Seattle City Council Transportation & Utilities Committee 3/17/21

Good morning.

The March 17, 2021 meeting of the Transportation and Utilities Committee will come to order.

Time is 930 AM.

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.

I am expecting Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Gonzalez to join shortly.

I will let everyone know when they are here.

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

discussed today, but held until the April 7th committee meeting to give folks more time on that.

And I'd also like to recognize that Council President Gonzalez is present.

Good morning.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We have another packed agenda today.

We'll be voting on the city light partial easement to the city of Kirkland that we had a required public hearing on last week or two weeks ago in our last committee meeting.

We'll have a presentation and vote on Seattle City Light Rates Ordinance.

Seattle Department of Transportation will provide an update on the West Seattle Bridge, and we'll vote on a related grant acceptance for the West Seattle Bridge.

And finally, we will continue our work to review the surveillance impact reports.

This particular group two of those impact reports are from Seattle City Light, Seattle Fire Department, and the Seattle Police Department.

And I'd like to note that Councilmember Herbold is here, so all the committee members are present at this time.

Right now we'll go into public comment.

This time we'll open the remote general public comment period.

It looks like we have just one speaker at this time.

I ask that everyone be patient as we operate this online system.

We are continuously looking for ways to fine tune this process of public participation.

It remains with strong intent of the City Council to have public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, the City Council reserves the right to modify these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is unsuitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and in a manner in which we're able to conduct our necessary business.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is up to 20 minutes, and each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

I'll call on the speakers two at a time and in the order in which registered on the council's website.

If you've not yet registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of this public comment period by going to the council's website, seattle.gov forward slash council.

The public comment link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, staff will unmute the appropriate microphone and an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted will be the speaker's cue that it's their turn to speak and the speaker must then press star six to begin speaking.

Please begin speaking by stating your name and the item you are addressing.

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda.

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

Once you hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's microphone will be muted to allow us to call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask that you please disconnect from the line.

If you plan to continue following this meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

The regular public comment period for this committee meeting is now open, and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

Please remember to press star six before speaking.

Go ahead.

We have Cynthia Spies.

Go ahead, Cynthia.

Hi.

I'm Cynthia Spies, an independent security researcher and District 6 resident.

My comments are on the surveillance technologies.

I sent written public comments via three emails to all of you, which highlight areas for improvement spanning all three departments technologies.

I like to focus though on the automated license plate readers or ALPR and cop logic.

99.995% to 99.75% of license plates scanned by SPD are innocent individuals just going about their day.

Yet SPD retains their data for 90 days.

SPD's ALPR system as it's currently being used is mass location surveillance.

Location data conveys a lot of private information about an individual, where they live, where they work, who they visit, and where they worship.

The harms of mass location surveillance are numerous and well documented by academics for over a decade.

SPD has framed the data retention as being due to state law, but there is no law that requires the retention of ALPR data of innocent people, nor is such needed.

New Hampshire restricts ALPR data retention to three minutes unless the license plate matched a hit.

New Hampshire hasn't turned into a lawless state.

Any claims by SPD as to such are earmongering.

City Council should require that SPD not retain ALPR data for non-hits.

CopLogic, a.k.a. LexisNexis Desk Officer Reporting System, is hosted on a merger of three data brokers, Sisent, LexisNexis, and ChoicePoint.

CISA ran the multi-state anti-terrorism information exchange, or MATRIX, which garnered so much public backlash for its invasion of privacy that federal funding to it was cut.

Each of these data brokers has had a large security breach, sometimes more than once, and includes what was the largest FTC settlement in its history at the time.

One breach wasn't even detected by LexisNexis and instead was uncovered by the security community via the data breach of the Russian identity theft shop that was selling the stolen data.

Given the above, city council should require that SPD transition cop logic to a purely on-premise deployment.

The retail theft track with SPD's cop logic turns private security firms into pseudo cops.

The retail tracks reinforces racial profiling and should be removed and disbanded.

Please see my prior emails for the full details.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I'm double checking the speaker list, and I don't see any other speakers signed up.

Can IT confirm that before we close the public comment period?

There are no other public comment registrants.

Thank you.

So that concludes our list of speakers from the general public.

Now we will move on to the first legislative item on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the first agenda into the record?

Agenda Item 1, Council Bill 120008, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department, authorizing the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer to release a portion of an existing transmission corridor easement to the City of Kirkland for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you, and you all will recognize this because we had a public hearing and discussion on this a couple of weeks ago.

This measure facilitates construction of a pedestrian and bicycle path on the east side rail-to-trail project.

It allows Seattle City Light to convey an easement to the city of Kirkland in exchange for a fair market value payment.

So we probably can go through this pretty quickly.

But I'll go ahead and, as usual, ask our central staff if they have any comments.

And then we'll hear from the department.

Eric, good morning.

No, I have nothing to add to how you framed it up.

The important thing to note is that the public hearing did occur.

And these kinds of easements come to the committee in a fairly routine fashion.

So with that, I will turn off the mic and let other folks step up.

Thank you, and thank you, Eric, for your review of this item for all of us.

So General Manager Deborah Smith is with us with some of her team, so if you want to make a quick comment and then we can see if the council members have comments.

Sure.

I don't really have anything to add.

And Greg Sands, which is here with us today from our environmental lands and licensing group, and he's able to answer any questions council members may have about this specific easement in front of you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmembers, anything to ask?

Again, just for the viewing public, this is an item that we heard a couple of weeks ago thoroughly and discussed it at that time, but happy to hear from folks now if they have any comments or questions before we vote on this item.

One moment, let me just get my participants.

Okay, so it looks like there are no additional comments.

Councilmember Strauss.

Yeah, thank you.

Just wanted to thank everyone for their good work on this briefing me about a month ago.

It's very straightforward.

Appreciate everyone's good work.

And happy belated birthday, Maura.

Thank you.

Yes, the work that City Light did with the city of Kirkland was exemplary.

And this looks like a great project.

Okay, council members, if there are no further questions, I now move that the committee recommend approval of this Council Bill 12008, item one on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

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

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that Council Bill 12008 be approved for forwarding to the full City Council?

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Peterson.

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

great, the motion carries and the committee recommendation is that the council bill be sent for approval to the March 22nd city council meeting.

And the folks viewing, you can go online to our agenda and look at the drawings of this project.

You'll be ready to hop on your bike soon and head over to Kirkland, but please come back.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item two.

Council Bill 120015, an ordinance relating to the City Light Department amending rates, terms, and conditions for the use and sale of electricity supplied by the City Light Department for 2021 and 2022 for briefing, discussion, and possible vote.

Thank you.

I appreciate we'll still have City Light here with us to discuss this.

I'm sure we'll have more discussion here on this one and Eric McConaughey as well.

I just want to say I appreciate both Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, our municipally owned utility enterprises, focusing on affordability for our city residents.

The City Light ordinance before us today, I believe, balances City Light's commitment to providing customers with stability and predictability in the amounts of their electric bills, while enabling our municipally-owned utility to recover from the financial impacts of the pandemic over the next couple of years.

In its present form, the bill would take two actions.

On April 1st, it would use the existing rate stabilization account surcharge to maintain a level-based rate.

The net result's good news.

There should be no impact to customer bills for 2021. The next item that the bill does is deals with the 2022 rate.

It keeps the promise made in 2018 to increase rates in 2022 by not more than 3.9%, with the expectation that as much as 1.5% might be offset by a lower Bonneville Power Administration pass-through rate reduction.

So in 2022, it's possible that the rate increase would be as low as 2.4%.

And I know that some of us share a very valid concern that we'd like a bit more time to affirm the 2022 rate information.

So even though this action for 2022 would be consistent with or better than the previous strategic plan approved in 2018, it'd be ideal to give everybody more time to acclimate to this information.

And so I'd, at the very least, be open to having this delayed to the April 29 full city council rather than going straight to the April 22 full council.

We can discuss that as we hear more about the item.

Did you mean March 22 and March 29?

Oh, yeah, sorry, March 29th instead of March 22nd, correct.

Thank you, Vice Chair Strauss.

So we will talk about the dates of this in a moment.

Either way, I'm really pleased Seattle Light, City Light's been managed to take various actions that would amazingly result in no net increase customer bills this year and to keep or beat their promise for next year.

Eric McConnick, I know you've been looking at this thoroughly for all the city council members.

So feel free to let us know your thoughts on this.

Thank you for your memo, your thorough memo on this.

And then we'll hear from City Light and we'll hear from council members.

Thank you very much.

Just by way of adding a little bit of context and framing, and to reiterate, Chair, forgive me for reiterating a little bit, but to be clear, the bill would set the rates in the Seattle Municipal Code for Seattle City Light effective April 1 of 2021. That's a 3% change to what the rate is now.

And then it would also set the rates beginning in January 1 of 2022 of 3.9%.

And that's across all of the rate schedules.

A schedule is a table that shows the rates for each class of customer that City Light serves.

These rates, as you mentioned in the bill, are slightly lower for 2021 and the same for 2022 as the rates that the council endorsed.

When the council adopted City Light's 2019 through 2024 strategic plan, and as you mentioned, the proposal would increase the 2021 rates at the same time that City Light will be removing the current rate stabilization account surcharges from customers' bills.

The rate stabilization account is a way for City Light to have a buffer against changes in wholesale revenue.

Wholesale revenue is the power that isn't sold to retail customers, folks like myself, who live within the service area for City Light and purchase power.

It's power that's sold to other providers, other utilities.

That's the way to think about it.

It's an important resource, revenue source for City Light.

And RSA was put into the code a number of years ago absorb fluctuations in that.

When the RSA, the rate stabilization account, drops below certain thresholds in its balance, the surcharges automatically are placed on the bills.

That is that City Light takes action to do that.

And when, conversely, when the balance in the RSA is big enough, then City Light removes those surcharges.

And council doesn't have to take action on this.

This is all codified.

This is all called for.

and authorized in the city code.

Because of the balances in the RSA, currently, City of Lytton expects to remove that 3% surcharge for customer bills soon.

My understanding would be as soon as the April billing based on the conversations we've had and the timing that's set in this proposal, in this council bill.

And just to reiterate, the council action isn't necessary to remove that surcharge.

Without any action on this bill, what would happen is that customer bills would be in the city of New York, the city of New York's retail rates are lower when the surcharge is removed.

once again, this proposal is crafted to result in no net increased overall costs to City Light customers in 2021 by balancing those two changes.

moving on very quickly, strategic planning.

typically, council would consider the adoption of new City Light retail rates only after adopting a new strategic plan and The widespread disruption of the pandemic last year interrupted the expected update to the strategic plan and rate path, and in recognition of economic stresses due to the pandemic, the executive and the City Light did not transmit it, and Council did not take up any rate setting last year for 2020. There was a similar thing that happened for Seattle Public Utilities.

However, City Light does plan to deliver a 2022 through 2026 strategic plan to council this May.

And with that, some framing pieces, I think I will step aside.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Eric.

Really appreciate your thorough analysis of this and your memo that's posted online for folks.

And let's hear from City Light, and then we'll take questions from council members.

General Manager Smith, take it away.

Eric, you did such a good job.

I feel like you, uh, you did my job for me, but thank you.

And yeah, I'm Debra Smith, uh, general manager and CEO for Seattle City Light.

Although today and today only you can call me Debbie Gimlin, which is my childhood name.

And, um, I am in fact of Irish descent.

So once a year, uh, You can call me Debbie, but other than that, I'm always so.

Julie, Eric, you did a great job of framing.

I'm just going to 1st of all, appreciate the opportunity that we staff have had over the last week or so to run through this presentation that the.

With with some of you and with some of your staff members and it's been really helpful.

So we've had the opportunity to kind of really understand what what's important to you.

So you're going to see a different deck than you saw last week, or at least some parts of it will be different if we did a readout and we're continuing to work behind the scenes to offer briefings to other council members, both on this committee and or on the full council.

So happy to do that and happy to work with folks who want additional information because we recognize that for me and for many of you, this is the first time you've engaged City Light Rates.

