Land Use Committee 5/1/2024

Okay, good afternoon, everyone.

The May 1st, 2024 regularly scheduled meeting of the Land Use Committee will come to order.

It's 2 p.m.

I'm Tama Morales, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Moore?

Present.

Council Member Rivera?

Council Member Wu?

Present.

Vice Chair Strauss?

Chair Morales?

Here.

Three present.

Thank you.

If our other colleagues arrive, I will make sure to announce them.

Okay, we have two items on today's agenda.

Council Bill 120749, a briefing discussion and possible vote on the Georgetown height legislation that we heard a little bit about in the last committee meeting.

And informational item 2460, a briefing and discussion on the Race and Social Justice Initiative.

We'll have a joint presentation between OPC and SDCI.

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

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

We'll now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Madam Clerk, we have one speaker.

We now have two speakers online and one in person.

Okay, so each speaker will have two minutes and we'll start with in-person first.

The public comment period will be up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in order in which they registered and will alternate between in-person and online.

You will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left.

If you are remote, please, your mic will be muted if you do not end your comments on time so that we can allow the next speaker to proceed.

Okay, so the public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker.

I want to acknowledge Council Member Rivera is here.

And Naomi, will you please read the first speakers into the record?

The first and only in-person speaker is Steve Rubello.

Your mic doesn't seem to be live.

I can barely hear you.

Thank you for sharing that.

The proposal for Georgetown, we haven't looked at how many trees are there.

This is more of what we have had.

in the past where, do we really need rezones?

You just simply come to the committee and you make a proposal.

And why should you go through the expense and the work of a rezone when you just simply go to the committee and you get probably more than a rezone might give you anyway on that?

So part of the change in zoning was this wasn't supposed to happen.

we were supposed to get the council out of most of the land use decisions on the parcel by parcel basis.

In the under the old system, I'm so old to remember that, the city council was involved because you had much tighter zoning and you had to let the neighbors all know what you were doing and it would come to the full council.

Usually, if your neighbors were not happy and the local property owners around you were not happy, you didn't get it.

I do remember Sam Smith comforting a developer when he told him, I like you still, but I can't vote for this because it got in the newspapers and little on TV.

And you see those people out there?

And the developer understood.

Nowadays, We don't have the public in the process at all.

I'm also happy to see a report on today's agenda.

Something that looks more like a land use committee function rather than handing out goodies.

Hopefully this committee won't be known as the Santa Claus for developers or the committee that never says no to developers.

We might actually look towards a regular order

Up next, we have Richard Conlon followed by David Haynes.

Richard, if you press star six, you should be able to unmute yourself.

I don't see him on...

Oh, there we go.

Yes, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, council members.

Thank you very much.

My name is Richard Conlon, part of the team at Watershed Community Development, a nonprofit organization.

I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak in support of Council Bill 120749. We've appreciated your attention and the positive responses we have received from council members.

I want to emphasize that this is a The development can be built outright under the existing zoning.

All this does is modify slightly the development regulation.

We do hope you will vote the legislation out of committee today.

If you need any additional information about watershed or the bend, I would be happy to respond today or in writing at your convenience.

We'd also like to invite any council members who would be interested to schedule a tour of our project area.

If you would like to do that, please let me know and we would be happy to work that out with your staff.

Thank you again.

And again, we really appreciate your attention and hope you will vote this out today.

Up next, we have David Haynes, but it looks like he dropped off.

David, are you there?

I don't.

We have lost a caller.

Okay.

Okay, anyone else signed up?

Okay, great.

Well, thank you, callers.

David, if you do want to submit your comments, you can do so in writing.

Okay, I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment period then.

And we will move on to the first agenda item, which is briefing discussion and a possible vote on Council Bill 120749. Naomi, will you please read that item into the record?

Agenda item one, admitting the Seattle Municipal Code to provide a 10-foot height limit exception in a portion of the Georgetown neighborhood for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Thank you.

Oh, yes, please.

I'm sorry.

Please acknowledge Vice Chair Strauss is here.

Apologies for being late.

I was attending an AWC meeting.

That's quite all right.

Okay, so we're joined by Jeff Wendland from the Office of Planning and Community Development and our own Lish Whitson from Council Central staff.

They did brief us on this legislation at the previous Land Use Committee meeting.

We also had a hearing at that meeting.

And so we're here to answer any questions you may have before the vote.

So I'm gonna move the bill and the amendment and then we'll get into discussion and we'll move on.

Maybe I'll let y'all introduce yourselves again, just for the record.

Alish Whitson, Council Central Staff.

Jeff Wendland, Land Use Policy Manager in the Office of Planning and Community Development.

Thank you very much.

Okay, so I am going to move the Council Bill 120749. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

So I'll go ahead and hand it over.

Jeff, are you going to be briefing this?

I hadn't planned on doing a presentation.

I think Lish will take you through it.

Okay.

And I'm here to be a resource for any questions.

Sure, just a brief refresher would be great.

Sure.

Let me just pull up one page from the presentation you saw last time.

It's a map of the area that is affected by the proposed zoning text amendment.

It's an area zone C-175 along 4th Avenue South near Georgetown.

It's surrounded by manufacturing industrial zones with 85 foot height limits.

And the proposal is to allow an additional 10 feet in this area zone for 75-foot height development.

under a number of conditions.

It would be green buildings that have at least five residential floors with sound insulating windows and air cooling and ventilation systems.

They provide ground floor retail or other community serving uses for at least 20% of the street frontage and have a 20 foot tall ground floor.

And there's an amendment that would adjust that last provision.

Great, thank you.

And so, again, this is really allowing, at least on the ground floor and the first two floors, kind of an artist-lived workspace, along with the additional residential cultural space and commercial space that you indicated on the ground floor.

It would also update the recital to the bill to reflect the name of the Watershed Community Development, which is formerly the Georgetown Community Development Association.

Oh, actually that's in the amendment, so excuse me.

Okay, I'm gonna see if colleagues have any questions on this bill for Lish or Jeff.

I have a quick question.

So the watershed area, is that carved out area in totality?

They're a community development organization, so they could be building in other places, but they are focused on developing in this red area surrounded by yellow on the map.

Where exactly is their development planned on this map?

So I know that...

Along 4th Avenue, do you see the Seattle Design Center?

The block's just north of there.

I know that they have acquired some property in those blocks.

In order for their design or their building to be built, we would have to pass this legislation?

As designed, otherwise they would build at 75 feet.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm just curious.

My understanding, based on what you've mentioned in email, is that in this 85-foot height zone, 80% of the street frontage needs to be in one or more of those complete community uses, which are iterated in the statute, and this is only 20%.

And do you know why that is the case, like why the development group has decided to have a smaller percentage?

Sure.

I'll take this question.

