Seattle City Council Land Use Committee 5/12/2025

Good morning.

It is May 12th, 2025 and the special land use committee meeting will come to order.

I'm Mark Solomon, chair of the land use committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll.

Vice Chair Strass.

Present.

Council member Moore.

Present.

Council member Rink.

Present.

Council member Rivera.

Present.

Chair Solomon.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

All right, great.

Thank you.

I move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Okay, it's been moved and seconded.

Hearing no objection.

Okay, the agenda is adopted.

Thank you all very much for being here this morning to, you know, discuss what we have on the agenda and always want to thank our central staff and S-TOP for helping us prepare for this meeting.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to...

of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up for today?

We have two speakers signed up, one in person, one virtual.

Okay, so we'll begin with the in-person speaker and then move to the remote speakers.

Each one will have two minutes.

Clerk, can you please read the instructions regarding public comment?

The public comment period will now be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

In-person speakers will be called first, after which we will move to remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We will begin with the first speaker on the list, and that is Mark Wood.

Good morning, everyone.

It's Mark Weed, and I was expecting to have one of my associates here today, too, and I'm sorry he's not here yet, but I'm sure he will become Henry Leidman.

We represent property owners on 6th Avenue.

down by the Soto Station.

And talking toward the ordinance today, we are in favor of the ordinance.

The missing is, why isn't it citywide?

Why is it only for sound transit?

And it would seem to me, in order to move things ahead for everyone in the city, that we consider looking at it in a broader sense.

In addition, in the case of the area down there around Soto Station, one of the provisions within the ordinance is to make sure that the community is best served by whatever work is being done around the station areas.

And I would like to make sure that that is observed and actually embraced for the community.

Thank you.

I appreciate the time today.

Thank you, sir.

Next, we have David Haynes.

David, please press star six.

Thank you.

You know, on the presentation, I noticed that there's something on there that says ensure a sense of belonging for communities of color at all stations, making sure that stations are not white spaces.

What the hell does that mean?

It's like First, you all have conflicts of interest.

You're not qualified for certain policies, but yet you're pushing through things as a favor, and you're tainting everything with racism.

I swear to Christ, man, the DOJ needs to come down and investigate this city council for all of your conflicts, all of your special interests, self-dealing favors.

and your unqualified, untrustworthy policies are gonna squander billions of dollars going to the top of West Seattle where you still can't get to Alki without doing another transfer.

You people are squandering billions of dollars on taxes and yet your society continues to implode nobody wants to take public transportation because it totally sucks you got speakers blaring in your ear like they're trying to keep the junkies away bothering everybody else while you're jolting in the tunnel that was made cheaply by corrupt unions who get a punch pulling pass on all your failures of not opening st2 but yet you keep pushing along with st3 just doing special interest favors, making sure that people can line their pockets with tax money, getting rich, selling out so you can have some stupid train that builds up a, uh, resume for progressive Democrats, the same ones who have tainted our society with skin color racism and ignorant conjurings of the past with all of your miseducations of hate.

You all are revolting.

You're no better than the past council.

You guys are just pushing the envelope and dumping people over the cliff with your failures and bad policies and racism.

Chair, there are no more speakers.

All right, very good.

As there are no more speakers, the public commentary period is closed and we'll now move on to our items of business.

Clerk, will you please, excuse me, will you please read the first item of, first and only item of business as reflected on rejected into the record?

Agenda item 1, Council Bill 120975, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning, addressing signage, clarifying requirements, and supporting efficient permitting processes for light rail transit facilities, and adding new sections of code to the Seattle Municipal Code.

Great, thank you.

And I see our presenters have joined us at the table.

So please introduce yourselves and begin, introduce yourselves for the record and begin when you are ready.

Good morning.

I'm Sarah Maxana.

I'm the Sound Transit Program Director at the Office of the Waterfront Civic Projects and Sound Transit.

Thank you for having us today.

Good morning.

Lindsay King, SDCI, Sound Transit III Project Manager.

Liz Schwitzen, Council Central Staff.

Okay, cool.

So I'm...

I'll do this.

I'll do this.

All right, good morning.

Thank you so much for having us back at the table.

We are eager today to follow up our conversation from the April 30th committee meeting.

We have a slide deck prepared that responds to some of the questions and discussion items from that committee meeting that pertain to issues related to our code amendment legislation, as well as some comments and questions that came up that are outside of the purview of the code amendments that we'd like to still take an opportunity to address.

That is tricky.

All right.

So we're going to start off with talking about some of the non-code amendment related issues, including safety and user experience on transit, residential and business displacement.

And then we'll speak to some of the issues that came up related to the code amendment legislation, including a brief recap of the code amendments, walking through the highlights of community engagement, the three plus years of community engagement that informed this proposal, and then talking a little bit about the tree and vegetation management plan, some of the questions and comments that came up about that, and then wrap up with some next steps.

So we always start off every slide just grounding again in Sound Transit 3, which was approved by over 70% of Seattle voters back in the 2016 ballot initiative.

It is the largest infrastructure projects in the city's history, West Seattle and Ballard together combined and bringing tremendous opportunity to transform how community members access their homes, jobs, destinations, but also bringing very real impacts to the city as it's being constructed through existing neighborhoods.

Our team is an interdepartmental One Seattle effort to work across city departments with Sound Transit, with stakeholders and communities in the planning, permitting, and delivery of these investments.

We're led by the Office of Waterfront Civic Projects and Sound Transit, but we depend on the leadership and subject matter expertise across dozens of city departments.

So we're going to start off today talking about two issues that came up in the April 30th committee meeting, safety and user experience on transit and residential and business displacement.

So I want to start off by talking a little bit about the council action back in 2022, which was following the draft EIS.