So I actually joined the city mid-October of 18. And as Eric mentioned, we had a strategic plan that had been approved the summer before.

which set out a rate path for six years but also adopted through that process rates that went into effect on January 1 of 19 and January 1 of 20. And then of course the plan that we had completed and it largely was complete last year before we put it on the shelf and said we will work to support our community and the best way we can do that is to stay the course and hold rates flat.

So we had no rate action the first of this year.

And again, this strategy that we've developed is important because we, and you'll see this in our slide, unlike many city departments, of course, we're not a general fund department, but we also have experienced a significant reduction in revenue associated with loss of load, which you will see.

So I'm going to just start with the first slide or two and then turn it over to my colleagues.

So if you could advance, Maura, that would be great.

And while we're doing that, I will mention that we have with us Kirstie Granger, who is City Light's CFO.

We also have Maura Brugger, who I think all of you know and works on council relations and Maura's running our show.

And Chris Rafini is here and he is our finance director.

And so much of what you're going to hear today is from Kirstie and Chris.

But I'm going to kind of skip over this.

I think Eric did a great job.

But again, the intent here is to provide bill stability for customers while giving City Light the revenue that we need to maintain service level during COVID recovery.

And, you know, one of the themes that you'll hear today is we are unclear, as we all are, about how that recovery will happen and how and over what period of time we will gain back the load that we lost during COVID.

So the other thing that I do want to mention, again, the January 1, 2022 proposed rate increase of 3.9%, which as Eric pointed out, was the amount for January 1 of 2022 in the last strategic plan adopted by council.

We actually do expect that the impact to customers would actually be more like 2.4 percent.

So we make assumptions around what Bonneville Power Administration will charge us for the power that we purchase from them, which is, you know, 30 to 40 percent of how we serve our community.

And then they go through a two-year rate case.

They are currently in the rate case right now.

The rates for Bonneville change every two years on the odd year and they are October 1 or because that's the start of the federal year.

So what we do is we make an assumption around what we think that will be.

And then depending on what it actually is, the difference is an automatic pass through codified through council requiring no city action.

So we do have the flexibility to push the timing of that slightly so we can use that 1.5% that we're expecting as an offset to the 3.9.

So let's advance the slide, Maura.

So part of the conversation that we had yesterday or last week with some of you made clear that doing a little rate utility rates 101 might be helpful.

So I'm going to run through just this one slide and then I'm going to turn it over to my team.

But as a not-for-profit municipal utility, we set rates to cover the cost of operations.

So rate setting is a two-part process.

So there's one, what's the revenue requirement?

How much money do we need to collect in order to pay our operations and maintenance expenses, to pay for the services we receive from the city?

to pay for our purchase power, to pay for our labor costs, and to cover both debt service that we typically use to fund a portion of our capital improvement plan.

as well as that portion of the capital improvement plan that we fund with current revenues.

And so that is the revenue requirement.

The second part of the rate setting process, which isn't called out specifically here, is where we determine how to allocate those costs.

So there was, before I came here, again in the summer of 18, as the strategic plan was being transmitted, there was interest on the part of both our review panel and council members to look at how we are allocating those costs.

And I want to be clear and direct up front to say that we have not completed that work intentionally going into this period of time.

We use a process called the Cost of Service Analysis, or COSA.

And that is the industry standard and the industry process that's used to allocate costs among different customer classes.

And what it does is it actually looks and says, where are the costs being experienced?

What are the drivers for costs?

And then it allocates those costs to the customer classes based on how they support the customer class.

So, that is something that we typically do most utilities do every couple of years, or certainly when there is an infrequent rate action, we would have done a cost of service analysis last year.

That was 1 of the things that we cut out of our budget during cobit.

Because we weren't doing a rate action and because we are just asking right now for just a one year rate action.

So the January one of 2022 while we complete our strategic planning process, we are we are deferring the COSA until 2022 So staff would intend to do that work, to complete that work next year.

And then it would influence and we would true the various rate classes on January 1 of 2023. So I just wanted to be clear about that so we understand where rate design is.

That's why, as Eric indicated, the 3.9% would be across the board because we've not gone back and modified the COSA.

City Council, and this is really important, investor owned utilities like Puget Sound Energy, they work with the state's utility board or PUC or UTC in the state of Washington, and they are the rate setting authority.

And so you hear about PSE having a really hard rate case, for instance, they just went through the process and there was quite a bit of pushback from Olympia.

For us, as a public utility, this is the defining factor for public power.

You are the rate-setting authority, and in that role, you represent the customer and the customer's voice.

As Eric mentioned, both the RSA and the BPA pass-through are supplemental automatic rate mechanisms that previous councils took to provide stability in rates and to provide certainty for the utility in terms of the revenue requirements.

Again, I already spoke about how the Bonneville pass-through works.

We attempt to identify and to include that in our rate trajectory.

But because we don't know, and again, Bonneville won't finalize its current rate process until August of this year.

So that's the timeframe.

We usually get about 60 to 90 days notice before it goes into effect through Bonneville.

So it passes through automatically.

Typical rate process, you know, as mentioned, typically we would bring a new strategic plan forward every two years.

That strategic plan would cover a six-year period.

It would include a six-year rate trajectory, and through your action, you would essentially be, I can't remember the word.

Chris, what's the word?

We're actually, you're actually adopting the first year's rate action, and you are, what is it called, the second year?

It's an endorsed budget if that's what you're talking about.

So you are typically as you approve that to your budget, you are endorsing a rate structure for the 2nd year and then it gets confirmed when we build the 2nd year's budget and bring that forward.

And we're kind of doing that this year.

The only difference is that this year, you've not seen the strategic plan yet.

But the strategic plan, which is, you know, we are at a point in it where we have the bones of it.

We know what our business strategies are.

We have great examples and ideas about the projects, initiatives and actions that we intend to take.

And we are about ready to turn that strategic plan over to the writers to make it pretty.

And then we will be on the path to bring it forward to you after the review panel produces their letter, et cetera.

It is important to note that the review panel has been very involved in the strategic planning process.

They are aware that we are here, and they support the right actions that we are requesting today.

The letter that generally comes with their formal approval will come with the strategic plan.

So where we are now is, again, rate process in 2020 impacted by COVID.

We balanced our 2021 budget with one-time reductions, brought no rate action forward, and now we are talking about switching the current RSA surcharge and converting it into a base rate increment.

and with no bill impacts.

And then, of course, the 3.9% potential action for January 1 of 2022. So I think that's what I've covered.

Are there any questions on that before we move forward into the specifics for today?

Please continue.

OK.

So seeing none, I'm going to turn this over to my colleague, Kirstie Granger.

Good morning.

So a little bit more background on City Lights, what's happening in the electricity world owing to COVID and pandemic response.

So last year, this is a, you'll see this chart here shows electricity demand in 2020 and you can see that In second quarter, we saw a large decrease in commercial demand for electricity, a large increase in industrial and a small increase in demand for residential electricity, which hopefully makes sense as as.

people who used to work in the downtown core, like many of us on this call, went to telework in their homes.

We saw a big reduction in commercial electricity use, but then also an uptick in residential use as folks are home now, if you're like me, running three Zoom calls simultaneously in your house.

And so, For City Light, and you can see in the chart in the bottom, our challenge is that our makeup of who uses electricity is strongly weighted towards commercial use.

And that owes to that we are a very urban area.

Seattle has a large, vibrant, normally downtown core.

And that is a big part of our electricity demand.

So you can see there in the chart at the bottom, 57% of electricity use is attributable to commercial.

And only about a third is residential.

So what happened is, as commercial use dropped, some of it was offset by an increase on the residential side, but not all of it.

And this is something that, in talking with our friends at SPU, talking with our colleagues in the industry, this is something where, for Seattle City Light, we have been impacted more severely by pandemic response than, I guess, in SPU's case, the commercial and residential almost offset as I understand it.

In service territories that might be more suburban, they'll have a stronger residential presence and so that offset would be more balanced.

But for City Light, this is a significant revenue issue.

In 2020, our revenue gap totals about $35 million.

I'll mention here, too, another factor that I know is top of mind for us is residential customers who have been impacted by the pandemic and are now struggling to pay their rent, their bills.

And so this is something else that is also translating to a revenue challenge.

correct me if I get these stats wrong, but my understanding is we have about approximately 10% of our residential customers who are behind on their electricity bills right now, and that is significant.

And in 2020, this is going to contribute to about a $20 million write-off in revenues from customers who won't be able to pay their bills.

And so as we talk about the financial challenges that we're looking at in the upcoming years, you know, making sure that we're funding and planning for a path to get these customers back on track with their bills and helping them do that is also very important.

Maura, can you go to the next slide?

So switching back to the commercial view, this is the big uncertainty for us from a revenue perspective is when will commercial electricity demand come back, which is very strongly tied to when will downtown come back?

You can see in this, I think it's a kind of a cool chart, this bubble chart.

So the size of the bubble indicates the commercial sector and how much of our electricity demand is represented by that sector.

And you can see there on the left, we've got, sectors like data centers, hospitals.

So those are significant, but they haven't been impacted very much by pandemic response, which makes sense.

But then there's other sectors, like office space, lodging, restaurants, that have been impacted a lot.

You can see that in the 10% range, and office space makes up about a third of our commercial demand.

even more impacted, and this is probably very intuitive, universities, schools, and then this category called assembly, which would include theaters, houses of worship, stadiums, places where people gather.

And obviously that's an area where we've seen a big, the pandemic has impacted them a lot.

And so that's an area where we've seen reductions, 25% plus in electricity demand from those businesses.

All right, one more slide on retail sales.

So all of this together contributed to a 4% decline in retail sales electricity demand for City Light in 2020. And owing to improvement in efficiency, efficient new housing stock, City Light has been seeing our energy use, our demand for electricity on the decline for several years now.

which has been a financial challenge for us that we've been watching and monitoring closely.

Now, layering on top of that the impacts of the pandemic, you can see there that we just shifted down a lot.

And so this is a very significant financial challenge for us and something that we will be contending with for the next five to eight years.

So two things I'd like you to take away from this chart.

Number one, near-term recovery, particularly in the commercial sector, particularly in the downtown core, is a significant driver for our revenue recovery.

And then really our long-term growth is everything hinges on electrification of transportation, of buildings.

And so council members, I know that this is a topic that I think it is not just about city light, it is across policies.

For example, the work that DCI is doing is contributing to changing building codes.

That will be a major factor in driving long-term stability and long-term rate affordability

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Christy.

My question stems just from our previous conversations where we went quite in depth here to call out the fact that the dotted line that is on the downward trajectory is then put into an upward trajectory, both the orange and blue, not only because of the energy code that we just passed, also because of Metro looking to electrify their fleet.

We talked a little bit about Washington State Ferry System using electrification and just electrification spanning across the market.

And while you touched on the fact that as we've become more energy efficient, we have seen a decrease in demand.

And this is where we have a really amazing opportunity to use a very green energy source, city lights energy sources, to be able to fight the climate crisis and bring your demand back by increasing our reliance on electricity.

I don't have a question, just wanted to highlight that you had gone in depth and that you provided really great feedback.

But if you or anyone else on your team wants to expand on the other areas of opportunity for electrification and how that is offsetting our energy efficiency work, we'd love to hear.

Well, I'll just jump in for a moment.

I think, and I know Sam Zimbabwe is on this call too, but I think one of the things, I think even today, the city's releasing their transportation, their electrification roadmap.

And it truly is a multi-department effort on how the city Continues to move towards deep decarbonization through electrification at this point of the transportation sector.

But as you pointed out, going forward up of the building sector, given changes in code.

So, you know, we are when this when this load forecast originally came to city lights, executive team, and it was in late 2020. We had not incorporated the new building code information and we looked at it and it was even scarier, quite honestly.

And then we asked staff to go back and look at their assumptions around both transportation, electrification and building sector.

You know, again, it is one of the areas of great uncertainty because it is unclear how the economic recovery and the move towards electrification, how those two will aligned going forward with respect to timing.

But the good news is, as you've pointed out, is we do have information now from some of the public transportation partners and folks that we're working closely with, including, as you pointed out, the port, metro, et cetera.

And they are mostly moving forward with their plans.