The 20% is for the kind of active, more retail oriented uses.

The remainder of that ground floor would be good space for maker type businesses, light industrial type uses, art space and the like.

So those aren't...

don't fit in that land use category of the 20% active uses.

But we think those other arts and maker uses would be a great fit for the remaining 80%.

And this bill would not prevent that from, I mean, they would be able to use that space even with the amendment?

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Okay, so as I said, colleagues, this is intended to provide sort of more street activation, more mixed use along that corridor of Fourth Avenue.

It is surrounded by industrial, but the space, this is, part of Georgetown where there is a residential area and there are lots of artists, lots of mixed use.

This would allow for the kind of maker space and other live work spaces that folks in the area are asking for and can more easily afford, I'm sure.

Okay, so...

If there are no other questions, then I am going to move my amendment.

Oh.

Sorry, Chair.

Yes, Council Member Rivera.

Just a confirming.

I mean, this just brings it up to what the other buildings are zoned for in the area.

Correct.

All of the zoning surrounding this area is- All surrounding is 85 feet.

Yes.

And this will bring it up to 85 feet.

Correct.

Just wanted to double check.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Sure.

Okay, so I think we talked a little bit last time about my amendment.

I will brief that again too, but just wanna go ahead and move that.

Amendment one, is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

So this would require that the ground floor be 20 feet tall for that 20% of the ground floor that's in non-residential use.

The point of this is to allow greater flexibility for projects in the area to be able to include ground floor residential uses with more appropriate residential heights.

Is there anything else you want to add, Lish, about what the amendment would do?

No, I think that covers it.

Okay, are there any questions or comments about the amendment?

Okay.

Seeing no further questions, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of Amendment 1?

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Wu.

Yes.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The amendment carries.

Is there any further discussion on the bill as amended before I request a roll call vote?

Yes, Council Member Moore.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I just wanted to note that the Watershed CDA has indicated they will be providing most units at 60 percent AMI and some at 80 percent, and that there is an agreement in place with the Seattle Housing Authority for some three-bedroom units, and the plan is to develop at least 900 new residential units in addition to providing for makerspace and other community-needed services and retail.

So I very much appreciate the effort and the commitment.

Obviously I'd like to get the AMIs lower, but 60 and 80% is a good start, and I do appreciate that commitment.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any other comments?

Okay.

Clerk, will you please call the roll on the amended bill?

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council Member Wu.

Yes.

Vice Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Chair Morales.

Yes.

Five in favor.

Thank you.

The motion carries and the legislation will be sent to the May 7th full city council meeting for a final vote.

Thanks very much, you guys.

Okay, we read item two into the record, please, Naomi.

Agenda item two, the Race and Social Justice Initiative Report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, we have folks from SDCI and OPCD coming as you're coming to the table.

This is just an informational item.

It's a joint report from OPCD and SDCI.

They work closely together on the work of the departments for the Race and Social Justice Initiative goals that we have as a city.

So I will let you introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Good afternoon, council members.

Nathan Torgelson, director of the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

Riku Kitindongo, director, Office of Planning and Community Development.

I'm Katie Sheehy with the Office of Planning and Community Development.

And please bear with me.

This is my first time with the technology and I'm a little like, where's the slideshow?

It's not a problem.

And then it looks like we've got some folks online as well.

Yes.

Good afternoon.

I'm Patricia Spears with SDCI.

Good afternoon.

Anyone else on the Zoom?

I don't think I see anyone else.

OK.

OK, great.

Are you ready to share your slides?

I have one moment.

Yeah.

This is not the right one.

I'm sorry.

I don't know where the presentation is.

Ah, here we go.

Is this...

Naomi, are you able to share?

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate the technical assistance.

Okay, sure.

Give us just a minute.

OK, here we go.

Please go ahead.

So go ahead, Patricia.

All right, I will read the land acknowledgement.

We acknowledge the role of traditional Western centric planning practices have played in harming, displacing and attempting to erase native communities.

We commit to identifying racist practices and practice allyship and strive to center restorative land stewardship rather than unsustainable and extractive use of the land.

We humbly recognize that we are on indigenous land, the traditional and current territories of the Coachella's people who have reserved treaty rights to this land.

including the Duwamish, Snoqualmish, Muckleshoot, and Stillqualmish.

We thank these caretakers of this land who have lived and continue to live here since time immemorial, practicing allyship and striving.

Our race and social justice ecosystem is a little bit different than some other departments because we have a joint change team.

When our Office of Planning and Community Development and the Department of Construction and Inspections were created almost 10 years ago, we had been the Department of Planning and Development, so we were a joint team.

And when we split apart, we decided to keep our change team together because our work really overlaps and informs each other.

And we really appreciate the ecosystem.

So there's the change team.

And then within SDCI, there's a white accountability action group and the anti-racist task force.

And similarly, the Office of Planning and Community Development also has race-based caucusing.

and a leading with equity team that really shapes our broader work plan.

And this ecosystem helps us do internal work and build relationships across our departments so that the policies and practices and procedures that we create better serve our communities.

And can you just talk a little bit about the change teams and the work that they do to bridge for other folks on the teams?

I think we're gonna talk a little bit more about that in the...

Okay.

As Katie mentioned, prior to 2016, we were one department, the Department of Planning and Development.

And when we were created into two departments, we thought it was really important since we work so closely together that we have a joint change team.

So we are excited to talk to you today about our accomplishments in 2022 and 2023. Look and discuss some of the challenges that we've had.

Talk about our racial equity toolkits and talk about our goals that are underway this year in 2024.

Some of the accomplishments that the change team had was LEAP training for both departments.

The Change Team Reading Group, where we read articles, books, watched films to lead to discussions identifying social and economic improvements in our community.

OPCD developed and shared a presentation called Land Use 101, which focused on the history of planning and development throughout colonization, segregation, and exclusion.

So amongst all of the work that we do as our two departments, I wanted to highlight a couple of things that we've done under the leadership of the change team and also leading with equity team.

Our OPCD staff, the management team, every year that we go through our budgeting process, we do it as a collaborative engagement.

not only amongst members of the management team, but the management team with their staff that they're responsible for, and then also to bring the outcomes and considerations of those deliberations to our Leading with Equity team to look at whether we are making decisions that are equitable and balanced and take into consideration you know, even potentially unintended consequences.

As you saw in the previous slide, we had hosted, you know, this collaborative events such as the Since I've Been Down film showing and also a visit to the Wing Luke Museum.

We...

always want to make sure that we're increasing connections between OPCD and SCCI.

I mean, Nathan and I see each other on a regular basis, and it stands.

But that interconnectedness we maintain with the change team.

We've also been working on equitable development zoning work together and design review work together.

And there's been growing participation in other groups, including the BIPOC caucus, the white caucus, and our leading white equity team.