At the time, that was the draft EIS for both West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions.

City Council adopted Council Resolution 32055 that recommended a preferred alternative for West Seattle and Ballard Link extensions.

And that happened in advance of the Sound Transit Board action on a preferred alternative.

It's really important to highlight this action because selecting the station locations and selecting where those guideways are going to go is typically the most important opportunity to affect the outcomes of the project.

And so it was a critical opportunity for the city, for the mayor's office, for city council to take a position to help shape those outcomes.

And the action that city council took spoke specifically to outcomes including safety, user experience, and displacement.

And I have a map here of West Seattle Link Extension, and in fact, all of the station locations and guideways that were identified in that council action did end up being the stations and guideways that were selected by the Sound Transit Board later that year.

So the council resolution based a recommendation for a preferred alternative on five key values, racial equity, safety and user experience, community, which included community impacts, including minimizing residential and business displacement, environmental protection, minimizing impacts to sensitive areas, and then financial stewardship, having a mind towards the taxpayer dollars being used to fund the project.

And while we walk through the specific issues that came up at the April 30th committee meeting, safety and user experience, minimizing residential and business displacement, we'll speak specifically to some of the examples of how this council action helped shape outcomes in a positive way.

So starting with safety and user experience on transit, selecting a preferred alternative for West Seattle in particular, prioritize safety and user experience and selection of that preferred alternative.

The example I'd like to share is the Delridge Station alternatives.

The Delridge Station alternatives included alternatives roughly in three different areas, Dakota Street, Delridge Way, and Andover.

The selection of a preferred alternative at the north end near Andover was made in large part over the possibilities on Del Ridgeway.

Del Ridgeway would have offered really great transit integration, but it would have created it would have precluded visibility, it would have created a dark corridor under which people would be accessing stations, and it would have created the type of design situation that does not necessarily lend itself to feeling safe, particularly at night.

And so one of the decisions to site the station further north allowed for a better lit area, a safer area for pedestrians.

In addition, for West Seattle and Ballard, we're working to improve safety and user experience through a number of other final design and permitting considerations, including advancing SEPTED principles, that's crime prevention through environmental design, Sound Transit has committed to a meeting series during final design for West Seattle to examine SEPTED principles and look for opportunities to incorporate them into final design.

We're also applying the adopted design guidelines in the permit project review process, and that includes a suite of strategies for design that include open space design and activation, safety and comfort, lighting, wayfinding, a lot of those design factors that can lend itself to a safer environment.

Safety and user experience doesn't just relate to design, it also relates to the experience that people have on transit.

And there were some questions that came up at the committee meeting about safety on the trains themselves.

The city is partnering with a number of efforts that speak to safety on trains.

There's the King County Regional Transit Safety Task Force.

That is a partnership with Sound Transit.

I guess I have Sound Transit written twice on that slide.

Sound Transit, King County, community organizations, labor law enforcement, working towards achievable and measurable safety improvements with a focus on the experience of transit riders and experience of employees.

Also working on improving safety and access to transit and local destinations for people that are walking and rolling, biking, driving through and near stations through several efforts, including the MLK Junior Safety Project and Sound Transits at Grade Crossing program.

So looking at ways to improve safety in the vicinity of those station areas.

Speaking to residential and business displacement, another issue that came up at the committee meeting related to selection of a preferred alternative for both the Delridge and West Seattle segments.

The council action on selecting a preferred alternative selected alternatives that had the lowest or on the very low end of residential displacement relative to the other alternatives being considered.

and moderate business displacement relative to the others.

Unfortunately, there was no single alternative that would have minimized both, and so this was looking for a balance that would have minimized particularly residential displacement.

Other alternatives for Delridge, for example, had substantially more residential displacement.

We're also now working with Sound Transit and affected property owners and tenants, including businesses and residents.

As West Seattle is now entering the final design phase of the project, Sound Transit is going to be beginning to property acquisition, and that includes assistance to property owners and tenants affected by property acquisition or relocation.

And we are supporting that process by pointing folks to the right departments and staff at Sound Transit to help them get the support that they need.

And then in addition, the state legislature just adopted earlier this month an increase to the cap for businesses that are displaced.

And that was a legislation that the city supported.

So businesses are going to be able to receive substantially more compensation in that relocation effort.

and that new amount is also to be adjusted for inflation over time.

So we see these as positive efforts that are going to support businesses as they're impacted by the project.

With that, we are going to pivot to the issues or questions that came up related to the Code Amendment package itself.

And I'm gonna hand things over to Lindsey to walk us through these next set of slides.

Thank you, Sarah.

First, I'd like to start by recapping where we were on April 30th when I presented the Code Amendments under consideration in particularly two groups of code amendments, the process related improvements and the design related improvements.

So just to recap, we've spent the last five years developing the code amendment package as it was presented to you.

Our goals are to resolve code conflicts to be able to permit the essential public facility, but also work to streamline the permitting process by removing redundant or unnecessary process steps in order to facilitate timely delivery of permits.

Our process related improvements focus on three areas.

The first streamlining the master use permit process.

Our goal was streamlining the master use permit process was to make the appeal process more efficient and timely while still maintaining the public touch points in the process.

So our master use permits will include the large white sign, public mailings and notice along with potential public meetings in community before we render a decision.

That way community can be involved when it is most timely to inform permitting decisions and participate in the process.

The second is to create a preliminary construction management plan.

The preliminary construction management plan was a tool to be used at the beginning of the permit process to lay out the strategy for construction when multiple permits will be occurring in the same area in geography.

We need to maintain a movement of vehicles, pedestrians, buses, bicycles, people rolling, walking around these neighborhoods while construction is occurring, and the preliminary construction management plan is a tool to help us support that process.