For most of them, the electrification of public transportation is something where It's a long planning cycle, long lead times in terms of orders, and a lot of public and federal funding to help with those efforts.

So fortunately, that does not seem to be slowing down, and we feel very encouraged by that.

And we're also having increased luck.

We were slow at the beginning moving forward with our own electric utility, the publicly owned charging infrastructure, as well as working with the private sector.

And we've kind of got that going in a groove now.

Some of our team, you know, have really focused on how do we make that easy.

We set a goal for ourselves that we wanted Volkswagen to be able to spend money in our community and that we were going to do everything we could to support them and others.

other private sector charging companies.

And so I feel like we're gaining some real momentum, both as a country, but also as a city.

So this is huge for us.

And the way we talk about it all the time, my team gets tired of hearing me say that, is that we are investing in our future load.

So as we come forward and we bring you our strategic plan here shortly, and you'll see that one of our huge, big initiatives going forward is grid modernization so that we can invest in and in support electrification in a graceful way over time.

And that's critically important for us because again, as we've continued to invest in energy efficiency and created that downward pressure, this is our opportunity to continue to push the deep decarbonization even more so than, or not more so, but in conjunction with energy efficiency and have the load in the revenue that we need to survive and thrive.

So thank you.

Please continue.

Great.

So owing to these challenges on the retail sales side, Looking out to 2022, which we're doing as we're doing our preparation work for the new strategic plan that we'll be bringing to city council this summer, our preliminary forecasts indicate that taking into account the reduced demand for electricity, restoring the one-time cuts that we adopted in our 2020 budget, and then so looking ahead to our 2022 endorsed budget, restoring those reductions, absorbing the impacts of declining load, absorbing two years' worth of inflation and a lot of other factors, this indicates a need for a 7% rate increase in January 2022, absent other action.

And so the opportunity that's presented by these RSA surcharges rolling off here in the beginning of 2021, so this is a strategy where we would exchange the RSA surcharges for a base rate increase and then implement the small rate increase in January 2022 We see that as an opportunity to smooth bills, smooth rates, because otherwise the alternative would be if we didn't take action now, we would be implementing small rate increases, decreases through 2021, but then turn around and implement a large rate increase at the end of the year.

And that's not the customer bill experience that we would like to provide.

So the smoothing opportunity, and you can see in the chart down below, would have the effect just on base rates of smoothing that so that we wouldn't have to do a large rate action in 2022. Oh, and this chart shows the bottom line here is the draft outlook for the strategic plan.

You'll see formally later this year.

But the intent is that you can see there that the 3.9% aligns with the plan adopted by the former city council in 2018 and that endorsed rate path.

what we intend to do looking out is to be able to deliver small inflation-sized rate increases throughout the horizon of our strategic plan.

Questions?

I know there's a lot on this slide.

We might have questions at the end.

Great.

All right, should we keep going?

Councilor Morales, please.

That's okay.

First of all, I just want to thank Debra and Mara, Kirstie, Chris.

We did have a briefing with my staff, I think it was last week.

So I really appreciate the time that you took to educate me on how all of this works.

And I just want to say that I appreciate your thoughtfulness in ensuring some stability and predictability for customers, because I know that you know, particularly for low-income folks, having, you know, incredible fluctuations in their rates is damaging.

So I'm grateful to all of you for thinking through how to prevent that from happening.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Maura, should we move ahead?

All right.

So as, as both Deborah and Eric have discussed before this ordinance proposes to do the things in this this yellow box here so exchanging the RSA surcharges for a base rate increase and 3%.

And then looking ahead to January 1 2022 legislating that 3.9% rate increase.

Knowing that we would anticipate with the Bonneville announcement this summer that that would translate into an effective increase of approximately 2.4%.

So that would be what would actually go into the billing system in January of 2022. Just to provide some context for what this would translate into for a typical residential customer, 2.4% is about $1.80 a month of an increase.

And for customers who are enrolled in the utility discount program that provides a 60% discount on all their electric bills, this would be about $0.72 a month.

All right.

So one more slide, just next steps.

March, we're discussing this ordinance, and as I understand it, then we would be looking for action on the 29th in committee.

It's obviously very close to April 1st, which we would propose to be the effective date of this.

But seeing as the putting this ordinance into effect would be doing nothing, changing nothing in the billing system.

We don't need a lot of lead time to do nothing.

So that's what would happen in April.

And then looking ahead to the summer, we would be bringing forward the 2022 to 2026 five-year strategic plan.

And then we'll be looking for the Bonneville announcement in the summer on what that rate decrease will be coming out of the Bonneville pass-through.

And then January 1, 2022, and then that would be after the budget process.

And so we, you know, at that point, the budget for 2022 would be formally adopted through city council.

That's when the 3.9 minus one and a half, so 2.4% effective rate would be implemented.

And then, we would come back in 2022 as we're looking to the next biennial cycle.

And that's the next time that you would see.

And as Debra mentioned, this is when we would be bringing forward like a full rate case with cost of service, rate design, and all of that would be in the summer of 2022 for the next biennium.

Thank you for this presentation.

And I did want to let folks know, I did speak to the head of the City Light Review Panel this week, and he confirmed that they are supportive of this approach in this ordinance today.

So that's, you know, General Manager Smith mentioned the City Light Review Panel briefly, but just as a reminder for folks, they are our watchdog.

We appoint some of the members, the mayor appoints others, They work throughout the year and are on top of these things.

Eric McConaughey from central staff, my staff attend those meetings.

So let's talk now about the timing of this.

Does anybody wanna ask questions and then talk about the timing?

Yeah, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you again, Christy, General Manager Debbie and Eric.

In the short week, it hasn't even been a week since the first time we met on this, and we've been able to meet three times.

So just calling out the fact that you were able to move quickly and meet with me a number of times.

I am going to separate my comments to the rate stabilization account, the first half, and then the second half.

And Maura, sorry, my goodness, Maura, you are amazing as well.

And then the second half being codifying the rate changes for 2022. So just above everything and all else, you have all done an amazing job this last year, making sure that we're stabilizing rates under like, I think slide six, it was slides three, four, five, and six really demonstrate, especially with demonstrating how our commercial accounts have dropped, how industrial accounts have dropped, how residential has increased.

I could go on all day about how great of work you have done.

Where my concerns lie are in that second half regarding codifying the 22 rates.

for no other reason than I have not had enough time to process it.

And it is important for me to process it in the context of the strategic plan.

So speaking to general manager yesterday, it sounds like we will have the opportunity to sit down for an hour or maybe two to discuss that before it comes to full council.

And just for context, you know, the Kirkland easement that we just had before us that we just voted on, we had a briefing about a month ago.

It came before committee twice.

Understanding that this is moving faster and we have an April 1st deadline, I don't want to hold up your good work.

and I need to make sure that I have the information needed to vote appropriately.

Chair Peterson, it's helpful to hear from the Oversight Board, and thank you for connecting with them.

Really, my comments are just of deep gratitude and Hal Hallstein, OSBT & COB, He, Him, His): calling out the fact that, especially for Rachel.

Hal Hallstein, OSBT & COB, He, Him, His.: : I mean s.can attest to this last year before the pandemic, I was not briefed on a pedestrian over a pedestrian bridge ordinance and we had to hold it.

It got held up throughout the pandemic because we didn't get a chance to come back and meet again.

So just, again, calling out the seriousness that I take these briefings well in advance of needing to take those.

So happy to support us moving forward to the March 29th committee meeting.

The reason, Chair, that I had my ears so attuned to that is because I know that we have to meet our April 1st deadline.

With that, if you want to speak to, with that, I have no further questions.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

And I agree, more time is appropriate, and I'm glad we're able to work something out where we'll have this appear at the March 29 City Council.

And as we schedule these committees, we will continue to try to build in more time, especially for complex council bills.

So I appreciate you raising that, and I hear you on that.

any other council members want to make any comments or questions right now?

Council Member Herbold.

Sorry about that.

I have a couple of questions.

One of them you might have answered.

I might have missed it.

On the RSA account, can you just talk a little bit about what this $1 million fund is What specifically can it be used for?

Does keeping rates low during a pandemic qualify as a use for these funds?

And then also, I'm always interested in sort of what some of the The capital drivers are of rate increases, and I followed this because I used to chair the committee with oversight of Seattle Public Utilities, and one way we reduced the size of a proposed rate increase was by reducing, because at SPU, the CIP, definitely drives rate increases.

We reduced what's called the accomplishment rate of capital projects.

They had been assuming previously that 100% of the projects would be completed 100% on time, and that by reducing the accomplishment rate to more align with what actually happens in capital projects, we were able to bring it down.

So just interested to know whether or not Seattle City Light has an accomplishment rate and whether or not the CIP drives rate increases generally.

Thanks.

Well, I can try to answer your questions and then Eric and Debra, oh, Debra, unless you'd like to go first.

All right.

So let's see, your first question about the RSA.

So the RSA, the rules for operation of the RSA are set by ordinance and currently the fund is restricted to only balancing revenues from wholesale sales.

That said, with council action, there are other possibilities.

I do know that one ordinance that's coming soon is an expansion of the ELEA program, emergency assistance for customer bills.

And so this is one opportunity where if City Light does have cash, we could use it to support helping customers who are behind on their bills get those balances paid off.

But as far as the RSA, to change anything about it would require ordinance.

And just to jump on that piece, because it does represent an opportunity, but we don't know what it is at this point.

And that is that we have also talked about resizing the RSA, which again would come back to you all for action.

When the RSA mechanism was developed, I think it was in 2010, and wholesale prices were considerably higher than they are now.

You know, just as we've been slowly over time in our budget process, we have been bringing our expectations around wholesale revenue in line by gradually reducing the assumption about what we're going to make.

We've been doing that based on the reduction in prices.

And so we do want to go back through and look at the mechanism.

If it turns out that the $100 million target is higher than it needs to be, then there would be an opportunity to look at what those funds would go to.

Right now, we do think about the one-time funds that by converting the 3% surcharge into a permanent part of the rate base right now, that does represent incremental revenue to us in 2021. And we do think about a primary use for that being helping customers with accrued balances.

And so there's a piece of work in addition to the ILEA called Road to Recovery that we're working on with, uh, with help and in coordination with SPU and, um, and, and how do we help our customers work down those, those past due bills?

So, um, and, and then with, with the second part of your question, it's a really good question.

And yes, every utility Council Member Herbold has, uh, tends to have eyes bigger than their stomach.

We do make assumptions around the extent to which we're going to spend capital.

And one of our key strategies in both the reductions for 2021 as well as 2020 and going forward is right-sizing our capital investment going forward, including, you know, this is a highlight of things to come, but when we bring you the strategic plan and the financial information that supports it, you're going to see that we are actually in the last two years of the strategic plan making a change, an overt change to begin funding more of our capital from rates, which is actually consistent with our existing financial policy where we've deviated from it somewhat.

And that's to manage that debt service number, which is really becoming quite a large piece.

So we were able to reduce and that is one of the primary ways we reduce the need for rate action.

in 2021 was by reducing our capital and thereby reducing the amount of debt that we took on.

So I don't know if that helps.

We're, you know, we're in probably year three of implementing this, you know, what we call CARES, which is a very, I mean, I think most large capital departments have some process.

I know SPOO does as well, but that's what we call our process where we are trying to look across the utility and prioritizing all of our capital needs so that this notion of buckets of money where people say, oh, that's my money, because I've always had that.

We're doing away with that.

And the executive team is really making the decisions around trade-offs.

And that is part of the broader strategy, which is to live within our means and to manage future rate actions so that they look like cost of living type adjustments and not continuing on a rate path that's not sustainable.

I'm going to pass it over to councilmember Herbold.

Well, Carsten, who's our rate, apologies for interrupting.

Carsten, who's our rate manager, can speak to some of the other adjustments, but we do start with a lower attainment rate, and we do make other kinds of adjustments to our forecast as we're doing the revenue requirement.

Carsten, are you ready?

Sorry to put you on the spot.

No worries, no worries.

Yeah, it's just, it's looking at some trend analysis of, how capital projects are budgeted, and then when we've actually spent the money.

And so we tend to budget thinking that we're going to spend the money for the capital projects sooner than we do.