Yeah, I'll just add that we work closely with the Seattle Office of Civil Rights to help shape the RSJ ordinance that the previous council passed.

And we've talked to Mayor Harrell a lot about these issues.

You know, there was a lot of discussion about bringing employees back to the Seattle Municipal Tower and to Seattle City Hall and trying to achieve that right balance.

A lot of our lowest paid employees happen to live the furthest away, but we also understand the value of bringing people together in community and at the city.

So achieving that right balance was a really important discussion that we had with the mayor.

Okay, so STCI has an anti-racist task force.

Nathan, hold one minute.

I'm sorry.

I'm not getting into this mic very well.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

And then I'll ask that we get through all the slides so that we can...

finish the presentation.

I'll hold the other comments that I have, but just as the chair of land use during the pandemic, I also want to highlight the fact that many of your employees didn't have the choice to not come into the office.

They were out doing inspections, out doing the work to continue our city building and moving, and I just wanted to highlight that fact.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

So STCI has an anti-racist task force, and we have been working on what we call an accountability agreement that sort of provides a framework for addressing workplace discrimination and improving staff awareness and engagement on race and social justice issues.

We have a process internally where staff can raise concerns to our internal task force if they're seeing problems within the department.

We have a policy guideline that when we make policy decisions internally, we want to try, we aim to have at least 50% of the people making that decision be BIPOC employees.

And we also have a process when we bring on new employees, because there's always turnover among city staff, people leave to get new jobs, new employees come on.

to have onboarding of race and social justice training so our new employees understand the framework within the city and how we operate.

So with the OPCD's caucuses, we created these in the summer of 2020, even though we had been talking about them a bit before then.

And we're also working on an accountability framework similar to what Nathan described with the that SDCI is working on.

And ours is still a draft.

But with our change team, we're able to co-inform each other and support each other in creating these frameworks so that they're consistent in implementing the Race and Social Justice Ordinance.

And we also, as was mentioned earlier, we co-led a visit to the Wing Luke Museum for the Nobody Lives Here exhibit that focuses on how the construction of the planning around the I-5 freeway impacted the Chinatown International District.

And we're currently designing an all-staff retreat to focus on our work moving forward.

So our Leading with Equity team operates in addition to our involvement on our co-change team efforts.

Leading with Equity team focuses more on our internal office culture and some OPCD specific efforts.

We conducted an RSJ staff survey last year underscoring important and longstanding issues and disparities.

particularly for BIPOC staff in how we're affecting office culture, what work is celebrated and uplifted, and how we need to move toward a relational culture.

We've undertaken a number of different important RET efforts of scale.

We're going to talk about that in an upcoming slide.

We also created a community engagement ethos when I joined OPCD three years ago, which informs our work.

So like, how is it that we engage community in a way that is collaborative and not extractive?

How do we cross coordinate with our other departments when we're doing that community engagement?

and how do we do community engagement that is authentic and intentional and leads to better outcomes for community.

So very proud of the indigenous Seattle program that is a part of our office.

Our former intern Dakota Murray is now one of our EDI project managers in the office.

And then as all of you know, we created a new, the city's first ever indigenous planner strategist position, which we were very excited to fill this year with Tim Lehman serving in this role, really important adding to our capacity to be able to address the needs of our urban indigenous and work with OIR on tribal related issues.

Dakota and Tim have partnered with local artists who have developed different names for our conference rooms that have indigenous roots.

We're also potentially working on a film project in that regard, just to talk about that transformation.

And there's also a future installation of new indigenous artwork in our OPCD lobby as well.

You know, I think that it's important to note, like, we have to operate on multiple fronts at multiple scales.

And so I think that while we are making progress, we still have a lot of work to do.

And it's great to have Tim and Dakota in the office to help guide us as we do this work.

Thank you.

So our EDI program, as you all know, just kind of as an average, we put out around $20 million a year in equitable development initiative funds to not-for-profit BIPOC organizations that are providing social services in the community.

black and brown faces for the communities that they are a part of.

Super important program for the city because we are demonstrating the value and we're also helping those organizations remain in place.

This was identified as a specific anti-displacement strategy.

I believe that was eight years ago now that it was identified.

as a program opportunity.

And the reason it's important for community is because it ensures that there are, BIPOC not-for-profits that have the opportunity to control their own space, to own their own space, and remain in place in our communities of color to support families, small business, and community and culture.

We administered a RFP in the summer of 22, and two RFPs in 2023. We often will do one in the first half of the year that's about site acquisition, and in the second half of the year that's for construction projects.

We closed transactions in 2023 for six organizations.

I won't go through the list, but you can see it there on the screen.

And then we continue to house and grow our indigenous Seattle internship program, which is the intent of which is to cultivate new talent in planning and build relationships with indigenous planning professionals in the region.

I'll just add that this has been a great collaboration with SDCI because some of these EDI grants actually lead into capital projects that obviously have to get a permit.

So we work very closely with Rico's team to make sure that there's a seamless transition as they move into actual permitting and development.

So Workforce Equity, we're really proud every summer to support and hire Seattle Youth Employment Program interns within our department.

Many of these youth are people of color, not exclusively, but this is a fantastic opportunity to educate the youth and future leaders in our community about what city employment and city government is all about.

And our hope is that some of the youth in these programs become eventual city employees in our departments.

I also want to mention that over the past two years, we have updated our hiring practices pretty significantly.

We now give interview questions a few hours in advance to the prospective applicants.

We know that some people don't think as quickly on the spot if they're just given an interview question in the interview.

So we want to give people some time to reflect and think before they actually go into the interview process.

Another change that we have made is in a lot of our interviews, we do not give applicants resumes to the interview panel way in advance.

One of the things we really want our employees or our interview panels to think about is a person's lived experience, not necessarily focusing on where that person went to college and the prestige of that particular college, but their total life experience.

And we think that's really an important process.

We have hired an equity advisor on our HR team.

That's been a really important part of our RSJ work.

And we have monthly leadership meetings within our leadership team at SDCI, and every employee put together an equity personal action plan, looking at how can you address race and social justice issues within our department, and also very important in the work that we do out in community.

The Race and Social Equity Index is an example of OPCD's work to really do some excellent data analysis.

This is led by Diana Canzoneri, our city's demographer.

And it was initially created in 2017 and has recently been updated with more current demographic data.

And it really looks at, it helps us as city planners and staff and other departments who also do planning understand the demographics of our neighborhoods and where there are more high priority areas where communities are lower income, less likely to speak English as a first language and have other needs that we want to align city resources to better serve these communities who are at higher risk of displacement and certainly were on the front lines and the hardest hit by COVID.

It's also important to note that this RSE index as well as our displacement index map are used by departments across the city as it relates to their decision-making about how we're making investments in community.