The third, creating a project-level tree and vegetation management plan, we'll dive into in greater detail later today, but a holistic strategy for tree management.

Sarah spoke to these as well, to establish light rail specific development standards and design guidelines to help facilitate an efficient and clear regulatory structure for stations regardless of their geographic location in the city.

And we intend to revise the bicycle parking requirements similarly to create station typography and be responsive to the unique geography and locations where stations are located.

Finally, we will establish the Seattle Design Commission as an advisory review body with public facing meetings for the public to engage in station design.

Next slide.

Thank you for asking us to detail what we have done in the public engagement space to advance our code amendments, and apologies for not including that in our last presentation.

I will start with the beginning of our process and detail where we went, who we talked to, what we heard, and how that informed our code amendments.

In 2023, we kicked off our public engagement efforts with both a station planning survey and bike survey, as well as a series of public open houses in fall of 2023 and spring of 2024. The survey and the online open houses generated over 2,100 responses.

specifically to what community priorities are around station design so that that could inform the development standards and the design guidelines that were presented to you.

Community responded that they wanted safe and clean spaces.

They also wanted to feel like they had the ability to easily transfer between movements of vehicles, buses, and stations.

All of these help inform the development standards that will guide station development, including clear line of sight, lighting, paths of travel, locating key intersections for modes near station entries.

Both the station planning survey as well as the open houses were provided with in-language support.

In 2023 and 24, we continued our public outreach by being in community at various community events throughout the alignments.

In 2024, we started a series of different Seattle Design Commission public meetings.

Primarily, Sound Transit was presenting the preliminary engineering designs for all of the West Seattle link stations and guideway segments.

The feedback provided by public during these meetings as well as the Seattle design commissioners further helped inform whether or not we needed to amend our code amendments to support better design outcomes at stations either through the creation of development standards or the design guidelines.

Later we gave specific briefings on the design guidelines and the code amendments soliciting feedback to help inform those.

Next slide, please.

The big bulk of our code amendment engagement kicked off in fall last year, where we sent nearly 100 different emails to interested parties, both tribes, all the different commissions and key stakeholder groups, both in the alignment area or just with a particular emphasis on elements of our proposal, including trees and bicycle parking.

The communication from the interested parties then informed a series of briefings that we completed over the next six months.

Our briefings included to the boards and commissions, including the urban forestry commission regarding the code amendments for the tree management plan.

The Seattle design commission is noted previously as well as the bike board and the transit board.

The feedback we received from the Urban Forestry Commission largely supported early and systematic addressing of trees through a singular tree and vegetation management plan for each link extension.

The support of a public facing community engagement tool for people to understand tree impacts and the mitigation being proposed was revolutionary and supported across the board.

The Seattle Bicycle Board as well as the Transit Board supported the station typology that we are proposing regarding the bicycle parking requirements to understand that station location matters as far as bicycle parking need.

It's really important to understand that across the board for bicycle parking, what people would like is safe parking that's close to station entries with good lighting and visibility, as well as the ability to support different types of bicycles.

Sound Transit also did a survey in the summer of 2024 in order to better understand what was preventing people from parking at bicycle or bicycle facilities at existing stations.

What people found was that many people needed bicycles for the last mile of their trip.

However, with the large distribution of stations across the city, we anticipate there will be more need for bicycle parking than what the current system requires.

Once we did our code amendment engagement, we heard from a number of stakeholders that wanted very specific briefings to address their concerns as they had identified in the environmental impact statement.

From there, we went to the Soto BIA, the Downtown ST3 Steering Committee, the Delridge Neighborhood Development Association, as well as presented to the part of Seattle and engaged with tribes regarding their concerns.

Concerns are varied.

However, it should be noted that both the BIA and the ST3 steering committee had particular concerns around the construction impacts of light rail transit facilities.

To that end, we decided to put the preliminary construction management plan as a code amendment in the code in response to their direct concerns.

Lastly, we wrapped up with our SEPA process, including public notice, publication in the Louie, as well as information provided on SDCI and SDOT websites, including fact sheets, as well as in-language support.

If anyone has asked for a briefing around code amendments, we have provided a briefing around code amendments.

Anyone and everyone who would like to know about it, we are more than happy to share, even leading up to the public hearing.

So that is an open invitation.

We are proud of the public engagement we did as well as creating a code that was responsive to what we heard from the thousands of people that responded to surveys or showed up to in-person events or requested specific briefings.

And if there's one thing I'd like to underscore is that one of the things that came out of the several years of community engagement that we did is that community engagement is really important.

And so the code that we are proposing to you for the three process improvements, which relates to improvements to the master use permit process, the project level preliminary construction management plan and the project level tree and vegetation management plan, those code amendments will put in place new community engagement requirements that do not exist today.

And so not only have we put a good deal of community engagement to shape the proposal in front of you, but the proposal in front of you is going to require additional engagement moving forward.

So from here, we'll pivot to the specific requests for information about the tree and vegetation management plan.

So to revisit what the key advantage of the tree and vegetation management plan is that it will create a transparent process with upfront engagement, as Sarah mentioned.

The trick here is that in a do-nothing scenario, SDCI would be reviewing and issuing permits, hundreds of them, in an administrative process with little or no community engagement.

Do you mind if we actually pause real quickly for a question?

I believe there's a question on the previous portion regarding engagement.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for being here round two.

Thank you for addressing some of the questions that we had last time.

On community engagement, can you talk a bit about, I understand the engagement to the boards and commissions and to the specialty groups and stakeholders that the city normally engages with.

I want to hear more about what was done in terms of broad community.

So I see farmers markets, but not everyone goes to their farmers market.

So, I mean, the BIA and the steering committee pointed out the construction impacts and concerns around that.

That is something that I know is shared broadly by just residents across the city.