So within our planning of our capital expenses for the rate setting portion, we assume that we shift some of that capital spending out every year.

is shifted out to more reflect what's happened in history.

So we do have that kind of adjustment to like downward size our capital program, at least compared to the budgeted amount when we set rates.

Just very, I'm sorry, Council Member, I just had one thing to offer.

Yeah, no, I was gonna say, this is super, super helpful, and to Chair Peterson, SPU used to have an accomplished rate, assuming 100%, they went down to 97% and was really able to reduce the size of their proposed rate increase in doing so.

This might be another issue to take up with SPU again because of, I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it.

Seattle city light is assuming a 90% project completion rate.

It suggests that SP might be able to go lower.

Okay.

Council members, again, you will have additional time here.

My motion, we'll talk about March 29th.

So I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 12015, item two on our agenda.

Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded to recommend passage of this bill and appearance at the full city council on March 29th, as we've discussed earlier.

Any final comments?

Okay, will the clerk please call the roll to recommend passage of this bill and appearance on the full city council, March 29th.

≫ 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.

≫

Thank you very much, Council Members and Chair Peterson.

Thank you.

Take care.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda into the record?

Agenda item three, presentation on West Seattle Bridge status for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And Council Members, in conjunction with grant acceptance from Puget Sound Regional Council for the West Seattle Bridge, which is the next item on the agenda, Council Bill 120017, We're going to get this brief update on the restoration work and other efforts around the West Seattle Bridge.

This is similar to the presentation received last week by the community task force.

So I want to also welcome our central staff analyst, Calvin Chow, who's been tracking these issues for us.

And I want to thank, shout out to Council Member Herbold, who's a co-sponsor on the bill that we're going to hear next and has been working with 100,000 constituents on this issue over the past several months with SDOT and others.

So, Calvin Chow, is there anything you wanted to say before we jump into the presentation?

No, I have no introductory remarks.

Okay, thank you.

And welcome SDOT and Directors Zimbabwe.

Please take it away.

Absolutely.

Thank you and good morning.

Thanks for having us here.

We're always happy to come and talk about the West Seattle Bridge and all that we are doing.

This remains a long emergency for us and for the people of West Seattle and the Duwamish Valley.

We recognize the impacts that the continued closure of the high bridge has on community members and business and the whole transportation network in the city and beyond that into the region and the whole of the state in terms of the access it provides to the port of Seattle.

We want to give you, we've reached some important milestones.

We talked about this with our community task force last week.

We want to talk about that as well as all of the things that we continue to do as part of mitigation of the impacts and the sort of full program of things that we do.

I'm going to turn it over to Heather Marks, who is leading up the whole of the efforts, and then we look forward to questions and discussion.

So I'll turn it over to Heather at this point.

Thanks, Sam.

Good morning, everyone, and happy St. Patrick's Day.

Our presentation today is wearing the green to honor that occasion.

Today we'd like to go over some bridge updates and talk a little bit about the low bridge access policy, reconnect West Seattle implementation, everybody's favorite topic, West Marginal Way, and then we'll cover some next steps.

And if that sounds like a reasonable way to spend the next few minutes, I will start.

The key issues that we are, this photo, by the way, is taken by a local journalist, Patrick Robinson, and it comes from last summer when we were lifting the work platforms into place during the summer as we were engaging in the stabilization work that we now continue to repair the bridge.

So our key issues right now are that we're maintaining an aggressive schedule on the phase two rehabilitation, phase two, because phase one with stabilization.

We are continuing to deliver ReConnect West Seattle traffic management commitments, and we are managing access to the Lower Spokane Street Bridge.

Next slide, please.

Just as a reminder, in case you haven't been tracking, we closed the West Seattle Bridge on May 23rd, 2020. That's the anniversary that is coming right up.

After the closure, our crack continued, which confirmed for us that we were right to take traffic off to prevent catastrophic collapse.

You may recall that the mayor declared the closure a city emergency in July and decided in November that we would move ahead with repair rather than replacement.

All of our initial stabilization efforts that I mentioned earlier were completed in December.

And everything is performing as expected, especially in light of the snow that we got the weekend of February 11th and 12th.

It's heavy, and the bridge performed as we expected it to under that load.

Next slide, please.

Hey, Council Member Strauss, you have a question?

All right.

Thank you, Heather.

For that last slide, I just wanted to call out the fact that closing such a major roadway and connectivity point to a large part of our city is a difficult decision.

And just want to thank Matt Donahue on SDOT's team because that was a brave move.

I don't think it is ever a light decision to go in and request the executive to make such a large scale closure.

2020 hindsight, clearly the right move, clearly the right decision to make.

And just want to thank Matt and your team for making that hard decision at that time.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

We are all very grateful on a daily basis for Matt Donahue.

We have reached an important milestone in the project where we have attained 30% design for the repairs.

And 30% is magical because that is when we It's called baselining.

That's when we baseline the project, and we decide on the scope, schedule, and budget, and we hold fidelity to those standards are what we hold ourselves to.

So the total program cost will be $175 million.

That includes much more than bridge repair.

It includes both the high and low bridge rehabilitation, ReConnect West Seattle, which is the traffic mitigation effort we're undertaking, all of the structural health monitoring, all of that phase one rehabilitation, and of course, communications and project management.

For the high bridge rehabilitation alone, we estimate $58 million.

And for the swing bridge rehabilitation, we estimate $14 million.

And as we come back to you in successive months, we'll report to you on how we're doing against those baseline figures.

Next slide, please.

So just as a reminder, here's a little image of a line drawing of the bridge, and it shows where we are going to add additional carbon fiber wrap and where we're going to add additional post-tensioning.

The gray on either side of the central span shows you where we've added additional post-tensioning as part of that stabilization effort.

But the orange and the blue show you that we're going to do much more post-tensioning and much more carbon fiber wrap, not just in the middle, but also on the ends.

In addition, we're going to do some ground stabilization work under Pier 18. That's the one on the far right side as you're looking at the slide.

And that ground stabilization work is not required as part of bridge opening.

but it is an important step in making sure that the bridge is seismically strong.

We're also considering additional repair projects to the bridge corridor while the bridge is out of commission.

We want to make sure that while the bridge is closed down, we've done all the repair, all the expansion joint replacements that we need to do.

So we take advantage of that time for the people of the city of Seattle.

Next slide, please.

We're also focusing attention on maintaining the swing bridge.

You may recall last year we finished a load rating exercise that demonstrated to us that the swing bridge was not meeting the new standards.

The bridge hasn't changed, but the standards have changed.

And so we're taking a proactive approach to strengthen and monitor that low bridge while the high bridge is closed.

It's the little bridge that could, and it's so important that it continues to operate properly.

We're coordinating all those preventative improvements with current FHA standards.

And the low bridge work is going to be on the same contract as the high bridge work.

It's specialized work.

And in order to make sure we got the very best proposals from contractors, we merge them into one project.

Next slide, please.

So for the low bridge, we're not going to have to do any post-tensioning, which is good news.

We are going to have to install carbon fiber wrap internal and external to those girders.

We're going to complete some epoxy crack injection throughout.

And maybe most importantly, we're going to take a look and repair, if necessary, that mechanical center lock system that latches the two spans together when it's closed to marine traffic.

Next slide, please.

As we have always anticipated, the high bridge is going to be repaired by the middle of 2022. And the low bridge will take a little bit longer to the end of the third quarter.

I want to note for everyone that as soon as we're finished with those repairs on the high bridge, we're not gonna drop our tools and open up the floodgates.

We're gonna have to open that bridge lane by lane, And so that's going to take a couple of weeks after the repair is done.

We feel like that is the safest way to do it to ensure that the repairs are working, because if they don't work, the results could be catastrophic.

Next slide, please.

Council Member Scott.

Yes, Chair, I can save my questions for the end.

Go ahead.

Heather is impervious to any questions.

You have seen her answer anything and everything from everyone.

Wonderful.

Yes, my question was on slide nine.

And Heather, again, your team is doing excellent work here by moving quickly and ensuring that when we reopen we load test the bridge to ensure that we're not putting too much load on it.

You mentioned the snow being a good example of us putting an extra load on it.

My question is, you talked about opening one lane at a time.

This could create confusion for drivers.

Is there an opportunity for us to open just to buses and freight?

Can you speak a little bit more to scaling up of our load testing?

Absolutely.

We are talking with some of our, I'm sorry, We are working with some of our traffic engineers, both internal and consultant, to help us create an opening plan that is going to be that is going to generate as little confusion as possible.

And so it makes sense for us to open it to large vehicles like transit first.

Um, but we're like I said, we're engaged in that planning, and we'll we'll keep the council as well as the community posted as that continues to develop.

Um, I want to acknowledge that as soon as the bridge is fixed, it is going to be very difficult for people to not want to get on the bridge right away.

We're responsible for public safety like all city departments are, and we just want to make sure that we're doing that in a way that is the most responsible and the most aware of consequences of a bad decision.

Great.

Thank you, Heather.

If you don't have the answer to this question, happy to follow up afterwards.

But what your last comments brought to mind is how Sound Transit load tests all of their stations and their trains ahead of opening.

Anecdotally, I thought that they had once said to me it takes them six months to two years of testing on the rails before they can put passengers on those trains, in those new stations.

Do you have a sense of how your work compares to that?

Do you have a sense of what Sound Transit does?

So I thank you for that question.

And I don't have the specifics on what Sound Transit does, but I can check in with them on that.

I will say that I know that the railway administration requires different kinds of safety procedures and they are longer than what we are pondering.

Oh, wait, maybe Cal has an answer.

I see Cal's hand up too.

I'll just jump in there too and say that transit has a very prescribed way of opening up new infrastructure that requires a component check, you know, checks of all the components and training of drivers and things like that.

And we don't anticipate anything like that length of time associated with this.

Great, and just the point that I was, and Cal, please follow up.

I just kind of want to focus the point that I was making, which is even once it's completed, the importance of taking that moment to ensure that it's load tested is so critical.

Thank you, everyone.

I just wanted to add that a lot of Sound Transit's burn-in time is really about burning in the rails and checking their electrical systems and all their control systems.

We also have a lot of signal intercepts that connect with the traffic system.

So there's a lot of other systems that are being evaluated.

And frankly, it's also a training run for their operators.

So it's a little bit of a different situation than bring back facility that had been in use.

So that's everybody's right, which makes me so happy.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate the shamrock on the slide there.

Regarding the note at the bottom, regarding the fact that the schedule and budget will be updated after we reach the stage of intermediate design, my recollection is that we're estimating that the stage of intermediate design is around July, is that right?

So that'll be an opportunity to check the schedule.

Okay, thank you.

That's correct, late July.

Intermediate design is what we used to call 60%.

Very good, thank you.

And that just in the context that Heather's about to talk about, that'll also be once we have a contractor on board and have been able to talk about some of the constructability and have a much, you know, really the next iteration of any changes to schedule and budget, we will continue to hold ourself to what we've talked about in terms of 30% design.

So I believe the last time we spoke to Council, we let you know that we were going to move forward with a general contractor construction management approach to building this bridge repair.

We released the request for qualifications and project approach on March 10th and are expecting that the proposals will be due in on April 12th.

It'll take us a month or so to do the interviews that are required for us to select a contractor.

This method of bringing the contractor on before design is finished gives us better schedule predictability and more opportunities to guard against change orders and also may provide some opportunities for us to squeeze the schedule.

in any way want to promise that, but it is a good way for us to ensure more predictability and avoid change orders during construction.

Because the contractor is sort of walking with us through the rest of the design process and can flag any constructability issues or materials procurement issues before it's too late, before it makes a big difference in the schedule.

Next slide, please.

So within that RFQPA, we've included our project construction goals, and you can tell they're important because we included them in that document.

We obviously are committed to honoring the schedule commitments that we've made to the community.

We want to maximize safety for the workers, the community, and the traveling public.

That's always at the top of the list.

We also want to continue open communications about the project with the community.

So that means the contractor is going to have to be prepared to allow the press to take pictures.

They're going to have to allow things like tours when it's safe to do so.

So that's a lot what that's about.