Thank you for making that point.

I was going to talk about that too.

It's really important to understand where these neighborhoods, what they look like, what kind of resources they need.

And I know we were meeting with SDOT recently.

They mentioned this map and the value that it has for their work.

Absolutely.

And especially because we want to all be using data in a similar way and not reinventing the wheel across departments, but that we have a shared understanding of our neighborhoods.

Thank you.

As you all know, OPCD houses the Planning Commission and the Design Commission underneath the umbrella of our office.

They both have independent charters and act independently, but collaborate with us in our work and as a part of our management team.

The Seattle Planning Commission presented four issue briefs last year focused on equitable growth and anti-displacement strategies to inform our comprehensive plan work.

The planning commissioner also did guided tours of the Wing Look Museum and a debrief with planning commissioners, kind of giving them some real life context that informs the discussions that they have amongst themselves while we're talking about how we plan the future of our city.

All Commission meetings can now be viewed on our website to increase accessibility and people have access to this information.

The Design Commission, adopted an equity work plan to guide best practices for commissioners recently co-sponsored an indigenizing public transit event with murray planner elizabeth i hope i'm pronouncing that correctly And the design commission also continued inclusion of equity in regards to design of public spaces.

That's really drives the heart of their work and their deliberations regarding public facing projects.

So digital equity, we realize that a lot of our interaction with members of the public is done online and through technology.

So it's very important that we understand how that's working or not working for our customers and members of the public.

And I just want to give a couple of examples.

The council a couple of years ago passed the Economic Displacement and Relocation Act legislation that helps those tenants that are seeing rental increases of 10% or more get assistance if they do need to move.

So we interviewed many of those tenants to figure out how that process is working for them.

There are forms that they have to fill out.

paper forms, digital forms, and we redid the whole application process based on feedback that we were getting from those tenants.

So that's a way where we reach out directly to our customers to improve our technology access.

Another example is our tree service provider legislation.

Customers who need to have trees removed for development have to hire a tree service provider to take that tree down or trim that tree, and they have to be registered through the city.

So we conducted interviews with those tree service providers to figure out how our forms and our technology could better help them.

And as I recall, part of the issue there was that many of our landscaping companies are individuals who maybe don't speak English as a primary language.

And so there is a language barrier to understanding that some rules might be changing.

Yes.

Thank you for that additional information, Council Member Morales.

A summary of our 22-23 RSJI challenges.

is the um having dedicated time to do this work i mean we all are really supportive to the paid work that we do that's very valuable to the city but we we want to be able to have time to be able to do our rsji work also a sense of urgency for our projects make it difficult to establish trust and build a relational culture within our departments while performing the RSGI work.

We kind of feel rushed in trying to do that work with the other many duties that we have.

Some of the ongoing projects that we do have is creating a racial equity toolkit library that will be shared between the departments, create the accountability movement working with OCR and SDHR in identifying good RSGI trainings that we currently don't have right now.

So we've been kind of working on that.

And lastly, transparency in decision-making by the city sometimes affects the RSGI work, which can make it challenging for us.

some of our opportunities to have fewer projects where we can focus more time and energy, which will allow us to build strong and ongoing relationships with community.

We continue to build spaces and culture of belongings and inclusion where voices are heard.

We really want to recognize anyone who has anything to say, and we want to just keep an open, comfortable space.

So I'll start out by just highlighting a couple of the racial equity toolkits that we've done within SDCI.

We have a small business liaison position.

I'm getting some feedback.

We have a small business liaison position within SDCI.

We did outreach with the Office of Economic Development in nine different languages to a variety of neighborhood business organizations and community organizations.

Many of these small businesses are BIPOC-owned businesses and were disproportionately impacted during the pandemic.

What we want to do is meet with these prospective businesses or new businesses before they come in for a permit to help guide them through the process and let them know about some potential permit requirements that they may not be aware of.

So that has been a really successful program where we help small businesses and also arts and cultural businesses within Seattle.

I also wanted to mention tree protection.

When we worked closely with Councilmember Strauss on the new tree protection ordinance, we worked really closely with the Office of Sustainability and Environment and also with the Department of Neighborhood Community Liaisons, where we targeted in-language outreach to various communities in Seattle.

And also, the new legislation that was adopted provides resources for planting trees in neighborhoods that don't have a great tree canopy.

In many cases, that's been in southeast Seattle as part of the in-lieu fee to make sure that those new trees are planted elsewhere as part of our overall urban canopy.

Can you go back to that?

Thank you.

So last year when we were in front of you, we presented on the joint rep that we did on ST3.

as well as the RET that we did for the industrial maritime strategy legislation that was passed last June, I think it was.

With equitable development zoning, we have an ongoing RET there.

And of course, I mean, it's...

That's one where I feel like the RET work is totally inherently incorporated into the work that we're doing for that policy work, research work, community engagement, and corresponding legislation when we do bring things for your consideration, because what we're trying to do is remove barriers for BIPOC organizations to do their own development work.

So that the RET is just kind of baked in by design.

I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about our RET for the comprehensive plan.

So if you go to the next slide.

Um, so we are working on, I mean, as you know, the comprehensive plan we've been working on for over two years.

We're now in our third year, uh, and we'll be, uh, delivering a final comprehensive plan draft to you before the end of the year.

Uh, so we have a RET report that is in process at this time.

That report describes how our RET team is operating and doing the work.

We've built on the PolicyLink's 2021 racial equity analysis to produce draft racial equity outcomes for the plan.

We've used the RET framework to inform our engagement approach, which centers the voices of historically underrepresented communities.

We've conducted equity-informed data analysis to understand how future growth would benefit or burden community members along lines of race.

We work to reflect the draft racial equity outcomes across each of the plans 13 elements in the form of specific goals and policies which will advance these outcomes.

We've also built on our draft racial equity outcomes engagement and analysis to inform our anti-displacement framework which you can pull down online.

to look at in more detail.

This was released just a couple of weeks after the draft plan.

The anti-displacement framework reflects on many of the existing city policies and programs that were identified through stakeholder engagement.

as strategies that collectively play an important and ongoing role in addressing displacement throughout the city.

We're continuing to seek feedback on the framework and strategies that are most important for the city to prioritize.

This will be an important conversation that we've been engaging folks in in our open houses.

We have an online open house this Thursday.

And we'll also carry that conversation into our zoning implementation in the late summer and this fall.

So statement of legislative intent on design review.

Design review has been a topic of great interest to our council members and to members of the public and to members of the design community.

We went through the statement of legislative intent process with a stakeholder group.

WHO PROVIDED A VARIETY OF RECOMMENDATIONS.

WE WENT THROUGH THAT PROCESS WITH AN EQUITY CONSULTANT AND ALSO A COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT CONSULTANT.