So what engagement was done with just the average resident?

on this because my experience is, you know, if we don't do the outreach on the front end, on the back end, people get really upset.

There will be disruption.

And that's just nature of, you know, we try to mitigate, but it's going to happen.

But the thing is, people get really upset if they don't know ahead of time.

And then on the back end, they read some SEPA posting.

There's going to be this disruption here.

And that's how they found out.

And then they feel like they weren't brought along.

So the stakeholder groups, we do a really great job letting them know ahead of time.

The average person, not so much.

So I just want to hear more about that.

And then I know you mentioned, Lindsay, in the plan that's going to be in the code, the, sorry.

Instruction management.

Exactly.

There's some outreach being detailed in there.

Maybe you can talk more about that.

Because...

Is the plan to do some community outreach before the permitting gets issued or are you talking about post or at what point?

Thank you.

As far as the broad outreach, we were trying to be in the communities, first and foremost, that were being affected by the light rail transit system.

So the open houses that were held in 2023 and 2024 were specific and open and available for all four stations that are going to be located in the West Seattle area.

So there was representation and outreach given to each of the communities with stations located in those areas and there was, I can't remember, hundreds of people that came to those meetings.

And I'd like to add, too, that while that was the West Seattle open houses, one of the advantages that we had in developing these code amendments over the last several years is that Sound Transit at the same time was working on their environmental review process for both West Seattle and Ballard, which meant that there have been events for the last four years that have brought community members together and a draft EIS with comments.

And so we have environmental review staff that have been calling through those comments and listening in board meetings to comments for the last four or five years on the project where we've had an opportunity to hear from affected property owners, whether it's from displacement or public safety or access or concerns about the impacts to environmentally sensitive areas in West Seattle or concerns about tree loss.

So we've been able to I would say piggyback on listening in and being a part of Sound Transit's process over the last four to five years that have covered not only the geographies that are all gonna be impacted, but really the whole breadth of issues that community members are bringing.

Yeah, that's a very good point.

And then regarding the preliminary construction management plan specifically, the idea behind it is that it would be created in draft form in advance of the permitting process beginning.

So that as the permit process begins, that information is available for both public review and comment as a part of the permitting process.

There are opportunities for early engagement in advance of permitting.

but we haven't committed at a broad scope to holding public meetings for every permit that comes in the door.

How we package our public meetings remains to be determined, but the idea is that we would be in community and soliciting feedback on the construction plan so that if people's concerns aren't adequately represented in the preliminary construction management plan, they would be able to do a timely comment to inform that before it becomes actionable.

Lindsay, could you describe a permit that you think would have a public meeting and one that might not?

Sure.

Every station, we intend to have a public meeting associated with it.

There are also other major permits that are located in sensitive areas like Pigeon Point or Longfellow Creek that have broad public significance.

We would anticipate holding public meetings where there is broad public significance to help streamline the permitting process.

Thank you, Lish and Lindsey and Sarah.

And I know, Sarah, you're no stranger to all of this, having worked on the Mercer block back.

I have my final question.

Thank you, Chair, if that's OK.

So I hear what you're saying.

You're going to do this community engagement before you or as part of, it sounds like, the permitting process, not before you do the permitting, necessarily.

It could happen either way.

We could do engagement before starting permitting if it informs multiple permits potentially.

Alternatively, if it's one primary permit, then we might want to do it during the public comment period.

So there could be advantages to time it either way.

So is this contained in the preliminary construction management plan when you're going to do it?

I mean, it sounds like you haven't made a decision yet.

And then there's the Sound Transit, who's a totally separate entity and agency that we have no control over.

So I get that part.

But as part of our permitting process, we're doing all this engagement.

Presumably they're doing theirs.

And hopefully we have some insight into theirs.

And at some point, they'll be sharing.

I will say one thing that we did learn from the community engagement that we've highlighted above is that it's best to do engagement with sound transit.

If you are in community, we both want to hear what community has to say and how that would inform our process.

engagement that we would do in community, Sound Transit would be responsible for representing their project.

So we would need to come in coordination with Sound Transit.

We would represent the regulatory side of the purpose of the meeting.

That being said, the public meeting element of the code amendment isn't specific to the preliminary construction management plan or individual permits.

It's an overarching allowance for us to hold public meetings whenever we would like to inform the permitting process.

So when you said, you know, we don't know when we're going to hold it, there's flexibility in the code to hold it when it's most impactful to the project, but it isn't tied to any one specific code amendment that we're presenting.

It is above and beyond all of it just to inform permitting.

Sorry if that's confusing.

No, it's not confusing.

I just, I'm glad to hear you're working with Sound Transit on the engagement plan because that's how I would want to do it, it makes the most sense, and we should be collaborating and working together on the community outreach.

I would like to, as part of this here, a more concrete plan and timeline for when that engagement, rather than this flexibility piece, because it would inspire more confidence if we knew this is a timeline for that community engagement as part of this permitting process, versus there's this flexibility now.

And then the public, I mean, we're constantly in the space with public where they don't always trust government and our agencies that are affiliated.

And it'd be good to know at what points in this process you will do that engagement.

The way that the code is written currently is that the public meeting would occur during the permit process.

We have suggested that it would be most timely and less impactful to the project scheduled to do so during the public comment period so that we would hold the public meeting while the public is currently commenting.

So it'd be at the beginning of the permitting process.

Okay, thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Any other comments from the committee before we let them proceed?

All right, so please proceed.

I have questions too, but we'll wait until the end.

Okay, thank you.

So back to the TVMP, the Tree and Vegetation Management Plan, where we left off was that it was one document that would address tree and vegetation before, during, and after construction.

The benefit is a consolidated, transparent, public-facing document in lieu of a permit by permit administrative review.