We also want to make sure that they are on board with collaborating with the project team and stakeholders during both design and construction.

A lot of times we get contractors on board and they just want to build it.

They don't want to engage with the community.

And so we made it really clear that that was going to be important during this whole program.

And we also want to make sure that they are good neighbors, minimizing the impacts to stakeholders and the public, and particularly our friends up on Pigeon Point and West Marginal Way.

Our goal continues to be reopening in mid-2022.

Next slide, please.

So I like a checklist and so here you have a checklist.

We have checked that first circle.

We have put out our contractor solicitation.

The next step will be to get that contractor on board and then hit final design.

Construction is likely to begin late this year and then construction, like I said, will be done in the middle of 2022. Next slide, please.

One of the things that's important to Aston and to the mayor as we move forward is to continue to invest in surrounding communities, not just for the mitigation efforts and the street and safety investments that we're making through ReConnect West Seattle, but also we're seeking approval to use a community workforce agreement and the city's priority hire program for this project.

This ensures that contractors hire from economically distressed zip codes Because this is a federally funded project, we have to seek approval from USDOT.

We've had several conversations with them, which have gone very well, and we expect to have a decision sometime in April.

We're also, of course, going to include disadvantaged business enterprise goals.

Those goals are set typically by WSDOT, and they're set a little bit later in the program.

Sam, did you want to add anything about community workforce?

Nope, I think it remains a commitment and working through, as Heather said, the approvals necessary to keep this going.

OK, the low bridge is the gift that keeps on giving.

It is a finite resource that everyone wants to have access to, and so we're working very hard to make sure that we're doing that equitably.

We began in January to allow automated enforcement.

So private vehicles that are driving on the bridge between 5 a.m.

and 9 p.m.

will be fined $75 per trip unless they are already on a pre-approved list, which I'll talk about here in a second.

We, since the very beginning of the program, have given priority access for emergency vehicles, heavy freight, and buses.

And then we have worked with our maritime community to ensure that people who work on Harbor Island and Terminal 5, members of ILWU, are able to access Terminal 5 from their Union Hall, which is on East Marginal Way.

Again, private vehicles may use the bridge between 9 p.m.

and 5 a.m.

That is when volumes are low enough that we can open up the bridge to everyone.

Right now, we're conducting targeted outreach to inform equitable policy updates this spring with a focus on BIPOC-owned businesses, healthcare providers, and people seeking life-saving treatments.

We expect to have an update for the community task force in April.

Next slide, please.

So we spend a great deal of time with the community as is appropriate.

This is a tremendously important facility for the people of West Seattle and Duwamish Valley.

We receive lots of emails and phone calls.

We send out weekly email updates to 8,600 people.

We've posted 92 blog postings.

We've had twice the number of blog views since we closed the bridge as we did before that.

We've done many, many interviews and responses to media requests.

And I think we've met with virtually every stakeholder group, some of them multiple times.

We also meet monthly with three advisory groups, including the Community Task Force, the Employer Resource Group, that's a group of large employers that we want to encourage to do things like use a shuttle to get their folks to work once things start to open up, and also a monthly maritime town hall where we keep the maritime and industrial community updated on what's happening.

Next slide, please.

So ReConnect Seattle is a very important part of this program.

We understand, I understand, because I live here in West Seattle, how important the bridge is to all of our access needs in the rest of the city and region.

Our goal is to provide the opportunity for similar levels of travel across the Duwamish as we had before the high-rise bridge failed.

That of course means a significant change in mode.

We have a map that is publicly available.

There's the link right there.

That shows all of the projects that we are working on.

In 2020, we completed all 22 projects that we promised to the community.

And in 2021, we are looking forward to delivering 32 projects that are planned for implementation.

Right now, until the end of this month, we are continuing to collect input from the community for projects that we will construct in early 2022. Next slide, please.

So we are leveraging up to $150 million of the city's financial commitment.

You all know very well that we've secured $100 million of that, and $50 million is unsecured.

We've spent $31 million to date on the stabilization and emergency repairs, as well as those traffic mitigation efforts that I was talking about.

We are looking forward to partnering with Washington State, the Port of Seattle, and other stakeholders All of our stakeholders that we work with recognize the local, regional, and statewide economic and mobility significance of the bridge.

It's not a tough sell.

We are using and seeking additional federal funding, including the $15.9 million in PSRC grants.

And we are right now engaged in putting the finishing touches on our U.S.

DOT Infragrant application, which is due here in two days.

Next slide, please.

Thank you so much, City Council, for your letters of support for Infra.

That was great.

We're requesting between $17 and $21 million.

The actual amount depends a little bit on details of which costs are reimbursable and which aren't.

We feel like our application fits really nicely into the six key objectives for Infra, and so we are looking forward to being very competitive in that process.

Next slide, please.

So I believe you have an ordinance before you, good, that authorizes the acceptance of that PSRC allocation of $14.4 million.

This includes 6.9 that we previously got that are now reallocating to the repair project, as well as $7.5 million of HIP funds.

So this will be a $12.4 million net add to the CIP.

Next slide, please.

Okay, I'm here for any questions.

Thank you very much for that.

Yes, we'll roll into the next item, which is the approval of that PSRC funding.

And I want to thank Council President Gonzalez for her leadership and helping to secure those regional funds.

And like you mentioned, the whole city council jumped in immediately to write the support letter, support the support letter for the infra.

grant from the US Department of Transportation.

So let us know if you need anything with that.

It's great to get everybody recognizing this as a regional, statewide, national issue with the port there as well.

So thank you for your work on this and for this overview for everybody and for the viewing public.

So to put into context this grant that we're about to approve, I will, let us go ahead and roll into this item four, which is the approval of the grant.

And then we can have additional comments and even go back to the slide deck if we need to.

But let's just, for parliamentary procedure reason, let's have the clerk read the short title of the next agenda item into the record.

Agenda item four, Council Bill 120017. An ordinance relating to grant funds from non city sources authorizing the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation to accept specified grants and execute related agreements for and on behalf of the city for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Excellent.

So, Calvin, do you want to talk a little bit about the specific grant, or should we turn it over to SDOT or both?

Council Member, I think it's a fairly simple grant ordinance, so I'll turn it back to the SDOT.

Okay.

So, we had your last slide there on the PowerPoint talking about this.

Is there anything else you wanted to add about this grant before we open it up to council members?

And you're on mute, Heather.

Sorry, I was trying to practice good Zoom hygiene.

I'm afraid I have to agree with Cal.

It's a pretty straightforward grant, but I'm happy to answer any questions that folks have.

Council members, any questions on acceptance of this grant from the Puget Sound Regional Council?

Again, thanking Council President Gonzalez for her efforts securing that.

I believe Council Member Juarez helped with that as well.

All right.

Councilmember Herbold, please.

I would like to thank the chair and of course, mayor Durkin and I believe there's also thanks that go to So, many thanks to go around.

This money is really important to get us started in receiving some funds from our partners.

So, thank you.

Excellent.

Okay.

I know Council Member Juarez would be happy that we're thanking everybody.

She loves it when we do that.

And really, we should also thank the other members of the PSRC who aren't from Seattle, who actually, you know, were persuaded by the arguments made by Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Juarez, and staff.

So thanks to our regional partners.

Helping us make the argument that this is a regional investment.

Right.

Oh, we got a roll now.

Council Member Strauss, please.

And I may be stealing Heather Marx's thunder.

She's coming after me.

I won't assume what she has to say only to say that the West Seattle bridge is such an important regional connection.

If you think if you are trying to get from Silverdale, or I should say, should I say Southworth to Covington.

you have to use the West Seattle Bridge.

It is just, it connects the entire Kitsap Peninsula to so many points north and east of West Seattle.

And I also appreciate and thank you to everyone, including Council Member Juarez for what they've done.

Heather, did you want to add anything?

Yeah, just, you know, we're all feeling so good thanking each other that I thought Of course, thanks always are due to our elected officials as they support these efforts.

But I also wanna raise up Jim Storman and Joanna Valencia within Eston.

They are the ones who did, it was a very heavy lift to get these HIP funds.

And so their knowledge of the way the PSRC process works, both technically and politically, created the conditions under which we could call upon the help of our elected officials to bring it home.

So thank you so much to Jim and Joanna too.

Thank you for raising up the work of the staff.

Council President Gonzalez.

Yeah, I just wanted to thank Heather for that.

The work that allowed us to persuade the other elected officials on the PSRC was really shepherded by the staff, and so a lot of the credit goes to good, solid staff work that allowed us to find a consensus approach to this grant that we're about to accept.

And there were some concessions made by us, and there were concessions made by suburban cities who are also members of the Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Policy Board that that are significant, but I think that it's fair to say that those concessions were made in the context of understanding that the West Seattle Bridge is crucial to our regional mobility and to freight mobility as well.

So lots of good work here and look forward to ongoing necessary work that is gonna be needed to continue to secure funding for this important infrastructure project.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Okay, with that, Council Members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120017, item four on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

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

Any final comments?

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that Council Bill 120017 be approved for forwarding to the full city council?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Excellent.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation is that the bill be sent for approval to the March 22nd City Council meeting.

All right.

Thank you, everybody, from SDOT.

Thank you so much.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item five, council bill 120002, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting surveillance impact reports for Seattle City Lights use of current diversion technology for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we now continue our discussion of the surveillance impact reports to fulfill our role under the 2017 and 2018 surveillance ordinance.

Seattle has one of the strongest review processes in the country for technology that could be used for surveillance.

Thanks to Council President Gonzalez and others who crafted those ordinances.

As you may recall, we received an overview of the surveillance technology impact report approval process back in January 20th.

Then the three ordinances for nine of the 26 technologies, existing technologies.

We're introduced February 22nd on the introduction and referral calendar.

We heard from all the relevant departments and central staff at our committee two weeks ago on March 3rd.

Now on March 17th, I'm confident we can vote on this item, which is for Seattle City Light Technology.

And also I'm hopeful for the Seattle Fire Department technology item, which is the next item on the agenda.

Regarding the reports on the SPD technologies, we can start today to explore potential future amendments and bring those back for a third committee meeting for just the SPD technologies on April 7th committee to vote on those.

Just a reminder that we also have the Group 3 and Group 4 surveillance impact reports coming soon to committee.

So hopefully this Group 2 is getting everyone acclimated to what's involved in reviewing and approving these existing technologies after they've undergone a thorough review by our Information Technology Department and Surveillance Working Group.

I want to thank all the volunteers on the Surveillance Working Group.

The good news from an accountability perspective is that it's not over even after council approves these ordinances because then our city auditor and our office of inspector general will continue to review these technologies after we approve the reports.

So we're starting with Seattle City Light Surveillance Impact Report for the couple of technologies.

So we'll go ahead and turn it over to our central staff.

Analyst Lisa Kay has been working very hard on these for over a year, and also we've got information technology department here with us, and we may have somebody from City Light here as well.

So let me turn it over to Lisa Kay from our central staff for any introductory remarks.

And we do have a couple of amendments that we're going to move on this ordinance as well.

So Lisa Kay, do you want to help us continue setting the table for this?

happy to thank you, Council Member Peterson.

I'm Lisa Kay on your central staff.

As Chair Peterson said, this this council bill before you 120-002 would approve the continued use of City Lights current diversion technologies and accept both the surveillance impact report and the executive overview of that report.

I do want to clarify that I have updated my staff memo from last week and notified you all that the ordinances would accept the executive overviews.

So I had thought that an amendment might be necessary to do that, but they are structured in such a way the ordinances are structured to accept those.

And as you'll remember, the executive overviews identify the enforceable policies and the procedures applicable to the technologies that are in each of the surveillance impact reports.

I could share my screen if you want, Council Member Peterson, and walk through the amendments that are on the table for 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 2, if you want, or I could do those one at a time.

How would you prefer?

Yeah, I think that would be helpful to look at those amendments.

I believe one is technical corrections, another is about getting a report back on the equity metrics, and another is about, well, yeah, those are the two, so please.

Okay, so the first amendment that's on the table to 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 2 would basically just make technical corrections to the surveillance impact reports.

for the three current diversion technologies.

That's binoculars, the check meter device, and what's called the sensor link amp fork.