COUNCILMEMBER MORALES, WE'RE VERY CLOSE TO COMING TO BRIEFING YOU ON THE RESULTS OF THAT ANALYSIS AND LOOK FORWARD TO THAT.

WE ALSO HAVE RECENT STATE LEGISLATION THAT LIMITS THE DESIGN REVIEW PROCESS TO ONE MEETING We know that community input is often the most important part of the design review process because people living in the neighborhoods where a new project is going to happen know their neighborhoods best.

We understand the value of good design, but we also understand the urgent need in our community for additional housing as quickly as possible, so we will be bringing To you, Councilmember Morales, a series of recommendations for how to move forward with changes to the design review program that address all of these issues.

We are excited about our 2024 goals for the work that we do.

For an example, we want to prioritize racial equity and build capacity for community engagement.

We also want to share impacts of our change team work to communities, including the use of social media.

Also, we want to invest in relationships with indigenous communities, collaborate with regional and national racial justice leaders are just a few of the goals that we have planned for this year.

And i'd also like to note one of my favorite things and Council member more we I was part of the walking tour in lake city last week, and I just want to highlight that walking tours within Community they're led by Community so that city.

A better understanding of their immediate needs so that again we can leverage existing city resources to better meet our Community needs.

So our leading with equity goals from our leading with equity team for this year, focusing on accountability and putting forth a RSJ relational culture into practice internally.

We're involving people across the office in our internal equity work at OPCD, coordinating multiple equity efforts with multiple work groups alongside the joint change team.

We're continuing to support the development of our accountability framework, our equitable project management workbook, and then the continued process for renaming of all of our conference room with indigenous names.

We continue to review and improve onboarding for new staff, interns and commissioners.

We're developing an RSJI training approach for 2024, including investing in quarterly community walking tours, like Katie was just describing, in coordination with SDCI and our change team, our joint change team.

And then of course, we're continuing to work on culture shift, use of our internal resources and resources from our external consultant, Office of Ombud and others.

and centering race equity as we develop our 2025 budget proposal.

And of course, continuing to track our racial equity toolkit work.

As far as STCI's anti-racist task force goals for 2024, a lot of these are continuing the work that we started in 2022 and 2023. I talked about the hiring process and making sure that that's transparent for applicants and for STCI staff so they understand who was hired and why, and that all applicants receive the same treatment.

Management accountability and accountability culture at STCI is crucially important, and that starts with the leadership in the department.

That's taking words and bringing them into action.

Just one example, our Apex Sam employees or...

Employees that are not represented by unions and are not eligible for overtime can receive merit days at the end of the year.

And in order for those employees to receive a certain amount of merit days, they have to prove that they have furthered the race and social justice culture within our department.

So that's something that we have added to that accountability agreement.

At the end of the day, what we are trying to do at SDCI every day is replacing a white supremacy culture with a relational culture where everyone feels valued and equal.

And that concludes our presentation.

We really appreciate your time and support, and we're happy to answer questions.

Thank you, everyone, for being here.

I do have several questions.

So colleagues, I'm going to go through a few of them.

And then if other folks have questions, please feel free to chime in.

So I guess the first thing I want to say is thank you for being so clearly dedicated to doing this work.

I know that this is not easy work.

It's really challenging.

It's hard to have some of these conversations.

And it's really important that we sort of move through that discomfort and get to the other side of being able to talk about how to use this information and these relationships to build better work culture, and really ultimately to be able to serve Seattleites better.

So I really appreciate that you've really committed to this work.

Naomi, can you go to slide five?

Because I think there's a graphic in here that just sort of really, for me, illustrates the layers of Seattle.

that need to be, right?

You start with yourself, but in order to have the kind of impact that we're hoping the Race and Social Justice ordinance, now ordinance, has for community, you have to work through starting with yourself, your coworkers, your department, and then eventually it becomes reflected in policy change, right?

So I guess that's the goal.

If we go to slide nine, I think this is an interesting example of that.

Wait, is it slide nine?

I'm interested if you could talk a little bit about what it means to indigenize the comprehensive plan, you know, talk a little bit about how changes in the draft plan might reflect this.

And then I'm also interested specifically in how we negotiate with the tribal community to prioritize land transfers as a strategy for repairing harm.

If that's anything you can address.

And you want slide 10.

Slide 10, my apologies.

So as far as indigenizing the comprehensive plan, over the years, our indigenous Seattle interns have really taken a deep look at the city's comprehensive plan and recognized that in the plan, there's no mention of the Duwamish tribe.

There's no mention of our region's history.

And the...

Prior to white colonizers moving to the region, trying to put this into good words, The native communities lived here in harmony with the environment and didn't see humans as separate from the environment.

That we are part of a larger ecosystem and that it's important for us as humans to be in relationship with that ecosystem and to help just be a part of it and be good stewards for the future instead of just thinking about the needs of today.

And what we're trying to rebuild as part of the Race and Social Justice Initiative is, as has been mentioned a number of times, a more relational culture where we don't other each other, but we support and uplift each other.

We celebrate our differences and strive to work across the differences.

be better stewards of each other today, but also think about how the work we're doing now is going to impact seven generations into the future.

And how can we bring that sense of urgency into our comprehensive plan and that acknowledgement that the decisions we're making today have a lasting impact?

And how can we make decisions that create a more healthy and just society?

And so that's...

That's part of what it means to indigenize the comprehensive plan.

And I will acknowledge it's a lot of work to sort of reshape a city's comprehensive plan to center these values.

And we're just getting started with the help of Dakota and Tim.

We're looking forward to doing more, but that's kind of the start.

And I'm hoping that that was.

Thank you.

I appreciate your explanation.

And if I can add a couple of other things just, and maybe some of it's more tactical, but we have reached out to a number of our urban indigenous organizations across the city that are supporting our urban indigenous community to ask what they feel as organizations, we should be committing city resources to support that work.

We have begun to incorporate some of that input and context into some of our language that you'll find in the draft plan itself.

We also have done initial outreach in coordination with Tim at OIR to all of our tribes and asked for their input related to the plan.

And we've gotten some good feedback on a couple of issues and know there is gonna be some important conversations moving forward as well with a number of the tribes.

So there's, as Katie is saying, there's still a lot of work that we have to do, but it's very much an active part of our agenda.

And I remember that there is one that we hired Owen Oliver, who was our first indigenous Seattle intern, to write an introduction to the arts and culture element of the plan that describes a future in which like a tribal member from like from 300 years ago could be transported to a future Seattle and still recognize Seattle as their homeland.

It's really beautiful.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

It's totally worth finding that to read it.

It's amazing.

We've talked about before, last year talked about how what we really need is to have an artist embedded in every department that we have so that cool ideas like this can come up and we can really think about how the built environment of what that looks like and how we honor that.