The ability to create one public facing document allows us to do the upfront public engagement so that people can understand the tree loss as well as the mitigation, where trees will be planted, how trees will be maintained.

That is unique and novel as far as tree management is concerned.

We intend to do specific engagement with the Urban Forestry Commission.

We went to them to outline what should be included in a tree and vegetation management plan.

They were supportive over the overall concept, but wanted to get more into the details.

That's where we envision a phase two engagement where the details of the tree and vegetation management plan would be shared with the urban forestry commission for their feedback in advance of being approved.

Tribes also commented that they would like to look at the tree and vegetation management plan in advance of permitting.

Happily, I can say that is part of the section 106 process and had been envisioned already.

The other major benefit of the tree and vegetation management plan is by creating a holistic forward facing strategy, we have the ability to start tree replacement earlier in advance of enduring light rail construction, not playing catch up after light rail is constructed, but being proactive and including it as soon as possible.

Next slide.

As a part of our last briefing on April 30th, you had requested specific information about the ability to transplant trees.

The city has taken that request internally and conferred with both our arborists as well as Sound Transit arborists about the potential of being able to do that, transplant trees.

There are a number of limitation costs and outcomes that we need to bring to your attention that would prevent us from universally saying that we could transplant trees or not.

It requires more work and information available.

The limitations that we understand is that size, genus, species, and health are absolutely paramount to whether or not a tree should be considered in the first place for transplant.

Also, there is a accessibility concern for both the sending site and the receiving site.

A simple way of considering accessibility is if there's power lines, for instance, next to a site, it's going to be very hard to move a tree off of that site without a lot of cost to relocate those power lines.

Second, there are portions of the project that are in unique geographies that wouldn't allow the relocation of trees.

So imagine steep slopes or potential slides.

We're not gonna have the ability to take trees out of these hillsides for transplanting without creating harm to the surrounding sites.

We understand that larger trees are harder to transplant and have a lower survival rate.

That typically, if there has been success, it is with smaller trees that are more nimble to be transplanted.

The third bullet is absolutely critical for us to understand.

The season and the time needed for transplanting may not align with the project schedule.

You can understand that you wouldn't be able to transplant trees at every season of the year that it's It's limited in scope when you can transplant trees.

You couple that with the fact that sound transit acquisitions are unknown, and when they do come through, they immediately like to start construction.

The sequence of acquiring land, obtaining permits, and starting construction is very, very...

sequential and at the scale of the permits that we're talking about delays of weeks or months have the potential to create knock-on effects across the entirety of the project schedule it is unclear whether or not we would be able to align the property acquisitions along with the season for transplanting couple that with when we need to start construction logistically has many many schedule implications The cost of transplanting trees is significant.

As we understand it, Sound Transit would not be able to transplant trees within their own project footprint since they are constructing within their project footprint.

Trees that would need to be transplanted would be coordinated with the city of Seattle to city property.

The city does not have the ability to transplant trees of their own and would need to contract out to specialists in order to do so.

Initial estimates seem to come in around between 10 and 100 times higher than a tree replacement.

In a scenario where so much costs are incurred, Sound Transit has what is considered, or what they call a betterment policy.

Something that goes above and beyond the code that incurs a lot of costs becomes the responsibility of the city to pay for.

It is unclear what transplanting trees would become betterments, but it is likely a consideration for us moving forward.

Lastly, the city has experienced a couple different transplanting recently that had very low survival rate.

So the cost benefit of being able to transplant trees is in question.

Do you have more you'd add?

I want to acknowledge that Lindsay and I are not the subject matter experts in urban forestry or certainly tree transplanting.

We did have an opportunity, as Lindsay mentioned, to consult with our arborists at the city, the urban forestry team at SDOT, SDCI, Office of Sustainability and Environment, and Seattle Parks.

in developing the information on this slide.

We do have a couple specific examples that the city can point to recent history in transplanting trees that have not yielded survival of those trees.

And so there is a good deal of hesitation about the upfront cost associated with that, which again is not subject matter expertise or technical capability that the city has.

We have to contract out.

and the low survival rate of those trees.

So it's something that we would want to approach with a lot of caution.

I also want to just underscore from the point of the city's involvement in any identification of betterments that we do think that this would likely qualify as a betterment under sound transit's policy, and pointing to the recent amendments to the Growth Management Act that were just adopted last month about precluding the siting of an essential public facility that states the city is responsible for ensuring a timely, oh, shoot, I should have brought the exact words with me, timely issuance of permit of a permit process that is able to move forward in an expedited manner that this this concept while I think coming from a place of absolutely wanting to preserve ecological functioning and canopy we think would introduce uncertainty to the schedule in a way that could trigger some of those statutory concerns We do, though, want to talk about what we're doing to get ready.

Kind of pivot to there's a lot that the city is doing to prepare for our role in the tree and vegetation management plan.

Lindsay, maybe I'll let you take the most bullets, and I wanna talk about the last one.

Okay, that sounds good.

Thank you for the tag team, sir.

We do have some members who do have a hard stop in a few minutes, so I'm wondering if we can pause here for them to ask the questions that they may have, or how much longer do you have on your presentation?

I think there's just like two more slides, maybe.

It's not too much.

You wanna let them roll?

Okay, continue please.

Okay, we are preparing for the tree and vegetation management plan.

So the next step in the development of the tree and vegetation management plan is to actually review the draft plan.

The city will complete its first review in the coming quarters and then we will go out for public engagement on the plan as noted with the urban forestry commission and available more generally for the public to engage in the plan.

It's important to understand that the directors must approve the plan before it is adopted.

And we have the ability to encourage larger trees within the project footprint where feasible.

On the right hand side of the screen, you can see what Sound Transit calls the vegetated clear zone around the guideway.

