.

What would you say is the most important recommendation that we solve for today?

And what do we need to do in the short term?

What's the first thing that we need to get going on?

I think we've already understood that we need to expedite this thing, that we cannot land in an agreement.

I just want to also mention that WSDOT doesn't have the surveillance ordinance, so there is no reason for them to invest in training and so forth.

So understanding those things and us balancing the return on investment, whether we should be spending money on something that we're phasing out to create training practices and so forth, the financial, you know, decision that we've made to expedite in transitioning this as quickly as possible.

So, and then the rest of them is, so that's the two recommendations about the training and creating a data agreement with WSDAT that we are, we would like to honor until the end of the year, we can't land there.

And then the rest of it is more of a documentation alignment and wording and so forth that that we need to kind of follow up with IT to demonstrate.

I also want to kind of talk about network security.

And Jason is here to talk about, we have actually invested in getting a private consultant to come in to do an audit on our street network and have implemented a lot of the recommendation.

We work very closely with IT to continuously maintain So if we're worried about hacking on those cameras and so forth, we have a great process and partnership and touchpoint with IT that we continuously to monitor our network, not just for the LPR, but all the traffic cameras, which you'll be hearing down the line, you know, and other traffic related devices such as traffic signals and stuff that we take security very seriously.

But Jason, do you want to add anything on that note?

Jason King, who's our IT manager.

Thanks, Adiem.

Yeah, just briefly, I built a great relationship with the chief information security officer for the city of Seattle, Seattle IT, in my position, supervising the technology team.

Back in 2015, he moved on to create a cybersecurity firm.

And so we stayed in touch.

As Megumi mentioned, we invested independently, the department did, to perform an audit of ourselves.

And we worked with Seattle IT to understand how to prioritize and implement and mitigate the risks that were discovered in that audit.

Then in 2019, the Seattle IT security team began introducing an auditing process to the customer department.

So we fully participated in that in 2019. So that's gonna be a biannual process.

So again, in 2021, will participate in another audit.

So yes, my team is trained on modern security methods and tactics.

And yeah, we just take security and privacy very seriously as a department.

Thank you, Adiem.

And Jason, you answered my, and Adiem, you teed up my next question.

So I have, you've already answered my follow-up question.

So thank you very much for your time and all of your work.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lovely to see you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

And so, Councilmembers, again, the auditor will be, auditor's office, you know, in the legislative branch at our disposal for any questions and follow up.

We're glad to hear Auditor Jones and his team will be following up on this.

It's good to hear directly from SDOT.

Thank you for being available to answer questions and provide all this context for us.

And we'll continue to be asking questions about these new technologies and reviewing the official surveillance reports as well and getting back to you with any concerns that we hear from the public about these.

some of this technology we're really looking forward to, like the block-in-the-box technology, and of course, safety around schools and providing that access to the lower West Seattle Bridge.

And at the same time, there are concerns about protecting the data, the personally identifiable information.

And so we're gonna continue to balance that work with our auditor too, and with information technology, and in this case, with SDOT.

Councilor, any final questions?

Okay.

Oh, yeah, Councilor Herbold.

I'm sorry.

I just wanted to get back to the two very short questions that were left on my list.

I understand that the raw data is shared with WSDOT.

I just want to hear affirmatively that it is not shared.

I know that SDOT doesn't use it for enforcement purposes, but I just want to hear affirmatively that it is not shared with SPD.

Is that correct?

It's not shared.

Are you asking?

Yeah, it's not shared.

Thank you.

Council Member Hurdle, we asked that question directly to WSDOT.

I think Magumi did, and they said, we do not share it with anyone.

OK.

Super helpful.

And then lastly, I understand that WSDOT temporarily holds the raw data for seven days.

Does SDOT as well?

No.

We don't, and WSDOT actually, sorry, Audium, yeah.

Just to clarify, WSDOT takes the raw plate information and immediately randomizes it, assigns it a value that you cannot reverse back to the original plate information.

They do hold that for seven days for troubleshooting purposes, as Megumi mentioned.

So again, the raw data is never held by SDOT.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.