Thank you.

Can I add one other thing I forgot to mention?

We also are working with indigenous Seattle and other members of the community regarding native neighborhoods effort, like which is a vision from community.

We've obviously are making a number of investments in Northgate in that regard now, but we're also talking about other areas of the city.

That's great.

That's great.

Placemaking that reflects the rich heritage and diversity of the city.

That'd be great.

Speaking of that, if I could go to slide 10, I wanted to talk a little bit about EDI.

And if you could...

You mentioned, Rico, when you were introducing this that- Slide 11. Slide 11, thank you.

That the funds are for organizations that are providing services, but it's a lot more than that.

It's also supporting the capacity to build their own projects and sort of lead, that is community-led development.

So can you talk a little bit about some of the projects and the sort of mix of services that have been provided there?

I'd love to talk about a couple of the projects that I provide support for.

So one of them is Lake City Collective.

And they started sort of, Cesar and Peggy started Their own Community based organization to support particularly immigrant communities in the lake city and North Seattle neighborhoods and.

it's really amazing to have seen them when they first applied for their Community capacity building grant they weren't even enough, they had to be sponsored by a different organization, because they weren't a nonprofit yet.

In the five, six years that I've been working with them, they have grown to become a really amazing organization and they have built, they're renting a community space in Lake City where they provide a lot of services.

They help young kids think about how to get into college and why college matters.

and provide a lot of other great cultural activities for folks in the North Seattle neighborhood and rental assistance.

And when COVID hit, they immediately were able to shift and help get city resources like emergency grocery vouchers, masks, vaccine clinics.

They were able to pivot and provide these essential services to their community.

And also during the pandemic, through an EDI grant, they were able to purchase property, which is currently just a surface parking lot.

and that's being used by, anyway, that part doesn't matter.

But they've also been like staying in contact and working with SDOT around a complete street and some bike lanes that are, I think, an SDOT project adjacent to their property.

They've also been in communication with Seattle Public Utilities where a natural drainage system is gonna be built to the south of their property.

And so they've been working with Miller Hull to design a community-based resiliency hub that looks really gorgeous.

They're applying for an Environmental Protection Agency grant with the support of the Office of Sustainability.

OSC.

And to Nathan's point about partnering with SDCI for these EDI projects, we had their early design guidance meeting just a couple of months ago.

And it was amazing because the permitting staff at SDOT and SPU and City Light were like, yes, we know about this project.

We've got projects adjacent to it.

And so we're going to make sure that the city's work supports like city collectives work so that that can help streamline and advance their project more quickly.

It's absolutely phenomenal and makes me so happy.

Another one that's also really great is Hip Hop is Green.

They are building Cherry Street Farm on, I think it's in between 16th and 17th and Cherry.

And...

Keith has acquired a shipping container that's been converted into a hydroponic farm that can grow up to five acres of food just in the shipping container.

And they're also in the process of building a community kitchen adjacent to that.

and so that they can have food demos and cooking demos because Hip Hop is Green started as an organization to bring health and nutrition into as the 10th element of hip hop to help young kids learn how to eat healthy, have opportunities to get out of the city and into natural environments.

And they host for years now, they've been hosting a youth cohort program where they provide stipends to the youth to do all of these great summer activities and learn how to grow healthy food.

So those are two that I work with.

Two fantastic examples.

Thank you.

And Hip Hop is great.

It's also doing an awesome conference this summer at Climate Pledge Arena.

I think it's in November.

Is it November?

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you're on social media, give them a follow.

Yeah, we'd love to share that.

The property has been in Keith's family for a few generations, and Keith's grandparents were known and won awards for the gardens that they built on this site years ago, so it's just...

some of the best things to support as a city employee and i'll just touch on a couple others and i'll be brief like so we're you know we're investing uh in the daybreak star facility in in coordination with united united nations of all tribes and and their continued their continued stay in important work on that site.

Art Noir is a great example of a new not-for-profit that was created to support black and brown artists like in the Central District and in the area and the region, which is housed now at 23rd and Union.

Wanawari is another arts organization that we support through our EDI program.

Africatown Plaza in collaboration with Office of Housing, they're funding the 134 units, I think it's 134 units.

that's upstairs, and then we're funding the commercial unit, which is Africatown's new offices on the ground floor.

So just, we have many, many exciting projects.

Well, I appreciate it.

Thank you.

I have one more little set of questions, colleagues.

I'm not seeing any hands yet.

Anybody?

Okay, I will ask if we could go to slide 20. Can you talk about the implementation of Is that the right slide?

Design review.

House Bill 2093 that streamlines design review.

And I will also say that one of the things I'm interested in learning more about is incentive zoning tools that have worked best to help folks, particularly black and brown community members, residents develop their property and how this might be connected.

Are we looking at the same thing?

Yeah.

So first is how the House bill streamlines design review.

I know you touched on it a little bit, but...

Yep.

So we have a fairly short timeframe on the House bill.

We have to have a proposal, I believe, adopted by council by the end of next year, and we need to do public outreach.

We're in the middle of discussions with the mayor's office right now about how best...

to tackle this House Bill and implement meaningful changes to design review.

Of course, the one big issue in that House Bill is only one public meeting.

So how do we make that public meeting effective for members of the public and also meaningful for staff?

to take feedback.

The other issue that we're looking closely at is we have literally thousands of design review guidelines.

We have neighborhood design guidelines.

We have citywide design guidelines.

So how do members of the public and design review boards and staff look at those guidelines or do we need to somehow streamline those guidelines?

That sounds like a lot of work.

It is.

But it's important.

Yes, all right.

So we'll look forward to hearing more from you as that process sort of unfolds.

And then the other question is around incentive zoning tools for supporting.

We are hearing a lot from neighbors who are interested in redeveloping their property, but who have some challenges.

I think we've talked with folks who want to understand the development process better so that they can take advantage of opportunities But I'm also just wondering if you can talk a little bit about incentive zoning tools and how that impacts those decisions.

OPCD, do you have any feedback on that issue?

One thing I do want to add, it's a little bit of a tangent to your question, Councilmember Morales, but I always have to promote this in that SDCI and SDOT have an information desk on the fourth floor of the Seattle Municipal Tower.

Obviously, the upper floors of SMT are closed to the public now.

You can be escorted and meet with staff.

but we have many members of the public and applicants that do not have technology resources.

And it's crucially important that people can walk into SMT and ask staff questions.

So that is a great service that we started providing at the end of last year.

And I'm just using every available opportunity to get the word out.

about that service, because there's still a lot of people that don't realize that that is a resource that's available.

We also have members of the public that do have technology resources, but really want to talk to a person face-to-face.

Yeah, that would be me.

I definitely prefer to talk to somebody face-to-face.

Were you going to say something, Rico?