It's important to note that while Sound Transit is acquiring land to build the light rail guideway, we have the ability to inform where and how trees are placed around the guideway while still maintaining the clear zone around it.

So not all areas of the guideway are going to be able to have trees, but those areas that do, we will encourage the largest trees possible.

And one of the most important points of this is that there are going to be a lot of trees that are going to need to be replaced outside of the project footprint.

And that's where the city can really be getting ready now.

And so we are developing a capital improvement program for the ST3 tree replacement that will happen outside of that project area.

And in that, we'll be able to consider, again, those strategies to encourage conifers and larger trees and assess the feasibility of transplanting trees that would be appropriate.

And just to bring home the final part about the code amendments generally, we have been working tirelessly for many years to help create the code amendments in order to streamline the hundreds of permits that we anticipate.

Our goals are to create clear standards, streamline the permit process, maintain and shepherd a transparent and public process, and always maintain our authority to assess and mitigate impacts of light rail construction and operation.

And this is our last slide.

Next steps, expecting a public hearing on May 29. And there will be additional legislation later this year related to West Seattle.

And then permitting for West Seattle is expected to start in earnest in Q3 and Q4.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the team and the presentation today, the last time we talked and several times before that individually in my office.

Colleagues, this is important legislation that keeps us moving to be able to deliver light rail faster, more efficiently, with less expense.

And what I mean by that is if We retain the current system as, without this bill, we'll be spending a lot of time and money on processes rather than outcomes.

This bill is designed to retain all of the different steps and procedures for everyone to be engaged and involved, and it batches them into processes that create more efficiency.

So this is needed, it's needed now because Work on West Seattle is already occurring.

I'm taking a tour in nine minutes of some work that is supposed to be going on here in Seattle for the West Seattle segment that this bill directly applies to.

So we don't have time to wait.

I thank everyone for their work.

I urge a yes vote.

Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Moore.

Thanks very much, Chair.

back with a much more fleshed out presentation on the tree and vegetation management plan I appreciate the thought that's gone into that I guess I would say I still have a fair number of questions basically what I'm hearing is that it's going to be virtually impossible for a variety of reasons to transplant trees.

And I guess I'm not quite ready to give up on that.

So I certainly will have questions, things I'd like to pursue offline.

But I think it's going to be important to work with the Urban Forestry Commission and actually assessing where we can successfully transplant trees.

So I guess I won't, I won't go into all my questions at this point, but just to both.

I appreciate the sort of holistic approach.

I really do appreciate that rather than permit by permit.

But I think there's still some room for more tree preservation than what's been put here.

So I would like to work with you and also strongly encourage early and frequent consultation with the urban forestry commission.

So thank you so much.

Thank you.

Council member Rivera.

Thank you, chair.

I agree with my colleague Council member more.

I feel like I understand the challenges you've presented around preserving a tree.

And at the same time, I feel like we can do we ought to be able to do those calculations as they are moving forward with construction.

I understand perhaps we can't save all the trees.

But I think it's harder on the outset or easier on the outset to say all the reasons why it would be difficult and then not do it rather than let's see if there are some of those that can be preserved that should be part of this conversation.

And then we're making really an informed decision versus like a whole we can't do it so we're not going to do it if that makes sense so I do appreciate though that you looked into this so I want to acknowledge the work that you've done so far in looking into this and I would like to see some kind of plan for can we save some of those trees understanding we're not going to be able to save all of them but it shouldn't be all or none because it's hard it should be let's see what we can do what can we do not what can't we do thank you Thank you chair.

Thank you chair and thank you to our presenters today for coming back to expand a little bit more on this information.

I'm really excited to support this important legislation to keep projects on track and just as a point of curiosity appreciate this additional information related to trees.

I'm particularly struck by this bullet point around just cost seeing that transplanting trees indicates higher costs, 10 to 100 times higher than a tree replacement.

Can you expand on that?

And are there a couple of examples you can point to in terms of exactly how much money are we talking about?

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity to expand on it a little bit.

We did have an opportunity to speak with some, again, we are not subject matter experts, but there is an effort and a partnership across the several departments right now that have been looking at successful tree transplant examples from other areas.

And there was a recent example in Boise that has had a good deal of attention in which a sequoia was moved from a development.

It was essentially a hospital, I understand, and was moved to a greenfield site just about a block away or not very far away.

The total cost associated with that was approximately $300,000.

It involved prep work a year in advance to the root system to get the tree.

I guess there's a pruning process that you do to the roots about a year in advance, and you give the tree some time to repair from that in about a year in advance of moving.

It required clear access to the pre- and post-transplant site.

So again, as Lindsey mentioned, power lines or being able to get heavy machinery onto the site, both the receiving site and the sending site for that large-scale machinery.

In that particular case, they were able to clear the access route.

It was a short and level route to move the tree from one site to another.

And then there was five years of maintenance that was involved following the transplanting by a private contractor that included irrigation systems at the roots, irrigation systems in the crown, and a full anchor system to support the entire structure.

And all of that was put in place for five years by a private contractor before maintenance of the site was then handed back to the parks folks there is our kind of high-level understanding of that.

At five years, that tree is still alive.

We have not had similar success with recent tree plantings or tree transplanting in the city of Seattle, but that gives you a sense of the scale of the amount of time in advance.

So that was a year of prep work, but it was also seasonally sensitive, so you had to wait till the right season to do the pruning work and then the right season to move the tree as well.

And Chair, if I may, I just ask a quick follow-up.

The five years of maintenance work or is that just the initial?

like year of prep and moving it?

Oh, you know what?

In my notes, I don't have it explicitly.

I believe it included some of that maintenance work, but I could find that out from the folks that I believe the Seattle parks that are doing that research.

Certainly.