So just to let you know, these are edits that correct the table of contents basically for these three.

They really are technical edits and the amendment is sponsored by Chair Peterson.

Would you like me to go to the next one or did you want to talk about that one Council Member Peterson?

Yes, let's go to the next one and then we'll hear if Information Technology wants to say anything, if Seattle City Light wants to say anything, and we'll circle back to these as well.

Okay, so amendment number two is one of a series of amendments.

You'll see both amendments one and two repeat for the three council bills, making first technical corrections and then second this amendment that would basically be requesting a report on the metrics that are going to be used as part of the Chief Technology Officer's annual equity assessments.

So you'll recall those metrics were requested as part of the racial equity toolkit in each of the CERs, but haven't been completed yet.

So this would be asking that once those are completed and provided to the CTO, no later than the third quarter of 2021, the department would submit basically to the clerk, file a report on what those metrics were.

So this amendment is sponsored by Chair Peterson.

You can see the language.

Actually, I'll scroll down this a little bit just to see this new section, too, is the specific language asking for that report by the third quarter of 2021.

Thank you.

And I will make the motions to put the bill on the table and then to propose amendments in order, Amendment 1, Amendment 2. Before I start that parliamentary procedure, are there any general comments from Information Technology Department or from Seattle City Light before we open it up to questions?

No comments from IT.

OK.

And no comments from City Light.

Let me go ahead and move just to get the bill on the table officially, and then we'll open it up for questions.

Council members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 12002, item five on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded for the passage of this bill.

Let's go ahead and are there any questions about the underlying bill that we have for either central staff or IT or City Light before I move the technical amendment one and then the amendment number two?

And you can ask these questions at any time during this process.

I'm just opening up if there are any general underlying questions before we get to the amendments.

Okay.

Chair, I might have some questions, but I was saving them until after we considered the technical amendments, so I'm gonna pull up my notes while we consider the technical amendments if you don't.

Yes, that sounds great.

Yeah, so let's try to amend the bill with these two amendments, and then we'll have another discussion about the bill as amended.

Let's see, so I would like to move, I would like to move to amend Council Bill 1202 as presented in Amendment 1 on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 1. And so we've, Lisa Kay has presented this to us.

Are there any comments on this that's been moved and seconded, this amendment?

We can go ahead and let's go ahead and call the roll on amendment number one.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Okay, the motion passes to accept Amendment 1 into this Council Bill.

I'd like now to move to amend Council Bill 1202 as presented in Amendment 2 on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 2. Lisa Kay has discussed this amendment.

It's there on the screen for us.

Are there any comments on Amendment 2 before we amend the underlying bill to incorporate Amendment 2?

OK.

We can go ahead and call the roll on Amendment 2. And again, we'll have discussion on the amended bill after this motion goes through.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 2?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Rouse?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted, amendment number two.

Let's open this up now for discussion on the bill as amended.

Council President Gonzalez.

Sure, my system is a little slow here, which is odd because I'm in the office, but I'm getting the little snail on my desktop here.

So just really quickly, the Council Bill 12002, I just want to make sure I have a clear understanding of what is included in this particular council bill, and I recognize that Lisa already talked about this a little bit, but if you can just sort of reorient us now that we've considered the amendments, if you could just describe really quickly what Council Bill 12002, what technologies and which departments are included in this particular bill.

I would be happy to do that, Council Member.

So 120002 is for three City Light technologies, all pertaining to checking into current diversion issues.

So basically electricity theft.

And so a particular team within City Light uses these three technologies together, the binoculars, the check meter device, and the amp fork to basically investigate potential cases of electricity theft.

And so adopting this bill that's before you would approve the continued use of these technologies.

They've been in play for some time.

I believe some of them are being updated, and we will probably get a revisor in the next year or two, because some of the, I think the trig meter device in particular is maybe replaced by something more technologically advanced.

In any case, this would approve these three technologies and would accept the surveillance impact reports.

for those, and also the executive overview of those, which catalogs the enforceable policies and procedures pertaining to all of those three technologies.

Great.

Thank you so much.

And when we talk about electricity theft, can you just tell me a little bit more about how this information will be utilized in the context of electricity theft as you've characterized it.

I may turn this over to Michelle Bargo if you don't mind getting into, I could speak to my understanding of how it plays out, but I think she's going to have probably a more specific and accurate definition of how they're actually employed in the field.

Yeah, whomever is the appropriate subject matter expert is welcome to answer my question.

Okay.

I think Michelle was on the line.

Yes, more burger is also on the line.

Good.

Good morning, council members.

Could I just do a quick comm check?

Can you guys hear me, Michelle?

Okay.

Um, and I'm just double checking.

Is this any better?

Okay.

Excellent.

Sorry.

Um, yeah.

So when we're talking about electricity theft, um, in many cases, uh, this would come in as a safety issue.

So we might notice that, um, It seems like the meter's been tampered for whatever reason.

And so we might want to try to investigate that site to make sure how much electricity is flowing to that site and then determine maybe how the system was tampered with.

In other cases, we might want to just see how much electricity is flowing to a resident if it was tampered.

It might not actually prevent a safety issue that someone from just passing by was able to pick up on and report.

So these technologies, as they, one, the binoculars are pretty self-explanatory in that you would just be trying to observe If there's a safety issue on the meter or if some of the equipment's been tampered with, they're not taking pictures or anything like that.

And then the other technologies, they're really just reporting on electricity flow.

So they don't actually carry any customer data on them.

The electricians go out, they monitor the cable that's going to the resident or what it might be.

It takes a reading, and then we document that reading on our computers.

And that's how we would use those technologies and make a determination if this doesn't seem in alignment with the way the original configuration was meant to be, or if there's actually a safety hazard that we need to address for the public.

Thank you, Michelle does does the Sir actually referred to electricity theft as a as a as an.

Concept at all, I'm looking at the Council Central staff memo that was drafted by Lisa and it looks like this issue around.

You know, identifying electricity theft was not written about in that memorandum.

So I'm, I'm, I'm wondering if that issue was was flagged or at all addressed in the context of the surf.

I can.

I can answer how we crafted it.

It was put to us, this is part of current diversion investigation, which could happen for a variety of reasons.

Got it.

Damaged equipment, something else happening.

So I don't think it's always an assumption that it's a theft situation or that's one of the scenarios.

Does that help?

Yeah, so the terminology that's being used is diversion, but within the concept of diversion, electricity theft is part of that.

Okay, so in the instances in which I'm focusing on theft because I want to understand, I mean, I'm just going to sort of get to the point here.

Is the purpose of that for enforcement?

And if so, what kinds of enforcement are going to be, what kind of enforcement actions are going to be triggered if, for example, Seattle City Light confirms that there has been electricity theft.

So in some cases, we actually work in conjunction with the police department on some of these issues.

And I think those are the nefarious situations.

I do think there is current diversion that happens just because some piece of equipment is not working correctly.

In those cases, it starts a conversation with a customer about just truing up the bill.

So I think it can take a couple of different paths.

But I do think if there is someone that is purposely stealing electricity, we're still going to have a conversation to recover those funds.

And most of this is addressed in SMC and department policies.

that need to be updated, just because, as was pointed out in a previous meeting, we do have our advanced meter technologies now, and those are going to play a role in reducing our needs for these technologies, because the AMI meters do give us the ability to identify these issues sooner, and so, therefore, not letting a prolonged duration of the occurrence take place and then a catching up of the billing that would have to take place, we would actually know pretty soon once the theft is occurring or the diversion is occurring.

I want to refer also to the executive overview which contains some information specifically that was taken from the SIR about data sharing specific to your concerns about sharing data with law enforcement or requests for data related to enforcement.

When a report is sent in conjunction with law enforcement, it does not include any consumption information.

This is per the SIR and department policy.

Law enforcement would have to submit a public disclosure request for specific power records if they needed that in support of their investigation, but City Light would provide that information pursuant to a subpoena or the request pursuant to the public disclosure law.

But when they require evidence, I'm reading from the executive overview, for further proceedings in complex or aggravated cases, when large sums of energy have been diverted or stolen, or when there's a safety risk to the public.

So there's the SIR and executive overview outline the circumstances under which Seattle City Light participates or assists law enforcement with these types of requests.

You were anticipating my next question.

So thank you for doing that.

So you're referring to attachment four on the agenda, which is titled Current Diversion Technologies Executive Overview.

And I see some information on page...

There's some information on page three, but I think the data sharing and accuracy information is primarily on page four, where it says, quote, data is collected and maintained for Seattle City light use.

and may only be shared with outside entities for the purposes of law enforcement or legal action by the relevant jurisdictional authority.

This policy is formally laid out in Seattle City Light Department Policy and Procedure, DPP, et cetera, et cetera." So I just want to really hone in on this concept because I think it's important. So I just want to make sure that I understand what I'm reading here. So in the instance in which law enforcement is doing an investigation, then they would have to think of going to Seattle City Light under the public disclosure law to request power records, or they would have to have a subpoena that is based on probable cause consistent with Washington public disclosure law. So in other words, you aren't going to be tipping off the Seattle Police Department that there might be an electricity theft issue. It's the street runs the other way. Am I understanding that correctly? That is correct. Okay. Thank you. I don't have any other questions on this.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Members, any other questions on this bill for the Seattle City Light 3 technologies?

One of the benefits of adopting the SIR ordinance here is that it does incorporate the executive overview into the policy, so that's very helpful.

Just looking to see if there are any other questions.

I don't see any further questions on this particular bill as amended, so we're going to go ahead and I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll on the committee recommendation that this council bill 12002 pass as amended.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Morales?

Yes.

Stroud?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries.

And the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the March 22nd City Council meeting for final consideration.

All right.

Will the clerk please read the title of the next agenda item into the record?

Agenda item 6, Council Bill 120003. an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting surveillance impact reports for the Seattle Fire Department's use of computer-aided dispatch for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Councilmembers, we heard this item two weeks ago.

It will be great to get a refresher from our central staff.

Lisa Kay, if you don't mind.

We do have the fire department here.

Evan Ward is here to answer questions from the fire department.

We appreciate the departments.

I'm happy to do that.

I would be happy to do that.

Council bill 120-003 would

And Evan Ward, I believe, is on the line from FHIR also, but when the software is used to advise dispatchers as to specific units and resources that they might want to tap to send in response to a call.

So they'll tell them, for example, if they need a specific fire truck or apparatus from a particular station that's closest to the call, they'll tell them if they need to have EMTs responding based on the reported problem, the location of the caller.

So it's really technology that helps the dispatchers, the people that are answering the phones and organizing the response to the 911 calls.

Thank you.

And would you mind going through these amendments, just walking us through the three amendments?

There's actually a third amendment.

I want to thank Council Member Herbold for her putting her amendment forward on the retention time.

But Lisa-K, please, if you don't mind, go through those three, and then we'll start the parliamentary procedure to get the amendment bill on the table.

Sure.

So amendments one and two basically parallel the same amendments that you just looked at for 120-002.

Amendment one makes the technical corrections to the surveillance impact report.

Basically, it's removing a draft watermark.

So it's really pretty minor.

This is sponsored by Chair Peterson.

Amendment two is, again, the parallel amendment with the previous bill that is requesting the report on the equity metrics for the computer-aided dispatch that would be provided to the chief technology officer to use in his annual equity assessment.

And that report would be due by the end of the third quarter of 2021. And this is also sponsored by Chair Peterson.

The third amendment, let me just move this down one.

As Council Member Peterson said, this amendment is sponsored by Council Member Herbold and would ask that the Fire Department align its records retention more closely with the state retention schedule.

So currently, the Seattle Fire Department keeps its dispatch records for the life of the CAD system.

That goes well beyond what the state retention policies would call for, which requires minimum retention of six years for fire incident reports and three years of computer-aided dispatch backup data and tapes.

So this amendment, as structured, would, you can see here in section two, would basically ask fire to report no later than the end of the third quarter of 2021 on a revised records retention schedule that would more closely align with what the state is calling for.

And Jennifer Winkler, who is the city records manager, would be working with the fire department on responding to this request.

Thank you for that overview of the bill as well as the three amendments.