So I'm not sure if this answers the question that you're asking, so you may need to rephrase it, but I was just thinking about the comprehensive plan and how we are looking at whether there's a way for us to create a policy around legacy homeowners that incentivizes black and brown families that own homes currently to invest in their own properties.

build that accessory dwelling unit, detached accessory dwelling unit, or, you know, as we adopt this, a new comprehensive plan that upzones the city, you know, they can build two or three additional units on their lot, have a reverse mortgage, and build generational wealth.

And there's...

There's a number of ways that we're trying to look at how we can encourage families to make that investment and then also create housing opportunities, infill housing in our neighborhoods across the city that actually allows our first-time home ownership opportunities.

opportunities that actually invite people back that didn't feel like they could afford to live in the city.

So that's part of what we're trying to figure out, right?

We have goals in the comp plan around anti-displacement measures, around the growth strategy, whichever growth strategy we decide on.

But what are the tools that we need in order to support those goals?

And this is definitely part of that question.

And maybe this is just further conversation, but I think it's gonna be an important piece of the discussion that we have around the comp plan over the next year, because we're hearing a lot from neighbors who want to take advantage of the increased value of their home due to where we live and don't want to just sell, they want to stay put, but also want to be able to benefit from that increased value.

So that's part of the conversation that we had in the last few months about the connected communities legislation.

And part of what we're learning is that there are There is a need for development consulting assistance for individual homeowners who want to do something like this but really don't have any idea how to get started.

And...

I guess the question is, how do we marshal the resources that exist to make sure that they're getting the support that they need and that they're protected in that process?

Yeah, and I think it's important to note that there's not one silver bullet, right?

So I think that the zoning legislation that we put in place matters a lot.

The policies that support it and the anti-displacement programs that we have matter a lot, whether it's related to providing people assistance for the 20% that they need to put down for first-time home buyer or rental assistance or maintenance and operations funding so that you can maintain your existing home or encouraging people to build the ADU or DOTU.

There's a lot of things that we are doing and that we'll want to continue to do, and then new things that we're starting to talk about.

Gosh, there was something else there.

there's a lot on the table right now.

And I do actually wanna say that I think that our continued investments in the EDI program, which was this anti-displacement strategy that was conceived of eight years ago, like still will matter a lot in the years moving forward.

in terms of being able to allow place keeping, allow BIPOC organizations also to afford to stay in the city, support black and brown families, and own the units that they operate out of.

And small businesses, a lot of it is about affordable commercial for folks as well.

That's right.

Okay.

Any comments?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here today and giving this great presentation.

I really want to thank you for all the work that you do and for the intentionality that goes into the work that you do on the race and social justice space, or in the race and social justice space.

There's a couple of things.

One, Rico, when you mentioned about community wealth building, I very much support, excuse me, about generational wealth building.

I very much support generational wealth building It's important for black and brown families to keep their land if they're lucky enough to be landowners and be able to pass that down through generations.

That is how you build generational wealth.

And, you know, in terms of developing on the land that they continue to own, I think that is a great way for them to invest in their own land ownership investment.

I think I caution on the reverse mortgages issue because I know in the 08 real estate bust, of the issue was that banks were giving reverse mortgages to folks who didn't necessarily qualify, and then that became actually folks lost their assets.

So I just, you know, there's something that we need to...

Go ahead.

Just to clarify, I'm referring to something different there, which is the idea that if we can help provide access to capital for existing homeowners, particularly ones that may have less than $100,000 a year in household income, that by building an AD or a DADU where they're renting out those units or selling those units, that that's returning income to the existing homeowner that can ultimately I mean if you're looking at the pro forma of a of a household that ultimately can look like a reverse mortgage so I'm not I'm not actually talking about any of our an actual reverse mortgage and then also though I mean understanding that if they sell a portion of their land they will have

it's not necessarily an investment.

Now they lose that portion of their land.

So it's just, there's just caution, I guess, that I would say in that space.

But in general, I do think that we need to support folks staying in their land and keeping their lands.

And I will say, I was looking on page 13 on slide 13 on the index.

And one of the things that I find interesting about this index is, there are micro, I'm gonna call them, that's not the correct term probably, but I'm gonna use it, is neighborhoods within these neighborhoods.

So for instance, In District 4, there's that yellow in Magnuson Park.

I know we have Mercy Housing and Solid Ground there.

And so I actually think of a portion of that yellow is probably actually closer to the purple.

But because we're looking at as the bigger neighborhood, it pulls down the whole piece to being middle.

And so I worry about the, as our, I keep saying this, our demographics across the city are changing.

We need to make sure that we're also providing opportunity to folks, black and brown immigrants that are in these other areas of the city that they're maybe they weren't before, but they are now.

And we want to make sure they're not excluded because now they're not showing up in the index in the way some of these other areas do.

So that is really of particular importance to me because I very much care about the folks and families that are living at Magnuson Park in particular.

I know that council member Moore also has a number of black and brown and immigrant families and her low income in her district as well.

So I wanna make sure that somehow, I don't know what we do to ensure that those folks are also captured in the work that we do.

Because if you look at the index, they're not necessarily gonna pop up.

And so if we're relying just on the index, then I worry.

And I think that goes, so really appreciate the point.

I think that goes back to this idea that there's, it's about an ecosystem of tools and programs and opportunities and communications.

There's not just like one magic bullet.

So I think that like, you know, when we were doing these interviews around urban indigenous organizations, like, building those trust relationships where we're talking about what's the work that you're doing and what's the work that we're doing and how do we support each other in our quest to uplift the needs of BIPOC communities, like the organizations that you're talking about in your district.

Like, we...

we just need to be doing more of that.

And I think that by doing it in multiple ways, we can move past kind of this invisibility of both organizational work, but just also kind of the rich tapestry of like history and culture across the city that is unseen by many.

So I'm totally on the same page with you.

Do you want to add something, sir, you look like?

Just that that's also why it's important for us as planners to not just do all of our work in City Hall, but to actually get out into our neighborhoods and build relationships with communities so that we understand the more specific nuanced needs that don't show up on maps.

Agreed.

And that's some of the work that we do also as council members.

And we want to make sure that we're supporting that work that you're doing.

Yeah, partnership is important and I do appreciate the partnership.

The last point I wanted to make was I know that we have some organizations that are doing great work, and they get multiple funding from different departments within the city.

And then my concern really is about other organizations that might not, in community, in black and brown communities, and indigenous community, that might be doing some work, or that are doing, not might be doing work, but they're not as well known, and I just wanna make sure that they're able to participate as well because sometimes the better known organizations get more attention and I want to make sure that we're constantly growing as you updated this racial index based on the new census numbers that we're constantly doing the outreach to make sure that we're not unintentionally going to the same organizations and other organizations who are also trying to play in the space like the organization you mentioned at Lake City Way are also able to participate in city funding.