Thank you.

Thank you for providing that.

Would love a follow-up just to have that clarity.

But yeah, certainly these numbers help color it a little bit more in terms of what we're talking about in these efforts.

Chair, that concludes my questions.

Thank you again for being here today and excited to support this legislation.

All right, thank you.

I see Council Member Moore, you have your hand up again.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to provide some context.

Actually, it's really unfortunate that something that was so incredibly successful is being used as a model here to shoot down this similar attempt here.

Additional data shows that actually...

The giant Sequoia that's being cut down today at Green Lake could have actually been moved without having to begin the tree.

The root pruning earlier because it's based on sequoias are much easier to transplant.

There were many people that could have made this happen for less cost.

So I just think it's important to realize that much of this is based on the species of the tree and the willingness to get it done.

and to not use this as an example.

This was a unique example of a very, very big and very, very old tree, and we are not going to find giant sequoias all along this proposed route.

So let's not use that exception, which actually could have been done here for less money and done now, to say that this cannot be done and it is unsuccessful.

And I would appreciate further clarification about all of this because there's been a lot of discussion with the arborists and the parks department about being able to move the giant sequoia today and other trees.

And there are many reasons why things have not necessarily been successful.

And another thing I would look at is what is the survival rate of saplings versus transplanted trees?

We have a very low survival rate of saplings and they also require a significant investment in time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Moore.

And just for clarification purposes, there will not be a vote on this today because we are having public hearing on the 29th.

And will we be voting on the 29th on this?

It's up to me.

Cool, all right.

Okay, so a couple of follow-on questions and also related to the trees.

I know that we had discussed the possibility of tree location versus tree replacement.

The information about the survival rate is very good to have, but as has been pointed out, maybe it's genus specific, time of year specific, tier specific.

So again, good information, good clarification to have.

I would also say that where possible, preserve rather than replace.

And if that means that you design around the thing, design around it.

Okay, it's a couple more curves.

So what?

And since you've highlighted CEPTED in your presentation in terms of station design, I also want to follow up with that concept when it comes to vegetation and lighting.

So my encouragement to the planners of these stations is look at the vegetation plan, look at the lighting plan, put them on top of each other, and make sure they don't conflict with each other.

Because the last thing we need to do is have a great lighting plan that is blown by the fact that when the vegetation comes into full maturity, it blocks the light from getting to where it needs to be.

Let's see.

Can you go back to slide nine, please?

And this is where you were talking about displacement and the, I guess, the compensation for the folks who will be displaced.

Now, there's discussion about the businesses getting up to $200,000.

and adjustments for inflation for the displacement of their businesses.

That doesn't tell me what about this single family residential folks.

how are they going to be made whole if their property is in the path of the rail?

And considering housing prices in Seattle, $200K ain't going to cut it.

So can you speak to that?

Yes, thank you for that.

And the $200K, just to note, that is related to the business reestablishment.

It's not for the physical.

It's the actual property relocation assistance that Sound Transit provides, whether residential or business, is separate.

than the business reestablishment component.

And so we do want to be because I just want to acknowledge that it's Sound Transit's and Sound Transit's role to provide that relocation assistance, and we don't want to speak too much to it, or over-speak to it, but that during the property acquisition process, relocation assistance, whether it's to tenants, to property owners, or to businesses, are provided through a comprehensive package that's negotiated with Sound Transit.

And so Sound Transit's Real Property Division is now working with property owners.

They've been working in West Seattle with some early acquisitions that were identified by the board last year, where well in advance of permitting, they were starting to have those conversations with affected property owners.

And so we are supporting that process.

We would be happy to get information back to this council from Sound Transit about the specifics.

I think that it is very specific to each property, what the comprehensive relocation assistance ends up being because it's so sensitive to the value of that particular property.

Okay.

And then if you go to slide 12, please.

Yeah, the whole part about the community engagement, because there's a concern.

Let's say there's been a history of concern about Sound Transit's engagement process.

Have they been fully transparent?

Have they fully been engaging with neighborhoods?

And we can think of several neighborhoods where that has been the concern, or you could even say the criticism, is that, hey, we were really never brought into the process.

So as we're looking at this particular project, as we're looking at these particular amendments that we're looking to make to code, it's very important for, I think, everyone on this panel that there's been sincere and genuine community engagement, not just to the BIA, which is also very important because that was another one of my questions, but to the community as a whole.

how much opportunity has the community as a whole, not just Janet Paratex.

How much have they had a chance to weigh in?

So again, that is very important for us.

We want to get a sense of that.

And if there needs to be more engagement baked in before stuff happens, before we put pen to paper, whatever, I think you may be seeing that request that let's make sure we're doing our part.

At the same time, we can't control what Sound Transit does, but we can control what we do.

So again, wanna put that out there.

Let's make sure that we have the most robust community engagement that we can prior to pen going to paper or shovel hitting dirt.

Could I just respond real quickly?

Thank you for bringing that up, and I think we just want to say that we share that concern, and I think when we look again at these process-related improvements, all three of those will bake in additional community engagement that would not exist under the current code.

So this is very much at the forefront of our minds and something that we heard during the engagement process is that we want to make sure that the permit process isn't just an administrative exercise, you know, on the 19th floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower, but that permit by permit, but rather that we have this upfront opportunity where community can really see all of the construction impacts in geography and have a chance to to be involved in what the construction management plan or tree vegetation management plan look like.

And will that be in writing?

Yes, that is in the Code Amendment, yep.

Sweet.

Okay, cool.

Councilmember Charles, did you have something that you wanted to chime in on?

Oh, thank you, Chair Solomon.

My apologies for misreading my calendar.

I was moving 30 minutes ahead of schedule, so that's why I returned here.