And Council Member Herbold will turn it over to you in a moment to speak to your amendment if you'd like.

If there aren't any general questions or if my colleagues would prefer to wait till we amend the bill and then have the amended bill on the table, we can have summary comments and questions and make changes.

We'll do it like we did the last bill.

So why don't we go ahead and do that?

So I would, Council Members, I now move that the committee recommend approval of Council Bill 120003, item six on our agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

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

And now I'd like to make a motion to amend Council Bill 120003 as presented in Amendment 1 on the agenda, the technical amendment that Lisa Kay mentioned.

Is there a second for Amendment 1?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented as Amendment 1. And Lisa Kay already went over this, but are there any comments on Amendment 1?

OK, so will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries, and the amendment is adopted.

I'd like to now move to amend Council Bill 120003 as presented in amendment number two on the agenda.

Is there a second?

I think, did I hear a second?

Yes, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented in our Amendment 2. Lisa Kay from our central staff already spoke to this Amendment 2. It's the same as the Amendment 2 from the previous council bill.

Are there any comments on Amendment 2?

Okay.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 2?

Gonzales?

Aye.

Councilmember Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the amendment number two is adopted.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to move amendment three?

I do.

I move to amend Council Bill 12-0003 as presented on amendment three on the agenda.

second.

All right, it's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented in Amendment 3. Council Member Herbold, you're recognized in order to address your amendment.

Thank you.

I have no further comments.

Lisa Kay did a great job of describing the intent and the effect of the amendment.

Thank you.

Committee colleagues, are there any other comments on Amendment Number 3?

All right, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 3.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Five in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries, and the Amendment Number 3 is adopted.

Now we have the amended bill on the table with the three amendments incorporated into it.

Are there any additional comments or questions about this amended bill with the fire department?

Council Member Herbold.

I just want to lift up some questions that have been asked both in public comment and in correspondence with council members as it relates specifically to this technology.

There is a question regarding whether or not the fire department has technical controls in place to limit the scope of SPD's access to the fire department CAD data.

And then another question about the understanding that there are a large number of administrators with access to the CAD system, and whether or not there is the ability to have more controls on the number of people who have access, and whether or not there's required technical training for those who do.

And I'm going to turn that over to Evan Ward with the Seattle Fire Department, who I think is aware of these questions.

Hey, thanks for having me.

So to address your, I'll start with the last question first, actually.

So I think there's a little bit of a misunderstanding when it comes to admin roles when it comes to CAD.

So there's only several admins, and those folks actually are in Seattle IT, and they work on the Seattle Fire Department's CAD technology.

What is true is that every Seattle Fire Department employee has access to this data, to the CAD system.

And the reason for that is it's so fundamental for just about everything we do.

I mean, from scheduling, resource allocation to HR, it's very important that everybody in the Seattle Fire Department has access to that data readily and daily.

And then to address your point about access to the police, we do not provide direct access to the Seattle Police Department.

It is only Seattle Fire Department employees or the Seattle IT folks who are the admins.

So similar somewhat to the Seattle City Light where the police or law enforcement has to essentially submit a request to get that data.

So we don't push it to them, they have to come to us.

So I hope that addresses your questions.

It does very well, thank you.

Just a follow-up on the CAD access controls that are in place.

The constituent asked about whether or not there was support for a two-factor authentication for that system.

I would have to look into that.

I would need to speak with our more technical experts on that, but so I don't want to give you bad information.

I appreciate that.

I think the concern is with a large number of people having access to it, that having more controls could improve the cybersecurity of the system.

So I appreciate you getting back to me.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

And for Evan Ward, if you don't mind getting back to Council Member Herbold this week, that would be helpful.

any other questions, councilmembers?

Okay.

Everybody's excited to get to the next item, I think is what's going on here.

So will the clerk, Councilmember Strauss, did you have a question?

Sorry.

Sorry, I was kind of following up on something.

Councilmember Herbold got to the root of my question.

I do know that, and maybe Mr. Ward, you could help me understand, I know that Seattle Fire Department, and I believe it's the CAD data, is available online as well as on PulsePoint.

Are there, I guess, any retention?

I know that on the online portal through Seattle.gov, it only shows right now 127 messages.

Can you share with me if there are any protections that need to be put in place around here.

I fully understand your comments just a moment ago about everyone in the department needing access to the data.

Are there any security concerns from your standpoint about having this publicly available online?

Are there retention parameters around this online data?

Can you share a little bit about that?

Sure, so I'm not aware of any requirements when it comes to, say, a minimum or a suggested maximum data retention for this online data.

I can tell you that such as the Realtime 911 data, the stuff we have on our open data portal, it is CAD data.

I mean, it is essentially taking the information that we've determined to not be a privacy risk, and we push that out to the public.

So to answer your questions, I don't see any concerns with the data that we currently publish online or to PulsePoint, for instance.

It doesn't contain any PII.

So personally identifiable information.

The only concern I would have, I suppose, would be if somebody could use that data and say, somehow combine it with a different data set, taking something like King County parcel viewer data, then potentially you could try and dig up maybe a response history to a particular location.

But again, there's no PII, there's no way to tell essentially who that person is based on that data.

And then just to go back to your last question, I'm not aware of any retention policies of that sort of data.

Thank you, Mr. Ward.

And just to tease that out one step further, it sounds as if on your internal, whatever computer you're using to review your CAD data internally has more information than what you're pushing out to the general public.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

Great.

And for that more detailed version of being able to view the CAD data within your dispatch system.

Are there two-factor authentications required?

Is it limited to government computers?

How are you creating that security parameter around that more robust data set?

Sure, so at least when it comes to the two-factor authentication, I'll have to get back to you on some of the details with that.

I can tell you that the CAD data is only available to the Seattle Fire Department employees via their desktop, but the data is also included with the mobile data terminal in the fire trucks or the other rigs that go out.

But I'll have to follow up and get you the information on the two-factor authentication.

Great, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member.

All right, colleagues, if there are no further questions, we'll go ahead and move to approve this amended bill.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation that Council Bill 120003 pass as amended?

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Morales?

Council Member Morales?

Strauss?

Yes.

Chair Peterson?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass as amended will be sent to the March 22nd City Council meeting for final consideration.

The next item, item seven on the agenda is related to the police technology.

The clerk can go ahead and read this title into the record, but we will be holding it until April 7th.

But please go ahead and read it into the record.

Agenda item seven, Council Bill 120004, an ordinance relating to surveillance technology implementation, authorizing approval of uses and accepting surveillance impact reports for the Seattle Police Department's use of surveillance technologies for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

And colleagues, as we discussed earlier, we'll give everyone more time on these SPD technologies.

So we'll have this item in our committee for a third time on Wednesday, April 7. At that time, we can vote on any amendments and ideally vote the amended bills out of committee.

As we discuss the SPD technologies today, Let's start to consider maybe air possible amendments, but we do want to get the amendments to central staff to Lisa K no later than Tuesday, March 23rd.

The amendments will need to undergo essentially two legal reviews, a standard legal review as we have with any amendments and a supplemental legal review to assess whether they might materially impact the federal consent decree.

with the consent decree over the police department.

I've already alerted the city attorney's office.

It's possible that amendments might have no material impact, but out of an abundance of caution, we'll have our city attorney's office do the initial screening for this to consider whether there might be any unintended consequences related to the federal consent decree.

Because these technologies are not directly tied to consent decree requirements, it's possible there'll be no issues, but we don't know until we see the amendment.

So that's why we're encouraging you to get those amendments in to Lisa Kaye next Tuesday.

And I will be working with several staff who are potentially going to break this ordinance into multiple separate council bills.

That way, if we hit any and we want to hold one of them later, we can move forward with the others.

So you might see them reintroduced.

The single bill reintroduces five bills, one for each of the technologies, just so we have more flexibility.

We can be more nimble on April 7. Okay, well, Lisa K., if you don't mind giving us an overview of these again, I'd appreciate it.

And the amendments, well, the only two amendments that were online were just the same technical corrections and the information on the equity assessment.

But we expect more amendments to come to Lisa K.

next week to discuss April 7th.

Thank you, Lisa.

Go ahead.

So with your permission, Mr. Chair, I would like to go ahead and share my screen and go back to the slide deck just to walk through these five technologies.

I think it just helps organize the thinking a little bit more because there are five SIRs here under consideration.

So let me just get this shared with you.

Is that looking right to you now?

Everybody can see that?

Not yet.

Because I have to hit share.

OK.

Great.

That should be on.

So I'm going to just jump forward to the five police department technologies here.

So the five that are under consideration here are for automated license plate readers for the parking enforcement system, but also uses an automated license plate reader system from a different vendor.

Computer aided dispatch, analogous to what you just talked about for fire department.

Cop logic.

This is the program.

Well, I'll walk through it in a little bit.

And the 911 logging recorder.

So the license plate readers, as you heard last week, will help in identification of stolen vehicles, help you find amber and silver alert individuals and vehicles that would be wanted in conjunction with felonies or other investigations.

I'm just going to do the description right now rather than walk back through my briefing, if that works for you, Chair.

Yes.

Okay, so I'm just going to skip the slides up to the parking enforcement systems technology is used to enforce parking laws, vehicle impoundment, scofflaw, so people who have scofflaw enforcement.

So if you have multiple infractions, parking infractions, they'll help you identify those individuals.

The information relative that is collected from the license plate reader system for parking enforcement Just a second, my cat is, Jessica, take the cat out.

Sorry, little cat interruption there.

We need cat prevention technology.

I think it's called a door.

Just that, yeah, anyhow, I apologize for that.

So the parking enforcement systems data from their license plate reader system is updated or is uploaded at the end of each shift to the database that is shared with patrol.

All right, the next technology is the computer-aided dispatch, which I don't think I need to describe in much detail there.

It's analogous to what the fire department does with its computer-aided dispatch, supporting those 911 calls.

The cop logic, this is the system that has two different applications.

One is where individuals can call in and report low-level crimes.

get a police recorded number that they can use to submit for an insurance claim.

The second track is this retail theft reporting where businesses can call or can report potential shoplifters and start the process for reporting those crimes.

And then the courts will decide whether to, or I'm sorry, the city attorney's office decides whether to file charges against those cases.

The fifth one is the logging recorder, which is basically used to record all the telephone calls that come into the 911 center and the radio traffic between the dispatchers and patrol officers.

So those are the five technologies and the surveillance impact reports and executive overviews that would accompany each of those technologies.

Thank you very much for the overview of the five SPD technologies, the existing technologies before us as part of the surveillance impact reports, and we do have again with us this committee, Captain McDonough from the Seattle Police Department and of course, information technology department might be able to answer some questions.

But colleagues, if you have questions for Lisa Kay or information technology or SPD that you didn't get to ask the last time, please go ahead and ask those questions now.

Obviously, feel free to give a preview of thoughts of what you might want to explore for amendments on April 7th.

I can, I'm happy to summarize a little bit of what I heard at the last committee and talking to individuals between now and then, between then and now.

But please, Councilor Herbold, did you have any comments?

Sure, I'll, I'll, I'll kick us off here.

So I wanted to.

I just get an understanding as it relates to the late reader efficacy.

I understand that the analysis that the police department does shows that over a nine-month period, there were 2.4 million license plates scanned.

as a result of the scanning of the 2.4 million license plates over a nine-month period of time, there were 124 hits.

And that apparently is an effectiveness rate that is significantly lower than a similar analysis of this data from 2013. In 2013, apparently, the number of hits was 0.25 percent.

Under the most recent analysis, it is now 0.005 percent.

And I'm just wondering, what do we learn from, assuming that analysis that I'm sharing is accurate, what do we learn about the effectiveness of this program with larger numbers of license plates being scanned and resulting in fewer findings of individuals who are, that SPD is looking for.

So Captain McDonough is on the line, I think, with us here to speak to that.

Good morning, Council Member.

Paul McDonough with Seattle Police here.

I appreciate the fact that you had other studies.

I'll be honest, I didn't read the first ones.

I didn't have that data, so I apologize.

But in terms of the hit ratio, if you're looking at just sheer numbers, I don't think that does it justice.