Agreed.

I'm sorry, Councilmember Wu and Strauss, I did not see whose hand went up first.

So go ahead, Councilmember Wu.

Thank you.

I just want to thank you for the work that you're doing, wanting to acknowledge that, you know, the system was not made for people of color, for indigenous people.

And so it's great that you are learning the process and people who are inside the process can slowly make those changes.

And hopefully that will slowly trickle down to policy and how we're looking at different things with an equity lens.

There's a lot of systemic racism, a lot of things within the system that definitely needs to be changed.

And so thank you for doing that work.

I know many of you have work, a regular job, and this is something you do regularly.

extra, so I want to acknowledge that and thank you for that.

I too am excited to see what the streamlined design process will look like, especially when it comes to community inputs and making sure that that community input is solicitated from the beginning of every development project.

I know many developments in certain neighborhoods will have a monthly newsletter where they update community on developments.

We'll love to see that and how that would fit in with design review because when I was on a design review board, our main question was, did you talk to communities?

Is community aware about your development project?

What does community think?

And many times that was the reason why groups had to come back.

And so hopefully, you know, with having groups go to design review in one meeting, it'd be great to have them prepared and ready to present on community thoughts and outreach.

Another thing I wanted to, I'm excited that there is a help desk available on the ground floor of, but wanted to make sure that reasonable expectations are set and also wanted to ask, is there any hope that the help desk will turn into what it used to be pre-pandemic when people can show up with plans and get their questions answered?

I went to the help desk about a month ago with some questions and basically was told like, here, this is the number to call to get your questions answered.

We basically help people get online and send them numbers on who they can call, but can't answer any other questions.

There was someone who had a language access need and basically was told, would love to have spoken to a real person, but was told call this number and we will connect you somebody via phone.

So I was wondering if you think having that helped us be as it was pre-pandemic, is that in the plans in the future?

We definitely want to keep the help desk going into perpetuity.

I think we need to look at our resources and can we bring additional expertise down to that help desk.

You know, kind of on the basis, oftentimes we are able to call staff down to assist a customer with a particular issue, but sometimes staff may be working virtually that day or not in the tower.

So I think those are really important issues you're raising.

Council Member Woon will definitely take a look at that.

Councilmember Wu, I also want to add just to speak to something that you led with.

This is not extra.

This is what gets me out of bed every morning.

This is the work.

There is no other work as far as I'm concerned.

The work of our office is to build an equitable city.

And that has to be evidenced in all of our policy work, all of our programs, all of our investments, and not just our department, but all of our city departments.

So it is, we live and breathe it, super important stuff, super hard, but like it is the work full-time all the time.

Yeah, I'd like to reiterate that.

I joke that I'm a second generation bureaucrat because my dad worked for the Veterans Administration.

And even as a kid growing up, just seeing how much bureaucracy the federal government creates to kind of separate itself from the commitment to serve our veterans.

That's something I grew up knowing about.

And so when I realized that urban planning was a thing, I was like, oh yes, this is what I should be doing.

I should be working with community, like work for government, but listening to community to center community needs, as I've said, to better align existing city resources to meet those needs and to...

bridge the gap between our long range policies and not do those in isolation from how we actually implement our plans and policies.

So I want to reiterate that what Rico said that this is the work, this is the work of government, right?

We create our laws, we create our practices and policies and procedures, and we can rewrite them and remake them to create a more equitable society.

Councilmember Wu, we really are trying to get out into the community more that the pandemic restrictions have been lifted.

SDCI has been working with OCR and we have hosted our first one and have three more landlord sessions in the Bertha Knight Landis room.

Given the complexity of landlord tenant regulations, we want to make sure that we're working with our landlord community so they understand that process.

Thank you.

I know you're also working on the unreinforced masonry.

Absolutely.

And that many of those buildings are within our communities of color.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, we'll be hearing much more about that later.

That's for sure.

Council member, are you done, Council Member Wu?

Okay, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you.

If you could go back to the first opening slide.

Second slide, my apologies.

My comments today are pretty short.

I've heard this presentation many times over the last four years and what impresses me and what I'm thankful and grateful for is that every time you come, you've done something more, you've taken it another step and you've improved on the process.

So I don't have direct questions, I don't have direct comments other than the culture of continued improvement is here.

And I appreciate that.

And that's really one of the more important things.

The reason that I sit on this slide, I will not comment on land acknowledgements.

That's for a different day.

But what I will say is this is a really amazing photo.

I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but the photo on the right is the location So these are past and present, and then the same location.

And it always really stands out to me, that photo on the right, because as we created the city of Seattle, we continued pushing our indigenous people farther and farther north.

And one of the first ordinances in the city of Seattle, despite being named after Chief Sealth, despite having his name on our seal, was forbidding Native Americans in our city.

And that is in part why we had these canoes up in Belltown, because we continued pushing them farther and farther north.

And so this picture brings me great joy because it is showing past and present and acknowledging where we've been and maybe giving us a little bit of a charge statement that we need to move faster, farther, quicker, and do better.

But that's why I started with, I see from both of your departments, a culture of continued improvement.

and I really appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Okay, well, since I have the mic, I do want to remind the viewing public that you have until May 6th to comment on the draft EIS for the comprehensive plan.

I have been encouraging people to just send their emails directly, whether it's a particular code, line item, particular issue in the EIS, or even just a broad...

request, concern, suggestion, you can send your comments to oneseattleplanatseattle.gov.

I will say again, I think we're all continuing to get emails from people about the draft EIS.

And so I will reiterate for the viewing public, We as city council right now are not in that.

We aren't crafting what the next version will look like.

So that's why we keep reiterating that if you want your comments to be included in the final draft or to be considered for inclusion in the final draft, you have until May 6th to send those comments in and you do have to send them directly to OPCD.

One more time at oneseattleplanatseattle.gov.

So I wanna thank all of you for being here.

This has been really important for us to understand the depth and breadth that all of you are doing to make sure that these two departments are really proactively reflecting the priorities around the race and social justice work and appreciate that.

Did I mess up something, Rico?

Well, I just want to, it's just a clarification.

If you go to engage.onceattleplan.com, that's a really good place to get information about the plan and make comments and pull down either a copy of the draft plan, the draft EIS, the anti-displacement strategy, or our neighborhood residential.

All the different elements.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Good point.

Okay, well, again, this was an informational item, but I do appreciate the transparency and the deep reflection that the departments have clearly been doing for some time to get us to this point.

So thank you very much.

If there are no further comments, this concludes the May 1st, 2024 Land Use Committee.

The next Land Use Committee meeting is on May 15th, 2024 at 2 p.m.

Thanks for being here, everyone.

We're adjourned.