Your comments about the payments for either people or businesses that are being displaced, It has been controversial over the years, which is why there's such a very prescriptive situation to address each and every different place.

And I believe that there was a bill before the legislature this year that passed that makes some changes.

But there's a...

For better or for worse, there is a very clear framework for what does and does not occur.

I also want to flag for the conversations.

We got into the conversation of betterments.

It's a term of art with Sound Transit.

It is...

And we passed at Sound Transit policies earlier this year or last year, really creating clear in or out policies for betterment.

What is, what is not a betterment?

Who is and who is not?

paying for that betterment because we have seen a different application in different cities, in different parts of the light rail system.

And so there's, again, a clear policy that we just have to be aware of, that if we are making these decisions, then it is not Sound Transit that will be paying for certain things.

It will be the city of Seattle.

Just wanted to keep that conversation going and looking forward to, you said this is going to be voted on in the next committee, is that correct?

Yes, it will.

All right, great.

Well, it's important that we pass this as soon as possible because at this point the record of decision has been issued for West Seattle.

We're at the go, no-go stage, so if the council is a no-go, then everyone should know that as soon as possible.

this.

Thank you.

Understood.

Thank you very much.

Let's see.

Looking to see if I had any other questions.

Last one about the, uh, engagement.

Uh, so, you know, you've done a lot of community engagement with stakeholders.

Uh, can you speak briefly to have the concerns raised during those, uh, engagements been incorporated into, uh, plans for construction or mitigation?

So specifically the construction management plan and how the concerns, okay.

Um, stakeholders at the Soto BIA in the downtown Sound Transit 3 steering committee are specifically concerned about the viability of businesses and residences in their geographic area while construction is underway.

Uh, and not just one construction project, but multiple construction impacts being considered cumulatively and the impacts over all of those.

The preliminary construction management plan has never been envisioned in the code before and specifying that we need to consider construction impacts holistically across multiple permits in a geographic area is the concept that is new and directly responsive.

Right now in a do nothing scenario, so in transit would be coming in for permitting and assessing the impacts of that permit alone.

we are asking them to assess the impacts of that permit in relationship to all the other permits in that geography.

And so in the downtown core, for instance, if you have three stations under construction at one time, how do goods move around the downtown core in that scenario?

You can't look at it with just one station.

You have to think about three if they will be under construction at the same time.

So that is where the preliminary construction management plan is being responsive is that it creates the tool for us to do that assessment with sound transit and have it be transparent and public facing for those community stakeholders to participate in.

And if I could just add quickly, that is a concern that came up in the engagement process, I would say, from the Soto business owners, the Port of Seattle, all through downtown, through Seattle Center.

They were very vocal in our engagement about the concerns related to construction.

But that by putting this into the code, it's not just for those downtown businesses.

It means that throughout the system.

And so Ballard, West Seattle, those communities that are also going to be impacted by construction impacts those businesses, those residents.

there's going to be this upfront construction mitigation planning that's happening in advance of permitting.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera.

Chair, thank you.

Sarah, thank you for talking about that because this is an S-stop piece, right?

How are you moving folks around while construction is happening?

that folks have had in the past and currently a lot of frustration with Estat and their ability to manage for traffic and moving of people and goods during this time.

So that is very much part of the outreach that I'm talking about at the front end and making sure that we are talking to folks about how we're gonna mitigate for that before is important.

Trying to get around the market with all the closures and there didn't seem to be, even in the timing of the lights changing is one way that you could do to mitigate for moving people around.

And what I saw yesterday did not inspire confidence because I'm not, I'm no traffic engineer, but I'm sitting there thinking if this light had changed at the same time as this light, we'd be moving people faster than just now waiting.

And by the time the light, you get the picture because you've done this too.

So, you know, and it's not just the traffic, it's buses and it's just foot traffic.

So, you know, all of these experiences are legitimate reasons why folks might have concern.

And I just want to make sure that we are addressing this on the front end with community folks, residents and businesses who are impacted.

and will be every day.

And again, I'm going to say it again because I said it last time.

I am supportive of Sound Transit 3. I am a big public transit advocate.

Did not have a driver's license until I was 30. True story.

So this is not meant to be, I'm being obstructionist.

We need to do the outreach on the front end robustly so on the back end we mitigate for folks getting really upset because we know what's coming.

So wanna make sure that this is happening beforehand.

And then as it's occurring, we're gonna have to keep doing these outreach points.

And that's why I would love to see some kind of outreach and with timeline plan for as these permits are coming up, how we are going to engage with folks to let them know that we're doing this work, not just Sound Transit, but SDOT is very much a big partner in this and what they're going to do to mitigate for things.

It's not just that we're doing it now, naming it now, acknowledging it now, and then during, it's like we need to do some things outreach-wise during as well, and I'm just not hearing that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Let's see, any other comments from the committee?

Any final comments from the panel?

I think the one thing that I would like to say with regards to the outreach plan is that outreach should be a holistic strategy.

There should be code backstops that are put in place so that we have engagement touch points codified, but that shouldn't be the only place that is specifying the engagement that is done with community.

necessarily relying on code to specify every single engagement opportunity but to develop a holistic engagement strategy with s dot that it goes above and beyond even just the individual permits that we're creating those regulatory framework around

All of that.

All of it.

All of it.

You want a bigger strategy.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Chair.

Okay.

Thank you.

And thank you all for being here today and presenting.

As was mentioned, we will have another meeting on the 29th.

There will be public hearing at that meeting.

And I am anticipating we will vote at that meeting as well.

So that actually concludes our are the agenda items for our meeting today.

So if there is, is there any further business to come before the committee?

Okay, hearing none, our next meeting will be Thursday, May 29th at 2 p.m.

Hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

The time is 1047. Thank you very much, everyone.