Because one of the things that ALPR does is it allows us to locate those vehicles that have been stolen by anyone in our community and return them.

Additionally, the information doesn't often come in, in what I would call the TV style.

In less than an hour, we know all the vehicles and everyone that's a player.

Uh, many of our cases come in over time, and so people collect the information.

We tracked down a vehicle.

We get a license plate, then they publish it, and we can use it for wanted and, uh, crimes and progress type stuff.

So I can tell you that the value of it is in returning the vehicles back to the property owners and or recovering the vehicle as evidence to be able to be able to hold those criminals accountable for those crimes.

And The good thing there is, even though it's a very low ratio, we have increased our population from 2013, I think you said, to 2020, so you're gonna get more reads.

The fact is, auto thefts are growing, unfortunately, during the pandemic.

And people, you would think they'd know if their car was gone, but they're just not going outside.

So I do believe that the numbers will probably be a little bit higher, but again, for the value that it gives for us for evidence and recovering the property, I think it's valuable for our citizens.

Thank you.

And the other question that I have relates to crop logic.

I think there's this perception that the use of the technology somehow grants security within stores some additional authority to do something that they can't do otherwise.

And I don't think that that is accurate.

I don't think it's the technology that makes it possible for store security to keep somebody on site until an officer comes, I think, to a certain extent, they have the ability to do that already, but maybe you could just talk a little bit more about that.

There's a concern that we are, that the technology itself is allowing for the deputization, basically, of store security.

Well, first of all, thank you for that question.

I agree with you it's inaccurate.

The store security does have a right to protect their own property and to lawfully detain, within reason, those who are suspected of committing a crime.

However, what cop logic allows us to do is reduce our staff hours.

So instead of having to send a uniformed officer to the site and take all that to take the report and collect the evidence and submit it, we've been able to shift that to the security loss prevention officers.

In that, they still have to swear out an affidavit about the reasonableness of what the crime was and present us with evidence.

When they submit that, it's actually not in the system until a detective reviews that whole thing.

And if there's anything missing in there for probable cause or evidence that shows that this individual committed the intended crime or the reported crime, that the detective sends it back and it doesn't even come into the system.

If that loss prevention officer chose to not respond to that, It automatically deletes after, I want to say about 120 days, I think it is.

So it gives people time to have that communication back and forth.

But the detective that reviews it ensures, just like an officer would had they gone there, to make sure that there is in fact elements of a crime that we can in turn look into and then forward to the prosecutor for consideration of charges.

If we only forward it, the prosecutor makes the final determination.

But I do think that the technology itself allows us to reduce, under the last study, just about 20,000 staff hours of keeping officers out on patrol doing what they can do and not going to the store and tying up the person in custody.

It also allows the last prevention officer, if the person has identification, to release that individual a lot sooner.

here.

It's a dramatic pause.

Sometimes it's very difficult to switch screens, but thank you for that thorough answer.

Related to the ability of store owners to use the online feature, and then the requirement that crimes that are reported using that online feature are then reviewed by a detective before acting upon those reports.

I'm wondering, have we considered collecting any demographic data about the individuals that store owners are calling in so that we can have an understanding of whether or not there is any disparity in enforcement and learning from that data, much like we do with the citations that police officers make.

We collect demographic information so that we can analyze it and learn from it.

I'm wondering, is that something that is possible to do with this system as well?

I don't know that it's being done currently, although all that data that you're requesting, the information that we require that we can legally ask is in the report.

And then just to clarify, there is a process that last security officer, last prevention officer, sorry, do get a manual on what they're required to put in and answer specific questions outlining the crime.

And then the other thing, just like if they're filing out the report in person with the officer, they have to swear that the information they're reporting is accurate or they're subject to criminal charges via the prosecutor's office for false reporting, things like that, possible even perjury.

But I do think that we could probably work with someone from IT to try to figure out how to get a program to collect some of that data.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Colleagues, any other questions?

And this isn't obviously the last time you'll get to ask questions, but I want to try to get on the table if you have any other questions.

And since we do have Captain McDonough here, as well as IT and central staff.

I do want to raise a question that we've heard about parking enforcement folks sharing information with the rest of the police department, in terms of the, are you able to speak to that a little bit about how parking enforcement interacts or shares data with regular patrol officers, for example?

Yeah, a little bit.

And since our last meeting, made sure that we went to go get some clarification on some of the data.

Parking enforcement officers are using a system that marks the geolocation and the time of the specific license plate that was read.

And then they use that to keep vehicles moving to try to free up parking spots.

If they write citations or issue infractions, we don't get any of that data.

That's handled completely by PEOs.

The PEO reads do in fact go into the data system.

And that was one of the clarification points.

Um, but for an officer to actually read that data, um, you were talking earlier about two factor authentication for some of the computer systems.

We have, uh, two, two factor authentication for SPD to get in.

And once they're in, they have to log into a specific system.

They have to put their name, the case number and the crime itself that they're suspected of and then do a search for the license plate.

So that's another way that we're using.

that accountability process to ensure that we don't abuse the information that's in the AOPR system.

So yes, they can actually access that, but it also has to be for a criminal offense.

If it's being used, hopefully not, but if it is used for personal use or something outside their official duties, then as you know, they're subject to the OPA and severe discipline under law, so.

Thank you for explaining that.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Captain McDonough.

Some of my questions are going to be extensions of what Councilmember Herbold was asking, and my apologies for maybe asking some of the real simple questions that have already been addressed in the memos and the presentations.

It's just dense information that I want to just focus clearly in on, for the license plate readers themselves, is the primary application of the license plate reader just with parking enforcement?

Is it also while the patrol car is on the road driving around?

We do have a number of patrol cars that have it, although not all of our patrol cars have it.

When they're not in the shop, because, again, it's technology and it goes up and down, we average two AOPRs per precinct, except for the north precinct, because of its geographic size, they had three.

Now, again, I'd have to check, but I know at least two of the vehicles were in for maintenance.

So where they came from, I can't answer that.

And so those units do, in fact, use it.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

And so for the non parking enforcement for the patrol cars that have it embedded.

What is the primary function?

Is it just to increase efficiency as you're driving around to locate as you mentioned stolen cars?

Maybe people that you are attempting to contact.

Can you help me understand what the policy reason is to have on patrol cars?

So you're half right on that.

Do you use it to check for wanted vehicles?

Stolen vehicles are those that have warrants associated to that license plate.

So if I have a car and I committed a crime and I'm wanted, then it may be tacked to that license plate.

We can check it out.

But in terms of looking at cars, no, they can't just run a license plate and say, oh, I want to go talk to you.

The officers can't do that.

There has to be something in the system to give them a read or a hit is the casual term that says, hey, this person is a missing person out of Spokane.

We get a number of those and those get updated into the system.

So they will, if the license plate reader sees the vehicle, the license plate, it'll tell us, hey, This vehicle is listed as a missing person out of Spokane or endangered person or something like that.

Other than that, it really just pretty much comes back with, for the patrol officers, the fact that it's wanted or not wanted.

If it's not wanted, it just, it doesn't come up with anything.

And thank you, Captain.

And so does that mean that as the patrol car is on patrol, it is automatically reading the license plates ahead and behind it?

Or do you have to activate this technology?

You have to turn the system on.

OK.

So it functions similarly as if a patrol officer is behind a car, they're punching in the license plate information.

Yes, sir.

And all the officers that are assigned an ALPR vehicle have gone through the internal training process.

OK.

And are you able to speak on the parking enforcement aspect, or do I need to direct those questions elsewhere?

It depends on how detailed you get.

I used to oversee the parking enforcement unit, but that was a few years ago.

So I'll do my best.

How about that?

Well, thank you, Captain.

What I have to say is that my questions pertain to both the data that is retained on patrol cars and with parking enforcement.

And this was getting to what Council Member Herbold was saying.

If there's not a hit on the license plate that you retain the data for, I heard you share that it's helpful to retain that data to identify stolen cars that maybe you didn't know were stolen at that moment and you later realized were.

Are there other reasons to do this?

It does seem to me on its face that we are retaining far too much data that is of personal nature.

So in response to obviously earlier inquiries over the years, SPD has reduced our retention time from 180 days which is what state law allows up to.

We've reduced it down to 90 days.

That way we can make sure that a significant image hasn't been recovered.

Now a definition of a significant image is very very broad.

And then on top of that we have to make sure that we can answer public disclosure requests which also take quite a bit of time considering the sheer volume of public disclosure requests that we get.

So in terms of that.

In trying to balance it all out, we said, look, the one homicide case that I'm aware of, it came in about two and a half weeks after the homicide, because it took the detectives in another jurisdiction that long to figure out the vehicle that the subject may be driving in, and we were able to locate that vehicle and then subsequently affect the arrest.

So it gives us a buffer in which to do that.

But after 90 days, if that case or that license plate hasn't been flagged to a specific case, It's called linked in the IT world.

It has been linked to a specific case or pool, then it is automatically deleted at 90 days.

So the officers don't have any touch with that.

They can't try to keep it longer or anything like that.

Thank you, Captain.

It would be helpful for me to receive the data from your end to better understand the need to retain the data that long.

I hear your concern about public disclosure requests, and I would also be interested to hear from our law department about the difference between if you were to only retain the license plate for, say, three hours, would that be considered a transitory piece of data?

You know, if you take a note just to remind yourself to make a phone call later this afternoon, you don't have to save that for public disclosure.

But if you were to leave that note in your notebook once the public disclosure was put in, was requested, then you would have to share it, the difference between transitory and permanent notes.

Yeah.

I would defer to legal.

But there are some issues there about performing a duty and an official capacity and then not keeping the data, et cetera.

But I'll let legal deal with that.

In terms of seeing the data, if you can break away, you can come over, we can show you, but we have to log in and follow the steps.

I don't believe, and I'd have to defer to legal, that I can pull a copy of it and just hand it off.

Oh, absolutely.

Thank you.

And I guess to focus my question a little bit more intently is to say, I just need high-level information.

Is retaining that data, has it produced 100 more arrests?

What were the arrests for?

Did it recover 7 cars or 24 cars?

When we're making these types of policy decisions, to simply say that retaining this data for 180 days or 90 days is a benefit because we made one recovery or three recoveries of cars is far different than 100 recoveries.

That's the policy perspective I'm coming with to this conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Any other questions for our team here that we have, Police Department, Information Technology, and Central Staff?

Otherwise, we can close out, and I'll talk briefly about next steps.

All right.

Chair Peterson, if I can.

Thank you so much.

I don't necessarily have any questions.

Thank you, Captain McDonough, for being with us today to provide initial responses here.

I just want to signal to both the chair and the council members that I'll continue to spend the time between now and the chair's new deadline of next Tuesday to highlight any additional concerns that I might have related to these particular technologies.

And my hope is that we'll be able to do that consistent with the deadline here.

I certainly don't want to be the the what's the phrase fly in the ointment and get us all stuck here on this because I know we have a lot of other technologies we need to consider here.

So we will work expeditiously to identify any of those concerns and we'll make sure to reach out to I.T.

and Captain McDonough with any any questions and of course with the assistance of Lisa Kay.

Thank you so much.

I think that sums it up well for everybody to colleagues to get your amendments, potential amendments, talk through them with Lisa Kay, and then as you craft them, we can get them over to the city attorney's office for the traditional legal review and then the additional lens of does this, might this impact the consent decree?

And then we can get those published and we can talk about them at the next committee meeting on Wednesday, April 7th.

And again, look for on the introduction referral calendar, you might see this bill broken into pieces so that we can be more nimble on the seventh.

Any final comments for the good of the order?

We can go ahead and close out the meeting.

I just want to thank everybody who's been working on these surveillance impact reports for many, many months.

And there's a long process, as we discussed earlier, and lots of input.

And we've got one of the chief architects of that process here, Council President Gonzalez, as well.

We're seeing the benefits of it by raising these issues.

We know some of the departments have even made positive changes to their policies during the SIR process.

So that's a really good outcome already for some of this.

All right, colleagues.

This concludes the March 17, 2021 meeting of the Transportation Utilities Committee.

We will plan to meet again on April 7. Thank you, everybody, for attending.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.